Srecko Sostar

No matter the language a person speaks, everyone knows an infant suckling its mother teats is eating, and milk is the food.
Perhaps my statement you respond to here was too precisely worded. I was borrowing the phrase "green vegetation" and I did spell out photosynthesis, but in my head the real point is that I don't know of many creatures that dwell in the deep sea whose primary source of eating is vegetation.
Also, the fact that we know the Bible account fails to give every detail about available nutritional resources that humans and animals likely and legally (meaning God was okay with it) made use of is only one more reason to defer to what we see in the natural created world and accept what we find there as additional testimony of God's will. Ever heard of a salt lick? Natural salt licks provide animals with essential mineral nutrients. These are not vegetation, yet animals will seek out these mineral deposits because they need them. Just look at the tremendous effort that some mountain goats go to in order to get to these minerals, which they're not getting from vegetation alone. Yet Genesis is totally silent on this subject. Good thing the written testimony of the Bible tells us that we also have the unwritten testimony of creation that also tells us of God's will.

JWI, you have my profound apology that I made you feel goaded into a response. It was not my intention. You articulate yourself as knowledgeable and willing to entertain subjects others would ignore because of the work of thinking. (And thinking is work!) When I run into a person like this I feel I can learn from them, so I engage. In this case it felt like goading on your end. For that I apologize.
What you've written sounds appropriate to me, especially the part about not being dogmatic in the face of a possibility "IT" could refer to everything God had just given to humans, not only the vegetation. And, to be sure, I'm not going to leverage a possibility here.
WARNING: What follows uses the term "eat" to mean take in the digestive track as food nutrition. If this usage offends a reader's senses this is forewarning.
Assuming the likelihood that "IT" only refers to vegetation that was given, that still does not change that, as vegetation was given, dominion of the animals and "all the earth" was also given. The antecedent of giving dominion of animals and "all the earth" had to have a consequent. If, as you propose, the consequent is not expressly stated then the question becomes, what is the consequent of being given dominion of animals and of being given "all the earth". So then we look at actions involving animals and "all the earth" that God approved of for an answer. What do we find? Here are a few examples:
- Humans could use animal skins as clothing; hence humans could use animal flesh to serve practical needs, including transplanting animal tissue onto their own tissue (that's what clothing is).
- Abel herded sheep, so humans could coral or otherwise control animals.
- Abel killed animals, so humans could take the life of animals for their own purposes.
- Abel offered choice animal parts to God, so humans understood the rich pieces of meat and offered those to God. (Would Abel have offered to God something for Him to consume that he [Abel] thought was indecent or inappropriate to consume for himself?)
- Humans could eat milk. This despite it not being vegetation.
- Humans could eat water. This despite it not being vegetation.
Given these, it is utterly impossible to conclude the consequent of being given dominion of animals did not include eating their flesh, and this is precisely the unstated consequent of being given vegetation presented in the near parallel account at Genesis 9. I mean, if humans could transplant animal tissue onto the own tissue, how does one argue this wouldn't include the tissue of the mouth and esophagus? Tissue is tissue.
I'm glad to hear this. I agree there is some sort of poetic prose going on in the early Genesis account. You've alluded to it yourself in former postings here, and in this case you do so by underscoring what comes across as deliberate intent in relation to vegetation (herbs, trees, et. al.). Yet we know humans being given dominion of animals and "all the earth" had some consequent, and if it's unstated that leaves practically endless possibilities. We know too that vegetation was not the sole thing humans could eat, because they could eat water and milk too (of necessity).
Which brings something else into question regarding animals. What, precisely, is the "green vegetation" that deep sea creatures are supposed to eat? The text doesn't say, and there's no photosynthesis to produce green vegetation.
When it comes to what soulical creatures could utilize as food, the early Genesis account is woefully incomplete. It paints a picturesque serenity, when in fact there was lots of defecation, death and ecosystem at work (what many people look upon as "gore"). It's interesting that, as an educated agrarian, my view understands all this (natural earth ecosystems) is at work all around me all the time (including in my own gut!), and it does not strike me as "gore". Even looking upon maggots existing and doing what they do is not gore for me to watch, it's a wondrous example of converting biological tissue into something useful for other forms of life to flourish. Anyone who grew up enough years ago also knows what an "outhouse" is. Anyone who says they never got curious and looked to the bottom to see what was going on is a liar. It's ecosystem on steroids. Those worms are just lapping that defecation up like their swimming a pasta! It's not green vegetation that those animals are eating. They're eating something that Adam and Eve were unavoidably defecating as a natural process. After eating that defecation the castings left behind by those worms is a super-food for botanical life in the form of nitrogen and other important nutrients.
 All this just strikes me as natural and normal. But, for whatever reason, the Genesis writer seems to have wanted to paint an idealistic view of Eden.
 

The consequences of the procedures differ. The first one was sentenced to death. There is no penalty for the second procedure.
So why does the exclusion apply to those who take blood. That is, according to the new regulation, it is called self-exclusion.
WTJWorg Lawyers playing with legalism of term disfellowshipping and dissociating. They want to present GB as respecters of human rights to freedom of choice.

The consequences of the procedures differ. The first one was sentenced to death. There is no penalty for the second procedure.
So why does the exclusion apply to those who take blood. That is, according to the new regulation, it is called self-exclusion.
WTJWorg Lawyers playing with legalism of term disfellowshipping and dissociating. They want to present GB as respecters of human rights to freedom of choice.

I think WTJWorg could blur the answers to such questions along the lines of:
God is omniscient, he sees and foretells the future, but he doesn't want to know every thing in advance because he respects man's privacy. So, God did not know that Adam and Eve would sin. And because of his "ignorance", God could not give instructions for something he had no idea could be important to future generations.
 

If it takes 100,000 words to explain “abstain from blood” doesn’t really mean that, you missed your calling as a Watchtower Lawyer.

I can answer all your above questions thusly:
Without thinking you came out with the statement about the value and availability of “carrion”.
Since then you have twisted logic and reasoning every which way but loose to defend your original mistaken position.
A common mistake. Repeated every day in every area of human interaction.
I am mortified that I have done the same sort of thing when I was just learning the Truth.

"But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die."
"Only flesh with its soul—its blood—YOU must not eat."
These two statements have something in common. Each is said of something that had been given to humans, and each carves out an exception to that gift.
The topic of this discussion is the scriptural basis for refusing a transfusion of products rendered from blood.
In the first statement above regarding the tree of knowledge, the sin of Eve is expressed this way: "So she began taking of its fruit and eating it."
"Taking of" and "eating" are the verbs at issue. Eve took something in a way she had been told not to. Eve had not been told to abstain from the tree. She had been told to abstain from eating from the tree. This becomes an issue because the blood the society says we must abstain from is precisely the blood from which all the products JWs accept are rendered. Under this doctrine, JWs are "taking of" the blood.
If it turns out to be the the case that there does exist a scriptural basis for abstaining from transfusion of donor blood, then accepting transfusion of products (the "fruit") rendered from that blood is equally forbidden, because that's what the "fruit" was picked from, which is what got Eve in trouble in the first case.
Or, would we dare suggest Eve could have taken of it's fruit, processed that fruit to get what she wanted to eat from it and thrown the rest away and all would have been good?
 

Well ….  I have ENDURED a plethora ( def. “plethora”: Whole damn potload) of silly defenses of carrion to get to the point that Cornelius was neither Christian or Jew … and he was a Roman Soldier … and he was approved by God.
…. so, I guess it was worth it.
But now… I have to rethink my whole perspective on the boundaries of relative allegiances and subjection, political neutrality, and WHY Jehovah God allows war, and NEVER considered warfare murder.

It's often the case that simple things explain what others see as complex issues. The problem occurs when those who see nothing but complexity fail to see how a simple thing resolves, what is to them, a complexity. 
- Sometimes a person can fail to see a forest because of focusing on a tree.
- Other times a person can fail to see a tree because of focusing on a forest.
But, oftentimes we have no choice but to dig through a lot of complexity to find a solution in a simple thing. This is where discussion with others is helpful. We can learn from one another. Sometimes a silly idea expressed aloud can lead a listener to an epiphany, only because the silly idea led them to a perspective they'd never considered before.

I'm sorry, but that's just one of the possible outcomes, that is, it's one of the interpretations that WJWorg offered as the correct interpretation of something that could or could not have happened.
There is no biblical evidence that Cornelius did this. So it remains in the realm/sphere of interpretation and speculation. Some stories end romantically and some don't.
Neutrality. There is no complete neutrality, because there is none.
Let's take a blood transfusion for example. The GB says that certain blood products can be taken, so the commandments about "abstinence from blood" are not fully obeyed. They also did not take a neutral position, because they determine what is forbidden and what is not when it comes to blood.

Well done……now I have a migraine 

I think that would only be possible if the soldiers in the trenches were about a hundred meters apart. But if the enemy soldier was with a bayonet over his head, the idea would suddenly change.

This is an interesting comment. It suggests commonness as a premise to establish an understood though unstated permission.
From prehistoric time there is abundant evidence that animals dead of natural cause has been an extremely common food item, in fact an essential food item for earth's ecosystem.
The biblical text says of Adam, "...God was forming from the ground every wild beast of the field and every flying creature of the heavens, and he began bringing them to the man to see what he would call each one; and whatever the man would call it, each living soul, that was its name. So the man was calling the names of all the domestic animals and of the flying creatures of the heavens and of every wild beast of the field, but for man there was found no helper as a complement of him."
If Adam had sufficient observation of earth's animals to realize there was no compliment of him it means he had a lot of observation of earth's animals. Animals eating carcasses dead of natural cause is so common it's unavoidable that Adam would have observed this. It was common. It was extremely common. It was common because, for animals, it was an unavoidable eventuality. (2 Pet 2:12)
If, as expressed above, a food item is so commonplace that it "need not be mentioned", then permission would be so understood it needed no mention.
However, as Adam would have commonly observed animals eating carcasses dead of natural cause, he would have equally observed animals eating vegetation. Yet, in particular for animals, vegetation was mentioned as a permissible food whereas carcasses dead of natural cause was not mentioned though we know both these food items were on the menu. Hence the veracity of this premise is questionable.
 

We do know that it was not uncommon for humans to eat animal carcasses dead of natural cause. Jews had to be told NOT to do this. Yet those same Jews were told they could sell that very food to gentiles who would eat it. Hence, I have no reason to think Cornelius didn't make use of such food and every reason to think he probably did. That said, of course the biblical account of Cornelius does not bore down to the detail of what he knew specifically about Noah. But God knew what He looked for in worship He accepted, and He accepted Cornelius' worship. Even though not a Jew. God accepted his worship. Even though not a Christian. God accepted his worship. Of course, when Christianity was revealed to Cornelius he accepted it. But from God's reaction we can have a decent idea that Cornelius was doing right by what God expected of folks.
I agree, there is natural law to consider. There is also ignorance to consider. What is a good hearted person to do who's acting on the best they know, despite their ignorance. One of my very favorite biblical texts is a psalm that exclaims God will deliver the poor one crying for help, also the afflicted one and whoever has no helper. Could be that Cornelius landed on this ground.
 

Perhaps this is why NOWHERE in the Bible is warfare by any side against any people for any reason considered … by God … to be murder.…
... if it was how could there ever be peace?
 

Indisputably there was internal struggles related to growing the Christian church. Worshipers were being welcomed into the fold that, from the Jewish Christians' paradigm, were disgusting. (Think Cornelius) I don't know if the vision Peter had was real or if he just invented it. But the biblical account says it was real, so I run with that. But, could be Peter just didn't want to get the push-back he saw Paul getting, so he conveniently had a vision that set everything straight insofar as how he saw fit to address expansion of the church among gentiles. And, who was going to question Peter's word?

In the past, even on this forum, I have argued the necessity of the Noahide Laws (the Acts 15 version at least partially motivated by them) for Jehovah's acceptance of Gentiles. Not that it was counted as righteousness, but "acceptableness" at least.  But we don't know that Cornelius actually feared God through a knowledge of those Noahide Laws, specifically, the law about blood, strangulation, or even the law about not eating a portion of his nutrition derived from a living animal.  It's quite possible. And that idea that Cornelius may have been a proselyte actually comes from a similar idea that Jews (and therefore early Christians) would call someone a "God-fearer" only when they had already shown a desire to follow the true God. It could be a step below a proselyte. The Watchtower publications are clear that Cornelius was not a proselyte although acknowledging that some commentators have made that claim. 
But Cornelius may have been considered a God-fearer for other reasons, unrelated to any knowledge of or practice of Noahide-style requirements. For example, there is the reference to natural law in Romans 1:
(Romans 1:19, 20) . . .because what may be known about God is clearly evident among them, for God made it clear to them. 20  For his invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world’s creation onward, because they are perceived by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship, . . .
(Acts 17:22-28) . . .“Men of Athens, I see that in all things you seem to be more given to the fear of the deities than others are. 23  For instance, while passing along and carefully observing your objects of veneration, I found even an altar on which had been inscribed ‘To an Unknown God.’ Therefore, what you are unknowingly worshipping, this I am declaring to you. 24  The God who made the world and all the things in it, being, as he is, Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in handmade temples; 25  nor is he served by human hands as if he needed anything, because he himself gives to all people life and breath and all things. 26  And he made out of one man every nation of men to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he decreed the appointed times and the set limits of where men would dwell, 27  so that they would seek God, if they might grope for him and really find him, although, in fact, he is not far off from each one of us. 28  For by him we have life and move and exist, even as some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his children.’
 
 

I think a much BIGGER question needs to be asked.
If Cornelius was a worshipper of Jehovah God, and his worship was acceptable to God, as stated specifically that it was …and he was a Roman Soldier …. what does that say about “… render unto Caesar …”.?
To me, the conclusion is inescapable and profound, and logical … but even so, I am afraid to even utter the words.

I realize your comment is sarcasm, but it's ironic that you make this particular comment within this discussion. It was precisely by IV administration of washed red cells (what we'd call packed red cells today) to litter mate puppies that it was demonstrated once and for all that, despite being rich in protein, transfusion of red cells offers no nutritional support whatsoever. This has to do with human pathology and how it makes use of circulating blood. Even under extreme starvation our bodies will not catabolize its own red cells for sake of nutrition.

Intent is simple enough to test.
Try feeding puppies only vegetation, and see how that works out.…. all else is playing with words.

For starters, the notion that the Christian biblical decree to "abstain from blood" is a resurrection of provisions of Mosaic Law is a nonstarter. The intra-Acts account of Cornelius demonstrates this. For a moment, we can set aside potentially conflicting teachings Paul wrote by just focusing on the same (and sole!) biblical text containing the decree to "abstain from blood", and we need look no further than the account of Cornelius at Acts 10. This man was gentile. He was not worshiping God according to Mosaic Law. According to the vision Peter beheld, Cornelius was doing things that would make a proper Jew puke! Yet his worship was acceptable to God. The text says in relation to Cornelius, "in every nation the man that fears [God] and works righteousness is acceptable to [God]."
Based on the biblical record we have, looking through God's eyes, Cornelius would have been bound to extra-Mosaic Law standards, which would have included everything of the Genesis account but not much afterward. Hence, in relation to blood, how would Cornelius have demonstrated "fear" of God and evidenced works of "righteousness"? He would have had to show respect for life by abstaining from unjustified homicide, which might have been tough as a soldier. Out of godly "fear" he also would have respected life by taking care not to eat an animal without killing it first, and when he killed it for food he would have refrained from eating it's blood. THAT is how he would have demonstrated "fear" of God and evidenced works of "righteousness" in respect to 'abstaining from blood'. That was it.
In respect to things Paul taught, and given that we find the decree "abstain from blood" nowhere but in the text of Acts, issues arise as you suggest. But, in my mind, unless someone points out something I've not thought of (entirely possible, if not likely!), the account of Cornelius is sufficient to determine that the decree to "abstain from blood" is answered in the text of Genesis. The Genesis text tells us what blood to abstain from, and what abstention is required of that blood.
I'm not intending to truncate a discussion you might want to pursue, and I'm willing to pursue it because I have every reason to think I can learn from you. But, in the case of the decree to "abstain from blood" I think information within the text of Acts is sufficient to narrow down what is required.
 

The biblical Abel killed an animal. Based on His response, God was okay with that.
What gave Abel permission to kill an animal in the first place?

I'm sure whoever wrote the account had a reason for however they wrote it. Whatever that reason was (or not!) unless we have a provable proposition regarding it then we just have to take what's written and work from that, which includes what is not written. In rational (logical) terms, silence means only silence, unless there is a provable proposition that says it means something else.
Here are two questions for you:
Do you believe the implied ideal diet in Genesis for Adam and Eve was intentionally written without a reference to milk?
If yes, does that suggest milk was not a food that should have been eaten by early humans?
Continuing, take a look at these two statements:
As the author intentionally wrote the account, the "ideal diet" expressed for animals was vegetation. Right? Yet the natural created world testifies (as you admit) that animals were eating meat at the very time addressed by the author of the Genesis account.
Do you accept the biblical notion that creation testifies to God's will? (Ps 19) If you do, then we know animal flesh was being eaten as food as long as there have been animals. Hence, though I'm sure the writer of the Genesis account had reasons for writing what was written, I have no need to think that writer's intent was to deny what nature tells us. For all I know the writer of the Genesis account was employing some kind of self-invented prose to paint a tapestry of nature's elegance. Who knows? And, so what? I can't read a writer's mind. But I can read what they wrote, which also discloses what they didn't write. And, unless there's provable reason to think otherwise, from a logical perspective, silence means no more than silence. In other words, the absence of an express permission suggests neither permission nor prohibition.
Please read what you wrote there, and I'm going to substitute a single word:
'At this point, any astute reader would wonder about milk. Why only mention fruit trees, green vegetation, and vegetation of the field including grain? Is there a command about milk? Is it allowed? Is it forbidden? Why don't we see anything about milk?'
Since the most essential nutrient needed by humans is water, here the same query worded another way:
'At this point, any astute reader would wonder about water. Why only mention fruit trees, green vegetation, and vegetation of the field including grain? Is there a command about water? Is it allowed? Is it forbidden? Why don't we see anything about water?'
A logical thinker would just see silence on meat (or milk or water) and not read anything into that as though it meant anything more than silence. That is, unless there was provable reason to think otherwise.
And, there's another example of potentially reading something into the text regarding silence. As it is true of meat, it is also true of milk. I could say, "And then we finally see it. After the Flood. We see something about milk!" (Gen 18:8) And, in response to MYSELF I'd say, so what? That an account is silent until it's not does not mean an initial silence means anything other than silence, unless there is provable reason to think otherwise.
And, by the way, even in the instance you refer to in the comment above (Gen 8 and 9) there is still no mention of eating non-soulical flesh (animals dead of natural cause), though both soulical and non-soulical flesh have already been mentioned in the Genesis account. The accounts you refer to above speak to the use of soulical flesh.
 

Two can play THIS WORD SALAD, Annie.
In the perplexing realm of circular discourse, where words pirouette without purpose and sentences meander aimlessly, we find ourselves trapped in a linguistic labyrinth of unparalleled absurdity. Picture a discourse so circuitous that it makes a dizzying carousel seem like a straight line. As we embark on this linguistic rollercoaster, we must prepare to navigate the convoluted contours of verbosity.
In the grand tapestry of talking in circles, the artistry lies in crafting sentences that orbit meaning without ever daring to land. Words, like mischievous acrobats, perform feats of linguistic gymnastics, contorting themselves into shapes unfamiliar to logic. It's a parade of paradoxes, where coherence is the elusive unicorn and clarity the rarest of gems.
As we delve into the heart of this linguistic carnival, one may be tempted to believe that profundity resides in the obscurity of expression. Alas, it's a masquerade where the emperor wears robes woven from the threads of ambiguity, and the courtiers nod sagely, pretending to decipher the indecipherable. Verbose vortices suck meaning into their whirlpools, leaving behind a vacuum of understanding.
Each sentence, a maze with no exit, beckons the listener to wander in perpetual confusion. It's a dance of diction where the music is composed of vague allusions and the choreography an intricate ballet of equivocation. Attempting to grasp the central theme is akin to chasing shadows, for just when you think you've caught hold of meaning, it slips through your fingers like ethereal mist.
In this topsy-turvy world of circular dialogue, the destination remains elusive, and the journey becomes an endless loop of linguistic acrobatics. It's as if words have donned roller skates, careening wildly through the terrain of syntax, leaving punctuation in disarray and grammar in a state of disrepair. A sentence may start with the promise of lucidity, only to spiral into the abyss of convolution.
To converse in circles is to revel in the absurdity of language, to embrace a carnival of confusion where coherence is sacrilege and simplicity a heretical notion. So, let us celebrate the linguistic mayhem, where words frolic in a field of lexical anarchy, and meaning is but a distant echo in the cacophony of circumlocution.
Wah de do DAH!