Religion: pros & cons pt1 (Religion)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 22, 2014, 20:39 (3467 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: I choose to say that a prohibition against ingesting blood means not to ingest blood.[...] I gave a specific example where the word 'eat' was not even used, and in fact it was said, "abstain from blood" AND not to eat meat with the blood. Abstain from blood is pretty cut and dry. I am not the one making arbitrary distinctions.-In my New World, Watch Tower translation, Gen. 9: 4 and Deuteronomy 12, 15-16 categorically use the word “eat”, not ingest. “Eat” is pretty cut and dried. Please remind me where the bible uses “ingest”. The two passages in Acts tell us to abstain from things polluted by/sacrificed to idols, from fornication, from things strangled and from blood, the last two of which presumably refer to the “kosher” way of slaughtering animals before eating them. It can hardly refer to blood transfusions, which were unknown at the time. And yet you would rather die than accept even the possibility that these phrases are open to interpretation.
 
DHW: I shudder to think of the JWs that may have died in the last 50 years or so, since the process became as safe as any medical procedures, drugs and operations can be. The issue between us is not whether there are better alternatives, but whether the text has to be interpreted your way.
Tony: The process has never been 'safe', and never will be. Even David has admitted as much. 

I wrote: “as safe as any medical procedures, drugs and operations can be”. If a patient's life can be saved by a blood transfusion, but the patient doesn't have one and dies, what part does medical safety play in your argument? I would still very much like to know how many patients have died as a result of this highly debatable interpretation of an ancient text.-DHW: “Would you allow a child to die because a tiny minority of biblical scholars believe eating and ingesting are synonymous with transfusing?”
TONY: I would do my damndest to save my children, but I would not break God's Law to do it. Further, my children wouldn't do it to save me. You will see that, no doubt, as cruel or vicious, but between us it is a matter of loving respect and strong faith.-Not cruel or vicious (both too deliberate). Since the death is based not on God's law but on a hotly disputed interpretation, perhaps heartbreakingly unnecessary.-DHW: You know that these were not the laws I was referring to as vicious. -TONY: Yes, I know what you meant. As David said, you read the words, but not the deeper underlying meanings and messages. Do you honestly think that the law meant that the first time someone smarted off to their folks they were killed? Or that it was a simple case of 'he eats too much, kill him!!' I suppose the part of "and they have tried to correct him but he refuses to listen to them". went unnoticed as well. Yes, the penalties were hard. Under biblical law, there is only one penalty for sin, only one. The only difference between the laws is when that penalty is paid. -I don't know why you assume I didn't notice the rest. In my view, stoning someone to death because they worship a different God, or because they are drunkards or gluttons (regardless of how often they've been told to mend their ways) is vicious. You were swift to point out that the new covenant rescinded the old laws, but you never said which ones. Were these rescinded? If so, does that mean the old laws were regarded as too vicious? It's difficult to know which laws are in and which are out, but perhaps that's why the bible is so wide open to interpretation.
 
TONY: And on the topic of marriage, check out Deut 21:10-14. That seems to be another scripture that is often ignored. -Let me summarize: if you've captured a beautiful woman (forget the ugly ones) from your enemies, you must let her grieve for the rest of the family you have killed, and then you can marry her (no mention of what she might want), and when/if you've had enough of her, you can send her away with her agreement, but you mustn't sell her. “You must not deal tyrannically with her after you have humiliated her.” OK to humiliate her first, then. But you are right: it doesn't forbid inter-faith marriage, in contrast to 7: 1-4, which says that when God enables you to capture a country, you must kill all the inhabitants and you must not intermarry with them. You just don't know where you stand with these laws. I guess it's all a matter of interpretation. Which is the subject we are discussing.