24AR29-08

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AR 29:8 - Did ancient cultures really believe in a "third gender?"

In this issue:

GENDER - making the "noble savage" mistake 

JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES - the idea that their blood policy led to any deaths was "completely unfounded"

Apologia Report 29:8 (1,649)
February 21, 2024

GENDER

"Did Ancient Cultures Believe in a 'Third Gender?'" by John Stonestreet with Maria Baer (BreakPoint, Nov 13 '23) -- "An argument cited often by propagators of transgender ideology is that ancient cultures across the world recognized so-called 'third genders,' those who did not fit neatly in categories of male or female. If they recognized this, the argument goes, then so should we. ...

   "Among the most cited examples of 'third genders' are the Native American 'Two-spirit,' Thailand's 'Kathoey' (a word regularly translated as 'Ladyboy'), the 'Sal-zikrum' of Ancient Middle East, the 'Fa'afafine' of Samoa, the 'Hijra' of India, and the 'Muxe' of Southern Mexico. ...

   "To suggest these cultures' understanding of 'gender' bore any resemblance to today's transgenderism is to impose our culture's categories on theirs. I believe the term for this is 'cultural appropriation.' ...

   "At its root, the modern concept that someone can be 'transgender' or 'born into the wrong body,' depends heavily on rigid male and female stereotypes. ... In other words, transgender ideology contradicts itself, promoting the very male and female stereotypes it claims to overcome. 

   "Incoherence aside, capital-T Truth exists, regardless of which people-groups throughout history believed in it. So, even if ancient cultures did believe modern ideas about women, gender, or sex, that does not make their ideas any more true or any less absurd. ...

   "To assume that only those cultures got it right is to make what is known as the 'noble savage' mistake. Imagine someone suggesting that because some cultures allowed slavery or cannibalism, we should too. ...

   "While the roles of males and females look different from one culture to the next, the biological reality that humans are male and female does not. That's been obvious in every culture until ours, and Genesis tells us why: 

   "Because 'God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him. Male and female He created them.'" <www.tinyurl.com/mrek6ata>

   (BreakPoint's "What Would You Say?" video series <whatwouldyousay.org> engages common, yet mistaken claims carefully, refuting them with simple points. A great resource for your apologetics/evangelism toolbox.)

 ---

JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES

Australia has been going after the Watchtower hammer-and-tongs for some time now. <www.tinyurl.com/AR-on-Aussie-JWs> In "Punishment and control: the secret handbook that rules a religion," Ben Cubby (Sydney Morning Herald, Nov 6 '23) reports: "An investigation following an inquest into the death of Jehovah's Witness Heather Winchester, who died in Newcastle after refusing a blood transfusion, has uncovered disturbing practices within the Australian church, including the systems for discipline, punishment and control contained in the secret rule book for church 'elders'. ... [NOTE: The Watchtower does *not* refer to itself as a "church".]

   "'No one is ever obligated to accept or reject a particular medical treatment or procedure,' a church spokesman said.

   "That is at odds with a secret handbook for church leaders, known as elders, which, according to former Witnesses, most devout members of the sect have never read and women are not even allowed to touch.

   "The handbook Shepherd the Flock of God <www.tinyurl.com/2urtx7mw> and other documents seen by The Sydney Morning Herald set out the lengths the church goes to prevent believers from receiving blood and details the secretive rules that govern the lives of its 70,000 members in Australia and 8.7 million around the world. ...

   "According to the handbook, a 290-page document issued to the church's leaders earlier this year, elders must direct parents in the sect to read and follow the instructions in a church manual on blood issues before their child undergoes a hospital procedure. ...

   "Parents are told to seek out a co-operative doctor and 'train their children to defend their faith'.

   "The manual anticipates the possibility of a court order requiring a blood transfusion for their child in a life-saving situation and coaches them to do everything they can to stop their child receiving blood. ...

   "The spokesman denied that there was a contradiction between the church's internal rules on blood and its public statements about free choice. ...

   "According to the handbook, elders pass the name, age, and telephone number of a congregation member who is to undergo medical treatment to the church's regional hospital liaison committee.

   "These committees are groups of elders with no specialist medical training appointed to provide pastoral care to church members and sometimes intercede with doctors if there is a possibility of blood products being used in treatment. ...

   "'When there is a crisis, elders may consider it advisable to arrange a 24-hour watch at the hospital, preferably by an elder with the patient's parent or another close family member,' according to one church publication advising members on health issues. 'Blood transfusions are often given when all relatives and friends have gone home for the night.'"

   As you may have gathered, "the church's blood transfusion ban" is the main focus of this feature. However, other interesting observations arise, such as: "The suburb of Denham Court in Sydney's semi-rural south-west is home to a private complex dubbed Bethel that houses the Australian branch office of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

   "The secure site contains accommodation for several hundred people, printing facilities for the Watchtower magazine and a life-size mock-up of a Middle Eastern-style village, which is used for making instructional films about Bible stories.

   "According to people who have lived there, Bethel residents live semi-monastic lives governed by arcane rules. ...

   "If they 'assume an independent attitude' it is grounds for reproval, according to the Bethel rule book. Also banned is 'clothing that brings worldly sloppiness or sensuality into the Bethel family. T-shirts bearing slogans are unacceptable at Bethel.'

   "At dinner 'it will be appreciated by others if when the food is passed, you take only a proportional amount of what is in the dish'.

   "Some modern technology is frowned upon, however, 'the telephone is a very helpful instrument that can be used to our advantage [but] please make your conversation brief'. ...

   "The local religion is a branch office of the church's global headquarters in Warwick, New York. It takes instructions on doctrine, policy and organisation from a small group of male elders in the US referred to as the governing body, who are at the top of the religion's pecking order. ...

   "There is no place for women in the upper levels of the church hierarchy.

   "All members of the church are encouraged to engage only with church-approved literature, and seeking higher education can be grounds for discipline and punishment. According to the elders' handbook, an elder may have his position reviewed if 'he or a member of his household pursues higher education'. ...

   "As at least four much-heralded prophecies for the date of Doomsday came and went in the past century, the church developed the practice of continually rewriting its own history and spiritual instruction manuals, in part to gloss over failed predictions. Updated information is referred to as 'new light'.

   "'At the church I went to, there was a library next to the meeting room,' said Ben Lynch, 24, who left the religion in his late teens after learning about the science of evolution at school.

   "'It was quiet and I liked it there with all the books. Not necessarily studying, just flipping through the pages, enjoying the books. One day, the elders came in and started taking books off the shelves. What had happened was that Bethel had just said we have got 'new light' and decreed that the old books had to be destroyed. ...

   "'I've read Nineteen Eighty-Four, so I know what it means to describe it as Orwellian. They're always destroying information, rewriting their literature, and everyone has to believe it's always been that way. It's like the Ministry of Truth.'

   "The latest list of church literature that has been deemed unsafe was circulated among Australian congregations last month. The list includes more than 50 of the organisation's own books and pamphlets to be discarded or in some cases destroyed." [That would be in October of 2023 ... and although the claim is credible, we’d still like to see epistolary evidence to support it.]

   Back to the main topic: "Former church elder John Viney served on hospital liaison committees for 15 years in Britain, which has the same church structure as Australia."

   He laments: "I always thought this and had trouble accepting it, but such was the cult mentality that not only did it happen to my family but as an elder, I disfellowshipped others … It's a wicked cult control mechanism." ...

   "A global church whistleblower group based in the US, Advocates for Jehovah's Witnesses for Reform on Blood, <www.ajwrb.org> has attempted to estimate the death toll in which the refusal of blood transfusions was a major or contributing factor, basing its research on data about transfusions in the wider community. Reaching precise figures is not possible because of a lack of data due to patient privacy. ...

   "'If we assume the ratio of members has been relatively the same with the average number of worldwide members over the past 62 years, we can extrapolate that somewhere between 632 and 1,096 Australian Jehovah's Witnesses have likely died prematurely as a result of following the Watchtower blood policy.'

   "The Jehovah's Witnesses spokesman said the idea that the blood policy had led to any deaths was 'completely unfounded' and said medical literature backs up the church's view that patients have better outcomes when they avoid blood transfusions."

   The piece concludes: "According to the elders' handbook, if blood is administered to a patient, elders at the patient's congregation are required to set up a committee to 'determine the individual's attitude'. ...

   "Judging repentance is not simply a matter of determining whether the wrongdoer is weak or wicked. Weakness is not synonymous with repentance." <www.tinyurl.com/wr2y4a8b> 

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