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Mormon Church Goes After WikiLeaks
An anonymous reader writes "The Mormon Church has instructed its lawyers to gag the Internet over WikiLeaks' release of the 1968 and 1999 versions of its confidential handbook for Church leaders. Apart from attacking WikiLeaks, legal demands were sent to Jimmy Wales of the WikiMedia foundation for a WikiNews article merely linking to the material, and scribd.com has also been censored. WikiLeaks has (of course) refused to remove the documents."
Good morning, Mormon Church. Say hello to Ms. Streisand for me!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
You'd think after the Swiss bank debacle it'd be pretty well known that trying to suppress this kind of information (particularly when it's distributed by an international organization), just guarantees that it will be more widely disseminated than it'd otherwise have been.
Someone circulate a memo about the Steisand effect to the lawyers of the US.
When heretics try to disperse reading material that the religious deem unsuitable for the public to read, the only choice that comes to mind is to burn and censor.
If you even have a "confidential handbook", you're a cult, not a religion...or maybe a good old fashioned pyramid scheme.
I'm no fan of the LDS, either as an institution or as a theocracy, but they have as much right to privacy as any other group or individual. Another organization often under attack by the societal, self-elected correctness monitoring crowd is Scouting USA which sponsors an organization known as the Order of the Arrow. OA also has self published, private material that it wishes remain so. There is also an article on Wikipedia about the Order in which editors have come to a consensus about not publishing those private details in accordance with that groups request, which is within their rights. I suggest the same courtesy be extended to the LDS, it's an issue of fundamental importance to anyone who values freedom of expression in all its forms, internet or otherwise.
As a Mormon, you should know that the materials in these 'secret' manuals are pretty boring. With a lay clergy, you've got to have *something* to help the poor souls who are suddenly responsible for leading congregations. A quick RTFM (haha) shows me this. As a lawyer, I'm disappointed you fail to see the larger issues of copyright and ownership, which is the real issue here. That the owning organization is a religion is an inconsequential detail.
Great Scott! It's almost as if the religious == irrational meme is not 100% accurate.
This is just a normal case of copyright infringement. Somebody holds the copyright and does not want somebody else to publish the book. Whether it is this book or a bestselling novel does not matter.
I wonder how those who talk about "gagging" here would actually want copyright laws to work? Abandon them alltogether and let anyone publish whatever they like? Or just allow the publishing of something when some group decides it is "evil"?
Of course, news media should have the right to publish excerpts from anything that is news or relevant and in most countries this is legal (i do not know about the US). So if you want to report about some weird/dangerous,/ridiculous issues in this book, provide a write-up (your own words of what is in there: legal) and support it with facsimiles of excerpts of the original (small parts: legal).
What would be the problem with that?
Ask them how well their campaign of suppression is working out for them.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
In 'The Gallic Wars' by Julius Caesar, book 6 chapter 14, there is a description of Gallic religious practices. The druids would not permit their texts to be written down, they had to be memorized. One reason being that as soon as a text was written it would pass into a sort of 'public domain' where non-druids could read it.
This sounds like something that should be in place today. Make all religious texts public domain, no exceptions. Religions are not for profit (well in theory) and they are tax-exempt, so they have no reason to have copyright. And they use copyright law to harass and bully their detractors. So take that power away from them.
Oh, Your religion wants hide something? Fine, memorize it.
I have three physical copies of the LDS Church's handbooks. One is from the 80s, and two are the most current.
All they contain are instructions for people who are asked to be leaders in their church, so they'll know what to do. Unlike other religions, the LDS Church doesn't have paid clergy, so people don't go to years of school to learn how to be a minister. Instead, they are provided with these manuals and they can reference them when they have questions.
If you're looking for some hidden secret about the LDS Church to make you go all jiggy inside, you're not going to find anything here. If you're up for a dry read though, knock yourself out at WikiLeaks.
Finally, the LDS Church does own the copyrights to these manuals. The law does offer them protection against violators, so I don't see anything wrong with them demanding that protection.
I know I'll get marked as a troll for this, but that is not my intent, so please try to be open minded. :-)
When someone can prove to me why one god is any more real than any other god, I'll believe. Until that point in time, I regard religion as a silly obsession for the weak and stupid.
Religion absolutely requires strict autocratic control over the devout masses. Leaking out a behind the scenes handbook thins the wall between Shepard and the flock, and may allow the sheep to think out side their assigned position in life, thus weakening the control the church has over its followers.
Free thinking and free access to information corrupts belief in god because, "as you know, reality has a liberal bias." (Colbert.) There is no proof of god and there is no universal truth, any belief system that relies on such a fiction crumbles in the light of critical thinking and knowledge. This is why all religions have tried to censor knowledge, burn books, kill heretics, and instigate wars against non-believers.
I find plenty of religious people to be rational about most things. It's just about religion that they are irrational. Religion is inherently irrational, as it involves absolute certainity in something utterly unprovable, intangible, and usually contradictory.
Disclaimer: IAAM
That being said, how is this different from any other person orrganization requesting removal of copyrighted material? (pretty much all LDS materials are copyrighted). Sure, most slashdotters don't believe in copyright, but this sort of stuff happens all the time. The church copyrights stuff not to make a profit (the leaders of the church do not make money based on how much the church makes), but so that things aren't taken out of context. As has been said down the thread, there is nothing crazy about this book that would drive people away from the church, but this now allows for tons of things to be taken out of context (things taken out of context are the main reason that people think the LDS church is so weird... that, and flat out lies about it).
I think you might think that because you are a Mormon. Hate to tell you... The Church of LDS is weird. Portraying NA as a lost tribe of Israel, the Garden of Eden and the new Jerusalem in Jackson County Missouri, history of polygamy in Western society as a central tenet of faith (followed by denouncing that practice), the tiering of the "Celestial Kingdom" and the structure and demands of the church is weird.
Weird is not inherently good or bad. This isn't an attack on Mormonism. But realistically LDS is a church that formed as what was considered then (and would be now) a cult with frankly bizarre practices and beliefs that retreated from developed areas of America and formed its own isolated community. The fact that some of the stranger pieces of theology have been disavowed or deemphasized and that the membership has increased greatly doesn't change that its a weird church.
There are a great many people out there who think the entire picture of a religion should be visible to the public. Thus when a faith tries to have hidden knowledge it appears as having one face to the public, and another face to the initiates. If the LDS church didn't have these practices Lighthouse and company wouldn't even exist.
It's pretty much the same reason by which people fight Scientology as well. There's simply a drastic difference in magnitude, with Scientology making much scarier threats, and having the vast portion of their entire religion be hidden knowledge.
What's wrong with polygamy?
This is a "free" country, is it not? I should be able to marry as many women (or men) as I want. It's my "right to pursue happiness" in whatever form that takes (and as long as no one is physically harmed).
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
You don't think magical underwear is weired?
IAAM. I don't think they are weird. I do think it is weird that people so credulously believe any rumor they hear about them. I enjoy learning more about other religions and faith traditions, and I think Stendahl's Rules are a good guide.
(1) When you are trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies.
(2) Don't compare your best to their worst.
(3) Leave room for "holy envy."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krister_Stendahl
This is a pretty clear violation of rule #1. I don't get the impression you particularly care to know much about Mormonism, but it certainly strikes me as ignorant to combine apathy and ignorance and pass it off as having an opinion.
It never ceases to amaze me how stupid people are.
Stendahl (above) is not a Mormon. Daniel Peterson is. He added a 4th rule to Stendahl's Rules:
So the principle that came to me on this was that if you are looking at a religious tradition that has a large number of adherents...then there must be something in it that appeals to different people.
Mormonism, for example, has clearly lasted long enough and has clearly appealed to a wide enough cross section of people that you don't have to concede that it's true to say there must be something there that appeals to people; bright people, practical people, highly educated people, uneducated people; all sorts of people in all sorts of cultures have found something appealing in this movement. The same is true of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity.
http://www.fairlds.org/Anti-Mormons/Critics_of_the_LDS_Faith.html
Then again, you may be one of those folks that think all religions are stupid. It's not always obvious whether an anti-Mormon is a belligerent atheist or a belligerent evangelical, but most of them break down into one or the other. (With a smaller category for angry ex-Mormons, I suppose.)
Some piece of clothes all of a sudden have magic meaning.
I know. It's so stupid. Like the way we just pretend that all of a sudden patterns of black lines on a white background have meaning and call them letters and numbers. What could be dumber?
It's so absurd it's beyond comprehension.
Which means either:
1. All 11 million Mormons (say 5 or 6 million if you want to just talk about practicing Mormons) are retarded.
or
2. Your perception of their beliefs is not accurate.
I don't think anyone could seriously believe #1, but it makes a nice insult if that's your goal.
If you think religious clothing is a must, you have some serious mental issues.
What if you don't think it's a "must". What if you choose to believe that it's merely a symbol of personal commitment and wear it for that reason?
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
If things taken out of context and lies are a big problem, then releasing the real, complete documents is a great thing. Now people can look up the context of quotes or check if statements are true.
Saying "my religion is just as fucked up as other religions" isn't really that much of a defense. Just because you're as bad as other people, that makes it right and ok?
And re-read your link about the golden plates... all of those have physical evidence of, you know, EXISTING, as well as being much, much shorter in text than Joseph Smith's plates.
The sooner you realize that ALL religions are a sham and a ploy to control their congregation to different extents, the sooner your eyes will open.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Saying "my religion is just as fucked up as other religions" isn't really that much of a defense. Just because you're as bad as other people, that makes it right and ok?
I'm just figuring out which argument I'm having. The argument that Mormonism doesn't violate the Bible/original Christianity is different than the argument that religion is not inherently irrational.
And re-read your link about the golden plates... all of those have physical evidence of, you know, EXISTING, as well as being much, much shorter in text than Joseph Smith's plates.
Right, so it helps to know if you think the plates are retarded in particular (e.g. you're OK with supernatural, just not this instance of it) or if you think the supernatural is inherently retarded. Obviously I can't use the same argument in response to both criticisms.
The sooner you realize that ALL religions are a sham and a ploy to control their congregation to different extents, the sooner your eyes will open.
And now I know which court you're in. The thing that's really funny to me is how die-hard atheists are so religious. The dogma, the conversion experience, even the promise that the truth will set you free. It is the exact same pattern of evangelism you find in proselyting religions.
I think a serious discussion about religion is probably not worth my time in this context. Feel free to message me or email me. Suffice it to say I'm familiar with the works of Hume, Descartes, etc. I've read and deeply respect the French atheist existentialist (Camus, Sartre, de Beauvoir). I'm not clinging to my religion out of ignorant. I understand the arguments against religion and some of them are quite compelling. But my reasoned position is to believe.
You're free to call me an idiot for doing so, or blind, etc. But I'm quite comfortable that there can be intelligent and rational people on both sides of this issue.
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
You kind of missed the point of that excerpt. The point is to prevent people from doing the following:
1) Commit some sin that the church disapproves of
2) Request that your name be removed from Church records in order to avoid the consequences
3) Get re-baptized, thus obtaining a "clean slate" according to the records of the Church
By asking leaders to hold off on approving name removals before determining whether there is cause for a disciplinary council is perfectly valid. There would certainly be an uproar if a guy rapes someone, gets his name removed from the church records, moves to another state, gets rebaptized, rapes someone else, and then someone finds out what happened at his last location. It's a protection mechanism for the church. (Disciplinary records are not removed, as far as I know, even if a person's name is removed from the list of members; again this is for the church's protection.)
I am not a Mormon, but I would like to point out that every single religion I can think of has their own kind of relics or other objects that are considered by them to be spiritually meaningful. These object are sometimes thought to have extraordinary powers that non-believers often find incredulous.
Many Catholics, for example, wear a crucifix on their body at all times. From what I understand of Catholicism and Mormonism, the Catholics wear this for the exact same reasons that Mormons wear their underclothes. Mostly to be a reminder of their commitment to their religion, and some believe it might help protect them from harm, etc.
As another example, if you aren't Jewish, strapping little boxes to your body seems pretty weird.
This is just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are many, many examples of this sort of thing.
My point is that singling out Mormons as "weird" for their "magic underwear" doesn't make much sense when placed in context with other, more accepted religions. They are all "weird" to outsiders.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
I do think it's more stupid to believe in miracles that happened 170 years ago If you mean that it's more stupid for people in 1830 to believe in the supernatural then I think you have a valid point. If you think it's more stupid to believe supernatural things happened in 1830 vs. 1030 than I think you don't. So I'm guessing you meant the former, but I'm not sure.
Yes, with a twist: long enough after the supposedly supernatural event, the evidence needed to verify or disprove it has faded. The relevant people have died, the stones have been buried or whatever, and you have only the account of the event. In 30 A.D. it was not reasonable to expect people to subject Jesus's tricks to skeptical scrutiny. In 1830, it was. Believing Joesph Smith today even though he refused to submit to the methods of proof well known and available at the time of his revelations in 1826-30 is much stupider than believing in Jesus today; the methods of disproof available in 1830 were not available in 30 A.D, so it is not a black mark on Jesus that he did not subject himself to those tests.
Your religion teaches that there was an advanced civilization of white people in America before the Native Americans. Actually it teaches no such thing. They were neither "white" in any conventional sense nor were they the first inhabitants in the Americas.
Whatever. The whiteness and firstness parts aren't important; the important part is that they were a non-Native Americans with an advanced civilization that predated the thirteen colonies. Again, archeology demonstrates that this is false.
Joseph Smith, while in jail in violation of double jeopardy, was shot and killed by a mob of over 100 people. So it's also historical fact that people hated the man. The governor of Illinois issued a famous "extermination proclamation" that all Mormons had to leave the state or they would be executed. So it's obvious that this hatred extended to government officials acting in their capacity as such. Given these historical facts, do you really think it's significant that he was found guilty of a crime?
Yes, since the conviction predated all the religious stuff for which he was hated. He didn't publish the Book of Mormon until about four years after his conviction. Or is your theory that the state government figured out that he was the type who might later try to start a hated religion, and therefore they needed to taint him with a fraud conviction before he got his religion off the ground?
Joseph translated 116 pages. He gave the pages to Martin Harrison. Martin Harrison lost the pages. Joseph Smith believed that they had been altered so that if he retranslated them the re translation would not match the original. Thus he did not retranslate them.
This is some seriously weak sauce, and pretty convenient if he was a fraud. If he seriously thought Harrison altered his translations, he could have found a trusted third party and then translated the documents several times with the third party vouching for the similarity or dissimilarity of these subsequent translations.
he enjoyed enormous personal gain when people believed him. This is utter rubbish. Joseph Smith enjoyed nothing but deprivation and persecution as a result of his claims. He lived in poverty virtually his entire life. He may have enjoyed some brief measure of comfort in Nauvoo in the years before he was killed, but the fact is that if he wanted to make a bunch of cash it would have been trivial to do so, given his talents, without going through all the trouble of getting himself driven out of several states and eventually shot to death.
Um, he was the leader of a religion of over ten thousand by the time he was assassinated. He had numerous wives, including one whom he married when she was 14. He had a COMPOUND. If this does not sound like some serious indulgence to you, I don't know what to say. Also, he likely did not anticipate bein
I think the implication is that his translation was not a translation and he made those 116 pages up from scratch.
You say "it makes no sense to say he was somehow less capable of translating non-existent plates the second time than the first time" but it makes perfect sense. If he's making it up as he goes along then if he does it again it won't be the same.
If he made another set and the first "translation" was found again then he'd have been exposed as a fraudster because the two would be different, thus he made up a fairly ridiculous excuse.
This is the word of god that has been given to me but I'm not going to translate it again because someone's out to get me? He obviously didn't think that 116 pages of the word of god was worth much.
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