@Mary:
Oh good lord.........are you really this dense? The point I was making is this: Fornication = sexual relations outside of marriage. Does this mean that people were not allowed to have sexual relations under any circumstances? ... No, it does not mean that.
This question is as much as non sequitur now as it was when you first asked it. It is relevance to this topic or any and, if I'm being honest, it suggests warped thinking on your part, @Mary. Now this opinion may be a bit hard for you to swallow, but I'm pretty sure you've had to swallow a lot of things since you've reached your adulthood, and that this isn't the first time someone has suggested an inability in you to comprehend what for others are rather simple concepts. And, to answer your question, if you believe me to dense, then what possible difference would it make to you what it is I might opine about myself in this regard when you have made it abundantly clear that you think me to dense?
Is English your second language? Everyone else got what I was saying, so please don't bother trying to twist my words around claiming I said something when I didn't.
Yes, my first one and my second one. If you feel that this would explain why it is that everyone else understood what you were saying, then why should I argue with you? Nothing I might say is going to convince you otherwise; I know this. But here's my question to you: Are you accusing me of having twisting your word around and/or of having falsely attributed some statement to you that you did not make? I wasn't aware that I twisted anything and made some false statement concerning you, so please post in reply to this question:
o What statement(s) of yours I twisted; and
o What statement(s) I attributed to you that were false
Um, you just underscored the exact same part I did egghead....
Is that what you see in your browser, @Mary? The words that were "in bold" in my post were these:
it is in connection with taking it as food
OMG.......are you truly comparing the reclassification of Pluto as a "planet"....
If this particular illustration should be incomprehensible to you, then I am going to have to accept that we have a communication problem. It's not so important to me to try to explain the point I was making in some other manner. Perhaps someone you respect -- like @TD, for example -- will jump in here and help you to understand the point I was making, but I have concluded from this admission of yours that you aren't able to hear me. (Matthew 13:14; Isaiah 6:10)
Ya....you're right egghead......everyone else on here is wrong and you're right....
Your sarcasm aside, yes, @Mary, I am right, and hardly anyone else that has contributed to this thread, including you, has been right.
@TD:
As the years went by and they had time to think about it a little more, most of them, including Jehovah's Witnesses rescinded that objection [re organ and tissue transplantation being cannibalism], and acknowledged that there are physical and moral differences between the eating of human tissue and the transplantation of human tissue.
These exact same differences exist with blood transfusion, which is why analogies with simple compounds like alcohol or penicillin fail.
What do you mean? It is red blood cells that take oxygen to the tissues of the human body. I don't see what an organ transplant has to do with blood transfusions, since, like any foreign tissue, blood transfusion is a tissue transplant and can suppress the immune system leading to immunologic reactions. I mentioned alcohol, but why do you here refer to penicillin as 'a simple compound'? What are these "physical and moral differences" that you say exists between someone that eats human tissue and the transplantation of human tissue as is done when one receives a blood transfusion? You're making no sense to me, @TD. My analogy to penicillin rings true.
You are not aware of it because you are not one of Jehovah's Witnesses, but I'm telling you since I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses that this prejudice that many people have as to our religious refusal to accept blood transfusions starts with the doctors that make some outrageous statements to the public as to how horrible Jehovah's Witnesses are as parents to allow their children to die for religious reasons "when a blood transfusion could have saved their lives" is religious persecution being brought to bear against us because we regard blood as sacred and these folks that bash us do not and hardly believe in God.
It really doesn't matter if you believe this, @TD, but many Jehovah's Witness/non-Jehovah's Witness unions, like yours and your wife's, have often led to things being said that cannot be taken back because Jehovah's Witnesses truly believe in the right of self-determination, in their right to decide what is going to happen to their own bodies or to the bodies of their own children. Jehovah's Witnesses consider it akin to forcible rape for anyone not one of Jehovah's Witnesses to force a blood transfusion upon their bodies or the bodies of their children since we believe all human beings have the right to make decisions that affect their own bodies, and they consider it to be a sacred responsibility to raised their children to adulthood without their children having to end up as adults living for the rest of their lives with the harm that can come to them as a result of their allowing doctors to give them blood transfusions when they were children.
If a 17-year-old kid, who has returned from the war in Afghanistan to his home in the US with legs that no longer work where wet gangrene has set into them so that amputation is required, should refuse to accept this life-saving operation, which will save his life and without which he is going to die, does the doctor have more right than the parents of his young man to decide to overrule this young man's wishes which his parents support? Do you believe this kid to be committing suicide, or would you consider the parents of this 17-year-old to be murderers for supporting their son's wishes in this regard for personal non-religious reasons?
Does the husband whose wife sustains an injury that leaves her brain dead and whose life is being sustained by her being kept on a ventilator as was ordered by her doctor have less right than the patient's husband to keep the patient breathing artificially in this way, especially when the wife may have executed a living will containing a DNR (do not resuscitate) directive in it should it become medically necessary for her to let a machine breathe for her? Do you believe the patient in this case to be committing suicide by having such a directive in her living will or would you consider the husband of the patient to be a murderer for supporting his wife's wishes in this regard for personal non-religious reasons?
If an adult patient refuses to accept a blood transfusion because he knows that blood is such a complex tissue that according to the January 1969 issue of Journal of Forensic Sciences, at page 87, "there is a less than 1 in 100,000 chance of giving a person blood exactly like his own," and that it is possible to contract Hepatitis B from just one millionth of a milliliter of infected blood, and also learns that it could be several months after a blood transfusion before he would begin to produce detectable HIV-1 or HIV-2 antibodies from contaminated blood, do you believe the doctor to have more rights than the patient to overrule his wishes? Do you believe the patient in this case to be committing suicide for his refusal to accept blood transfusions in this regard for personal non-religious reasons?
What if, say, an eight-year-old girl sustains a life-threatening injury as the result of a car accident in which she loses some blood volume and requires surgery and her parents, who are Jehovah's Witnesses should stay the hand of the doctors so that they do not permit them to give her a blood transfusion, but otherwise seek the very best care that money can buy to save her life, including the use of blood volume expanders and drugs like recombinant erythropoietin which speeds up the body’s own production of red blood cells until this little girl's body is able to produce enough blood on its own.
Do you believe the doctor's medical judgment should overrule the parents of this child's religious beliefs with respect to blood and seek a court order to force unwanted blood transfusions on their little girl? Do you believe the parents of this little girl to be derelict in their responsibilities toward their daughter, and, if their daughter should die, to be guilty of homicide for not permitting the doctor to use blood transfusions in an attempt to save the patient's life for personal religious reasons?
Tell me this, @TD: Do the parents of the 17-year-old and the eight-year-old lose the right of self-determination over their own children should, following a serious injury, they refuse to accept the medical treatment that a doctor believes could save their child's life, even when there is a very real possibility that their child will die? Does the husband of a patient lose the right of self-determination over his wife's life, or does his wife, the patient, lose the right of self-determination over her own life, should either of them decide to sign a DNR directive or order when there is a very real possibility that the patient will die? Does the patient lose the right of self-determination over his own life should he refuse to accept the medical treatment that a doctor believes could save his life?
Transfused blood cannot save anyone's life forever, but Jesus' ransom blood is able to save life forever. It is by means of Jesus Christ "that we have the release by ransom through the blood of that one, yes, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his undeserved kindness." (Ephesians 1:7) This ransom sacrifice is the only arrangement that God has authorized by means of which the blood of one creature (Jesus) may be used on behalf of another to save life. (Matthew 20:28)
The only divinely sanctioned use of the human reproductive system in the Bible was through marital intercourse.
This is true.
Do Jehovah's Witnesses decide all matters of medicine using the same methodology they use with blood?
Yes, which "methodology" is, simply put, if God said don't do it, then we don't do it.
It could be inferred that all other uses of the human reproductive system were forbidden.... The resultant restriction would forbid all uses of the human reproductive system outside of marital intercourse for no other reason then that they unknown to the ancient world and therefore not listed as exceptions in the Bible. In-vitro fertilization would be lumped together with things like adultery, which is very, very different.
It's not so "very, very different" if God indicates in His word, the Bible, that He doesn't approve of in-vitro fertilizations.
It should be obvious that this line of reasoning is fallacious on many levels. In-vitro fertilization for a married couple is a preternatural use of the human reproductive system, but it is still a use in accordance with what Jehovah's Witnesses would consider the purpose of the human reproductive system to be. (i.e For married couples to produce children)
Nope.
This is what I was driving at when I asked if Jehovah's Witnesses judge transfusion under the same rubric as the mundane uses of blood known to the ancient world. Medical procedures unknown to the ancient world can't be judged that way and I would be surprised if Jehovah's Witnesses use that methodology in other areas.
This would be a different question, for the rubric as to which you speak here is different from the in-vitro fertilization-adultery paradigm or the idolatry-blood-fornication paradigm. Let me explain.
In-vitro fertilization constitutes adultery, whether the husband's sperm is used to fertilize an egg of another woman, not his wife, or this wife agrees to an insemination by intercourse with this other woman, not his wife. The Bible says: "You must not give your emission as semen to the wife of your associate to become unclean by it." (Leviticus 18:20)
Even if we were talking about gestational surrogacy, where implanted into this surrogate's uterus is the fertilized egg of the husband and his wife, which makes this other woman, not his wife, pregnant. So what happened that is so wrong here, you ask? The pregnancy is the result of a misuse of her reproductive organs, so that her womb is being used by someone that is not her husband. Both of these things that I mention here are immoral on many levels. I saw a preview of a television show recently where the newborn infant was going to die, and this baby that had been the result of a gestational surrogacy between a married couple and the wife's sister-in-law had been produced from the last of the wife's stored eggs after a hysterectomy, so that the husband and wife were discussing the possibility of harvesting the eggs of her newborn so that they might be used in a gestational surrogacy, again involving the wife's sister, which is just sick!
If the surrogate should receive the sperm of an unmarried man, this would then constitute fornication on her part (and on the donor's part as well). (1 Thessalonians 4:3-8) Life is sacred and sexual intercourse if how life ought to begin between a man and woman that become "one flesh," married. (Matthew 19:4-6) The marriage bed is not to be defiled in any manner. (Hebrews 13:4)
It isn't proper for a man other than the surrogate’s own husband to make use of the surrogate's reproductive organs, period, whether it be by means of the sperm you know, or donor sperm. (Leviticus 18:20; Deuteronomy 23:2)
@Listener:
DJ it seems that you are in disagreement with the GB as this is the situation
Ok.
TD has [presented] a good argument to explain how blood is not food when injected but rather tissue transplant.
How would you know a good argument when you hear one? On what basis do you conclude that @TD's argument was a good one. What is the nexus between an organ transplant and a blood transfusion? How did you come to the conclusion that @TD was comparing blood to food?
What really gets me though is how it even comes about that such a serious life and death situation is decided on a majority, surely it should be a conscience matter when all are not in agreement.
You might want to take a moment and read Jesus' words to his apostles at Matthew 16:19. After you will have done this, you might then ask someone what this verse means in the context of this question that you have asked here.
@djeggnog
