Pudgy

But only temporarily. Temporarily stopping evil. Nothing else.
God doesn't even have an aversion to blood. Liters of blood were used for the altar. While the animals are being slaughtered and the blood is sprinkled on the altar, weren't the hands, face and body of the people present "defiled" with the blood? Well, remember how we react when blood stains our hands or clothes.
Also.
Deuteronomy 14:21 New King James Version (NKJV)“You shall not eat anything that dies of itself; you may give it to the alien who is within your gates, that he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner; for you are a holy people to the LORD your God.
So the blood remained in the body. And blood can be eaten, without possible health risks. Or did God intend to "kill the unbelievers" with rotten food and clotted blood?
.........and you can create a profit too.
 

Don’t fall into the same trap as the WTB&TS does when they change the definitions of words to convince the rubes that they were always right.
 

Amazing. Terrific! Wonderful insight!
How can you BE so friggin’ smart?
Oh … you read a lot of history?
….. well, ok then …..
 

Pay attention, as there will be a test later involving the nautical term “Keelhaul”.
If you are in charge of provisions on a trans-Atlantic voyage from Ireland to the Americas in an old wooden sailing ship … a trip that could take a month or two … and the Captain says take all kinds of food on board … the decks and cargo holds will be filled with dozens or hundreds of cages with live animals as well as food for them, and great wooden casks of drinking water.
There was no refrigeration back then, so as the trip went along, the animals …. chickens, turtles, sheep, pigs, rabbits, and more would be slaughtered as needed for food.  
Even better than vegetables that start dying when they are separated from the plant.
They were not thought of as cargo, because they were never intended to reach shore.
You could have 532 different live animals on board, CATAGORIZED AS “FOOD”.
I have read they even used to do this on warships. I have seen this in several movies.
The Bible DOES NOT SAY that there was carrion on the Ark, and there is no need to make that up … unless of course you have a runaway imagination and are trying to enhance something you said previously that you realize later makes no sense at all.

Georgie, if you aspire to be seen as an expert, fer cryin out loud, READ your own references, plus hundreds of other articles on the subject …. FIRST.

Yes. I’m familiar with what you say. Specifications may ask for documents of certification, and if you send a stack of small-print documents an inch thick, it just gets filed away by a bean-counter and that’s the end of it. Your in! It’s bad, but oftentimes that’s how it works. 

Lol! You may have no idea. Then again, you might. There are fractions of fractions of fractions of… Literally, there is no end until you get to quarks and leptons. On the other hand, the very idea that the Bible supports a position that white cells from blood should be treated as blood is wholly without support in biblical text or in nature. In the natural world it is utterly impossible that, for example, white cells are distinguishable, let alone a “major component” of blood compared to a product like cryosupernatant plasma.  

Well, honestly, though it serves the purpose, that cartoon is a little bit of an understatement. It's not just 13 fractions that are permitted.
There is no part of blood that JWs cannot accept from the donor blood supply so long as it is not classified as "a major component" by JW leadership. That's right. JWs can accept 100 percent of what is donated to the local blood bank, so long as it is sufficiently processed first.

Pudgy, it is absurd that JW leadership claims JWs abstain from blood. JWs gobble up blood products by the drum loads all around the world. According to JW policy, JWs can undergo plasma exchange by accepting transfusion of cryosupernatant plasma. When this exchange is done, more than half the patient's circulating blood has been replaced by someone who donated blood, or at least plasma. A single patient could undergo this treatment daily for weeks. That is a massive about of product taken from the donor blood supply. Like I am with most any subject, I take time to research rather than just trusting someone else to tell me what I'm supposed to believe. Everyone should subject their views, and what they are taught, to critical analysis to  make sure what they believe and what they are taught is sound.

Since we have biblical text saying creation testifies as God's word (Ps 19:1), and since there is evidence in creation that some animals are predatory by design, then it is scripturally arguable that Noah took some live animals onto the ark as food in addition to the ones he was obligated to preserve alive. I'll leave that argument for you. So long as the argument you put forth is logical in form, and so long as each premise is well-evidenced, you'll see no objection from me.
PS: Among predatory animals, the strongest argument might be based on obligate carnivores.

Jehovah to Noah to stock the Ark with food of every sort. If Noah took an outrigger canoe to an island 300 miles away it would be logical to take caged or leashed animals with him. The Pacific Islanders do this, even  making a cooking fire in the boat ( on rocks or sand or dirt I suppose ?)
Jehovah delegated food supplies to Noah’s best judgement.
Does best judgement include partially decayed meat?  No.
How about a nice, fresh chicken?  Yay!
Of course, I have already explained WHY God told Noah to provide over three times  more unclean animals than clean animals.
Noah provided the food at his discretion. JEHOVAH PROVIDED THE DELIVERABLE ANIMALS.
Use your common sense, experience, and reading to decide what is probable, and what is improbable.
Fer cryin out loud …. when is the last time you scraped a flattened sun baked squirrel off the asphalt and took it home and ate it?

Amazing. Terrific! Wonderful insight!
How can you BE so friggin’ smart?
Oh … you read a lot of history?
….. well, ok then …..
 

It is a waste to explain the obvious to the clueless.

Possibilities don't make for very good premises. Possibilities are endless. For premises used in a logical scriptural argument, we should stick to what we have evidence of.
God has, to my knowledge, never had aversion of humans eating meat of animals as though doing so was wrong or contrary to His will.
This discussion is addressing pre-flood food.
God told Noah to bring some of every sort of food eaten onto the ark to serve as food for himself and the animals. That's God's word. Not mine. If you want to challenge God's word feel free. But it's His words you'd be challenging. Not mine.
If we accept God's word for what it says, then, as the Bible goes onto say in the very next sentence, "Noah proceeded to do according to all that God had commanded him. He did just so." (Gen 6:21)
We know animal carcasses dead of natural cause were a sort of food eaten, both prior to and after the flood. After the flood God held no aversion to non-Jewish descendants of Noah eating this very sort of food. So men like Elihu, Job and Cornelius were free to eat this sort of food. God even arranged that this sort of food could be purchased from a Jew specifically to use it as food eat it. (Deut 14:21)
Hence:
- It still remains the case that dead carcasses were a sort of food eaten prior to the flood.
- It also still remains the case that Noah was told to put some of every sort of food eaten onto the ark to serve as food for himself and the animals.

Logical conclusions are ideas/teachings/notions that are, among other things, falsifiable. Logical conclusions are not the result of personal interpretation. To the contrary, logical conclusions drive bias to the side and put what can be proven as sound to the front.
The biblical account shows it proper to reason from the scriptures. I confess to an assumption that this means sound reasoning (which is logic) and not unsound reasoning (which is fallacy). Logic is employed to help people learn valid information. Fallacy is employed to persuade toward a preferential view (a bias). Fallacy is a distraction from valid information.
There are well known and accepted conventions of logical construction. It works a lot like math and is very objective, which is why it's dependable to examine any idea, including one's own idea(s).
If you're unfamiliar with this discipline then I'd recommend you undertake a study of it. It's not really hard. But if you want to reason soundly then you have to learn how to form logical conclusions.
As for "who determines the logical conclusion, and how" anyone who understands conventions of logical construction can examine a conclusion to see if it's logical. The person would look at the argument's form to see that it is logically valid. If the form is logically valid the person would then examine each premise in the argument for veracity. If the form is valid and the premises are supported by evidence then the conclusion of the argument is as strong as the evidence in support of the premises.
 

I'm not even sure where to start responding to this. It completely overlooks so much of what I've presented, going contrary to much of it.
1) I do not believe it required more faith to be a Christian in the first century. Why? I've said this before. The early Christians had men among them who were working miraculous feats. Curing sick people. Feeding thousands with a few fish and loaves. Raising the dead. It's not hard to put faith in teaching coming from such men. In large part this is what led to Jesus having followers in the first place. Though a very loving man and excellent speaker and teacher, he turned water wine, he healed the sick, he raised the dead. This was enough to draw anyone's attention. After the Christ's resurrection and ascension Christ's apostles had similar supernatural power. You can't really refute that if it's real and you're there to witness it, which means you're doing well to listen and accept what they teach.
2) Though the early Christians could easily accept teaching from men working supernatural miracles, Paul warned not to accept even what they ("we") say if it departed from what they had already taught them and began teaching something different than they had accepted from prior teaching. I don't see how you can dispute this latter point. Paul said it point blank. To deny this is to deny the legitimacy of what Paul said, or to read a preferential interpretation into the text. Notwithstanding all that, what was to happen when the men with supernatural power to work miracles disappeared in death? Their very presence presented a restraint of false teachings and teachers. The answer is that they left behind their own inspired written works (miracle workers with supernatural power can be assumed to be inspired to also write a legitimate record of events and teachings). The earliest Christians had the inspired words available up to that time, which Paul spoke of to Timothy. But the new witness of words that we call the Christian scriptures today was left by inspired men for sake of Christians to come.
3) I've studiously avoided suggesting that any Christian should, as you say, 'trust in their own interpretation of scripture'. To say this is to totally misunderstand what it means to form a logical conclusion. Logical conclusions are not the result of personal interpretation. It's to the contrary. Logical conclusions drive bias to the side and puts what can be proven sound to the front.
4) Yes, I agree with that for the early Christians with exposure to teachers with miraculous supernatural powers. These men were walking and talking tangible evidence that they were teachers of truth. But when these men were gone Christians needed to take great care that they were not mislead by new teachers, and they needed to remember which loyalty is priority, which is to God and not men (no matter what position they may hold as teachers/leaders). They also needed to guard against following they own interpretations. The answer was learning to reason from the scriptures. I have to believe that the biblical notion of reasoning from the scriptures was sound reasoning (logical) and not unsound reasoning (fallacious).
 
5) I agree with everything you say here with one exception, which I've underlined. It's a false bifurcation here to say if a) they found their own conscience was uninformed then b) they were to conform to the mind of the congregation. This argument wrongly presumes two things, 1) that there is no alternative other than a or b (which is why it it's a false bifurcation) and 2) that "the mind of the Congregation" is "informed". Here's my question to you on this point: What if your mind is uninformed and the Congregation's mind is also uninformed? What then? Think about that. There is an good solid answer to that question.
 
6) In the presence of inspired biblical text and the testimony of God creation all around us, no one should form belief based on "their own interpretation", meaning how they prefer to see things. That would be no more than believing what you want to believe solely because that's what you want to believe, something I categorically reject.
7) You ask "was their an authority to which they were to submit their interpretation". For early Christians who had the testimony of miracle workers with supernatural power, my answer would be yes, unless (or when) they changed their testimony. This latter point is what Paul warned against. This is why obedience to teachers and teaching has a limit. For Christians that came after the men with supernatural power, they had the testimony left behind in the new witness which we call the Christian scriptures. Any teaching asserted based on the bible since the men with supernatural powers would have to conform to sound (logical) conclusions based on the testimony already given and codified as the Bible.
If the question is whether God expects us to obey Him ahead of whomever He may have placed in an appointed position, then we have to look to examples that test that question. This is why the incident of Aaron standing in passive support of God's appointed spokesman (Moses) is important. It succinct fashion it provides a very important object lesson. If we want to worship God then we have to obey Him no matter what anyone else tells us, even if that other person has, or is thought to have, divinely appointed authority. 
 
The priest at the ancient tabernacle in the wilderness had something standing above them that was unmistakable. It was a supernatural phenomena of a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. This made it pretty clear that what was coming from the priests should be followed because that supernatural phenomena demonstrated God's approval of what they were doing there. If you want to look to the priesthood to examine the question of whether a worshiper should passively support a wrong teaching or sin (like in the instance at Meribah) then you need to find and share an incident that tests that question, which you haven't done. We know Jews were told to obey the priests. But what about when those priests told somebody to do something wrong, or wanted someone to support them in wrongdoing? Were they supposed to obey them then?  Ultimately, though, Israel insisted on having a king like the nations around them, and God appointed a King over Israel. The first one was Saul. Saul went bad. Though he was the anointed of God, he went bad. David would not act to remove Saul from his position because God had installed him as king. But David did not obey Saul because he knew Saul could not be trusted. This, too, was another incident demonstrating that our loyalty/obedience to God appointed authority has limitations. If it was true of Moses, whose was "God" to Aaron, then it was also true of the priesthood of Israel.
There is too much here so that time does not allow me to proof read. If something is misspelled or you have a question of anything please just ask. I have yet to see anyone post a thing suggesting that there is not an appropriate limitation to our obedience toward leaders we look toward as teachers. You recognize that somewhat, and I respect that. But I'd recommend you spend some time honing your skills of logical construction. Learning how to reason soundly helps a person avoid the trap of falling for their own bad ideas, preference and/or biases, and it also helps us recognize unsound teaching coming from others.

George, I have nowhere suggested that only am I entitled to ask questions. Where or how you came up with this notion is for you to explain. Just above I answered a question of yours. But, in response, my hope that you'd answer the extremely simple question asked of you was dashed by what appears to be abject refusal.
Was it okay for early humans to feed their babies milk? 
if yes, why? 
if no, why?

Okay. I'll entertain your question asked of me in the hope that you will answer the question I asked of you.
You asked, "What motivated you to shift the topic from spoiled meat to breast milk?"
First, that question poses a falsehood. I have not shifted the topic from "spoiled meat" to milk.
In my second entry of this discussion I pointed to milk as a food item. Thereafter I pointed it out again, to you specifically. I raised this because of the subject matter, which is pre-flood food. My motivation is to examine the subject of what was used as food prior to the flood.
So nothing about my motivation has shifted. I'm still on the subject of the discussion.
So, my outstanding question to you remains, and is:
 
Was it okay for early humans to feed their babies milk? 
if yes, why? 
if no, why?

George,
Look at the title. This discussion is about pre-flood food.
So, my question to you remains:
 
Was it okay for early humans to feed their babies milk? 
if yes, why? 
if no, why?

That is the most insane conclusion I have read since last week’s Babylon Bee!
Although some scripture may be twisted into a pretzel to suggest a Snickers Candy Bar is nature’s most perfect food!
And just HOW do you know that less perfect people have a greater capacity for imagination?  
…. and describing edible foods is evidence of that?
YIKES!

That is the most insane conclusion I have read since last week’s Babylon Bee!
Although some scripture may be twisted into a pretzel to suggest a Snickers Candy Bar is nature’s most perfect food!
And just HOW do you know that less perfect people have a greater capacity for imagination?  
…. and describing edible foods is evidence of that?
YIKES!

George, 
Was it okay for early humans to feed their babies milk? 
if yes, why? 
 
if no, why?

By "staple" I intended to convey common. When animals or humans get  hungry they look for food. We mainly eat to survive. If we have the option of being choosy then we might also defer to taste. But mainly we're trying to survive, especially was this so in the ancient world.
Early humans ate would they could live off of as best they could. When they happened upon carrion dead of natural cause if it was fairly fresh (e.g., less than 24 hours deceased) it would have been very edible if its skin were generally intact. Among large herd animals like the American Bison, when literally tens of millions of them roamed the western plains, it was not uncommon for ancient people to come upon hundreds or even thousands of them drowned in a stampeded to a river off a steep embankment. Of the flesh, it would be harvested and what was not eaten then could be dried for later use. This was the same way they stored vegetable matter for future nutrition.
Using fire to cook food was a means of making all foods even safer to eat, and by cooking food it also helped humans get more nutrition from the food they ate.

I reject the idea that carrion as generally defined was ever a dependable food supply for any living things anytime in history.
It is statistically impossible.
Perhaps if you or an animal killed the prey animal, and then defined that fresh kill as carrion … hmmmm … maybe  … but it is an awkward construct and almost all people DO NOT imagine the grocery stores selling carrion … that is something vultures and other birds who have a highly acidic saliva and stomach acid that will almost instantly disassemble bacteria and toxins do.
In the most general sense, carrion refers to the decaying flesh of dead animals, often found in various stages of decomposition. Carrion can be categorized into different stages of necrosis (decay) based on the degree of decomposition. These stages typically include:
1. Fresh carrion: This is the initial stage of decomposition, where the body is newly deceased, and minimal decay has occurred. The flesh may still appear relatively intact.
2. Bloat stage: During this stage, gases produced by bacteria and other microorganisms begin to accumulate within the body, causing it to swell and become bloated.
3. Active decay: This stage is characterized by the breakdown of tissues, with the release of offensive odors and the presence of scavengers like flies and beetles.
4. Advanced decay: In this stage, most of the flesh has decomposed, leaving behind bones, hair, and tough tissues. Scavengers such as vultures may still feed on what remains.
5. Dry stage: At this point, only desiccated and skeletal remains are left, and decomposition has largely ceased.
Because of the plentiful availability of 5 out of 7 unclean animals on the Ark to be used for predator food, fresh drownings outside the Ark, and when a pregnant “clean” animal died giving birth, and fish, there is no need to introduce the concept of carrion as a food for mankind or animals, in general, but more to the point, it is statistically impossible.