Thanks for providing this fun diversion from work, by the way. I've debated these issues so often that I really feel almost a kind of nostalgia when I get into one again. Reminds me of high school.
I don't know about being smarter, but I do know that its literally impossible to prove to a believer that god doesn't exist.
Short reponse: it's really hard to prove the non-existence of anything. And we're not really trying to "prove" whether or not God exists. Just whether or not there are rational reasons to believe so.
Long response: You're playing with fire here, but you don't seem to realize it. In your haste to show various reasons why even if God Himself came down and gave a tour of Heaven and Hell could still be susceptible to doubt, you opened yourself up to a bigger chasm then you meant to. What you're really talking about here is not proving God doesn't exist (proving non-existence of anything is difficult, by the way) we're talking about pretty fundamental issues of ontology itself. You're headed straight for solipsism. I don't know how familiar you are with Descartes, but he was the one that first pointed out that hey - we can doubt anything. We can't trust our senses 100%, so we can't be certain about ANYTHING. Then he said, but wait "I think, therefore I am", and he used that as his starting poing to get back to some certainty. Trouble is most people agree with what he said about doubt, and disagreed with what he said about getting back to certainty. It would take a bit more to get where I'm going with all the logic behind it but the conclusion is relatively simple: science is based on faith just as much as religion IF you define faith as "believing the most rational thing in the absence of certainty". I don't expect you to believe it's true, but you should at least realize that I believe in a rational definition of faith, and I reject "blind faith" as a religious principle entirely.
This happens way too often for it to be a simple coincidence. This in reference to Pelagius (and others) getting excommunicated, burned, etc. by the stake. I agree it's not coincidence, but you have to be historically smart about how you apply the precedent. Religion today is not the same as religion throughout most of history. During the middle ages you coudn't seperate church and state and political power as you can today, and so that actions of the Church at that time aren't necessarily applicable to the behavior of religion in general now. But I agree whole-heartedly that it's not a coincidence. Part of Mormon belief is in an apostasy - that after Christ set up a church it was corrupted from within and turned into the monstrosity that was Catholicism for much of its history.
abortion v. slavery
Two different things, by no stretch of imagination could you consider slavery a civil liberty.
On the contrary, not only could you, but many people did. The entire basis for American civil freedom and liberty rests on private property rights, and slaves were considered property.
In hindsight it seems horrible to us, but only because we now realize that blacks are just as human as whites. That's the real question: who gets human rights? If I believe that an unborn child is a human then I can just as readily reply that it's ridiculous to say that any one has a "civil liberty" to kill that human being. There's no such thing as a civil liberty for one private citizen to kill another private citizen. Except in self-defense, meaning abortion for the life or health of the mother is a fundamental right. But between 90 and 95% of abortions in America are "purely elective" aka birth control. I have every bit as much right to fight against birth control and a "woman's right to choose" (unless the woman is the unborn child in question, of course) as did abolitionists, who in the eyes of their enemies were restricting the private property rights of slave-owners.
One day future generations will, I believe, look at abortion in our society
Oooh... now we're serious! We've started the meta-argument about who's using more logical fallacies in the argument proper!
Look it wasn't just an ad hominem attack. The fact is that if you had any knowledge of literary criticism whatsoever you'd never say antyhing like this:
Why does it seem like everything in the Bible has double or triple meaning? Was the vocabulary that much smaller 2,000 years ago?
The fact is that some parts of the Bible are OBVIOUSLY not intended to be literal. Take the story of Job. 7 sons killed. Then at the end he gets 14 back? Everything he loses, he gets 2 of back. You think we're supposed to read that on a literal level? Give me break, it's INTENDED to have deeper meaning.
Or take practically EVERYTHING Christ said in the New Testament. I mean, dude, have you READ it? Does the word "parable" mean anything to you?
None of this proves conclusively that the exact quote in question should be read my way or your way. But it does demonstrate two things.
1 - Non-literal meaning in the Bible is both crucial and intentional. 2 - You're not very familiar with the Bible.
This support is bolstered by things like 4000 yaers ago when the KJV was written. The KJV was translated, not written, and only about 400 or 500 years ago. They have no evidence for any of the New Testament stuff being within a couple of deacdes of the actual time of Christ, and even if it was that old it would be 2, not 4 thousand years old. The Bible wasn't even compiled until 400 or 500 years after Christ. The word itself means "books", and it just a collection of what the political powers in the Church wanted included at the time. It was never written as a unified book. It's just a collection of texts that they liked, they threw out and tried to burn the copies tha they didn't - and the voting was very contentious on what got left in.
I'm really not trying to be a jerk here, and I realize that the whole KJV 4000 year old thing was probably just a slip up and that you already know some - or most - of what I'm telling you now.
But dude, and I mean this sincerely, you're in a little over your head. I'm not a professional scholar. I'm an amateur. I read articles in professional theological and historical journals, but it's not like I've ever written one. So I'm no expert either. BUt really, there's just a basic level of awareness you need to have about the bible in order for this discussion between us to really be fruitful.
I really should learn better than to respond to people who consider me "another hyper-sensitive religious nutjob clinging to a ludicrous belief system in hopes of getting a private planet after you die". But alas, I'm a slow learner in some aspects.
I guess we need to talk about the word coercion now. If you join the National Honor Society you promise not to cheat on tests. Do you consider that coercive? If you cheat - you can't be a member. According to your definition - they're coercive. According to your definition EVERY organization that has ANY RULES WHATSOEVER is coercive. Either follow the rules, or leave the club. "Help! Help! I'm being repressed! Did you see him repressing me!?!"
If that's your definition, then fine. The National Honor Society is coercive and so is the Mormon church. Along with every other institution that has any rules regarding membership whatsoever. What a useful new definition of "coercion" you've discoverd, your highness.
But I don't find that to be a useful definition of coercion, because nobody is making me join the club in the first place. There's no penalty for not obeying, except not being in the club. (Not that they actually check this rule or anything). Or maybe you believe the Danites will come and get me in the night if I leave the Church and reveal the secret rituals we perform on virgins, goats, and chickens.
Are you saying that in order for a club to be non-coercive it has to allow members to be members no matter what they do? So if I want to be a member of a sky-diving club, but I've never sky-dived and have no intention of doing so, they must let me be a member anyway or they are coercive? Or if I want to join a breast-cancer survivor group, but I've never had breast cancer, they're coercing me by not letting me join? Coercing me to what, exactly? Get breast cancer? I hope you can see why your construal of "coercion" is far outside the mainstream and while it may have some technical claim to being "right" is really utterly useless and irrelevant in real life.
You act as though I should some how tremble in the face of impending scorn regarding "golden tablets, the third testament, or of Jesus appearing in the American West". Why? Because you think they are ridiculous claims? So what? Because others here probably think they are ridiculous? This should intimidate me why?
The fact is that the use of metal alloy tablets, including gold, to record important historic and genealogical information was unheard of in the time of Joseph Smith. Yet now we have ample evidence of this practice in ancient cultures: Try the "Plates outside the Latter-day Saint tradition" section of the wikipedia entry under "Golden Plates"
Ooops, I'm supposed to be feelig embarassed and intimidated by your superior knowledge. I'm just a lowly, grovelling sheep, after all, not a big, independent free-thinker like yourself. I feel nervous just posting with you!
The third testemant is ridiculous? Why? Because you say so? The Bible itself references literally dozens of prophetic writings that we no longer have any record of. In addition we have dozens of new records recovered from the Dead Sea Scrolls, not to mention the Nag-Hamadi texts. Do you want a list of other aprocyphal books that we DO have outside the Bible? I just googled "lost books bible" or something like that. Here's a list:
Pseudepigraphal Books
Epistle of Barnabas
First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians
Second Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians
The letter of the Smyrnaeans or the Martyrdom of Polycarp
The Shepherd of Hermas
The Book of Enoch
Gospel of Thomas (140-170 AD)
The Psalms of Solo
"Don't piss into the wind" is commonly-accepted wisdom. You say it to state the obvious -something that practically everyone knows.
"Religion is the opiate of the masses" is a commonly-accpeted wisdom in the same sense. Whether or not it's held by a majority is debatable (and the quote itself is debatble - I'm not dismissing it out of hand, just dismissing out of hand that it is common wisdom). I don't think you'd get a debate about whether or not "don't piss into the wind" is really good advise or not.
Please understand distinctions. I'm not saying whether or not the quote itself is reasonable. That's one issue. I'm stating that taking the quote for granted is not reasonable. That's a seperate issue.
Why do I know more about Joseph Smith than you? Well, there's a chance I don't. But chances are I do because I know more about Joseph Smith than most people. My father has written a couple of books (published by Oxford University press) about early Church history that include a lot about him. He's written numerous speeches, essays and articles. I do early proofreading on all this work. My grandfather also wrote books about early Mormon history before he passed away. On top of this, I've also done some study on my own. It's something that matters a lot to me, and I've done considerable reading on the topic. Most people don't actively study Joseph Smith. Therefore I know more than most people.
It's not like I'm claiming to be a genius or something. There's nothing special about my position - I've just read up on it. That's it. People tend to know about what they study. I'm an amatuer student of Mormon history. Runs in my family. If you are too, or if you are professional historian, than you know as much or more than me. But chances are you're not.
Your quote says "lose his life for my sake". That, in just about any reading, means dying.
Not really much for literary criticism, are you? Sure one conventional meaning is to die. But I really think that's also the most superficial and lazy approach you can take. There is a long tradition of believing in martyrdom as way to heaven - both in Islam and Christianity. I'm not denying that. But I think that the alternative reading is just as strong.
But unless you believe in it, it is just a cool sounding phrase.
No, what you wrote is a witty, cool sounding phrase. The quote itself is something more.
I've read many philosophical books where I don't believe what's written, but deeply admire the sentiment. One great example is Simone DeBeouvior's book on ethics. I disagreed with a lot of what she had to say (about atheism, especially). I didn't believe in what she wrote. But that in now way whatsoever reduced it to just a "cool-sounding phrase". It remained a deep, morally complex, and intellectually demanding philosophy. Just not one that I believed in.
In that same sense it is possible to have a great appreciation for some of the deeper teachings of various aspects of Christianity. Of course, you'll never get this appreciation if you're too busy reading things in the most superficial sense possible in an attempt to win an argument.
Look, I don't mean to be flippant. Or at least, I don't mean to only be flippant. I'm not saying that everyone who hates religion in general is irrational to do so. But anyone who thinks that it is obvious that religion is evil/stupid/whatever should think about this: If people have been arguing a topic for literally millenia with geniuses on both sides of the issue without ever reaching a consensus, and then someone comes along and goes, "duh, it's obvious" then that individual is either smarter than everyone else who's ever discussed it, or completely missing something.
So what do you think is more likely? That you're smarter than every religious scholar and philosopher for the past 4,000+ years, or that there are actually very defensible positions on both sides of the fence - and you're just not succeeding in understanding any of the points that don't support your conclusion? You see the really smart people that are on your side (atheists and others opposed to organized religion) would be pretty embarrassed to have you on their team. That's a bad sign.
I'll outline just a couple examples of what I'm talking about. First of all, not all religions constrict liberties. A lot of the western ideals of liberty that gave birth to the American Revolution can be traced back hundreds of years to theologians and philosophers. Take Pelagius for one really early example. He was an early Catholic who taught free will. He was excommunicated by the Church - but that's a mark against the people who excommunicated him, not against religion in general. My own religion (Mormonism) has a similar theology. There are tons of quotes from the Book of Mormon about how "men are free", "ye are free", etc. Also the Bible: "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." So if you want to say that religion limits freedom, you're going to have to do the research, incorporate the evidence that doesn't help, and show why, even taking all that into account, you're point of view is still right. Not saying you're wrong - just that you're irrational.
Another example: "you don't like abortion? don't practice it!" Response: "You don't like slavery, don't practice it!" Your views are not as bullet-proof as you think. Another instance where you would do well to actually understand the opposition before you assume you're right. Not saying you're wrong, just that you're irrational.
Final example: "You guys probably killed more people then Hitler" I'm a Mormon. My people missed all the big religious wars, we've only been around since 1830. If you're trying to lump me together with all religious people, or even all Christians, then you're just being irrational again. I might as well lump together all political parties because they're all, you know, political. Who cares if they disagree on almost nearly every aspect of politics? Or just group together everyone that believes in communism. Then I can walk up to a hippy and be like "You people probably killed more people than Hitler" and, since I get to include Stalin, I'd be right. Again - not saying you're wrong; just irrational.
I don't really take this post as a troll post at all, but it's not as hard as you think to get answers to the questions you seek. I'm not saying you'll buy them, I'm just saying they're out there. At the extreme risk of getting hounded by anti-Mormons, I'll try to give you some reactions from that point of view.
1. God doesn't need human worship/belief, etc.
Mormons believe that the human soul is eternal - uncreated. We're all God's kids, and he wants us to grow and develop. Life is a phase in that development. He is there to assist us in developing. The point is not to make life easy - obstacles and trials are part of the development process - but to enable us to rise to the challenges that we face.
2. Not everyone's going to Hell.
Mormons aren't into the whole hellfire and damnation thing so much. We have a much different take on how things work out after this life, but the central doctrine is this: we are radically free. In this life we suffer from all kinds of circumstances that we can't control, but the one thing that we can control is who we are. And that's what we have to live with after this life: the person that we've become. So for most people the after-life is only Hell in the sense that it's a life of mediocrity when it could have been a life of peace and enlightenment if they'd consciously strugged to live up to ideals instead of being satisfied with avoiding major guilt and getting away with as much self-indulgence as possible. But there's room for development after death as well, so it's not like you just have one shot. That's the whole point of the atonement (the suffering Christ went through). It enables us to "do-over" the stupid things we do.
The only ones going to hell as in infinite torment are those who willfully choose it. And even then I'm not so sure on the "infinite" bit. So naturally Mormons believe hell is going to be almost empty.
3. Pain and suffering in life.
Some of the pain that we suffer in life is unavoidable and part of the design. Working out hurts, but it makes the muscles stronger. That kind of thing. Other suffering is a result of the fact that the most important element to our life on earth is our moral freedom. We choose who we want to be. Some of use choose to be evil, and further pain and suffering - both self-inflicted and otherwise - comes from those choices. But I believe that since we have lived an infinite amount of time before this life (which we can't remember because it would taint our choices so that we wouldn't choose good for the sake of goodness) that when we have passed through the troubles of this life the pain will seem as a momentary thing. I'm not saying that the hardship faced in the world is not real or genuine - it is. Just that I believe that we all chose to be here in the first place, and that in the end none of us will regret our decision. Some of the hardest things we do in life are also the most worthwhile. I think the same holds true for life itself.
4. Vague rules
Right now we live as children, following the rules of our parents. But the point of this life is for us to grow up. The rules were never meant to be all-inclusive because that would negate the chance to develop our own internal morality. The rules are supposed to be a framework to keep us from doing really stupid things, but the vagueness is intentional because it is when we start thinking for ourselves about morality that we actually develop.
5. Why doesn't this whole system work better?
That seemed to be an implicit question. If God wants to spread the truth, why do we have thousands of creeds and denominations out there? Why not pick one, show up now and then so we all know which one it is, and then we know where to go! Part of the answer is what you get in #4. Another part is that there has to be a force for evil as well as for good. Otherwise it's not a genuine choice. Some people follow that evil side just as much as others follow the light side. And if there was a force out
I simply can't believe that this is an honest question and so I'm not going to take it as such. There's no coercion to ANY aspect of my faith - that was the whole point of the line you quoted. There's no way you could post that.
So you post is just a coward's low-blow and you know it. You know what some of my deeply-held beliefs and convictions are, and it's easy to snipe at them without seeming to reveal anything of your own to possible public scorn. My fault for posting them publicly, you say? Well I don't regret it. That the sacred beliefs or practices of another religion are an object of ridicule to you demonstrates more about your own lack of maturity than anything about the religion your attempting to denigrate.
Any religion can be mocked by those who aren't willing to try and actually understand it. Catholics are cannibals for believing the bread and wine literally turn to the body and blood of Christ. Muslims are sex-fiends for all wanting to blow themselves up to get 70 virigins. Ha ha ha ha. What a riot.
The fact is that if you're an atheist, a Zorastrian, a Muslim, or subscribe to any of the numerous, diverse, and deep cultural approaches to religion than we can respect one another and disagree constructively.
Don't be an ignoramus. In the first place, I wasn't trying to "impugn the legacy of Marx". I think the USSR, China, Cuba and most of world history for the past 50 years are doing a fine job of that. World history doesn't need my help.
In the second place, you're proving my point: the Marx quote is not commonly-accepted wisdom because most people aren't Marxists. Just as the words of Joseph Smith aren't commonly-accepted wisdom because most people aren't Mormon. I was just pointing out the obvious fact that we don't all think Marx got everything right. I was not trying to push my own beliefs on anyone else.
And yet, despite the obviousness of all I've written, you took the trouble to post. Were you really just defending the legacy of Marx? If you were and you're a Marxist, then I can respect that - and we can have an argument about whether my first paragraph was justified.
But from my experience dealing with people who have an irrational hatred of Joseph Smith and/or Mormonism and/or Christianity in general and/or God in general and/or organized religion in general I'm guessing one of those factors was a stronger motivation for your post than a sincere desire to protect the legacy of our dear departed comrade.
In that case I'd like to point out that while I would take it as a matter of course that a Marxist has probably studied Marx and has his or her own defensible reasons for listening to him, you seem to assume that I don't have a similarly reasonable position in following the teachings of Joseph Smith. Since I'm willing to bet you know very little about what Joseph Smith actually said or stood for, I'd say that means that in this instance one of us is prejudiced, and the other is not.
But if you really were just standing up for Marx, then I'm the one that's out of line.
I was just saying that there is a withdrawal-type phenomena associated with some people stopping video games. Didn't mean to infer that it was on the same level as withdrawal symptoms from drugs. I think the two are similar in many ways, but not really in magnitude. I also think the distinction between a physical and a psychological addiction is a blurry one.
Plus, the money you pay to Blizzard goes to, well Blizzard - a business. There are some churches with paid ministers and such that rake in the tithing. But others, like my church, have NO PAID MINISTRY. So not matter how "business like" they appear, the money is going to either support the church or alleviate suffering.
If it's supporting the church - that's OK. The only people in the church are people who want to be there, so tithes are no more sinister than dues to a club you like. No one makes you pay them. And if you feel you have to pay them or incur the wrath of God - that's still your problem. No one can make you believe God even exists in the first place. If I tell you to give me all your money or Santa and the Easter Bunny will kill you, am I coercing you (assuming you're not a 4 year old)? No - it's up to you to take that threat seriously or not, I can't make you believe in Santa.
And the rest of the money goes to welfare programs, educational funds, and disaster relief. I'm OK with that too.
My brother has an extermely addictive personality. I would definitely say he has withdrawal symptoms if he doesn't get his fix. You do not want to be around him when he doesn't get his WoW fix. I'm not exagerating. That's one of the reasons I've never played the game.
In general, you shouldn't question something that you don't understand. You're not married either, are you?
Look, I'm both deeply religious (and committed to an estabslished, organized religion) and married. I served the whole 2-year mission (paying most of the way myself - $10,000). And you're comments are just way out of line.
If you're very religious, then your church/instution owns your ass, and most likely for the duration of your life.
I suppose there are those who are so petrified of going to Hell or whatever that they follow their religion out of fear. And for those people, I think your comment may hold. But what you're failing to understand is that a religion is something you have to consciously stay faithful to. It's very demanding, yes, but this doesn't imply coercion. No one MADE me go on a mission, no one MAKES me go to church every Sunday, and no one MAKES me believe what I believe. It's my choice, day in and day out, to live according to the values that I hold true. It's my choice to sacrifice time and money to things that I think are worthwhile. And believe me, there are plenty of times when I'm unsatisfied with my religion as in institution and when I question it. Questioning is a part of healthy spirtual life. If you don't question - if you don't think for yourself - then you are a slave.
Marriage is similar. You marry someone you love (hopefully), but if you expect marriage to make your life better without constant effort, work, and patience then you're going to be just another whining divorcee. You can look at marriage as your ball and chain - but this just means you're turning yourself into a victim. Or you can man up and see marriage for what it is - a committed relationship that you entered of your own free will. It's not like marriage or religion happen to you (in general) they are relationships that you choose to enter into, that you need to continue to choose to be in day in and day out, and relationships that are easier to let die than to keep alive.
This is all very different from games, in my opinion, for one critical reason. If you get married solely for yourself and if you attend church solely for yourself (and some people do these thigns) than you've missed the whole point. But who plays video games for any reason other than their own personal entertainment? Same thing with drugs. I'm not equating the two, but I'm showing that they are both demonstrably different from relationships where the whole point is to elevate the other part, or the relationship itself, above the self.
It's that elevation of God and commitment to Him and His Church (if you're Christian, like I am) that seperates religious activity at a fundamental level from something you do for kicks and jollies. The same can be said of other religion. If you're of the Islamic faith (Islam = submission) then you're no slave. Submitting because you want to, because it is your earnest desire to serve God, does not take away your freedom or make you an addict - it is just how you choose to use that unalienable freedom.
Maybe you should actually do a little bit of study of religion before you make such ignorant and sweeping prouncements. The verse repeated at least three times in the New Testament "whomsoever shall save his life shall lose it, whomsoever shall lose his life for my name's sake" is not just a cool-sounding phrase. It's a description of how, in voluntarily giving of your self to a greater cause - you can find something greater than what you find in a life dedicated to gratifying your own desires.
You don't have to believe in God to beleive that sentiment, and you don't have to believe that sentiment to respect it. I'm not saying that all religions, or all religious people in any denomination/creed, have this belief of freedom. But when you consider other religions, you should always consider them at their best - at what the believers aspire to be. No one lives up to all their own ideals, that doens't mean that no one is trying.
If you're asking questions like this, you're not understanding what's going on. That's likes saying at the dawn of the textile industry, "OK, so all the home-weavers just quit and the guild folds. Now all the factories with buggy prototype machines and no trained work force just have to somehow make a profit. Bet you're in favor of artificially high prices now!"
I'll explain the analogy. The current record labels are dinosaurs, and their time has come. The market can no longer support them. But this is a PROCESS. It's not like you can just hit a switch and say "OK industry, change" and expect an instant turn over. The record labels have the resources to stick around for a while, and the new business model that will replace them is not ready yet. This doesn't change the fact that the old business model won't work anymore.
And the artificially high prices, in this case, are going to be the result of DRM (if it succeeds). Consider diamonds. Until the 19th century they were very rare - and thus valuable. In the 19th century, however, vast diamond deposits were found - mostly in Africa. The DeBiers family realized that if diamonds were no longer rare, they would no longer be valuable as jewelry - and thus they bought up the vast majority of the diamonds and mines available and then released only a controlled amount to the public. So even though diamonds, as raw material, are relatively common they are rare on the marketplace. They have succeeded in maintaining this artificial scarcity for over a century. It only worked becuase they paired it with an equally successful marketing campaign.
Whenever a new diamond mine of sufficient size to threaten their contol is opened they can flood the market - temporarily dropping the prices and financially ruining their competitor - then buy up the mine once the owner is crippled. Then they restore prices to previous levels by drying up the supply lines.
DRM does effectively the same thing. I'm ignoring the issue about who a song belongs to for now. The question of price is related to scarcity. If music is scarce - meaning you have to go to a store and buy a CD to get one then the price stays high. It's like diamonds vs. cubic zirconium. The knock-off isn't as good. So as long as there is a difference in quality between the "real" thing (CDs) and copies (tapes of CDs) then the prices can remain high. (Plus tapes are not free either.)
But if suddenly there are EXACT copies (MP3s, CD burning with CDs getting really cheap) then the supply shoots through the roof. But if you managed to clamp down on that excess supply - via DRM - then you can drag it down to the original level and continue to charge the same price. So as far as the record labels are concerned DRM has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with "rights". It's about supply - as in supply and demand.
But of course DRM also has to do with "rights" and we can't ignore that side of it. Artists do create the songs, and thus they should have some ownership and control rights. At the very least, they should have a way to make money off of their music.
There are two approaches to this dileman. If you're a hard-core capitalist you say "tough luck. either the market's there, or it's not". I think that this is laregely true. If musicians suddenly couldn't make money or control their art and we had a mass exodus of musicians then people would realize they're going to have to pay more just to support the artists.
The thing is, we don't have to let the market work that way. We don't have to wait for musicians to all starve to death to realize that if we want good music we have to support musicians.
But the only reason to think that supporting musicians means supporting record labels is if we buy into the record label PR machine. Just like the diamond industry managed, in the space of a few short decades, to introduce a foreign tradition to Japan (diamond engagement rings after WWII) so successfully that the landscape of a culture was changed (the tradi
I found the Thomas Jefferson quote I had alluded to earlier. Try this one on for size!
Rev. Allen wrote in his diary: "President Jefferson was on his way to church on a Sunday morning with his large red prayer book under his arm when a friend querying him after their mutual good morning said which way are you walking Mr. Jefferson. To which he replied to Church Sir. You going to church Mr. Jefferson? You do not believe a word in it. [You see, Thomas Jefferson wouldn't be a member of our church. He was not an evangelical by any stretch of the imagination. But listen to what he said.] Sir said Mr. Jefferson. No nation has ever existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Good morning Sir."
Michael Novak, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding. (San Francisco, Encounter Books, 2002), p. 31.
I'm not sure it's valid to say that because Jefferson had ties to a religion that was persecuted that it follows that Jefferson could therefore "[n]ever have meant for religion of any sort to be a part of the government of the United States". The only thing that really follows based on logic and common sense is that Jefferson would have wanted the kind of gov't that would neither persecute based on religion nor allow religious persecution.
And yet many, many decades before the current right-wing of the Republican faction even existed to abuse God in religion, the federal gov't sent an army to the territory of Utah to - essentially - persecute another religion deemed heretical: the Mormons. Prior to that the state of Illinois had decreed that all Mormons had to leave the state or be exterminated. So clearly we had all kinds of religious persecution - more than we have today - before the religious right was in power.
So you'd think that I would be especially sensitive to this issue, and I believe that I am. But the fact is that taking God out of gov't will not necessarily decrease tendency to persecute any given religion. It just makes gov't hostile to ALL religions. What we need is a gov't that it not attached to any specific doctrine or tenent - not a gov't that either denies or ignores the existence of God.
And I'm not sure how you take that Jefferson quote, but I don't think it is atheist or even genuinely agnostic. Here's the quote: "Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."
I'm a devout Mormon, yet I have no qualms endorsing this quote whole-heartedly. What is belief in a God who is never questioned? Any belief held without questioning debases both the holder of the belief and the object of it.
The fact is that some Founding Fathers, like Adams, had a serious beef with at least some versions of Christianity (eg Catholicism). But they kept their negative feelings against Catholicism out of the gov't and we have a Declaration of Independence, and a deep tradition, of invoking the name of God in official gov't capacities. It's on our money, it's in our pledge (a recent addition) and prayers are said in the Senate and House. Adams, Jefferson and many more can all freely allow God in gov't - just not the doctrine of any church that claims to speak for him.
I agree completely. I'm just rather long-winded and didn't have a chance to get that all in there. The industry started to create and distribute music on physical media. But since then it has grown and taken over more and more of the process, from finding talent to actually producing the music that it distributes.
There are two problems. The first is that they have huge physical capital devoted to a process (finding talent, producing music, creating the physical media, distributing the physical media, promoting the music) and they are about to lose out on two of those 5 aspects. Those 2 are where the revenue actually comes in, so it's going to be very difficult to support the whole thing. I'm not saying that there's nothing left for them to do, I'm saying that you can't support this entity that used to do 5 major tasks if suddely 2 of those tasks are irrelevent. They have to downsize, become more efficient, and generate new revenue streams (new business models) or they are going to collapse from their own weight.
The second problem is that a lot of people don't like the fact that the record labels went from making and distributing physical media to influencing the music itself. There are a lot of people - all those who listen to non-top 40 music - who have no interest in seeing the major record labels survive even in a reduced state. When record labels found and groomed talent and practically shoved it down the publics throat it could be argued that they weren't doing a genuine service, they were simply capitalizing on their oligarchical status as distributors of music to also control that music.
Now that we don't need them to distribute we who never wanted them to find the talent, produce the music and promote it (because they were more intersted in profits (homogeneity) than artistry) have just as much motivation as we always have to try and bring them down, and a lot more opportunity. We don't want to let them find new revenue streams that will allow them to maintain their status as the gateways to public msuic.
I see the same thing happening with movies and TV shows, by the way. The cost to produce block-busters has skyrocketed, but the actual computer and video equipment necessary to make professional-grade movies/TV shows is increasingly publicly accessible. I mean, the Matrix movies (as well as who knows how many more) were edited in Final Cut Pro. Which I've used when I was in school.
Sometimes good shows get cancelled because they don't have mass appeal. So the TV/movie industry puts profits ahead of taste. Thus as soon as the opportunity arises, the revolution will overthrow them just as it is in the process of overthrowing the major record labels.
We can expect the same DRM crap from them as from the record labels, but in the end the market simply won't support the old business models.
All you've succeeded in doing is creating a boo-hoo story for the VP in charge of the Sony Music dvision. And it's legitimate. But it doesn't change the fact that when the market changes in fundamental ways some business models do not survive. Period. You have this HUGE industry that was essentially created to solve a problem: distribute music to consumers. At the time of creation the only method of distribution was physical. It was expensive and time-consuming to create phonographs, 8-tracks, cassettes, etc. So now you have this huge corporation that was built up around the fundamental problem: create physical media to distribute music.
Then along come computers and the internet. Now you can make endless copies of the music (digital files) and you have a method to distribute them without significant additional overhead (peer-to-peer over the internet). These are the facts of life. And it means that the entire music distribution infrastucture has become an out-dated dinosaur.
You seem to want us to understand the plight of the Sony VP. But that's not really relevant. The problem isn't that people are stealing music. That's a symptom of the greater problem: there's no longer a need for giant distributors with extensive physical capital to fulfill. And that is not anybody's fault. That doesn't make stealing OK. But everybody not stealing is not going to suddenly eliminate the market inequities.
The problem is that we're going through another economic revolution. Just as tremendous social upheavel accompanied the Industrial Revolution, this economic revolution from physical media to digital media is going to cause huge waves (maybe not AS huge, that remains to be seen). And just as some labor groups fought the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the physical media conglomerations are going to fight this revolution. But they have just much chance of winning as the Luddites did of banning machinery and factories.
We're completely wasting our time, efforts and money if we try to either prop up a failing and antiquated system or try to divert attention from the underlying flaws. The world has changed - and the only prudent thing we can do is try to change with it. That goes for you, me, and Sony VPs everywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
That's because it's not a question. I said that in the first para of my first response.
-stormin
Thanks for providing this fun diversion from work, by the way. I've debated these issues so often that I really feel almost a kind of nostalgia when I get into one again. Reminds me of high school.
I don't know about being smarter, but I do know that its literally impossible to prove to a believer that god doesn't exist.
Short reponse: it's really hard to prove the non-existence of anything. And we're not really trying to "prove" whether or not God exists. Just whether or not there are rational reasons to believe so.
Long response: You're playing with fire here, but you don't seem to realize it. In your haste to show various reasons why even if God Himself came down and gave a tour of Heaven and Hell could still be susceptible to doubt, you opened yourself up to a bigger chasm then you meant to. What you're really talking about here is not proving God doesn't exist (proving non-existence of anything is difficult, by the way) we're talking about pretty fundamental issues of ontology itself. You're headed straight for solipsism. I don't know how familiar you are with Descartes, but he was the one that first pointed out that hey - we can doubt anything. We can't trust our senses 100%, so we can't be certain about ANYTHING. Then he said, but wait "I think, therefore I am", and he used that as his starting poing to get back to some certainty. Trouble is most people agree with what he said about doubt, and disagreed with what he said about getting back to certainty. It would take a bit more to get where I'm going with all the logic behind it but the conclusion is relatively simple: science is based on faith just as much as religion IF you define faith as "believing the most rational thing in the absence of certainty". I don't expect you to believe it's true, but you should at least realize that I believe in a rational definition of faith, and I reject "blind faith" as a religious principle entirely.
This happens way too often for it to be a simple coincidence. This in reference to Pelagius (and others) getting excommunicated, burned, etc. by the stake. I agree it's not coincidence, but you have to be historically smart about how you apply the precedent. Religion today is not the same as religion throughout most of history. During the middle ages you coudn't seperate church and state and political power as you can today, and so that actions of the Church at that time aren't necessarily applicable to the behavior of religion in general now. But I agree whole-heartedly that it's not a coincidence. Part of Mormon belief is in an apostasy - that after Christ set up a church it was corrupted from within and turned into the monstrosity that was Catholicism for much of its history.
abortion v. slavery
Two different things, by no stretch of imagination could you consider slavery a civil liberty.
On the contrary, not only could you, but many people did. The entire basis for American civil freedom and liberty rests on private property rights, and slaves were considered property.
In hindsight it seems horrible to us, but only because we now realize that blacks are just as human as whites. That's the real question: who gets human rights? If I believe that an unborn child is a human then I can just as readily reply that it's ridiculous to say that any one has a "civil liberty" to kill that human being. There's no such thing as a civil liberty for one private citizen to kill another private citizen. Except in self-defense, meaning abortion for the life or health of the mother is a fundamental right. But between 90 and 95% of abortions in America are "purely elective" aka birth control. I have every bit as much right to fight against birth control and a "woman's right to choose" (unless the woman is the unborn child in question, of course) as did abolitionists, who in the eyes of their enemies were restricting the private property rights of slave-owners.
One day future generations will, I believe, look at abortion in our society
This time, leave out the ad hominems.
Oooh... now we're serious! We've started the meta-argument about who's using more logical fallacies in the argument proper!
Look it wasn't just an ad hominem attack. The fact is that if you had any knowledge of literary criticism whatsoever you'd never say antyhing like this:
Why does it seem like everything in the Bible has double or triple meaning? Was the vocabulary that much smaller 2,000 years ago?
The fact is that some parts of the Bible are OBVIOUSLY not intended to be literal. Take the story of Job. 7 sons killed. Then at the end he gets 14 back? Everything he loses, he gets 2 of back. You think we're supposed to read that on a literal level? Give me break, it's INTENDED to have deeper meaning.
Or take practically EVERYTHING Christ said in the New Testament. I mean, dude, have you READ it? Does the word "parable" mean anything to you?
None of this proves conclusively that the exact quote in question should be read my way or your way. But it does demonstrate two things.
1 - Non-literal meaning in the Bible is both crucial and intentional.
2 - You're not very familiar with the Bible.
This support is bolstered by things like 4000 yaers ago when the KJV was written. The KJV was translated, not written, and only about 400 or 500 years ago. They have no evidence for any of the New Testament stuff being within a couple of deacdes of the actual time of Christ, and even if it was that old it would be 2, not 4 thousand years old. The Bible wasn't even compiled until 400 or 500 years after Christ. The word itself means "books", and it just a collection of what the political powers in the Church wanted included at the time. It was never written as a unified book. It's just a collection of texts that they liked, they threw out and tried to burn the copies tha they didn't - and the voting was very contentious on what got left in.
I'm really not trying to be a jerk here, and I realize that the whole KJV 4000 year old thing was probably just a slip up and that you already know some - or most - of what I'm telling you now.
But dude, and I mean this sincerely, you're in a little over your head. I'm not a professional scholar. I'm an amateur. I read articles in professional theological and historical journals, but it's not like I've ever written one. So I'm no expert either. BUt really, there's just a basic level of awareness you need to have about the bible in order for this discussion between us to really be fruitful.
-stormin
I really should learn better than to respond to people who consider me "another hyper-sensitive religious nutjob clinging to a ludicrous belief system in hopes of getting a private planet after you die". But alas, I'm a slow learner in some aspects.
I guess we need to talk about the word coercion now. If you join the National Honor Society you promise not to cheat on tests. Do you consider that coercive? If you cheat - you can't be a member. According to your definition - they're coercive. According to your definition EVERY organization that has ANY RULES WHATSOEVER is coercive. Either follow the rules, or leave the club. "Help! Help! I'm being repressed! Did you see him repressing me!?!"
If that's your definition, then fine. The National Honor Society is coercive and so is the Mormon church. Along with every other institution that has any rules regarding membership whatsoever. What a useful new definition of "coercion" you've discoverd, your highness.
But I don't find that to be a useful definition of coercion, because nobody is making me join the club in the first place. There's no penalty for not obeying, except not being in the club. (Not that they actually check this rule or anything). Or maybe you believe the Danites will come and get me in the night if I leave the Church and reveal the secret rituals we perform on virgins, goats, and chickens.
Are you saying that in order for a club to be non-coercive it has to allow members to be members no matter what they do? So if I want to be a member of a sky-diving club, but I've never sky-dived and have no intention of doing so, they must let me be a member anyway or they are coercive? Or if I want to join a breast-cancer survivor group, but I've never had breast cancer, they're coercing me by not letting me join? Coercing me to what, exactly? Get breast cancer? I hope you can see why your construal of "coercion" is far outside the mainstream and while it may have some technical claim to being "right" is really utterly useless and irrelevant in real life.
You act as though I should some how tremble in the face of impending scorn regarding "golden tablets, the third testament, or of Jesus appearing in the American West". Why? Because you think they are ridiculous claims? So what? Because others here probably think they are ridiculous? This should intimidate me why?
The fact is that the use of metal alloy tablets, including gold, to record important historic and genealogical information was unheard of in the time of Joseph Smith. Yet now we have ample evidence of this practice in ancient cultures: Try the "Plates outside the Latter-day Saint tradition" section of the wikipedia entry under "Golden Plates"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Plates#Plates_ outside_the_Latter_Day_Saint_tradition
Ooops, I'm supposed to be feelig embarassed and intimidated by your superior knowledge. I'm just a lowly, grovelling sheep, after all, not a big, independent free-thinker like yourself. I feel nervous just posting with you!
The third testemant is ridiculous? Why? Because you say so? The Bible itself references literally dozens of prophetic writings that we no longer have any record of. In addition we have dozens of new records recovered from the Dead Sea Scrolls, not to mention the Nag-Hamadi texts. Do you want a list of other aprocyphal books that we DO have outside the Bible? I just googled "lost books bible" or something like that. Here's a list:
Pseudepigraphal Books
Epistle of Barnabas
First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians
Second Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians
The letter of the Smyrnaeans or the Martyrdom of Polycarp
The Shepherd of Hermas
The Book of Enoch
Gospel of Thomas (140-170 AD)
The Psalms of Solo
"Don't piss into the wind" is commonly-accepted wisdom. You say it to state the obvious -something that practically everyone knows.
"Religion is the opiate of the masses" is a commonly-accpeted wisdom in the same sense. Whether or not it's held by a majority is debatable (and the quote itself is debatble - I'm not dismissing it out of hand, just dismissing out of hand that it is common wisdom). I don't think you'd get a debate about whether or not "don't piss into the wind" is really good advise or not.
Please understand distinctions. I'm not saying whether or not the quote itself is reasonable. That's one issue. I'm stating that taking the quote for granted is not reasonable. That's a seperate issue.
Why do I know more about Joseph Smith than you? Well, there's a chance I don't. But chances are I do because I know more about Joseph Smith than most people. My father has written a couple of books (published by Oxford University press) about early Church history that include a lot about him. He's written numerous speeches, essays and articles. I do early proofreading on all this work. My grandfather also wrote books about early Mormon history before he passed away. On top of this, I've also done some study on my own. It's something that matters a lot to me, and I've done considerable reading on the topic. Most people don't actively study Joseph Smith. Therefore I know more than most people.
It's not like I'm claiming to be a genius or something. There's nothing special about my position - I've just read up on it. That's it. People tend to know about what they study. I'm an amatuer student of Mormon history. Runs in my family. If you are too, or if you are professional historian, than you know as much or more than me. But chances are you're not.
-stormin
And 2000 years ago the nascent Catholic church was considered a cult by the Jews.
Your quote says "lose his life for my sake". That, in just about any reading, means dying.
Not really much for literary criticism, are you? Sure one conventional meaning is to die. But I really think that's also the most superficial and lazy approach you can take. There is a long tradition of believing in martyrdom as way to heaven - both in Islam and Christianity. I'm not denying that. But I think that the alternative reading is just as strong.
But unless you believe in it, it is just a cool sounding phrase.
No, what you wrote is a witty, cool sounding phrase. The quote itself is something more.
I've read many philosophical books where I don't believe what's written, but deeply admire the sentiment. One great example is Simone DeBeouvior's book on ethics. I disagreed with a lot of what she had to say (about atheism, especially). I didn't believe in what she wrote. But that in now way whatsoever reduced it to just a "cool-sounding phrase". It remained a deep, morally complex, and intellectually demanding philosophy. Just not one that I believed in.
In that same sense it is possible to have a great appreciation for some of the deeper teachings of various aspects of Christianity. Of course, you'll never get this appreciation if you're too busy reading things in the most superficial sense possible in an attempt to win an argument.
-stormin
Why would you consider such hatred irrational?
Good question.
You guys probably killed more people then Hitler.
Good answer.
Look, I don't mean to be flippant. Or at least, I don't mean to only be flippant. I'm not saying that everyone who hates religion in general is irrational to do so. But anyone who thinks that it is obvious that religion is evil/stupid/whatever should think about this: If people have been arguing a topic for literally millenia with geniuses on both sides of the issue without ever reaching a consensus, and then someone comes along and goes, "duh, it's obvious" then that individual is either smarter than everyone else who's ever discussed it, or completely missing something.
So what do you think is more likely? That you're smarter than every religious scholar and philosopher for the past 4,000+ years, or that there are actually very defensible positions on both sides of the fence - and you're just not succeeding in understanding any of the points that don't support your conclusion? You see the really smart people that are on your side (atheists and others opposed to organized religion) would be pretty embarrassed to have you on their team. That's a bad sign.
I'll outline just a couple examples of what I'm talking about. First of all, not all religions constrict liberties. A lot of the western ideals of liberty that gave birth to the American Revolution can be traced back hundreds of years to theologians and philosophers. Take Pelagius for one really early example. He was an early Catholic who taught free will. He was excommunicated by the Church - but that's a mark against the people who excommunicated him, not against religion in general. My own religion (Mormonism) has a similar theology. There are tons of quotes from the Book of Mormon about how "men are free", "ye are free", etc. Also the Bible: "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." So if you want to say that religion limits freedom, you're going to have to do the research, incorporate the evidence that doesn't help, and show why, even taking all that into account, you're point of view is still right. Not saying you're wrong - just that you're irrational.
Another example: "you don't like abortion? don't practice it!" Response: "You don't like slavery, don't practice it!" Your views are not as bullet-proof as you think. Another instance where you would do well to actually understand the opposition before you assume you're right. Not saying you're wrong, just that you're irrational.
Final example: "You guys probably killed more people then Hitler" I'm a Mormon. My people missed all the big religious wars, we've only been around since 1830. If you're trying to lump me together with all religious people, or even all Christians, then you're just being irrational again. I might as well lump together all political parties because they're all, you know, political. Who cares if they disagree on almost nearly every aspect of politics? Or just group together everyone that believes in communism. Then I can walk up to a hippy and be like "You people probably killed more people than Hitler" and, since I get to include Stalin, I'd be right. Again - not saying you're wrong; just irrational.
-stormin
I don't really take this post as a troll post at all, but it's not as hard as you think to get answers to the questions you seek. I'm not saying you'll buy them, I'm just saying they're out there. At the extreme risk of getting hounded by anti-Mormons, I'll try to give you some reactions from that point of view.
1. God doesn't need human worship/belief, etc.
Mormons believe that the human soul is eternal - uncreated. We're all God's kids, and he wants us to grow and develop. Life is a phase in that development. He is there to assist us in developing. The point is not to make life easy - obstacles and trials are part of the development process - but to enable us to rise to the challenges that we face.
2. Not everyone's going to Hell.
Mormons aren't into the whole hellfire and damnation thing so much. We have a much different take on how things work out after this life, but the central doctrine is this: we are radically free. In this life we suffer from all kinds of circumstances that we can't control, but the one thing that we can control is who we are. And that's what we have to live with after this life: the person that we've become. So for most people the after-life is only Hell in the sense that it's a life of mediocrity when it could have been a life of peace and enlightenment if they'd consciously strugged to live up to ideals instead of being satisfied with avoiding major guilt and getting away with as much self-indulgence as possible. But there's room for development after death as well, so it's not like you just have one shot. That's the whole point of the atonement (the suffering Christ went through). It enables us to "do-over" the stupid things we do.
The only ones going to hell as in infinite torment are those who willfully choose it. And even then I'm not so sure on the "infinite" bit. So naturally Mormons believe hell is going to be almost empty.
3. Pain and suffering in life.
Some of the pain that we suffer in life is unavoidable and part of the design. Working out hurts, but it makes the muscles stronger. That kind of thing. Other suffering is a result of the fact that the most important element to our life on earth is our moral freedom. We choose who we want to be. Some of use choose to be evil, and further pain and suffering - both self-inflicted and otherwise - comes from those choices. But I believe that since we have lived an infinite amount of time before this life (which we can't remember because it would taint our choices so that we wouldn't choose good for the sake of goodness) that when we have passed through the troubles of this life the pain will seem as a momentary thing. I'm not saying that the hardship faced in the world is not real or genuine - it is. Just that I believe that we all chose to be here in the first place, and that in the end none of us will regret our decision. Some of the hardest things we do in life are also the most worthwhile. I think the same holds true for life itself.
4. Vague rules
Right now we live as children, following the rules of our parents. But the point of this life is for us to grow up. The rules were never meant to be all-inclusive because that would negate the chance to develop our own internal morality. The rules are supposed to be a framework to keep us from doing really stupid things, but the vagueness is intentional because it is when we start thinking for ourselves about morality that we actually develop.
5. Why doesn't this whole system work better?
That seemed to be an implicit question. If God wants to spread the truth, why do we have thousands of creeds and denominations out there? Why not pick one, show up now and then so we all know which one it is, and then we know where to go! Part of the answer is what you get in #4. Another part is that there has to be a force for evil as well as for good. Otherwise it's not a genuine choice. Some people follow that evil side just as much as others follow the light side. And if there was a force out
I simply can't believe that this is an honest question and so I'm not going to take it as such. There's no coercion to ANY aspect of my faith - that was the whole point of the line you quoted. There's no way you could post that.
So you post is just a coward's low-blow and you know it. You know what some of my deeply-held beliefs and convictions are, and it's easy to snipe at them without seeming to reveal anything of your own to possible public scorn. My fault for posting them publicly, you say? Well I don't regret it. That the sacred beliefs or practices of another religion are an object of ridicule to you demonstrates more about your own lack of maturity than anything about the religion your attempting to denigrate.
Any religion can be mocked by those who aren't willing to try and actually understand it. Catholics are cannibals for believing the bread and wine literally turn to the body and blood of Christ. Muslims are sex-fiends for all wanting to blow themselves up to get 70 virigins. Ha ha ha ha. What a riot.
The fact is that if you're an atheist, a Zorastrian, a Muslim, or subscribe to any of the numerous, diverse, and deep cultural approaches to religion than we can respect one another and disagree constructively.
Or we can be reduced to your level.
-stormin
Don't be an ignoramus. In the first place, I wasn't trying to "impugn the legacy of Marx". I think the USSR, China, Cuba and most of world history for the past 50 years are doing a fine job of that. World history doesn't need my help.
In the second place, you're proving my point: the Marx quote is not commonly-accepted wisdom because most people aren't Marxists. Just as the words of Joseph Smith aren't commonly-accepted wisdom because most people aren't Mormon. I was just pointing out the obvious fact that we don't all think Marx got everything right. I was not trying to push my own beliefs on anyone else.
And yet, despite the obviousness of all I've written, you took the trouble to post. Were you really just defending the legacy of Marx? If you were and you're a Marxist, then I can respect that - and we can have an argument about whether my first paragraph was justified.
But from my experience dealing with people who have an irrational hatred of Joseph Smith and/or Mormonism and/or Christianity in general and/or God in general and/or organized religion in general I'm guessing one of those factors was a stronger motivation for your post than a sincere desire to protect the legacy of our dear departed comrade.
In that case I'd like to point out that while I would take it as a matter of course that a Marxist has probably studied Marx and has his or her own defensible reasons for listening to him, you seem to assume that I don't have a similarly reasonable position in following the teachings of Joseph Smith. Since I'm willing to bet you know very little about what Joseph Smith actually said or stood for, I'd say that means that in this instance one of us is prejudiced, and the other is not.
But if you really were just standing up for Marx, then I'm the one that's out of line.
-stormin
I was just saying that there is a withdrawal-type phenomena associated with some people stopping video games. Didn't mean to infer that it was on the same level as withdrawal symptoms from drugs. I think the two are similar in many ways, but not really in magnitude. I also think the distinction between a physical and a psychological addiction is a blurry one.
-stormin
Plus, the money you pay to Blizzard goes to, well Blizzard - a business. There are some churches with paid ministers and such that rake in the tithing. But others, like my church, have NO PAID MINISTRY. So not matter how "business like" they appear, the money is going to either support the church or alleviate suffering.
If it's supporting the church - that's OK. The only people in the church are people who want to be there, so tithes are no more sinister than dues to a club you like. No one makes you pay them. And if you feel you have to pay them or incur the wrath of God - that's still your problem. No one can make you believe God even exists in the first place. If I tell you to give me all your money or Santa and the Easter Bunny will kill you, am I coercing you (assuming you're not a 4 year old)? No - it's up to you to take that threat seriously or not, I can't make you believe in Santa.
And the rest of the money goes to welfare programs, educational funds, and disaster relief. I'm OK with that too.
-stormin
My brother has an extermely addictive personality. I would definitely say he has withdrawal symptoms if he doesn't get his fix. You do not want to be around him when he doesn't get his WoW fix. I'm not exagerating. That's one of the reasons I've never played the game.
-stormin
I forgot to finish writing out the quote. Oops. Here we go:
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
Matt. 16: 25; Mark 8: 35; Luke 9: 24
In general, you shouldn't question something that you don't understand. You're not married either, are you?
Look, I'm both deeply religious (and committed to an estabslished, organized religion) and married. I served the whole 2-year mission (paying most of the way myself - $10,000). And you're comments are just way out of line.
If you're very religious, then your church/instution owns your ass, and most likely for the duration of your life.
I suppose there are those who are so petrified of going to Hell or whatever that they follow their religion out of fear. And for those people, I think your comment may hold. But what you're failing to understand is that a religion is something you have to consciously stay faithful to. It's very demanding, yes, but this doesn't imply coercion. No one MADE me go on a mission, no one MAKES me go to church every Sunday, and no one MAKES me believe what I believe. It's my choice, day in and day out, to live according to the values that I hold true. It's my choice to sacrifice time and money to things that I think are worthwhile. And believe me, there are plenty of times when I'm unsatisfied with my religion as in institution and when I question it. Questioning is a part of healthy spirtual life. If you don't question - if you don't think for yourself - then you are a slave.
Marriage is similar. You marry someone you love (hopefully), but if you expect marriage to make your life better without constant effort, work, and patience then you're going to be just another whining divorcee. You can look at marriage as your ball and chain - but this just means you're turning yourself into a victim. Or you can man up and see marriage for what it is - a committed relationship that you entered of your own free will. It's not like marriage or religion happen to you (in general) they are relationships that you choose to enter into, that you need to continue to choose to be in day in and day out, and relationships that are easier to let die than to keep alive.
This is all very different from games, in my opinion, for one critical reason. If you get married solely for yourself and if you attend church solely for yourself (and some people do these thigns) than you've missed the whole point. But who plays video games for any reason other than their own personal entertainment? Same thing with drugs. I'm not equating the two, but I'm showing that they are both demonstrably different from relationships where the whole point is to elevate the other part, or the relationship itself, above the self.
It's that elevation of God and commitment to Him and His Church (if you're Christian, like I am) that seperates religious activity at a fundamental level from something you do for kicks and jollies. The same can be said of other religion. If you're of the Islamic faith (Islam = submission) then you're no slave. Submitting because you want to, because it is your earnest desire to serve God, does not take away your freedom or make you an addict - it is just how you choose to use that unalienable freedom.
Maybe you should actually do a little bit of study of religion before you make such ignorant and sweeping prouncements. The verse repeated at least three times in the New Testament "whomsoever shall save his life shall lose it, whomsoever shall lose his life for my name's sake" is not just a cool-sounding phrase. It's a description of how, in voluntarily giving of your self to a greater cause - you can find something greater than what you find in a life dedicated to gratifying your own desires.
You don't have to believe in God to beleive that sentiment, and you don't have to believe that sentiment to respect it. I'm not saying that all religions, or all religious people in any denomination/creed, have this belief of freedom. But when you consider other religions, you should always consider them at their best - at what the believers aspire to be. No one lives up to all their own ideals, that doens't mean that no one is trying.
-stormin
It's not an "old adage". It's a quote from Karl Marx. Personally, I don't take everything the man said as a pearl of unquestionable wisdom.
It's a sad state of affairs when Microsoft has to come to the rescue and un-fsck your security blunders
I had to stifle my laughter when I read that (people frown at the solitary techie who laughs for no perceptible reason in his cubicle).
Please mod parent "fscking hilarious".
-stormin
If you're asking questions like this, you're not understanding what's going on. That's likes saying at the dawn of the textile industry, "OK, so all the home-weavers just quit and the guild folds. Now all the factories with buggy prototype machines and no trained work force just have to somehow make a profit. Bet you're in favor of artificially high prices now!"
I'll explain the analogy. The current record labels are dinosaurs, and their time has come. The market can no longer support them. But this is a PROCESS. It's not like you can just hit a switch and say "OK industry, change" and expect an instant turn over. The record labels have the resources to stick around for a while, and the new business model that will replace them is not ready yet. This doesn't change the fact that the old business model won't work anymore.
And the artificially high prices, in this case, are going to be the result of DRM (if it succeeds). Consider diamonds. Until the 19th century they were very rare - and thus valuable. In the 19th century, however, vast diamond deposits were found - mostly in Africa. The DeBiers family realized that if diamonds were no longer rare, they would no longer be valuable as jewelry - and thus they bought up the vast majority of the diamonds and mines available and then released only a controlled amount to the public. So even though diamonds, as raw material, are relatively common they are rare on the marketplace. They have succeeded in maintaining this artificial scarcity for over a century. It only worked becuase they paired it with an equally successful marketing campaign.
Whenever a new diamond mine of sufficient size to threaten their contol is opened they can flood the market - temporarily dropping the prices and financially ruining their competitor - then buy up the mine once the owner is crippled. Then they restore prices to previous levels by drying up the supply lines.
DRM does effectively the same thing. I'm ignoring the issue about who a song belongs to for now. The question of price is related to scarcity. If music is scarce - meaning you have to go to a store and buy a CD to get one then the price stays high. It's like diamonds vs. cubic zirconium. The knock-off isn't as good. So as long as there is a difference in quality between the "real" thing (CDs) and copies (tapes of CDs) then the prices can remain high. (Plus tapes are not free either.)
But if suddenly there are EXACT copies (MP3s, CD burning with CDs getting really cheap) then the supply shoots through the roof. But if you managed to clamp down on that excess supply - via DRM - then you can drag it down to the original level and continue to charge the same price. So as far as the record labels are concerned DRM has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with "rights". It's about supply - as in supply and demand.
But of course DRM also has to do with "rights" and we can't ignore that side of it. Artists do create the songs, and thus they should have some ownership and control rights. At the very least, they should have a way to make money off of their music.
There are two approaches to this dileman. If you're a hard-core capitalist you say "tough luck. either the market's there, or it's not". I think that this is laregely true. If musicians suddenly couldn't make money or control their art and we had a mass exodus of musicians then people would realize they're going to have to pay more just to support the artists.
The thing is, we don't have to let the market work that way. We don't have to wait for musicians to all starve to death to realize that if we want good music we have to support musicians.
But the only reason to think that supporting musicians means supporting record labels is if we buy into the record label PR machine. Just like the diamond industry managed, in the space of a few short decades, to introduce a foreign tradition to Japan (diamond engagement rings after WWII) so successfully that the landscape of a culture was changed (the tradi
I found the Thomas Jefferson quote I had alluded to earlier. Try this one on for size!
Rev. Allen wrote in his diary: "President Jefferson was on his way to church on a Sunday morning with his large red prayer book under his arm when a friend querying him after their mutual good morning said which way are you walking Mr. Jefferson. To which he replied to Church Sir. You going to church Mr. Jefferson? You do not believe a word in it. [You see, Thomas Jefferson wouldn't be a member of our church. He was not an evangelical by any stretch of the imagination. But listen to what he said.] Sir said Mr. Jefferson. No nation has ever existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Good morning Sir."
Michael Novak, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding. (San Francisco, Encounter Books, 2002), p. 31.
-stormin
I'm not sure it's valid to say that because Jefferson had ties to a religion that was persecuted that it follows that Jefferson could therefore "[n]ever have meant for religion of any sort to be a part of the government of the United States". The only thing that really follows based on logic and common sense is that Jefferson would have wanted the kind of gov't that would neither persecute based on religion nor allow religious persecution.
And yet many, many decades before the current right-wing of the Republican faction even existed to abuse God in religion, the federal gov't sent an army to the territory of Utah to - essentially - persecute another religion deemed heretical: the Mormons. Prior to that the state of Illinois had decreed that all Mormons had to leave the state or be exterminated. So clearly we had all kinds of religious persecution - more than we have today - before the religious right was in power.
So you'd think that I would be especially sensitive to this issue, and I believe that I am. But the fact is that taking God out of gov't will not necessarily decrease tendency to persecute any given religion. It just makes gov't hostile to ALL religions. What we need is a gov't that it not attached to any specific doctrine or tenent - not a gov't that either denies or ignores the existence of God.
And I'm not sure how you take that Jefferson quote, but I don't think it is atheist or even genuinely agnostic. Here's the quote: "Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."
I'm a devout Mormon, yet I have no qualms endorsing this quote whole-heartedly. What is belief in a God who is never questioned? Any belief held without questioning debases both the holder of the belief and the object of it.
The fact is that some Founding Fathers, like Adams, had a serious beef with at least some versions of Christianity (eg Catholicism). But they kept their negative feelings against Catholicism out of the gov't and we have a Declaration of Independence, and a deep tradition, of invoking the name of God in official gov't capacities. It's on our money, it's in our pledge (a recent addition) and prayers are said in the Senate and House. Adams, Jefferson and many more can all freely allow God in gov't - just not the doctrine of any church that claims to speak for him.
-stormin
I agree completely. I'm just rather long-winded and didn't have a chance to get that all in there. The industry started to create and distribute music on physical media. But since then it has grown and taken over more and more of the process, from finding talent to actually producing the music that it distributes.
There are two problems. The first is that they have huge physical capital devoted to a process (finding talent, producing music, creating the physical media, distributing the physical media, promoting the music) and they are about to lose out on two of those 5 aspects. Those 2 are where the revenue actually comes in, so it's going to be very difficult to support the whole thing. I'm not saying that there's nothing left for them to do, I'm saying that you can't support this entity that used to do 5 major tasks if suddely 2 of those tasks are irrelevent. They have to downsize, become more efficient, and generate new revenue streams (new business models) or they are going to collapse from their own weight.
The second problem is that a lot of people don't like the fact that the record labels went from making and distributing physical media to influencing the music itself. There are a lot of people - all those who listen to non-top 40 music - who have no interest in seeing the major record labels survive even in a reduced state. When record labels found and groomed talent and practically shoved it down the publics throat it could be argued that they weren't doing a genuine service, they were simply capitalizing on their oligarchical status as distributors of music to also control that music.
Now that we don't need them to distribute we who never wanted them to find the talent, produce the music and promote it (because they were more intersted in profits (homogeneity) than artistry) have just as much motivation as we always have to try and bring them down, and a lot more opportunity. We don't want to let them find new revenue streams that will allow them to maintain their status as the gateways to public msuic.
I see the same thing happening with movies and TV shows, by the way. The cost to produce block-busters has skyrocketed, but the actual computer and video equipment necessary to make professional-grade movies/TV shows is increasingly publicly accessible. I mean, the Matrix movies (as well as who knows how many more) were edited in Final Cut Pro. Which I've used when I was in school.
Sometimes good shows get cancelled because they don't have mass appeal. So the TV/movie industry puts profits ahead of taste. Thus as soon as the opportunity arises, the revolution will overthrow them just as it is in the process of overthrowing the major record labels.
We can expect the same DRM crap from them as from the record labels, but in the end the market simply won't support the old business models.
And that's good news.
-stormin
Actually... if I really had it my way we'd just move to base-12.
Why does no one take this seriously? One day we're going to move to metric time. Why not now?
-stormin
All you've succeeded in doing is creating a boo-hoo story for the VP in charge of the Sony Music dvision. And it's legitimate. But it doesn't change the fact that when the market changes in fundamental ways some business models do not survive. Period. You have this HUGE industry that was essentially created to solve a problem: distribute music to consumers. At the time of creation the only method of distribution was physical. It was expensive and time-consuming to create phonographs, 8-tracks, cassettes, etc. So now you have this huge corporation that was built up around the fundamental problem: create physical media to distribute music.
Then along come computers and the internet. Now you can make endless copies of the music (digital files) and you have a method to distribute them without significant additional overhead (peer-to-peer over the internet). These are the facts of life. And it means that the entire music distribution infrastucture has become an out-dated dinosaur.
You seem to want us to understand the plight of the Sony VP. But that's not really relevant. The problem isn't that people are stealing music. That's a symptom of the greater problem: there's no longer a need for giant distributors with extensive physical capital to fulfill. And that is not anybody's fault. That doesn't make stealing OK. But everybody not stealing is not going to suddenly eliminate the market inequities.
The problem is that we're going through another economic revolution. Just as tremendous social upheavel accompanied the Industrial Revolution, this economic revolution from physical media to digital media is going to cause huge waves (maybe not AS huge, that remains to be seen). And just as some labor groups fought the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the physical media conglomerations are going to fight this revolution. But they have just much chance of winning as the Luddites did of banning machinery and factories.
We're completely wasting our time, efforts and money if we try to either prop up a failing and antiquated system or try to divert attention from the underlying flaws. The world has changed - and the only prudent thing we can do is try to change with it. That goes for you, me, and Sony VPs everywhere.
-stormin