The Visit and updates

So yeah, I know I haven't posted in a long time. Been really busy, and from what I found out at work today thats going to remain the same. However, now that I have a computer that doesn't piss me off most of the time (Go Apple) im going to force myself to update this more often.

Beyond the typical, had to work this last weekend which sucked. Stupid on call. Beyond that, really haven't done much. Just kicking it at the house, loving my Mac.

So Saturday, right before I had to go to work, I got a visit at the house. Jehova's Witness. First time ever that I was at home and was the one that answered the door. She was a very nice older lady with her granddaughter behind her (who sadly, was visibly bored beyond belief. She was only 10ish, so most of the discussion was uninteresting to her as it would have been when I was 10.) The nice lady and I had an interesting discussion for about 15 minutes.

Now, anyone who knows me well enough knows that while I like to talk about religion, its very rare I do so with a stranger. Usually if its a situation like this, I would just say "Sorry, not interested" and keep walking. However, in recent months and years I am more and more compelled to talk about it, especially if someone comes to me. She was pleasant to talk to and I believe that I was quite cordial with her.

We really didn't talk about many different topics. She started giving her speech and asked how I felt about it. I told her I was an atheist and didn't believe in it, and she said "Oh you need more faith" which I thought odd is more implies I had some. Anyways, she started talking about the bible and asked if she could read just one passage thing from a book she had thats titled "What does the Bible really teach?".

The part that she read I thought was quite interesting. She decided out of the entire 200ish page book to read the part where basically it says that the wife of a family should be subservient to the husband. The Bible "says" that the husband should listen to the wifes input, but ultimately its his way that gets done. I told her I had a few issues with that and I disagreed with the original premise.

First of all, she said that for the most part, a family could not function well unless it was that way. She likened it to a business where theres a CEO. I disagreed that it was the same as in a business, a CEO is usually hired by a board or is kept in place by such. The CEO can be fired or removed if he doesn't do a good job.

Now in a family, say for arguments sake its just a husband and wife, thats the board. Im sure families could work if the husband had the ultimate say. However, it could also work with the wife having final say. Or, like my family (or they hid it well) its a shared thing between both. No one was the ultimate decision maker. Yes, there may be disagreements but there would be disagreements either way. Personally, I would think there would be resentment if the husband always made the decisions even if the wife didn't agree with some of them, and there was no working it out.

The lady I was talking to (sadly, I don't recall her name) even said she had an issue with being the submissive to the husband, but thats what the bible says so thats what it should be. I then asked why she thought the bible was a good source for that, and she said "well we have the gospels which were eyewitness testimonies of Christ" which I then attempted to explain to her that those gospels were not written till at earliest decades after Christ's life. I didn't even go into the fact that many of the gospels pull from the other gospels as she was adamant that the gospels were indeed written down during Christ's life.

The last thing her and I talked about was one of the issues I have with the Jehova's Witness way of looking at the bible in reference to the passage (of which ill make another post about this later with some more specific info I find in a little research project im going to do) in which "taking in" (or eating or whatever) of blood is a sin, which leads to many JW's not getting blood transfusions. I mentioned to her that I had an issue with this as it flies in the face of good scientific evidence that getting a blood transfusion which may save your life and that not getting one could end it.

The thing she told me, of which I have heard this exact same thing from others, is that not only does the bible say that its wrong (which is very much open to interpretation as the Bible was more than likely talking about eating blood as back then it was not very healthy to do) but that even in modern times, blood transfusions have a very high risk of getting infection like hepatitis and other blood transfered diseases.

Now, I believe that to be patently false. Its very rare these days for that to occur, as blood is checked a bunch of times for bad things, you can't give blood if you have had like a piercing for a year and a bunch of other rules. I suspect that the incidence of infection by transfusion in modern faciities (read, not Africa or off the grid clinics were some of the rules on who can give blood are not followed) is stupid low. This is one of those things in a future post (in the next month or so) im going to do some research on statistics associated with what the likelyhood of getting an infection is these days.

At about that time my roommate had to go outside and informed the nice lady as hes walking out that I was a tough nut to crack which I thought was funny. At that point we pretty much ended the conversation, said our thanks for the discussion and she asked if she could give me the What does the Bible really teach book to look over, which I said sure.

The book came with a little paper that basically poses general life questions that people may ask themselves (or God, same thing).

Why do we suffer?
How can we cope with life's anxieties?
How can we make our family life happier?
What happens to us when we die?
Will we ever see our dead loved ones again?
How can we be sure that God will fulfill his promises for the future?

In future posts, and im going to try real hard to do one a week, im going to take each of these questions and look at the answers to them and post about it. Another question thats mentioned in the book but not on the little paper that ill also write, mainly cause it amuses me is "How do we know which religion is the correct one?" (or something to that effect).

In addition to putting what the book says and my thoughts about it, im also going to put how I would answer those questions (however the last one from the paper I can't as I don't care about supposed promises for the future). Partly I want to put what I would say to those questions as recently, by a few people who I talk to from time to time about religion it has been brought to my attention that while I may rail on religion and what I think is wrong with it, I rarely bring up or mention what I believe in. I happen to think this is a valid point, therefore ill put my personal beliefs and thoughts when I reply to those questions. As I go through the book, I may also put some more questions on the list (the paper has those 6 original ones but the book 19 different chapters, mostly written as responses to a question it poses).

Also in between these I'm going to try to get some info on blood transfusions. We shall see how easy that is as time goes on.