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Catholic Bishops Support Net Neutrality
An anonymous reader writes "This week, in their annual 'State of the Union' address, the President of the US Catholic Bishops Conference spoke on a number of issues, in particular a surprisingly strong statement in favor on Net Neutrality. 'As the Internet continues to grow in its influence and prominence in Americans' lives, we support legislation and federal regulations that ensure equal access to the Internet for all, including religious and non-profit agencies, as well as those in more sparsely populated or economically distressed areas. True net neutrality is necessary for people to flourish in a democratic society,' said Archbishop Timothy Dolan. It's always interesting to see the Catholic Church joining in a crusade that means so much to so many Slashdotters!"
It's always interesting to see the Catholic Church joining in a crusade that means so much to so many Slashdotters!
Crusade? Slashdotters were expecting the Spanish Inquisition!
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
No, Intelligent design is a radical Protestant scam. It is an attempt to save the Genesis account of creation at any cost, because if they don't, there's no original sin for Jesus to be sacrificed for rendering the whole of Christianity meaningless.
Honestly? It's not about WHO supports net neutrality, it's that its idea isn't hijacked, bastardized, and killed by politicians and lobbyists. Spread the information, defeat misinformation. I couldn't care less that a religious organization approves or agrees.
Religious groups have long been in favor of Net Neutrality; they need to get their message out to the masses just like individuals. Many of them fear not being heard if censorship is allowed. In addition, many would not like paying exorbitant fees like the access fees that network providers want to to charge to carry their traffic.
It is the mass media and the corporate executives that want to drown out any voice but their own. They want to drive up the price of access to for their own greed and to avoid having to compete on a level playing field. How can anyone afford Netflix if Comcast forces their bandwidth costs to skyrocket. The same goes for VOIP services or any future idea that may compete with their monopoly (or duopoly as is the case.)
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On the other hand, the progressive Catholic church has moved on from the myth of original sin and has accepted that he died for Net Neutrality.
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I think Catholicisms objection to I.D is a matter of doctrine, that it actually limits the possibilities of the universe (which is described as the glory of God in the bible). Anything that limits the glory of God is blasphemous, therefore Intelligent Design is blasphemous.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Actually you don't, because what the "youtube atheist movement" doesn't understand is that religion is and always was mostly a social interaction thing than the interpretation of holy books, dogmas and so on. You may know more about the later, but the churchgoer knows way more about the practical and social aspects of religion, e.g.: how it feels to sing or pray with a whole church.
Also the history knowledge of the "youtube atheist movement" shows distinctive selective knowledge. E.g.: non-religious reasons for the crusades or about the killing of believers by atheists in the name of the reason during the french revolution.
Jan
Actually the official position of the Catholic Church is that the Big Bang and evolution are the best models currently available to describe the universe that God created, and the process of how we came into being. There is no conflict between evolution and Catholic teaching, and the Big Bang was originally put forward by a priest, but dismissed by much of the rest of the scientific community as being too much like a "God did it" theory.
ID isn't blasphemous to Catholics because it's limiting God. ID is just wrong because A) it isn't science. B) it assumes taking the BIble literally. Catholics theologians are fully aware of how the Bible has changed, is sometimes self-contradictory, and has been reinterpreted over the centuries, and so taking a specific translation and treating it as word-for-word literal truth is a simplistic and juvenile approach.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
I'd say that official stances from an organization that has approximately 1/5th of the world's population as members certainly matters. Just because you are dismissive of the organization or disagree with their message them doesn't change that. Pretending otherwise is the exact same failed juvenile mentality that led America to ignore Communist China up until Nixon.
The difference in the Council of Bishops vs. some random person, is that Bishops are an established position of leadership and authority within the organization. You may not care of the random guy from the shopping mall has to say about an issue, but you might care more about what the general manager of the mall might say, and you certainly would care what the Board of Directors of Westfield Shopping Centers Inc. might say, because it reflects where the organization as a whole might be headed or might be directing their efforts.
Dismissively ignoring their statements simply because you don't like who they are and what you think they stand for is short-sided and naieve.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
First they came for Google, and I did not protest that Google was treated differently on the web, because I was not Google.
Then they came for the farmers, and I did not protest that farmers could not get the internet, because I was not a farmer.
Then they came for protest sites, and I did not protest because... welll I don't protest and who cares those trouble makers can no longer afford an online presence.
Then they came for me and even if there was anyone left to protest, there was no place left to do it. Like the newspapers, the radio and TV before, the internet had become corporate run, purely for profit and removed any usage of the voiceless to be heard.
The Internet is not just a gimmick anymore, it has become as essential for democracy, freedom and equality as education, food and medicine. We have strict regulation to ensure equal access to lifes essentials. I think it might be time to put access to free information on an equal basis as a basic human right. Better that then let the American ISP who are without principle ruin yet another media.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You may know more about certain aspects of Christianity, but I'd wager that you also subscribe to some urban myths or oversimplifications. Internet atheism is in many cases a circle-jerk that is at odds with serious scholarship. For example, so very often one encouters claims in internet atheist circles that Jesus never existed, that he's entirely fictional. Even atheist historians believe overwhelmingly that a historical personage did exist, even if myth has accreted around him. The claim that Christians copied Christmas from a pagan holiday pops up a lot too, even though recent research suggests a strong possibility that it was the other way around. All those comparisons between Jesus' death on the cross and e.g. the Egyptian gods were already answered by Justin Martyr 1800 years ago.
Furthermore, Internet atheists seem to be all rah-rah for the New Atheist demagogues like Dawkins and Hitchens, who dismiss Christianity out of hand, instead of philosophers of religion who have the necessary training and who take inquiry seriously. I have a lot of respect for atheist philosophers like Hume and Mackie who examined theistic arguments carefully and responded rigorously, but that kind of careful argumentation is ignored by the New Atheists and their acolytes because it's too much work.
I'd say that official stances from an organization that has approximately 1/5th of the world's population as members certainly matters.
At least over here in Europe, most "members" of the church are members for two reasons and two reasons alone: Marriage and funeral. The number of people actually active in any sense is maybe 10% of that. The influence of the church is massive, but overblown. Most of its presence in organisations and political structures (Europe is a lot less segregated in this than the US, with the church having official presence in many government groups, like the local equivalents of the FCC and the likes) is historical.
The church certainly matters. But its opinion on anything modern does not, because everyone with half a brain, even those who are on paper members of it, realizes they know nothing about these things that is worth listening to. That is from what I gather a very, very widespread opinion. My own is in fact less neutral, I actually think they are corrosive and their opinions and actions are dangerous.
You may not care of the random guy from the shopping mall has to say about an issue, but you might care more about what the general manager of the mall might say, and you certainly would care what the Board of Directors of Westfield Shopping Centers Inc. might say,
Actually, no. Unless it is on matters of shopping malls, of course. But being director of a shopping mall does not confer any authority on unrelated matters. When it comes to, say, high-energy physics, I will take the opinion of any unknown actualy physicist active in that field over the shopping mall director, the pope or the president any day.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
... The claim that Christians copied Christmas from a pagan holiday pops up a lot too, even though recent research suggests a strong possibility that it was the other way around.
[Citation needed] There simply exists so much useless studies that I can't take that for granted without reference. People really should disclose their faith in these arguments, someone might consider you as biased since you openly advertise being Christian in your webpage.
Atheism (or agnosticism) strictly does not have a problem being biased since it does not state anything, just that there is no proof. So please, again, where is your reference?
Indeed. They're the ones who originally promoted the whole idea of copyright. They wanted to keep control of the Bible, stop people from making unauthorized copies.
[citation needed]
I always understood the Statute of Anne to be about protecting the vested interests of publishers sympathetic to the crown. And anyway, Queen Anne was a protestant, not a Catholic, so Catholic lobbying is unlikely to have been effective.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
The Philocalian Calendar provides the first mention of both Christmas and Sol Invictus. As they are first attested at the same time, it's hard to say which influenced which. The Roman Empire in the 4th century had a fascinating competition between religions, with Christianity becoming popular in urban centres, Mithraism a fad in the army, and a handful of people even trying to "return to the sources" in pagan worship. An unqualified claim that religion X took custom Y from religion Z is an oversimplification of a complex and murky period.
Atheist philosophers, after they make a case for atheism, often draw conclusions for metaethics. Atheism does not stop at simply saying there's no proof.
Yeah. I think the Vulgate was the main source for the KJV translators.
It's problematic to use the term "original version" when discussing the Bible. At best we tend to have what would be described as the oldest sources available, and in some cases these oldest sources appear themselves descended from earlier unknown sources. I'm not sure what you're defining as insignificant here, and whether you're talking about the canonical Bible or its individual books?
The Bible, as in a canon of collected works, has been pretty stable for a long time now, but it's not as if 2000 years ago the Bible fell from the sky in its current form. There have been a number of canons and apocrypha. It took hundreds of years to arrive at what would be almost universally accepted as the canon we know today. That canon itself has been pretty consistent for at least 1500 years, and the KJV dates from the 16th or 17th century century (can't recall which), so it is wrong to claim that the *Bible* itself has changed a great deal. It is however perfectly correct to highlight the incredible quantity of apocryphal works and what appear to be later additions to individual books. I think the more important thing to look at is how interpretations of the Bible have changed.
I like to use KJV and NIV side-by-side. NIV is a bit dry and at times over-simplified, but far easier to comprehend. KJV alone can be a bit misleading, such as in Exodus (I forget the verse) where the word "gift" in the KJV is more correctly translated as "bribe". That wouldn't make sense to a KJV reader unless they were very careful to read the verse in its correct context.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
A large amount of Christians worldwide disagree. The Orthodox Church uses the Septuagint because it is believed that the pointing in the Masoretic Text was altered in order to suppress Christian interpretations. As far as they are concerned, a reliable Hebrew text is no longer available.
I'm sorry, but that's just bollocks. The only attestations of the Hebrew language we have from that period are epigraphical. Biblical texts date from centuries later.
"Trashy"? The Vulgate was actually a polished, literary translation that was meant to supersede the amateur translations that Latin-speaking Christians had used to date. The Protestant reformers and the Eastern Orthodox Church had a great deal of respect for Jerome's work (they simply didn't think it intelligible to their modern audiences).
The Bible sitting on my shelf is about as accurate of a translation as you can get from what Paul and Luke actually wrote in Koine Greek and Aramaic.
An Aramaic ur-text is a controversial theory, and usually only ascribed to the Gospel of Matthew. Paul and Luke were Hellenized and spoke Greek as their mother tongue. They likely wrote nothing in Aramaic, and even if they did, there's no manuscript of it to translate from.
A knowledge of the Bible is essential to understanding Western literature. If you want to shun the Bible, then much of our civilization's canon of poetry and prose becomes unintelligible. You don't have to actually believe in the contents of the book to make use of it.
"The claim that Christians copied Christmas from a pagan holiday pops up a lot too, even though recent research suggests a strong possibility that it was the other way around."
The other way around? How could that be, seeing that Mithras worship/celebration was help on Dec. 25 long before christians moved his birthday there, as well as the Saturnalia being celebrated at the end of the year for centuries before Christ.
I am Catholic. When the Church speaks on scripture, it has authority. When it speaks of that which has nothing to do with the bible, as in net "neutrality" (really nothing more than Government control over private networks, there is nothing neutral about it) or "man made global warming" the Church has no authority whatsoever.
This is hopelessly confused as a statement of Catholic doctrine. The magisterium of the Church heirarchy is not certainly not limited to scripture (sola scriptura is common Protestant doctrine, opposed to the fundamental doctrines of the Catholic Church), instead, it extends to matters of faith and morals whether grounded in Scripture or Tradition or both.
Advocacy of "net neutrality" and "man made global warming" both lead to similar ends: the confiscation of private property directly (by taking it over) or indirectly (by telling you what you can't do with it via regulation), which I can argue violates one of the foudnations of Judeo Christian morality, the 10 Commandments, specifically "thou shalt not steal".
One can, of course, argue for anything, but to argue that any taking of private property for public use or restriction by public authority on the use of private property categorically contradicts Christian morals you must dissent from the teachings of the Catholic Church on faith and morals in the domain in which you are making the argument; particularly, you must dissent from the teachings on the moral aspects of private and public property articulated in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) which, recognizes the importance of private property rights but also states that they are constrained by the rights and obligations of public authority, and that "The right of private ownership, however, is not opposed to the right inherent in various forms of public property. [...] Furthermore, it is the right of public authority to prevent anyone from abusing his private property to the detriment of the common good."