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TrueTomHarley

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Posts posted by TrueTomHarley

  1. On 12/7/2023 at 1:01 AM, Pudgy said:

    … I was just getting ready to reply something I thought was profound, wise, insightful and wrong.

    …. but then the idea occorred to methat we have never seen MM and the Big L in the same post….

    Coincidence?

    Oh, it is hardly proof positive, but both have been around for a long, long time. Both respond to me in more or less the same way. Both are avante garde about respecting the GB’s wishes—MM has made it clear, and the Librarian just for hosting such a site. Both have a fixation on order—concerned when a thread wanders. Both respond to challenges with snippets about food—‘I like tacos’ for the Librarian, ‘pass the popcorn’ for MM

    I mean, I wouldn’t stake significant sums on it, but no way is it an absurd speculation.

  2. 8 hours ago, Many Miles said:

    I was really looking for a view from a casual observer. It means something to me.

    Adding to Thinkings list, of which each item is different, so that I think that would have answered your question, is just plain ‘ol human error. Anyone who has ever worked in healthcare (my wife is a retired nurse) knows there is plenty of it. 

    In my area, hospitals laid off nurses who would not accepted the Covid shot. This led to collapse of the hospital system, as there were a lot of them, not easily or affordably replaced, so largely not replaced, making the remaining staff take up the slack over which they protested and went on strike. Do you think this worked to increase the safety of transfusion protocol?

    Just recently local hospitals were found to be in severe violation of a law that they must not be understaffed. It’s a LAW—how could that have not fixed the problem? It’s as though administrators say, ‘If our nurses quit, the very stones will take care of you!’

    Everything is collapsing. And whereas JW’s stand on war, tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse, and compliance with safety laws, place them BY FAR among the safest religions out there, you keep flailing a on a number so relatively tiny that neither Thinking nor myself can think of an example we personally know of. And neither of us are youngsters, especially Thinking.

    In a revolving population of several million you are going to find countless examples of anything. But there is such a thing as focusing on the trees so minutely as to not see the forest.

  3. 7 hours ago, Many Miles said:

    The question of fractions harvested knowingly and purposely from blood to take what we want is like asking God if it would have been okay for Adam to knowingly and purposely harvest what he wanted to eat from the tree of knowledge and throw the rest away without eating it. And what response do you think that would have evoked from God? Who knows, maybe Adam didn't like peelings.

    Seen in that light, it is. Seen in the light of ‘drained animals yet retain traces of blood’ it isn’t. I’m not sure why you’d have to be a microbiologist to serve God. Blood is recognizable, even broken into packed red, packed white, etc. Fractions are not.

    Nor did you answer my question, even to say ‘I don’t know,’ about percentages at the Bethels.

    At any rate, the problem’s been effectively solved, as you indicated and I responded about that draft letter to be kept top of the chart. It is plain that you’re not going to be satisfied without things going down 100% your way, but nothing in life is like that.

  4. 9 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

    And why is the blood topic in a discussion that started out about Malawi anyway?

    Miles himself raised that objection. But I told him to suck it up. He’d already gotten his licks in. Time to move on. I knew Pudgy would back me and the card-catalog Librarian would be too tipsy to notice.

  5. 4 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

    If you had to name a primary medical issue leading to mortality related to blood, what would be your top five?

    I would leave the question for someone who has better data at their fingertips and instead ask this one:

    The notion that fractions might be viewed differently than blood, some feeling ‘it’s not a cake until you mix the ingredients,’ and so we hear of persons urged to make their own conscientious  decisions . . .I wonder how they turn out at the Bethels. The two poles regarding fractions are accept them all or reject them all, doubtless with some picking and choosing in between. How does that go down in Bethel? Roughy equal, or is the majority toward one pole or the other?

    We did come to learn how they are with vaccines. I wonder how it shakes out with fractions. It is possible, even likely, that nobody knows, that it is not something tracked. But it still makes me curious.

  6. 36 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

    But you characterized the occurrence as "occasional". How many times need I ask to get an answer of what you mean by that? If you can't quantify it then how to do characterize it as you have? So what does your characterization mean? 

    When Jehovah’s organization was confronted with Covid and the vaccine campaign, and all the controversy generated, they tracked those whom they found easiest to track—those among their worldwide circle of full time servants. This informal survey indicated to them that any risk of vaccinate was quite low, acceptable in view of the risk of Covid which seemed quite high. Soon we began hearing of how most of those at Bethel had gotten vaccinated. 

    Since then I have read, from the worldwide population, how ‘died suddenly’ is now a thing. Did they always?  A book by that name charts insurance company data to discover a significant, statistically most unlikely, spike in sudden unexplained deaths in otherwise healthy people, often the young, which coincides exactly with the time period in which vaccines began to be mandated for those employed in large companies.

    There is no doubt that the worldwide statistical pattern shows this. Yet I look around the congregations and circuit and if it shows up, it is not so marked as to be noticeable to me.

    It is probably similar with blood transfusions. You asked my personal experience. I gave it. I don’t know the overall pattern. I accept when you and others say some have died that you are not lying. As with Thinking, however, there does appear to be a lot of “fearmongering” (her word) to make the situation appear worse than it is.

  7. 1 hour ago, Thinking said:

    My goodness that would have been so hard to do with that young lad with an unbelieving dad…so happy you didn’t try to persuade him in any way

    Some expected me to. I caught some flak next morning from one of the boy’s hometown elders. I didn’t answer then as I would today—that they should have been there themselves if they were concerned about his outcome. I just knew at the time with this unknown teen that if he hadn’t formed a stand by now it was a little late to start just then, or for me to encourage that.

    Then, of course, adding to my prior answer to Many Miles, there was the time I was admitted myself for a sudden onset of pain and they advised surgery come Monday morning. I made clear at least twice how I felt about blood and was told, ‘Not a problem, easily accommodated, we do it all the time. Just sign here and here.’ Then, on the operating table, in comes the anesthesiologist who says, ‘I see you’re a Witness. If it should turn out that you need a transfusion, will you accept one? Or would you rather die?’

    The experience is in ‘Tom Irregardless and Me,’ where it was attributed to Wayne Whitepebble. But it was really me.

  8. 2 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

    How can you realize something you've never personally known of?

    What kind of a silly question is that?

    Come, come, Many Miles, you’re picking a fight. Everyone knows how you can learn of things that you don’t know from personal experience.

  9. 1 hour ago, Many Miles said:

    What, in your experience, does "occasional" mean? … I'm curious what your experience is… understand you'd only be speaking of one man's opinion and experience

    I have known three people in my lifetime who were told, point blank, and without much empathy, that they would die without a blood transfusion. None agreed to one. None died. One of them was a teen backed by her parents. 

    I realize that some persons have died, as you’ve indicated. I have just never personally known of one.

    I also recall being asked to visit a teen from some rural congregation who had been in an accident and was being advised a transfusion was necessary. His mom was a Witness, his dad was not. I went with the idea that if this lad, who I did not know, wished for no transfusion, I would back him in his wish.  He did not indicate any such desire and he was transfused. I do not know what became of him afterwards. The experience was awkward and uncomfortable for me, not knowing any of the people involved. 

    The closest experience with blood that I know, not exactly what you have asked,  is of a nearby couple whose son had a defective heart from birth. The local hospitals would not agree to operate without blood. His parents took him to a hospital out of state that specialized in bloodless medicine, where the heart was repaired without incident. Several years later the problem (or a new one) returned. This time, neither the local hospital nor the bloodless one held out much hope. Parents took him to the hospital that had operated the first time, and he died. Sorry, I don’t have the specifics of exactly what his defect was.

    The husband was not a believer when these trials began. He acquiesced to his wife’s stance. The support he received from the friends at the faraway hospital made such an impression upon him that he later became a Witness, and was one at the time of the child’s second operation. He has remained steadfast in the faith and serves as an elder today.

    Another elder who I don’t know well—his youngest suffered some malady and hospitals wanted transfusions. They held firm and the boy is well today, with what treatment I forget, but the man recalled to me his anguish at the time that his son might die “to no purpose.”

  10. It is too easy to take the JW blood transfusion stand as an arbitrary concoction of their ‘top brass,’ imposed on everyone else for—who knows what reason? In this crazy world of ‘anticult activism,’ it can be spun as a technique of ‘controlling people:’ Lay a few conditions on others and there is no question as to who is boss.

    That is why I like this quote from Professor of Anatomy at the University of Copenhagen, Thomas Bartholin. (1616-1680) Yes, it was a long time ago. Does that make it irrelevant? If anything, it makes it key. 

    Those who drag in the use of human blood for internal remedies of diseases appear to misuse it and to sin gravely . . . Cannibals are condemned. Why do we not abhor those who stain their gullet with human blood? Similar is the receiving of alien blood from a cut vein, either through the mouth or by instruments of transfusion. The authors of this operation are held in terror by the divine law, by which the eating of blood is prohibited,” he writes.

    It is key because it shows the stand educated people took, at least some of them, before the occasional price that has been paid caused ‘the faithful’ to go all weak in the knees. Did Jehovah’s Witnesses make this stuff up about blood transfusions just to be ornery? No. Their stance was once the stance that immediately occurred to God-fearing persons such as this professor. I’d take him over that smart-ass GC philosophy professor any day.

    The smart-ass philosophy professor—no question about it—leans heavily toward atheism, if not embracing it entirely. He consistently insists that ‘rationality’ must define all. He consistently insists that belief in God is ‘irrational.’ You can do it if you want—he gives his permission—but just don’t imagine you’re being ‘rational.’ To be sure, there are philosophies that would prohibit you, but they are as logically inconsistent as the ones that allow you, so he doesn’t know what to do until he has rationally settled the problem, a project that isn’t going too well, though that doesn’t phase him.

    It makes a difference if you are atheist or not. Leaning toward atheism means that any loss of life is permanent and therefore must be averted at all costs. Exceptions are made for loss of life due to war, due to scientific or other exploration, even for extreme sports. For the latter, the deceased is likely, not to be derided as the idiot everyone else thinks he is, but to be lauded for having ‘lived life to the full,’ ‘following his dreams’ and so forth.  But if that dream has to do with religion—then and only then is such loss of life deemed near-criminal.

    To be sure, atheists are not glib about loss of life. They endorse efforts to make war safer, for instance, by sending in drones to do the bombing, rather than soldiers who might get hurt. They make us all wear seatbelts when we drive. No spouse has ever nagged so much as my car nags me if I ride unbuckled—the alarm starts pleasantly enough but soon escalates to nuclear war alarm level that is well-nigh unbearable. Protective equipment, even concussion protocol, is devised for football athletes—no, not that silly game where you kick the ball around but can’t touch it with your hands, but the one where you can manhandle it and anyone with it pretty much anywhichway you like—violence comparable to rugby, I am told. They’ve made it safer. They even stopped the game when the Bills players dropped on the field and the ambulance came out to administer CPR before taking him away. It took about an hour, during which teammates crowded around so fans could not see the fellow being worked on, an hour during which the sports broadcasters had to uncomfortably tread water, but they did afterward call off the game and all the fans went home. They didn’t do as in Ancient Rome: ‘Another one bit the dust! Bring out the next combatant!’

    Jehovah’s Witnesses have also made their Bible-based transfusion stand ‘safer’—not directly they haven’t, but by spurring on the advent of bloodless medicine, they have made holding fast far ‘safer’ than it used to be. From Tom Irregardless and Me: 

    The Watchtower organization never meant to kill a god; Witnesses just wanted him to leave them alone. We initially assumed when doctors told us we were crazy for refusing blood transfusions that we were, at least insofar as the present life is concerned. But each passing year has revealed our position to be more sound medically, and the transfusion god’s less. We never imagined doctors would ultimately expose transfusion as a sham and kill the god. It wasn’t our intention for that to happen. We don’t gloat about it. 

    “To be sure, it hasn’t happened. The god of blood transfusion is not dead. He’s alive. But he’s not well. He’s limping where he once walked tall. He is like the god of churches that Sam Harris boasts he has killed. He’s respected so long as he stays in his place. But his place used to be anywhere he wanted it to be. He’ll be around for a long time because too many incomes depend upon him. But he’s not the god he once was.

    So the Witness transfusion policy on transfusion, like the above policies on other secular matters, is much safer than it once was. It is certainly far ‘safer’ than it was in Bartholin’s day, back when a godly person would instantly recognize that to misuse blood was to “sin gravely” and be “held in terror by the divine law.”

    On 12/4/2023 at 9:55 AM, Many Miles said:

    This is a document that is signed by treating doctors and the child's parents and is "TO BE PLACED IN THE FRONT OF THE CHART". (Upper case in original document) The primary language reads:

    "In an emergency, where your child is apparently experiencing severe suffering or is at risk, if the treatment is not administered promptly, of sustaining serious bodily harm, medical staff will provide treatment that is allowed by the law, which may include blood transfusion."

    This document was put together just for JWs, and it was drafted with full support from the society's hospital information services department. When JW parents have minor children in other hospitals HLC members have initiated inquiries as to whether the institution has such a letter of understanding, and if they do not would they consider using one.

    To the extent that this is true (I’m pretty sure it is, but I just don’t want to rubber-stamp it), it has not become a situation in which the prevailing view of transfusion has changed. It has become a situation in which HQ says it is not for them to enforce one’s compliance or non-compliance. They are moving more into the arena of ‘each one must carry his own load’ as opposed to ‘You’d better carry it; we’re watching you.’ It would be in perfect harmony with the revised stand ‘over counting time.’ It might be okay for the enforcer to verify that you count time, but not the shepherd

    To the extent it is true, if someone caves on the blood issue due to cowardice, like Peter caved in denying his Lord and then later in the matter of partiality, it is between them and Jehovah. If someone ‘caves’ on this issue due to conviction, it is also between them and Jehovah. The shepherding organization may well assist, healing in the instance of cowardice, educating in the case of possibly misplaced conviction, but will otherwise stand aside and not meddle in the affairs of the ‘house slave’ of another. It is a win-win. Being a win-win, to continue to rail over transfusion beliefs begins to smack of ‘fighting against God.’ There they are, plain as day, according to Bartholin. The support organization has fixed the issue. What more could you ask for, other than usurping the power to resurrect? You’ll just have to wait on that for a while.

  11. 23 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

    Your heart and mind made the wrong assessment and conclusion. I'm sending a smiley. :) 

    It is like when a man just returned from his day's work invited me into his home, in which he had several Bibles. I had stopped by previously; his wife said to return when he got home, for he loved to discuss God's Word.

    He was a humble man, hospitable, instantly likeable, of just what church I forget. I made some points. He made some points. He invited me to a certain passage of scripture. He meant to read it aloud but I got there first and made to read it myself. 

    "No, not you, don't you read it," he said, chuckling in good-natured faux panic. "You'll mess it all up!"

  12. 18 hours ago, Many Miles said:

    I don't know much about your written works, but it sounds like you have fun with it. By itself that's reason enough to keep at it. 

    I do have a lot of fun with it. I compare myself to a painter, a favorite safe hobby for a Witness. (painting, not writing, and the object painted is likely to be a boat) He or she paints for enjoyment. Thereafter, he doesn’t tuck paintings in the closet but puts them in some gallery. If he finds that some like them, so much the better. If they buy them, even more so much the better. But he would paint regardless of reception. He benefits from naysayers too, and may or may not incorporate their input into subsequent works.

    I write to be creative, to research, to tell stories, to do memoirs. Steve Jobs confided to his biographer he wanted his story told so his kids would understand him better. I don’t primarily consider myself an apologist, though I can see why other people might. It is just that I am a Witness and everyone writes about what they know. Mostly, I am just a communicator who gots to communicate.

    That said, to the extent I am an apologist, I go places I have never seen any Witness go. The Witness works that I have seen mostly confine themselves to ‘safe’ Witness topics like bashing holidays or blood transfusions. If they do go into matters of controversy, they mostly repackage what they’ve read in the Watchtower. For me, Chrysiddes remarks (under his pen name Ivor E. Tower) about ‘Tom Irregardless and Me’ is satisfying:  “Tom shows a remarkable breadth of knowledge and reading too – he has by no means exclusively studied Watch Tower publications.”

    To the extent I have a goal, it is to show how a modern Witness copes with the times. Another goal is not to be dull. As an example of going somewhere I’ve never seen a Witness go, ‘In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction,’ includes a detailed description of my meeting with the elders, following up on prior counsel not to engage with ‘apostates’ and unsure as to whether I do or not, but if so, to readjust. I mean, I had a book (which I later removed) on my blog page entitled TrueTom vs the Apostates!’ A little difficult for me to say, ‘Don’t know nothin bout no apostates here.’ I don’t advertise, but word gets around.

    Probably, every ‘apostate’ book contains a meeting with the elders, many of them framed as ‘shootout at the OK Corral.’ I don’t know for sure, having never read one. Everyone’s got a story to tell, and mine is as good as theirs. But I’ve never seen an account of a meeting with elders from a loyal congregation member. If Witnesses are known as ‘insular,’ I strive to be open. I frame this meeting in the good light I think it should be framed in, as an example of shepherding, even when a given ‘sheep’ might find it overbearing. Rather than take any shots at anyone, I present the elders much as Pudgy has, as honorable men doing their best to do the right thing. I’m on good terms with every one of them, as well as the congregation at large. 

    I even deal with charges opponents make against them: 

    Are the brothers “brainwashed”—the ones who counseled me about a matter that they do not understand themselves from a fleshly point of view, which is the only point of view of concern to the greater world? It’s such a loaded word. Who isn’t brainwashed today in some respect?

    “Follow the flag and get your head blown off in consequence; only some of your countrymen will think your death noble—everyone else in the world will consider your death in vain. It doesn’t take some brainwashing to buy into that? Follow unquestioningly the overall goals of this system to get a good education so that you may get a good job—not a tad of brainwashing there that such is the path to happiness? When my wife worked as a nurse with the geriatric community, she said a quite common thing was for bewildered elderly persons to look around them in their waning years, as though to say, “Is this all there is?” These were not “losers” in life, for the most part. These were people who had enjoyed careers and loving families. But there was an aching emptiness at the end for many of them, a certain vague but overpowering sense of betrayal by life. Is it not the result of being brainwashed by mainstream thinking?”

    So, yes, I write for enjoyment. Yes, I am pleased that my works trickle off the shelf. But they should be New York Times bestsellers.

    18 hours ago, Many Miles said:

    Ignore people like me.

    Unnecessary advice. You are one of the viewers, even as you do paintings yourself. I’m content if you don’t throw that many tomatoes.

  13. 1 hour ago, Srecko Sostar said:

    Why torture your soul as if everything after "sin" is irreparable and futile.

    The only problem a sinner will have is a problem with people, not with God. Then tell me, whose, which relationship is more important to you?

    Exactly. That is why you sit in the penalty box for a while till they let you back in the game.

    Many Miles all but blew a gasket when I pulled this illustration on him, but it is exactly what I would do if I had caved on this issue, either out of conviction or out of cowardice.

    Of course, if it were out of conviction I caved, so that it was not really caving but standing on principle, and my conviction was such that since headship is misguided on this position, it is misguided in everything else as well, then I would not head for the penalty box. I would head directly to the showers. But most people are not such black-and-white thinkers. Even the Great Courses philosophy professor cited some research somewhere—I will look it up in time—to the effect that most persons are content with what is mostly true, a finding that seems to distress him because he thinks through philosophy he can discover what is absolutely true. Good luck on that project. 

    His course of 36 lectures (let us estimate 5 per lecture, deducting the introductory and concluding lecture, to arrive at our count) considers 170 philosophies, some in detail, some in passing, and for each one he cites logical inconsistencies. Even as I write this, I know it cannot be as high as 170, but it is a lot.

    He says: “Philosophy can be frustrating because it's so difficult to find concrete answers. For example, we just studied a number of ethical theories but each one failed in one way or the other. We didn't definitively define what's morally right and wrong and we certainly didn't find the truth makers for moral statements we were looking for.

    Now this might tempt us to draw the conclusion that, just like with free will and persons and the mind, that morality is just an illusion. The reason that we can't find the ground for moral facts is because there are none, and that might be true however.

    Or . . .it just may be that he is looking in the wrong place for everything. It just may be that Zilch is the price he pays for confining his search to that of the ‘physical man.’ If he was to expand to the ‘spiritual man,’ it might be different, but he has consistently made a great show that everything must conform to ‘reason.’ He is not put off by his entire lecture, which sums up the entire body of philosophy, not finding any ‘reason’ that is consistent. 

    19 hours ago, George88 said:

    Once again, the power of intellect shines through.

    Believe me, if this guy has a problem, it is not that his intellect fails to shine through. It’s that he should put a basket over it. He has confined his search to what is rational, to what is intellectually satisfying, and he will not go beyond it. It is a great shame, because the body of knowledge Witnesses adhere to is not afraid to go beyond it. It has to conform to reason, and it does, but it doesn’t have to bow to it as Master, the way this professor representing philosophy does.

    It is like my comment on the educated world’s division of Job into two parts: “Is the appeal here that by doing so you are in position to understand neither while in both cases flattering the intellect?” By separating chapters 1 and 2, you get to shine before your educated peers, reassuring them that you, too, are not so stupid as to believe in a literal devil. At the same time, you get to spin treatises on the windy speeches, unconcerned that they may be a test at the end. Whatever theories you propose will be no better or worse than the next guy’s.

    It is not intellect that matters to God. It is heart. If you have intellect, by all means, bring your gift to the altar, but don’t expect anyone to bow and scrape to you on that account, much less to hand you the reins.

    But coming back to Srecko, I would say that if I caved, whether it be out of cowardice or conviction, I would sit in the penalty box for a while. If it were conviction, I would bitch a little bit inwardly, to be sure, but I wouldn’t flame anyone. They’ll eventually let me back in, and in the meantime, I can read Pudgy’s cartoons. 

    Not to make light of MM’s trials. Had I experienced the things he had experienced, I might feel differently. I too, might thereafter present myself as an investigator of faiths (through rationality, no less) rather than as an adherent of one. I, too, might seek to undermine whoever I thought was advancing the ideas I came into such jarring conflict with. 

    It is the human experience. John Butler experiences child sexual abuse long before he becomes a Witness. Thereafter, he cannot participate in a discussion of it without lapsing into near hysteria. The Sandy Hook parent loses his child and crusades for gun violence. A mother’s son is run over and Mothers Against Drunk Driving is born. None of these things would have happened without a horrific experience to precede it.

    I am sympathetic. Maybe I would go there, too, in similar circumstances. My only experience with childhood sexual abuse came when some pervert happened along as my 15-year-old self was walking before dealer row considering the car I might buy when of driving age. No one was around, and the creep, leaning into me a little bit more than one would think proper, urged me to go with him behind the dealership because that’s where they keep the really good cars.

    I wasn’t stupid. I got away from him in no time flat. I saw right through him—though, not for the right reason. They’re not going to keep the really good cars in the back. They’re going to put them up front where people can see them!

    But if some horrific thing had happened, maybe I, upon recovery, would be like Butler. Or with different tragedies, like the other three. Or like Many Miles. Maybe I would come here as Many Many Miles and say to him, ‘What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?’

    If I so far have not, it is out of recognition that, whereas humans excel in demolition, they are far less skilled in construction.

     

     

  14. 1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

    No. I will say it came from JWs. And guys like MM may say, ‘Oh, well, this book is an apologetic work. Why waste my time?’ But I cannot conscientiously do it any other way.

    It gets worse. When I release any such book, not only with MM dismiss it because it is apologetical in nature, but my own people will say, ‘Hmm—are we supposed to be doing this? Isn’t it someone else’s job to write about God?’

    It’s like when I fill out a skills list for use in building projects. I say I know how to clean. If I say I also know how to write, follow up remarks will reveal that my experience comes through blogging—a dirty word to most Witnesses. It is not as though anyone has said a person can’t do that. It is that no one has said that you can, (a dilemma known as Pudgy’s Razor) and so the thinking of most will be, ‘If it were worth doing, the org would be advancing and recommending it.’ Instead, they have cautioned of how ‘it is not necessary’ and ‘some indiscreet brothers’ have done it, leading others to conclude that ‘Thou Shalt Not Blog’ is the eleventh commandment. 

    So, for me it is somewhat like @Juan Rivera, who has said he pays a social cost for being a Witness. Juan, too, could write some books, and may someday. But he will face the same dilemma, and already does in ways that are parallel. He would, if he were a Baptist, write a book about God. Baptist Press would promote it, and even say: ‘Look at this guy! A real thinker, he is, a theologian and one of ours!’ Whereas, when he writes as a Witness, he becomes that brother who is likable but a little odd and possibly one who should be given a wide berth. You can ‘beat the rap’ simply by being a good person in the congregation and out, but the notion that one should feel there is a rap to beat will unfailingly stick in the craw of those overly swayed by today’s age of independence.

    For me, I will acquiesce and say, ‘That’s the way it is. Suck it up.’ If it is a downer, it is many-fold more times compensated for by other benefits that I perceive stem from being a Witness. When people unite, all must chip in a little. If they don’t, then the unity doesn’t happen. Is there a social cost to being a Witness and making oneself subject to the Witness’ organization? There is also a social cost to not doing it: 

    Recently, we had people from Texas come into town to work on a Kingdom Hall remodel nearby and they needed a place to stay. Sight unseen, we handed them the keys to our house while we were heading away for a few days. Many people would kill for such a brotherhood where you can place such trust in total strangers. 

    That happened. The following two paragraphs I made up:

    At the Independence Day church, Mr. and Mrs. O’Reilly heard of our adventure and decided to do the same. The first guests who stayed at their house broke their TV. The second set of guests tracked mud throughout the house. The third set found the Go Packs and raided the funds set aside.  The fourth set emptied the house completely and the O’Reilly’s returned to four bare walls.

    Steamed, they contacted Independence Day Church headquarters. “Oh, yeah, that happened to us, too. No, they’re not congregation members – they’re imposters. But we have such a half-assed organization that any scoundrel can pull the wool over our eyes in a twinkling of the eye.’

    Notice how it is not a matter of rationality to prefer the Witness organization to the Independence Day church. It is more a matter of what one values more. ‘Taste and see that Jehovah is good,’ the verse says. I had previously witnessed to the O’Reillys extensively but upon hearing Jehovah has an earthly organization, they decided that tasted bad. They preferred the Independence Day Church, where no one will lean upon them in any way. If they have to buy a houseful of furniture once in a while, it is in their eyes a small price to pay. 

     

  15. 19 hours ago, Many Miles said:

    Maybe I missed something, but the article I read that you linked to was an apologetic work. . . 

    Was it? 

    How is the following any more than a reasonable conclusion upon reflection of the article itself?

    The problem is that transfused blood needs nitric oxide to keep the blood vessels open, otherwise, the carried oxygen never reaches the tissues. But nitric oxide begins to break down within three hours of storage, and donated blood is presently stored up to 42 days. To be sure, researchers think they can remedy the problem. But that does nothing to improve the effectiveness of blood transfusions already given, each one of which was hailed as "life-saving," yet few of them actually qualifying as such, at least not any more so than saline solution, which offers no danger of rejection. We all know that the body spots foreign tissue in an instant, and tries hard to get rid of it.”

    I mean, I get where you’re coming from. I make clear in the article that I am a Witness. That negates the commentary itself, which even acknowledges researchers aim to rectify the problem and perhaps partially have by now? This is the mindset with which, for example one reads something about an uncontrolled southern border and says, ‘Well—what do you expect? He’s a Republican who wrote it.’ Or one reads something about the abuses of big business and says, ‘He’s a Democrat. Of course he’s going to say that.’ 

    This is example of the inane prejudging of information the greater world typifies today. The Great Courses philosophy professor does this in spades. Discussing climate change, he touches on the fact that many weatherman don’t believe it. ‘A meteorologist is not a climatogist,’ he tells us, thus equating anything the former might write to so much toilet paper. How did it get to be a world where people are brilliant in their chosen field, but if you nudge them just a tiny bit out of it, they are clueless? What Great Educator fallen from the heavens packages information this way? And why—unless he is also the Great College Administrator. Hehehe )))). 

    If I refer frequently to this philosophy professor, it is because I can see he and his featuring prominently in any future book about Job and other theodicies that I may write, and I am getting a few licks in early. How should I present such a future book? If I include reference to Jehovah’s Witnesses in it, people will say, ‘Oh, that’s an apologetic work.’ But if I don’t, it will leave a gaping hole because the theodicy most coherent is that of Jehovah’s Witnesses. (with a possible nod to the Seventh Day Adventist writer) If I cover all the Witness theology, but don’t say where it came from, it’s as though to say it can be found anywhere—even though it can’t. It becomes like pointing the person seeking water in any random direction, unconcerned with whether I am pointing to the Sahara Desert. Moreover, if I cover the ‘theodicy’ without saying where it came from, I give the impression it came from myself! 

    No. I will say it came from JWs. And guys like MM may say, ‘Oh, well, this book is an apologetic work. Why waste my time?’ But I cannot conscientiously do it any other way.

  16. 7 hours ago, Pudgy said:

    … I was just getting ready to reply something I thought was profound, wise, insightful and wrong.

    …. but then the idea occorred to methat we have never seen MM and the Big L in the same post….

    Coincidence?

    And then … Pudgy is actually . . . . . .drum roll, please . . . . .pass the popcorn . . . .. .MARMADUKE!!

  17. I would never say that the Librarian and Many Miles are the same person, but they do bear a certain relationship to each other.

    And the exact nature of that relationship is . . . IDENTITY

    (sigh . . . Naw, I don’t really know it. But there are enough clues one might piece together as to make it at least a 60% probability, or even higher.)

  18. 2 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

    Maybe I missed something, but the article I read that you linked to was an apologetic work. Bizarre is often in the script when writing to protect a view rather than writing to share a view.

    Is there a link you provided I missed?

    Here's the one I read: https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2007/10/blood-transfusi.html

    Hmm. Yeah, you’re right. It is there, but it is several paragraphs down since it is not the main point. It reads:

    Oddly, there are two versions of this AP story by Randolph E Schmid. One leads with the butt-kissing "blood transfusions have saved millions of lives" and one doesn't. I suspect Mr. Schmid, who is a science writer, did not include it. But somewhere along the line, some pious editor unable to tolerate the blood transfusion idol besmirched, added the phrase. Versions that have the phrase are here, here, and here. Versions that do not are here, here, and here. (I've included so many because some sources don't archive their stories very long....I hope some of them survive.)”

    Alas—none the versions have survived. Papers don’t maintain their archives as they used to, or they put them behind paywalls.

  19. 1 hour ago, Many Miles said:

    Now, as for the usage of "life saving", it's common usage for a wide array of therapeutics. It is false to say the term is never separated from blood transfusion. As a adjective the term is applied when context suggests it is applicable, no matter the noun it's describing

    It may be that I am too close to the forest to see the trees on this one, but is sure seems to be the way I said. At any rate, that bizzare treatment of the article I linked to I have never seen anywhere else.

  20. On 12/4/2023 at 4:39 PM, George88 said:

    We have [individuals] who mistakenly believes that blood transfusions are a panacea

    The Great Courses professor on philosophy, expounding on the topic ‘how do we gain knowledge?’ cited an example of those he thinks who have not. He speaks of Jehovah’s Witnesses rejecting “life-saving blood transfusion.” (The logical error they have committed, he says, is rejecting the findings of ‘experts’ which, he maintains, is something you must never do.) The guy has nettled me up to this point. Now he’s toast.

    It is very strange that the adjective “life-saving” is never separated from the noun “blood transfusion,” all the more so because the 2008 New Scientist article indicated “life-threatening” was more apt. Where did that convention come from? Do we ever hear of “life-saving heart transplants” or “life-saving antibiotics?” When you drop, do they send a “life-saving ambulance?” No, they send a regular one! So what is it with blood transfusion alone being “life-saving?”

    The strangest example of this (for me) occurred with a certain news article I blogged about. A certain serious risk of transfusion was under discussion, which went on for several paragraphs. It was a source like the Associated Press. Individual newspapers subscribing to that news service picked up that story and ran with it. Half of them simply reprinted the story. The other half also reprinted the story, but with an added first sentence: “Although blood transfusions have saved countless lives, they are not without problems” or something to that effect.

    https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2007/10/blood-transfusi.html

    It took me some time to believe my eyes. Some of them had it. Some didn’t. What’s with that? I wondered. I finally surmised that there were many editors who could not tolerate an affront to the god of blood transfusions so they offered him an opening pinch of incense so that he would not become incensed at them. I didn’t know how else to account for it. I used the oddity to my own advantage, however. I then writing Tom Irregardless and Me and began to insert, not only that god, but several other ones: the god of football, the god of qualifications, the god of higher education, and the god of the sex abuse registry—making reference to an Economist article lamenting that modern hysteria over pedophilia has resulted in sex registries so long as to be useless to law authorities, so that they mostly become a registry to shame people. Then (the article did not extend it to this) they become a vehicle for shaming those you don’t like. The stuff is the Chief Planetary Product. There is plenty of it to go around, so that focusing on groups in where it has occurred makes a great forum for spouting off, but not so much for fighting the problem. It occurs everywhere, people have discovered. 

    Anyway, from where does this crusade to substitute “life-saving blood transfusion” for “blood transfusion” arise? Might it be to fend off Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have dared to offend a god?

  21. 42 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

    Hey. I was just confessing! :)

    Gasp!!!!

    A conspiratorially-minded person could take this confession for an admission that MM IS The Librarian!!!! Now, that would be a puzzle piece to crow about!

    Just like I have progressed from being rebuked years ago for shamelessly promoting my first book, Tom Irregardless and Me, to participating here to such a degree that some think I actually own the site.

    When the number of my comments surpassed those of the formerly dominating @Pudgy (under a different name) I said, ‘What’s wrong—cat got your tongue? I never thought they would surpass those of @JW Insider, but that too eventually happened.

    A few dark and paranoid persons began insisting I was the owner. I denied it, but there is a certain type of person who once they get something into their heads, you can forget about ever getting it out. So I began to play along with the notion, and will continue to do so until this site shuts down, which you never know if that will happen or not. @admin was sweating it a while back about some proposed legislation that would make it hot for webmasters. Apparently, the storm blew over. Meantime, I put most of my writing on my own platform, so if this ever does go up in smoke, I go up to a lesser degree.

    I dedicated In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction to @The Librarian. A writer needs more than a muse. He also needs a villain—and she has provided a playground where villains roam freely, as well as others falling in diverse places on the spiritual spectrum. It’s not always clear where they fall, but it sure is engrossing to put together the puzzle—just know, if you find you have stepped into it, you have to back out for a time. Not every one on a mission is actually on one. Sometimes, they just so closely resemble a person on one that you can’t tell the difference.

    Avant-garde to carry on in this way? The entire system is avant-garde, from the slippery one who chuckles hehehe))))) as he is cast down from the heavens, to the brother who rebadges the WaPo byline as ‘Theocracy Dies in Darkness,’ to the brother who cries ‘There is not a righteous man, not even one; there is no one who has any insight; there is no one who searches for God—except me.’

  22. 1 hour ago, Many Miles said:

    I believe in evolution.

    I know this will stagger the faith of some participants here. But I just have to say it.

    Evidence:

    This discussion started by asking the question "How many here have ever held an MCP party card to look it over and see what it is?"

    Watching the subsequent path of this discussion has made me a believer. Oh, and we even have a talking beaver chiming in from time to time!

     

    Oh, stuff it. You got your licks in. Let that be enough for you. Time to move on.  :)

    It’s a little like @The Librarian, aptly named, whining on about the defilement of her card catalog that exists to keep order! Then someone like Pudgy comes along, and says, ‘Hey, forget order; let ‘er rip. You can be organized to such a degree that it starts to come out of your pores, like the brothers whose gestures are so similar that they begin to resemble synchronized swimming.

  23. 8 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

    Do not forget that it is applicable to everyone and to every situation. GB convinces himself of ideas, and then every JW finds his ideas within the general idea of his religion

    Loosely speaking, Srecko is my template for the character Vic Vomodog, sort of a Wily E. Coyote figure who lurks in wait of any comment about anything and converts it into yet another attempt to catch the Road Runner. Thus far, Road Runner thwarts him every time, but we do not know what tomorrow will hold. If we did, the gag would have lost its enduring appeal long ago. Vic’s perpetual attacks on the faith are not logically consistent, but I don’t worry about it because neither are Srecko’s. Anything that comes up—how can it be used against the faith? Nevermind if it is consistent with prior criticisms.

    It probably never would have occurred to me but for reflection upon the inane, ‘hehehe )))))))’ he used to append to comments, ceasing the practice only after Nana Fofana (who does not appear to be here any more) began imitating the style so mercilessly, even meanly overacting a chopped style that stems from English being a second language, that he could endure it no more.

    Oh, yeah: hehehe ))))))). How can one not think of Wily E. Coyote cooking up another scheme with some Acme products?

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