The Blood Challenge - Life Over Death
This is a blog site devoted to challenging the Jehovah’s Witness dogma that states that receiving a blood transfusion is wrong and that a child dying is preferable to them having a better life chance receiving better medical treatment in a crucial life and death situation.
If this religious dogma for you is unreasonable or defies belief there is something you can do about it.
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It has more purpose than the blasphemy challenge
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Someone you will never meet will benefit - perhaps live because of it
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It will only cost you a little bit of your time
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It will be amazing and easy
GIVE BLOOD
Blood and the sacrifice of infants to ancient text
Often people wonder why there is hostility to religion. There is an idea that faith is noble, righteous - that some how devotion to god, even to the point of sacrifice of a child shows a piety that we can only wonder at of an ancient civilisation (think Abraham and Isaac). I do not count myself amongst such people. One reason is that in the modern age I was a child ready to die for such ancient superstition.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses have faith that runs thicker than water, which demands obedience to the doctrine of the current “Watchtower and Tract Society” which forbids having a blood transfusion or the use of blood products in surgery. In Acts 15:28, 29:
28 It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements:
29 You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.
Farewell indeed to reason, because this is based on this ancient of understandings as found in Leviticus 17:11, 12:
11 For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.
12 Therefore I say to the Israelites, “None of you may eat blood, nor may an alien living among you eat blood.”
This infantile understanding of the human body is the reason why as a child I was prepared to refuse a blood transfusion. To be convincing if ever called upon before a court I had those bible quotes memorised. Ready to sacrifice my life as a personal choice to die by god’s word. Gladly laying down my own life before a “supreme” being that needed the flesh of the first born animals to be burnt to him.
Hitchens made the comment at the AAI that he did give blood and had not done so for sometime. Sadly I did not get a chance to tell him how even religion poisoned the idea of giving blood that could save life. That somehow a transfusion counted as being eaten, even if its absence meant death to someone.
I have started a pledge, http://www.pledgebank.com/againstjwdogma which has now ceased. By the time it ended it had 78 signatures (28 more than the 50 aimed for) by 30th September 2007. 30 so far have carried out the pledge to give blood and when that reaches 50 then for the first time in my adult life I will give blood.
This has been made easier, in that with others outside the White House I renounced the Holy Spirit, a concept that theologically I was being asked by the Elders of my congregation to be prepared to lay down my life for.
So when people say to you that religion is a force for good in the world, and only evil people use it to further evil deeds please remember that that is not so. And that for a few scribbles by people who did not even know basic anatomic features, people in the 21st Century will hold the life of a child to ransom. A child who lacks the cognitive ability to reason independent of their parents wishes. A child of Jehovah’s Witnesses - not a Jehovah’s Witness child that knows the consequences of death and the man made fabrication of ancient texts.
Do not label children, and do not let them die in the mistaken belief that religion promotes the best interests of people, or liberty requires the sacrifice of those not old enough to make an informed choice.
What You Can Do
The pledge may have ended but the spirit lives on. Please go on youtube and film yourself giving blood. For example here is what my friends and I did.
So please write a blog, do a video, pledge that you will give blood in defiance of superstition and leave a comment and link on here. Tell the world this is religious dogma that is unacceptably forced on children and this child abuse will not be tolerated. Please also write to your local representatives and hospital trusts with your concerns that a child’s access to life saving treatment maybe critically prevented or delayed by a parent’s religious beliefs taking precedence over a child’s right to life.
Do something amazing - give blood.
The National Blood Service (England and North Wales)
The Welsh Blood Service (South Wales)
1 comment January 13, 2008
