Internet Use Becomes More Purposeful

tacocat writes "An article in the The Christian Science Monitor talks about the changing use of the Internet. They cite a report from The Pew Internet and American Life Project that talks about people Getting Serious Online. The study is continuation of people they have been following already and found that people are using the Internet more often for serious matters and issue of utility, rather then just for fun."

Comments

A worthy Newspaper - don't be fazed by the title

[andyr]

The Christian Science Monitor is a quite excellent paper.

It has one religious article, that you are free to ignore. THe rest of the reporting is superb - they have their own reporters, so it is refreshingly free from Reuters / AP Newswire rehashes. Often as not, I read the news months before the mainstream press finds it newsworthy. It is great for International issues.

Cheers, Andy!

Yes, but.

[tcd004]

They still visit crappy sites like ours.

tcd004

Porn

[AndrewCox]

I take my porn very seriously.

Re:In other news...

[stinky wizzleteats]

Since your comment will be troll-modded into oblivion, I quote you for context's sake:

More and more people want to get some work done with their computers and make the switch from the hacker/cracker OS Linux to a real operating system (Windows XP)

I'm a network security professional who offers a security audit product based ENTIRELY on open source software. So while you are flying around giggling over grassy fields, I'm making 6 figures per audit.

Have fun with the whole raw sockets thing.

Yesh! (Egregious Karma Whoring Link)

[ackthpt]

Here's the link to save you having to scroll all the way down the page and type in Kathleen Fend Read This Story (c=

Re:A worthy Newspaper - don't be fazed by the titl

[jonnythan]

Kinda hate to do this, but I feel you should get the other side of the coin.
These are snippets from web sites discussing Christian Science.

In short, there are numerous problems with Christian Science and the Bible.
MBE herself plaigarized much of Science and Health, Christian Scientists
have been shown to have a much higher death rate over control groups
practicing standard medicine, CS denies the perfection of Jesus as a man,
Science and Health makes tons of absurd claims and has many logic problems,
Science and Health promotes ignorance of Health in general, and MBE claims
that only "Divine Science," not medicine, has the power to heal at all.

MBE herself was a drug addict and liar, tended to by medical doctors, wore
glasses, and was married several times.

Read the first excerpt carefully to see the truth about the origins of this
money-making, for-profit, theft.

My personal problem isn't that so many people believe this flawed system. I
think all Christian religions are flawed and contradictory, and I'm not
preaching about them. The problem is that Christian Science passively
promotes the transmission of infectious disease and creates a public health
problem, leading to the premature deaths of many Christian Scientists as
well as those who are not. It's an absolute travesty to see a child die of
an infectious disease because a Christian Scientist mother refuses
antibiotic treatment for a common disease. And if the mother does not deny
treatment, how can she justify being a Christian Scientist?

Read on, please.

~~~~~~~~~

The system was actually invented by a man named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby
[Fig. 2] who, after "healing" Mrs. Eddy (then Mary Patterson) of a variety
of hysteric symptoms, taught his system of mind-healing to her. His system,
which he himself often referred to as "Christian Science," contained all the
essential elements of Christian Science as it is practiced by the Eddyites -
including the idea that disease is just incorrect thinking (the result of
"mortal mind"), the idea that "absent treatment" is possible, etc. After
Quimby died in January of 1866, Mrs. Eddy reworked his notebooks, gradually
removing references to Quimby, and finally claimed the system as having been
her own divine discovery. The system became more and more "Eddyifying" the
longer Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy worked it over. As a
pseudoscience guided by the modest personality of Quimby, Christian Science
gained only passing attention in New England. Transformed into a religion by
Mrs. Eddy, the system rapidly became a world-wide, multimillion-dollar
enterprise.

Scarcely two weeks before her fall, Phineas P. Quimby had died. Mrs. Eddy
mourned the loss of her guru in a poem published in a January issue of The
Lynn Advertiser. The poem was titled "On the Death of P. P. Quimby, Who
Healed with the Truth that Christ Taught." In later years, Mrs. Eddy was to
discount Quimby as having been a "mesmerist" and "illiterate." She also
later denied ever having been his student.

(this one is from the New York Times)
If, therefore, this religion is not of divine origin, is not the discovery
of Mrs. Eddy, but is merely a slight elaboration of the humanly invented
theories of a Maine Yankee, it is of the utmost importance that the fact
should be known, not only that "Christian Science" may be put in its true
light, but that parents who may be tempted to join this church and endanger
the lives of their children may have full knowledge beforehand of the exact
extent to which God is responsible for its origin

The notion of M.A.M. (malicious animal magnetism, aka mental malpractice)
was needed to explain how it could be that Mrs. Eddy, despite her alleged
ability to heal disease in others, and despite the "unreality" of disease,
could persistently be victimized by the "illusion" of kidney stones, etc.
Enemies were maliciously beaming these delusions at her telepathically! If
there be no such thing as disease, why do we always have the illusion of
disease? What is the cause of illusion? Mental malpractice, of course!
M.A.M. from our enemies is what does it.

MBE claims, in Science and Health, that she suffered a fall on ice that was
pronounced "fatal" by physicians. She goes on to explain:
"On the third day thereafter, I called for my Bible, and opened it at
Matthew ix. 2. As I read, the healing Truth dawned upon my sense; and the
result was that I rose, dressed myself, and ever after was in better health
than I had before enjoyed."
The Times located the doctor, who, in a sworn affidavit, claimed that the
fall was not serious and he successfully treated her for 10 days with a
chemical remedy, for which she thanked him:
"I did not at any time declare, or believe, that there was no hope of Mrs.
Patterson's recovery, or that she was in a critical condition, and did not
at any time say, or believe that she had but three or any other limited
number of days to live; and Mrs. Patterson did not suggest, or say, or
pretend, or in any way whatever intimate, that on the third day or any other
day, of her said illness, she had miraculously recovered or been healed, or
that discovering or perceiving the truth or the power employed by Christ to
heal the sick, she had, by it, been restored to health.
As I have stated, on the third, and subsequent days of her said illness...I
attended Mrs. Patterson and gave her medicine; and on the 10th day of the
following August, I was again called to see her...I found Mrs. Patterson
suffering from a bad cough and prescribed for her. I made three more
professional calls upon Mrs. Patterson and treated her for this cough in the
said month of August, and with that ended my professional relations with
her. (Bates & Dittemore, Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 111-113)"

There is a letter from MBE (after she married her second husband) to P P
Quimby explaining that she has been teaching his system, and Mrs. Patterson
tells Quimby she has been lecturing on his system of healing and asks him to
give her (absent) treatment for dyspepsia and constipation. Quoth Mrs
Patterson: "Please attend to my case when you get this; dyspepsia and
constipation; two bugbears that Miss Jarvis has just got rid of and saddled
on to me."

Of all the biblically based cults in America today, Christian Science is one
of the most interesting. Not only does it deny the essential doctrines of
Christianity, but it has completely reinterpreted the Bible. It drastically
redefines the Bible's culture and terminology and rips thousands of
scriptures out of their historical and biblical contexts. The result is a
non-Christian mixture of metaphysical and philosophical thoughts. Christian
Science is so foreign to the Bible that, if it didn't use words like Jesus,
Trinity, Love, Grace, Sin, etc., you'd never suspect it had anything to do
with the Bible at all.

On the one hand, the Christian Science church avidly collects testimonials
about alleged incidents of healings through Christian Science. Science and
Health, With Key to the Scriptures gives many examples of such anecdotes, as
do sympathetic accounts such as those of Robert Peel [Peel]. Personal
testimony of healings play a large part in organized Christian Science
gatherings. On the other hand, the Church ardently resists any attempt to
test Christian Science in a scientific manner, involving blind studies and
controls.

Whereas the Christian Science approach to healing may help psychosomatic
illnesses, it has been scientifically demonstrated that it is not effective
with real illness. Studies comparing the cumulative death rates of
practicing Christian Scientists with control groups have shown significantly
higher death rates among the Christian Scientists (Journal of the American
Medical Association, September 22/29, 1989, pp. 1657-58, and Morbidity
Weekly Report, August 23, 1991, pp. 579-582).

Christian Scientists believe that Mary Baker Eddy received the Truth through
divine revelation (Science and Health, p. 110). The fact is that she
plagiarized much of what she wrote from metaphysician George Hegel, P.P.
Quimby, Francis Lieber and others (Walter Martin, Christian Science, pp.
7-13; Martin Gardner, The Healing Revelation of Mary Baker Eddy, pp.
145-158).

Christian Science denies the incarnation of Christ was the fullness of deity
dwelling in human flesh, denies the perfection of the man Jesus, and
attempts to explain away the historical death and bodily resurrection of
Jesus Christ (Science and Health, pp. 336, 29, 332, 53, 398, 313, 593;
Miscellaneous Writings, p. 201).
However, the Bible claims Jesus Christ is not the divine idea of God but was
God uniquely manifested in the flesh, truly God and truly man, one divine
Person with two indivisible natures, who is the only Savior and the only
truth and Lord (John 1:1-3,14; Colossians 2:9; Philippians 2:6-7; John
14:6).

Even though Mrs. Eddy claimed that "the Bible has been my only authority"
(Science and Health, p. 126), in actual practice Christian Scientists accept
the Bible only as interpreted by Mary Baker Eddy in her writings. In fact,
she taught that the Bible has been corrupted, but Science and Health is the
"first book" which has been "uncontaminated by human hypotheses" (The First
Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany, p. 115; Science and Health, pp.
99, 139, 456-57).

No true Christian Science member should ever go to a doctor, hospital, or
take any kind of medicine, for to do so is to deny "Divine Science"
(Christian Science Sentinel, May 9, 1942, p. 469). Indeed in the church's
official "The Christian Science Standard of Healing," Mary Eddy Baker is
quoted as saying, "It is impossible to gain control over the body in any
other way [divine Mind-Prayer]. On this fundamental point, timid
conservatism is absolutely inadmissible. Only through radical reliance on
Truth can scientific healing power be realized" (Science and Health, p. 167;
Radical Reliance In Healing, 1958, p. 1).

Christian Science denies the incarnation of Christ was the fullness of deity
dwelling in human flesh, denies the perfection of the man Jesus, and
attempts to explain away the historical death and bodily resurrection of
Jesus Christ (Science and Health, pp. 336, 29, 332, 53, 398, 313, 593;
Miscellaneous Writings, p. 201).

However, a careful examination of the record shows that Mrs. Eddy often
acted in direct contradiction to the tenets of her own religion. For
example, a diary kept by Calvin Frye, a household servant of Mrs. Eddy,
reveals that she was addicted to morphine, and in fact had a lifelong
dependence on morphine pills and shots [Gar].

In Science and Health, p. 245, she wrote of an English woman who,
"disappointed in love in her early years, she became insane and lost all
account of time. Believing that she was still living in the same hour which
parted her from her lover, taking no note of years, she stood daily before
the windo watching for her lover's coming. In this mental state she remained
young. Having no consciousness of time, she literally grew no older. Some
American travellers saw her when she was seventy-four, and supposed her to
be a young woman. She had no care-lined face, no wrinkles nor gray hair, but
youth sat gently on cheek and brow. Asked to guess her age, those
unacquainted with her history conjectured that she must be under twenty."
Mrs. Eddy cited as her source an article in the Lancet, but without volume
and page numbers it is impossible to verify the source.

Also in Science and Health, pp. 556-557, she wrote: "It is related that a
father plunged his infant babe, only a few hours old, into the water for
several minutes, and repeated this operation daily, until the child could
remain under water twenty minutes, moving and playing without harm, like a
fish." Again, she provided no documentation.

How about people who take poison by mistake? Don't they die even though they
have a belief that what they swallowed wasn't poison?

If disease is a consequence of incorrect belief, why do babies get sick?
After all, their understanding of disease must be small if not nonexistent,
yet they often get sick. Furthermore, some diseases in small infants (e.g.,
bacterial infections) are cured by antibiotics. Are we to believe that
babies had incorrect beliefs and these beliefs somehow changed after the
administration of antibiotics?

Similarly, if disease is a consequence of incorrect belief, why do animals
get sick?

Gale Wilson was an autopsy surgeon for the coroner in King County,
Washington, USA who studied death records in that county from 1935-1955. He
(or she) found that Christian Scientists tended to die at a slightly earlier
age than non-Christian scientists; that the cancer death rate for Christian
Scientists was twice the national average, and that at least 6% of Christian
Science deaths were medically preventable [Wil].

Yet another piece of evidence against Christian Science is its failure to
protect students at Christian Science schools from disease outbreaks. For
example, in 1985 a measles outbreak hit several US colleges. "Worst hit of
all was Principia College of Elsah, Ill., a tiny Christian
Science-affiliated school where at least 96 students have been infected and
two have died, apparently from complications. (Rubeola, which tends to be
more serious in adults than in children, can lead to pneumonia and
encephalitis.)" [Time] Later a third student died [Shi2]. In summer 1989, 55
children came down with measles while attending a Christian Scientist summer
camp. In fall 1989, 88 students at Principia Academy and 12 students at
Principia College got measles [Shi2]. It happened again in 1994. This time,
an infected Christian Scientist helped spread the disease to 176 people in
six states [Shi]. The local medical officer was quoted as saying, "Every
four or five years we have an outbreak, and everyone at Principia gets it
who hasn't had it before and isn't inoculated." Based on this evidence,
there is currently no reason to believe that Christian Science treatment is
effective, and reasonable evidence to believe it may actually be harmful.
A propaganda sheet once sent to Ohio legislators by the Ohio Christian
Science lobbyist bragged that the Christian Science method of "spiritual
treatment" had recently been able to cure even diphtheria - ignoring the
fact that diphtheria is not always fatal [my mother recovered from it in
1920, long before antibiotics] and avoiding the embarrassing point that in
modern times the only Americans seriously in danger of getting diphtheria
are unimmunized persons such as Christian Scientists!)

In many places, the children of Christian Scientists are excused from taking
health or biology courses, lest in learning about diseases they become sick!
After all, the High Priestess of Christian Science herself, Mary Baker Eddy
states in the "Christian Science Textbook," (Science and Health, p. 389)
"The less we know or think about hygiene, the less we are predisposed to
sickness."

Although only a few Christian Science children are known to have died in
Ohio in recent years, by putting the present unconstitutional religious
exemption into Ohio's laws in 1977, the Christian Science Church has made it
possible for other cultists legally to kill their children by faith
non-healing or prayer over-dose. In the "Faith Assembly," a cult centered in
Warsaw, Indiana, and having quite a few adherents in Western Ohio, nearly
100 children died between the mid-70s and the mid-80s. One Faith
Assembly-related death in Ohio was that of 23-month-old Kimberly Miller, who
died of pneumonia on April 3, 1986, after State Representative Francine
Panehal - apparently yielding to Christian Science pressure - killed a
reform bill, H.B.-67, which sought to remove the religious exemption from
Ohio's child-abuse statutes. Because the Faith Assembly cultists do not get
involved in lobbying, the only group to oppose H.B.-67 was the Christian
Science Church. Not only did a cadaverous Bill Evans - the CS "Committee on
Publication" - testify to the efficacy of prayer for healing, Christian
Scientists from all over Ohio jammed the hearing room to pressurize the
proceedings.

This has gotten long enough, if you're interested, visit these three web
sites (particularly the last), which go into great detail. I would love to
talk to your parents about this stuff, but I don't want to offend them :P

http://www.carm.org/christian_science/cscult.htm
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:VIjWxwmAe7w C: www.watchman.org/profile/C
hrSciProfile.htm+chris tian+science&hl=en&ie=ISO-88 59-1
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:TlSxAJQ vbu0C: www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~sha
llit/Talks/cs.html+chr istian+science&hl=en&ie=ISO- 8859-1
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:h70Kw OcQ1q4C: www.atheists.org/church/xt
ianScience.html+christ ian+science&hl=en&ie=ISO-885 9-1