Yes, open source software runs well on Windows. It's a great way to avoid retraining, to fit into existing infrastructures, and all that. That's why people have gone through a lot of trouble porting Apache, PHP, Perl, Python, bash, Gtk+, etc. to Windows, and why eventually all of Gnome, KDE, and all those apps will run on Windows.
But that's not the "best of both worlds". Once you have gone to WAMP, there is little technical reason not to kick out the Windows kernel and admin tools as well. At this point, Linux is easier to install, easier to administer, cheaper to get, and cheaper to maintain than Windows.
If Microsoft thinks that WAMP is something they can live with, they're wrong. Their OS monopoly is going to disappear, and WAMP is just a transition. That doesn't even have anything to do with Linux or open source, it's the way markets naturally evolve. Microsoft needs to figure out how to get a big revenue stream that's independent of Windows and Office. If they don't, they'll be doomed.
Senators may often be narrow-minded and sometimes corrupt, but they don't rush into something like this.
The House is like a bunch of little children. Given the evident state of maturity of 415 members of the House of Representatives, I think those people should be barred from accessing the Internet, except under supervision of some adult.
Furthermore, there are no official Mormon theologians, there is no official canon of Mormon theology, and there is no professional clergy. The type of intentional misleading you speak of is institutionally impossible. The educational wing of the church is called CES (Church Educational Services, I think) and they specialize in getting the basics down. There has been no official attempt to capture Mormon theology definitively, and there never will be. [...] Also, once you understand that there is no such thing as a closed or definitive Mormon canon, you will realize that your assertions that the Articles of Faith and their meaning in ordinary language is what defines Mormon theology is equally impossible. Mormon theology can not be contained because we believe in an open canon and on-going revelation.
The problem isn't that there isn't a complete statement of Mormon theology, the problem is that you are unwilling to commit to even individual statements about Mormon theology, even those made by Joseph Smith. Whenever I try to reason starting from one of those statements, you say that there are some other statements that I don't know about that modify the truth of that original statement, or that the words don't really mean what they mean in ordinary language.
And while you don't hesitate using your own behavior or the behavior of other Mormons to support what Mormonism is all about, when others give examples that don't fit your views, then you just say that those don't count for some reason, because they don't live up to Mormon ideals for example.
The problem here isn't my state of knowledge about Mormonism, the problem is that you are unwilling to commit to any set of premises about the religion. I do appreciate the time you have taken for your responses, but I think that makes further debate pointless.
gcc is not part of the OS. In fact, most people run OS X without gcc being installed on their computer and wouldn't know it if it was installed.
What does any of that have to do with anything? My original claim was that NeXT/Apple has no trouble using GPL'ed software, but they are trying to avoid giving back to the community.
Your attempts to talk about what and what isn't part of the "OS" are an attempt to distract from how sleazy NeXT and Apple have behaved in the past. Mac zealots like you have no business pointing fingers at open source developers: you are far worse in your zealotry, and you just take and don't give back.
Well they are very careful with the viral (yes, I feel it's appropriate) nature of the GPL, and are careful to never put GPL stuff (at least that we know of) anywhere inside the OS directly,
Aren't you listening? NeXT had no trouble using gcc, no matter how "viral" you think the GPL may be. What they weren't doing is satisfying their requirements under the GPL, and once they were forced to, their contributions were nearly useless.
Sometimes I wonder, no matter what its intentions, if GPL is actually helping the masses much (vs BSD liscensed software, etc), or mostly idealists/software purists and those whose situation affords the effective running of Linux-based OSes.
Most of what Apple is shipping as "OS X" is based on open source software: the kernel, the compiler, the command line environment, and many of the libraries. I wouldn't be surprised if the total contribution of Apple developers to OS X is less than 10%. And for many of those open source software packages, Apple has had no problems in choosing software under the GPL license. Apple doesn't mind getting software for free, they just don't like having to comply with the licenses.
Is Apple "idealist" when they demand that I pay for their software? I don't think so. And neither are GPL software developers when they demand that Apple comply with the GPL. If Apple doesn't like the GPL, they can buy all the software they need commercially, or choose BSD equivalents.
Mormonism wouldn't really change very many laws at all. [...] As for homosexual acts, consensual acts between people that don't impinge on human freedom can't be illegal. I'm comfortable with that.
Well, you say one thing, but the actions of your fellow Mormons speak another language. For example, consensual sodomy has remained against the law in Utah, one of the small minority of remaining states, until the US Supreme Court finally overturned all sodomy laws in 2003. And as recently as 1997, the Utah legislature even rejected a law to decriminalize sodomy between spouses.
Having spent some time in Utah, I think it's pretty clear that Mormons restrict many behaviors that are not restricted elsewhere, and that those restrictions are made to make others conform to Mormon standards of good behavior, not just trying to ensure that each resident can act according to their own conscience without interfering with the rights of others to do so.
As usual, general Mormon attitudes temper the severity with which many of these rules are imposed, and positions more tolerant of other religions and views can probably be reconciled with Mormon theology, but right now, that's not how Mormons act at the ballot box and in the legislature. (This blog post addresses some of these issues.)
Apart from an implementation of the Objective C frontend and runtime. But don't let facts get in the way of your ill informed ranting.
As I was saying: NeXT complied with the letter of the GPL by dumping a hacked version of gcc on the world, but that wasn't useful for the gcc project, at least not for a long time.
Whether they did this out of laziness or whether it was a deliberate strategy, I don't know. But I think they hurt themselves big time with it. If they had worked harder to make sure that the official gcc compiler releases had a useful Objective C implementation in them, Objective C would probably be a widely used, mainstream language today.
As a brief aside, what do you think are "the kinds of converts Mormon missionaries would like to reach?"
I assume anybody who isn't Mormon, but you tell me. Are there any other religions that Mormons respect enough not to attempt to gain converts from them?
The main reason is what I referred to earlier as the milk before meat principle. The most superficial, and therefore the most readily accessible, interpretation of human morality starts with action. The most crude understanding of morality starts with things that should or should not be done.
So you agree then that Mormon missionaries use the language in Articles #2 and #3 in full knowledge that their audience is going to interpret it differently from the way that they themselves interpret those articles? For example, missionaries believe, as you do, that character determines the afterlife, but their audience interprets their statements to mean that actions are sufficient to determine the afterlife. Or, to bring it more to the point: Mormon missionaries believe there to be a spiritual truth, but they are actually telling their audience something that differs from the actual spiritual truth, because they think that the audience is not ready to understand the actual spiritual truth.
Mormon missionaries want to reach as many converts as possible, and this introduction to our theology is foundational and therefore exactly what we need. This is just a simple principle of teaching: you start with simple principles, common ground, and motivating examples.
Giving students simple rules and theories that the teacher knows are not actually true is called a "teaching device". They are widely used in classrooms and mentoring and they are quite effective. The reason it is permissible not to tell the truth to students in a classroom setting is because the students (or their guardians) have consented to the teacher-student relationship and because there are strict boundaries for how teaching devices can be used.
However, Mormon missionaries are not just using such techniques as a teaching device, they are using them as a recruiting device. That is, Mormon missionaries are using teaching devices without the prior consent of the other person. In different words, Mormon missionaries are deliberately not telling the truth to their audience without the consent of their audience. Now, do you disagree with this analysis in some way, or do you simply believe that not telling the truth is justified and moral under those circumstances?
Two additional remarks. First, religions that aren't attempting to grow fast don't have to do this: almost all their instruction takes place within settings in which instructors have authority over their students. Using teaching devices to induce people to join a religion is an attempt to gain converts at the expense of other denominations and religions, and that violates Mormon claims of religious tolerance, in my opinion. Second, one principle of teaching devices is that they need to be resolved eventually; that's why we have textbooks and reference books, and why the two aren't the same. But Mormons have one set of Articles of Faith, valid and applicable to everybody from potential convert to religious scholar and philosopher. Therefore, the Articles of Faith and their meaning in ordinary language is what defines Mormon theology.
Think about it: the punishment for this "crime", "imprisonment up to 10 years", is the same as voluntary manslaughter.
The real intent of lawmakers creating laws like this is to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt. They know that it is hard to be sure that you are able to comply with the law when you have any sexual content on your site, so they hope that there's going to be less of that content and/or that sex sites are going to hide themselves from search engines out of fear and uncertainty over possible legal action for unintential violations. Furthermore, they hope to be able to use it as an additional threat against operators of sites with sexual content in case they can't get the operator on some other charges.
For the sake of full-disclosure, here is where I draw the distinction. You don't legislate morality directly, you legislate pragmatically to get to morality.
Let me paraphrase that. You're saying "One ought to legislate pragmatically in order to promote behaviors which conform to the Mormon view of what constitutes moral behavior."
What I can't figure out to begin with is why you even want to bother to apply your principle. Is it because you can't think of another principle? Or is it your wish to force me towards what you consider salvation, even if I don't want to? To me, your desire for resurrection of the body is one of the worst states of sin a human being can be in, how can it be a moral choice for you to impose on me and others behaviors that promote this?
Another question about your approach is where you would stop. Right now, Mormons are constrained by democracy and society, but if they were free to pass any laws they wished, what kinds of laws would they pass "to get to morality"? Would adultery and homosexual acts become ilegal again? What about masturbation and lying? How do you decide?
When you talk about "pragmatic", you are implying that that's the best practical thing to do. Actually, there is another way: you legislate pragmatically to maximize the ability of people to make their own moral choices. That principle yields laws that protect people from crimes against person or property, but otherwise interferes minimally in their lives, and maximizes the ability of religions to co-exist.
Your principle leads to conflict between religions and religious coercion, because if you try to legislate "to get morality", then a tug of war starts between different religions whose morality one ought to get. My principle leads to peaceful co-existence between religions.
But it isn't just my principle, it's the principle the US and Europe have increasingly adopted in the 20th century; prior to that, nations were using your principle, the principle in which the majority religion would coerce the minority religions to conform to its views of morality, and it led to constant conflict. Moving from your principle to my principle was a giant step forward for the West; why do you want to get back to the old principle?
Well, thanks for your careful responses as well, and I find our conversation interesting as well.
After a careful study of Mormon theology, however, [...] The Book of Mormon explicitly states that those who do not end up in God's presence are only those people who would suffer more from being in his presence than from being wherever they do end up. God IS the reward, not the reward-giver. The same analog works for punishment.
Well, since you manage to express this concept that you arrived at after careful study of Mormon theology in plain language so that non-Mormons can easily understand it, that raises the question: why do the Articles of Faith not just use the same plain language? The articles could say:
Article #2: We believe that God in His mercy gives each man the kind of afterlife that he feels most comfortable with.
Article #3: We believe that, just like a connoisseur appreciates better wine and food through experience, men appreciate and will obtain a better afterlife through the practice of charity and purity.
If I understand you, you're saying those two articles are what the actual Articles #2 and #3 amount to; so, why don't they say that? Why do they use language that obviously would be misinterpreted by the kind of converts Mormon missionaries would like to reach?
though not Free Software because it doesnt' seem to like GPL stuff much, like many corporations
Well, I agree that Apple isn't giving back enough to open source, but they have no hesitation using and shipping GPL'ed stuff. Two important examples are gcc and bash. And with gcc, for years, NeXT managed to comply with the GPL while avoiding giving anything useful back to the gcc project.
This statement is explicitly what you don't like: rewards/punishment based on actions. Not on character. But your reading of Mormon theology based on these two verses is piecemeal. You should at least read all 13 of the Articles of Faith. If you did, you'd end up with this:
You are proving that there exist non-utilitarian aspects to Mormon theology, which is obviously true, but it's irrelevant to this argument. The point is that Mormon theology contains offers of utilitarian deals to its followers. Since Mormons say can't pick and choose which parts of Mormonism you follow, this is obviously an essential part of Mormon theology. (Let's not even go into the fact that your interpretation of Article #13 as talking about character rather than actions is dubious at best; I actually se no Article that clearly supports the notion that Mormonism is concerned with character rather than behavior.)
The thing you're missing is the principle of milk before meat. The utilitarian aspect of Mormonism is something you see as an end in itself,
No, I don't see it as an "end", I see it as a means. In fact, it's a very effective means for getting people to improve their character. But that doesn't make it moral.
Let's say Article of Faith #2 said "Every Mormon child should undergo brain surgery to eliminate aggressive behavior and to eliminate desire for non-procreative sex."; brain surgery could be very safe and effective in getting people to stop doing bad things. Would the existence of Article #13 make up for the existence of such an Article #2? Wouldn't you consider any religion that requires brain surgery on children for its members immoral, no matter what its other tenets might be?
The thing you're missing is the principle of milk before meat.
I think you're evading the issue. Just answer this question: according to Mormon theology, will God actually reward me for charity, punish me for sin, and assign me to one of the three Kingdoms after death according to my behavior in the world? Or are these beliefs merely an educational device? And if they are an educational device, were they created by men or by God?
That's because Sun's implementation, like every other Java implementation (and there are quite a few) is required to adhere to a written specification.
What you're pointing at as a "written specification" of "Java" is a book on the Java language. Standardizing the Java language isn't the problem, standardizing the libraries is. There are specifications for the Java libraries. Conformance of new implementations is checked via a test suite. As far as I know, no implementation besides Sun's and its licensed derivatives passes that test suite.
So, therefore, in reality, there is only one implementation of Java, plus a bunch of ports. The notion that Java is an "open" "standard" with multiple implementations is a myth created by Sun to make the platform more appealing to ABM people.
The Mormon church exemplifies charity according to your definition. I know of many, many examples of charity from the Mormon chuch (because I was involved in them) that I could not find in the press
You keep supplying evidence for the statement "many Mormons are good and the Mormon church does good". I agree with that statement. Like any large population, the Mormon church has its share of good people, and it causes the others to behave themselves. And Mormon practices probably actually produce large numbers of people who aren't just behaving in good ways but are genuinely good people.
None of that says anything about the morality of Mormon theology itself. We can eliminate bad behavior with brain surgery and achieve generosity through electrical stimulation of the brain. We can eliminate the desire for non-procreative sex through drugs. The fact that we can produce what you consider moral behavior in this way doesn't make the application of procedures that achieve it moral.
Your attacks on Mormon theology as reward based are well-taken, but misguided. It's not a flaw of Mormon theology, but of many Christian cultures to see the rules as a series of checklists
You're quite right: many Christian denominations are. I didn't claim that Mormonism was unusual in this regard. I also didn't "attack" Mormon theology, I simply consider it immoral.
So you see, while it may be true that Mormons (like many other people) do "confuse good deeds and good character" this is a result of Mormons failing to live up to their own religion. It is an indictment (and a valid one) of Mormons, but not of Mormonism.
No, it is a fundamental flaw of Mormon theology (as well as of many other religions). The Mormon Articles of Faith specifically tell people that they will be rewarded or punished, and therefore utilitarian considerations are a built-in part of the theology. If Mormonism didn't want its adherents to make this confusion, it could simply eliminate rewards and punishments from its teachings; everything else would remain unchanged: practices, laws, teachings, theology, etc.
Through practice the action - which may at first be done reluctantly - may be engrained in your character.
That is a good and valid principle: people become better people by becoming accustomed to doing good deeds. We teach children that way, and we also use rewards and punishments until they have learned. And that's probably the way heaven and hell were originally intended: as metaphors and teaching devices. But the Mormon church (as many others) never resolves the issue; it maintains these notions as "articles of faith". And, what is worse, it uses these promises of rewards to recruit people into the religion. Despite all the protestations of tolerance, in the end, it still ends up as "my god gives you more rewards than your god, that's why you should join us".
"Mormon attempts to legislate morality". I gather from this you are referring to Mormon opposition to legalizing gay-marriage
No, I'm not referring to it specifically. I don't care whether gay marriage is legalized or not. It's a non-issue that is being used to get people like you to the polls to vote for people like Bush.
We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own cconscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.... Without denying the actuality of evil, I prefer to see the Mormon Church in terms of it's capacity to heal sinners, as opposed to prevent sin.
But that, in itself, constitutes intolerance to other religions. While your church permits others to worship as they choose, when they don't share your views about what is sinful and what is not sinful, then you try to restrict how they can act. And, furthermore, you actively attempt to change others to conform to your notions of morality, including by coercive means.
The Mormons - with their vast financial and capital resources and strict hierarchal organization - are frequenty fist-responders to international crises. [...] We've got a vested interest in long-term financial growth in these nations too. Although currently limited to Mormon members, the Perpetual Education Fund is one such example.
Yes, and why do Mormons collect all this money and use it in this way? Among other things, because it helps the organization grow, because church members are pressured to do it, and because you can brag about it (as you just did). Those acts may still be good, but they are not charity, because charity is self-less. Charity would be for the Mormon church to give the money to nondenominational aid organizations or to local churchas; but combining one's own religion and aid is not charity, it is taking advantage of vulnerable people for one's own benefit.
And you encourage this selfish thinking at the individual level: you say that "if you do this, then you'll be rewarded after death; if you don't do this, or if you do that other thing, then you'll be punished after death". The Mormon church appears to have a particularly pernicious form of this tit-for-tat deal compared to other churches by promising restoration of the healthy body and mind after death, playing on fears about the body and dying (that is tempered by the fact that its notions of "heaven and hell" are considerably more palatable than brimstone and fire).
In different words, when an atheist and a Mormon perform the same good act, then in the atheist, it's a sign of good character, while in the Mormon, it's probably just a desire for a reward that causes him to behave in that way.
Another issue is Mormon attempts to legislate morality. Why is that an issue? First, you are imposing your own religious beliefs on others that way. Second, you are depriving people of the ability to be good by simply making it illegal to commit sin.
These are just exemplary points, but they illustrate that fundamentally Mormons (they are not alone in this) confuse good deeds and good character, and this confusion is deliberate because it furthers the worldly goals of the church.
Religions and churches like the Mormon church are analogous to prisons. Prisons keep bad people from doing bad things, but they fail to turn bad people into good people. When a prisoner refrains from doing evil, you don't know whether it's because he has become a good person or because he simply was prevented from being bad in prison (a problem parole boards face). And while the existence of prisons arguably has a positive effect on society, and while we need them until we come up with something better, prisons are not moral institutions, and many of the principles by which they operate are immoral.
What do you hope to gain with snide comments like this? The Mormon church believes:
They aren't "snide comments". You make judgements about supposed discriminatory speech by others; that makes your own morality and ethics very much an issue.
You may contest all of this as you wish, of course, but in the end I just have to ask why we would be so careful to come across as non-racist and non-sexist if we truly were?
You attempt to establish that your church doesn't discriminate simply by redefining the terms to suit your needs. But it's pointless to debate this further. My own faith tells me that you have chosen a religion that is immoral in both some of its fundamental tenets and some of its practices, and that includes, specifically, its practices in third world nations. Therefore, I think it's pointless to continue this discussion: to me, you are trying to defend the indefensible and you simply have no moral basis from which you can make arguments about issues of discrimination or development. Furthermore, if your own faith doesn't already tell you that the actions of your church are wrong, nothing I say will likely change you.
Confirmed it by scrolling half a page down the article and reading "Powered by ASUS", nifty logo and all...
The article on Newsforge does not mention ASUS.
(However, going one link further, R-Cubed's site does say "built on ASUS", but leaves open the question of whether they changed the machine in any way.)
We've made great strides with treatments, and it's possible (I think) that with time our treatments could reach the point of allowing people with HIV/AIDS to surive and live as healthy people. This is the type of "cure" I was referring to.
Well, that's not a cure, and our treatments are already almost to that point. But that's not an option for third world nations.
I'm not sure about only. If it was the only response, we'd give up our drug and vaccine research, wouldn't we? Are you suggesting we do so?
Drug and vaccine research is very useful for developed nations. But it's not a solution to the AIDS crisis in the third world.
then you've made (in my opinion) a disciminatory remark.
Making a discriminatory remark isn't the same as discrimination, just like sexual innuendo is not the same as rape.
It is possible to hold disciminatory or imperialist atitudes without "real mistreatment".
Holding a discriminatory attitude isn't the same as discrimination, just like being horny isn't the same as having sex.
Or would you have me - and others like me - stand by and listen to discriminatory rhetoric without opposing it because the rhetoric - until it is acted out - is merelely "uninformed"
Quite to the contrary: you should use the opportunity to counter it. But if you equate a discriminatory attitude with discrimination, you will never have the opportunity; discrimination is illegal, and if discriminatory speech becomes illegal, you simply can't talk about it.
(I find it ironic that a Mormon would want to "oppose discrimination", given the discrimination that the Mormon church actually practices against all sorts of groups. Of course, you have the legal right to choose to practice whatever religion you like, but I consider your choice immoral.)
I don't think I said anything about an HIV vaccine. I was talking about a "cure".
A cure is even less likely than a vaccine. To date, there is not a single viral disease that can be cured using drugs, and most viruses are far simpler to eliminate than HIV. Over the next several decades, HIV infection, at best, will become a manageable chronic disease for people in wealthy nations. And if HIV ever gets cured, it will likely be by gene therapy, which simply does not work for third world nations.
Medicine simply does not have a solution to the world-wide HIV epidemic. The only realistic response to the HIV epidemic is in patient, long-term development efforts.
I do think that many people engage in various forms of reverse-discrimination or cultural imperialism when they talk about 3rd-world nations
People may say things that are uninformed or prejudiced, but that's not discrimination or imperialism. Discrimination and imperialism are real mistreatment of specific people and groups of people. Equating the two is bad because it stifles debate and stifles the opportunity to eradicate misconceptions.
Yes, the "Hitler card" as in the "all jews must die" mentality coming from Iran's Hitler, or did you not hear that from the Iranian President?
Iran's president denies the Holocaust, he wants to eliminate Israel, and he institutes discrimination against Jews in Iran. He may also sponsor terrorism against Jews elsewhere in the world. That makes him an evil man, a demagogue, and and opportunist, but none of that puts him in the same league as Hitler.
In any case, the problem of people like you is that you escalate rather than deescalate. People like you think because Iran's government is evil (which it is) and because other people who happen to share your religion have been badly mistreated in the past (which they have), you have some sort of special license to do whatever it takes to reduce your risk and survive. That stance is not only ethically unjustifiable, racist, and plain evil (in a banal sort of way), it also simply doesn't work.
Israel isn't being destroyed by Iran or the Palestinians, it's being destroyed by people like you, on both sides of the conflict.
War monger? I hate war. But I hate Hitlers of the world MORE.
Ah, the Hitler card: just define any group, nation, or political leader you don't like as a Nazi or Hitler, and all of a sudden, you think your position is justified. The irony is that that kind of simplistic us-vs-them thinking is pretty much what defines Nazis and Hitlers. People like you exist in all nations and all peoples, you mistake your self-righteous convictions for morality, and, in the end, you are just evil.
I guess it is so much easier to call people names.
Explain that to me. It sounds like you think women are inherently weaker creatures then men in more than just the physical sense
That style of argumentation is inflammatory and unproductive, and I suggest you'll get along better in the world if you stop these "when did you stop beating your wife" style arguments.
In any case, rather than try to explain to you the link between women's rights and HIV/AIDS, I refer to article that explains the link. There are lots more articles on it on the Internet if you bother to look for them.
Then you start going off about a magic pill? Huh?
You have been arguing that investing in an HIV vaccine is important in order to help children and other people not responsible for their infection. With that argument, you implicitly assume that a practical, effective HIV vaccine can be developed at all. Right now, that's wishful thinking.
Improving women's rights and economic development in third world nations is difficult politically and very expensive; that's why policy makers are looking for a "magic pill" (an HIV vaccine) to avoid having to make tough political decisions or spend a lot of money.
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Yes, open source software runs well on Windows. It's a great way to avoid retraining, to fit into existing infrastructures, and all that. That's why people have gone through a lot of trouble porting Apache, PHP, Perl, Python, bash, Gtk+, etc. to Windows, and why eventually all of Gnome, KDE, and all those apps will run on Windows.
But that's not the "best of both worlds". Once you have gone to WAMP, there is little technical reason not to kick out the Windows kernel and admin tools as well. At this point, Linux is easier to install, easier to administer, cheaper to get, and cheaper to maintain than Windows.
If Microsoft thinks that WAMP is something they can live with, they're wrong. Their OS monopoly is going to disappear, and WAMP is just a transition. That doesn't even have anything to do with Linux or open source, it's the way markets naturally evolve. Microsoft needs to figure out how to get a big revenue stream that's independent of Windows and Office. If they don't, they'll be doomed.
Senators may often be narrow-minded and sometimes corrupt, but they don't rush into something like this.
The House is like a bunch of little children. Given the evident state of maturity of 415 members of the House of Representatives, I think those people should be barred from accessing the Internet, except under supervision of some adult.
Furthermore, there are no official Mormon theologians, there is no official canon of Mormon theology, and there is no professional clergy. The type of intentional misleading you speak of is institutionally impossible. The educational wing of the church is called CES (Church Educational Services, I think) and they specialize in getting the basics down. There has been no official attempt to capture Mormon theology definitively, and there never will be. [...] Also, once you understand that there is no such thing as a closed or definitive Mormon canon, you will realize that your assertions that the Articles of Faith and their meaning in ordinary language is what defines Mormon theology is equally impossible. Mormon theology can not be contained because we believe in an open canon and on-going revelation.
The problem isn't that there isn't a complete statement of Mormon theology, the problem is that you are unwilling to commit to even individual statements about Mormon theology, even those made by Joseph Smith. Whenever I try to reason starting from one of those statements, you say that there are some other statements that I don't know about that modify the truth of that original statement, or that the words don't really mean what they mean in ordinary language.
And while you don't hesitate using your own behavior or the behavior of other Mormons to support what Mormonism is all about, when others give examples that don't fit your views, then you just say that those don't count for some reason, because they don't live up to Mormon ideals for example.
The problem here isn't my state of knowledge about Mormonism, the problem is that you are unwilling to commit to any set of premises about the religion. I do appreciate the time you have taken for your responses, but I think that makes further debate pointless.
gcc is not part of the OS. In fact, most people run OS X without gcc being installed on their computer and wouldn't know it if it was installed.
What does any of that have to do with anything? My original claim was that NeXT/Apple has no trouble using GPL'ed software, but they are trying to avoid giving back to the community.
Your attempts to talk about what and what isn't part of the "OS" are an attempt to distract from how sleazy NeXT and Apple have behaved in the past. Mac zealots like you have no business pointing fingers at open source developers: you are far worse in your zealotry, and you just take and don't give back.
Well they are very careful with the viral (yes, I feel it's appropriate) nature of the GPL, and are careful to never put GPL stuff (at least that we know of) anywhere inside the OS directly,
Aren't you listening? NeXT had no trouble using gcc, no matter how "viral" you think the GPL may be. What they weren't doing is satisfying their requirements under the GPL, and once they were forced to, their contributions were nearly useless.
Sometimes I wonder, no matter what its intentions, if GPL is actually helping the masses much (vs BSD liscensed software, etc), or mostly idealists/software purists and those whose situation affords the effective running of Linux-based OSes.
Most of what Apple is shipping as "OS X" is based on open source software: the kernel, the compiler, the command line environment, and many of the libraries. I wouldn't be surprised if the total contribution of Apple developers to OS X is less than 10%. And for many of those open source software packages, Apple has had no problems in choosing software under the GPL license. Apple doesn't mind getting software for free, they just don't like having to comply with the licenses.
Is Apple "idealist" when they demand that I pay for their software? I don't think so. And neither are GPL software developers when they demand that Apple comply with the GPL. If Apple doesn't like the GPL, they can buy all the software they need commercially, or choose BSD equivalents.
Mormonism wouldn't really change very many laws at all. [...] As for homosexual acts, consensual acts between people that don't impinge on human freedom can't be illegal. I'm comfortable with that.
Well, you say one thing, but the actions of your fellow Mormons speak another language. For example, consensual sodomy has remained against the law in Utah, one of the small minority of remaining states, until the US Supreme Court finally overturned all sodomy laws in 2003. And as recently as 1997, the Utah legislature even rejected a law to decriminalize sodomy between spouses.
Having spent some time in Utah, I think it's pretty clear that Mormons restrict many behaviors that are not restricted elsewhere, and that those restrictions are made to make others conform to Mormon standards of good behavior, not just trying to ensure that each resident can act according to their own conscience without interfering with the rights of others to do so.
As usual, general Mormon attitudes temper the severity with which many of these rules are imposed, and positions more tolerant of other religions and views can probably be reconciled with Mormon theology, but right now, that's not how Mormons act at the ballot box and in the legislature. (This blog post addresses some of these issues.)
Apart from an implementation of the Objective C frontend and runtime. But don't let facts get in the way of your ill informed ranting.
As I was saying: NeXT complied with the letter of the GPL by dumping a hacked version of gcc on the world, but that wasn't useful for the gcc project, at least not for a long time.
Whether they did this out of laziness or whether it was a deliberate strategy, I don't know. But I think they hurt themselves big time with it. If they had worked harder to make sure that the official gcc compiler releases had a useful Objective C implementation in them, Objective C would probably be a widely used, mainstream language today.
As a brief aside, what do you think are "the kinds of converts Mormon missionaries would like to reach?"
I assume anybody who isn't Mormon, but you tell me. Are there any other religions that Mormons respect enough not to attempt to gain converts from them?
The main reason is what I referred to earlier as the milk before meat principle. The most superficial, and therefore the most readily accessible, interpretation of human morality starts with action. The most crude understanding of morality starts with things that should or should not be done.
So you agree then that Mormon missionaries use the language in Articles #2 and #3 in full knowledge that their audience is going to interpret it differently from the way that they themselves interpret those articles? For example, missionaries believe, as you do, that character determines the afterlife, but their audience interprets their statements to mean that actions are sufficient to determine the afterlife. Or, to bring it more to the point: Mormon missionaries believe there to be a spiritual truth, but they are actually telling their audience something that differs from the actual spiritual truth, because they think that the audience is not ready to understand the actual spiritual truth.
Mormon missionaries want to reach as many converts as possible, and this introduction to our theology is foundational and therefore exactly what we need. This is just a simple principle of teaching: you start with simple principles, common ground, and motivating examples.
Giving students simple rules and theories that the teacher knows are not actually true is called a "teaching device". They are widely used in classrooms and mentoring and they are quite effective. The reason it is permissible not to tell the truth to students in a classroom setting is because the students (or their guardians) have consented to the teacher-student relationship and because there are strict boundaries for how teaching devices can be used.
However, Mormon missionaries are not just using such techniques as a teaching device, they are using them as a recruiting device. That is, Mormon missionaries are using teaching devices without the prior consent of the other person. In different words, Mormon missionaries are deliberately not telling the truth to their audience without the consent of their audience. Now, do you disagree with this analysis in some way, or do you simply believe that not telling the truth is justified and moral under those circumstances?
Two additional remarks. First, religions that aren't attempting to grow fast don't have to do this: almost all their instruction takes place within settings in which instructors have authority over their students. Using teaching devices to induce people to join a religion is an attempt to gain converts at the expense of other denominations and religions, and that violates Mormon claims of religious tolerance, in my opinion. Second, one principle of teaching devices is that they need to be resolved eventually; that's why we have textbooks and reference books, and why the two aren't the same. But Mormons have one set of Articles of Faith, valid and applicable to everybody from potential convert to religious scholar and philosopher. Therefore, the Articles of Faith and their meaning in ordinary language is what defines Mormon theology.
Think about it: the punishment for this "crime", "imprisonment up to 10 years", is the same as voluntary manslaughter.
The real intent of lawmakers creating laws like this is to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt. They know that it is hard to be sure that you are able to comply with the law when you have any sexual content on your site, so they hope that there's going to be less of that content and/or that sex sites are going to hide themselves from search engines out of fear and uncertainty over possible legal action for unintential violations. Furthermore, they hope to be able to use it as an additional threat against operators of sites with sexual content in case they can't get the operator on some other charges.
I'm confused. Would tagging lesbian Barbie with the keyword "Barbie" be legal or illegal?
For the sake of full-disclosure, here is where I draw the distinction. You don't legislate morality directly, you legislate pragmatically to get to morality.
Let me paraphrase that. You're saying "One ought to legislate pragmatically in order to promote behaviors which conform to the Mormon view of what constitutes moral behavior."
What I can't figure out to begin with is why you even want to bother to apply your principle. Is it because you can't think of another principle? Or is it your wish to force me towards what you consider salvation, even if I don't want to? To me, your desire for resurrection of the body is one of the worst states of sin a human being can be in, how can it be a moral choice for you to impose on me and others behaviors that promote this?
Another question about your approach is where you would stop. Right now, Mormons are constrained by democracy and society, but if they were free to pass any laws they wished, what kinds of laws would they pass "to get to morality"? Would adultery and homosexual acts become ilegal again? What about masturbation and lying? How do you decide?
When you talk about "pragmatic", you are implying that that's the best practical thing to do. Actually, there is another way: you legislate pragmatically to maximize the ability of people to make their own moral choices. That principle yields laws that protect people from crimes against person or property, but otherwise interferes minimally in their lives, and maximizes the ability of religions to co-exist.
Your principle leads to conflict between religions and religious coercion, because if you try to legislate "to get morality", then a tug of war starts between different religions whose morality one ought to get. My principle leads to peaceful co-existence between religions.
But it isn't just my principle, it's the principle the US and Europe have increasingly adopted in the 20th century; prior to that, nations were using your principle, the principle in which the majority religion would coerce the minority religions to conform to its views of morality, and it led to constant conflict. Moving from your principle to my principle was a giant step forward for the West; why do you want to get back to the old principle?
Well, thanks for your careful responses as well, and I find our conversation interesting as well.
After a careful study of Mormon theology, however, [...] The Book of Mormon explicitly states that those who do not end up in God's presence are only those people who would suffer more from being in his presence than from being wherever they do end up. God IS the reward, not the reward-giver. The same analog works for punishment.
Well, since you manage to express this concept that you arrived at after careful study of Mormon theology in plain language so that non-Mormons can easily understand it, that raises the question: why do the Articles of Faith not just use the same plain language? The articles could say:
Article #2: We believe that God in His mercy gives each man the kind of afterlife that he feels most comfortable with.
Article #3: We believe that, just like a connoisseur appreciates better wine and food through experience, men appreciate and will obtain a better afterlife through the practice of charity and purity.
If I understand you, you're saying those two articles are what the actual Articles #2 and #3 amount to; so, why don't they say that? Why do they use language that obviously would be misinterpreted by the kind of converts Mormon missionaries would like to reach?
though not Free Software because it doesnt' seem to like GPL stuff much, like many corporations
Well, I agree that Apple isn't giving back enough to open source, but they have no hesitation using and shipping GPL'ed stuff. Two important examples are gcc and bash. And with gcc, for years, NeXT managed to comply with the GPL while avoiding giving anything useful back to the gcc project.
This statement is explicitly what you don't like: rewards/punishment based on actions. Not on character. But your reading of Mormon theology based on these two verses is piecemeal. You should at least read all 13 of the Articles of Faith. If you did, you'd end up with this:
You are proving that there exist non-utilitarian aspects to Mormon theology, which is obviously true, but it's irrelevant to this argument. The point is that Mormon theology contains offers of utilitarian deals to its followers. Since Mormons say can't pick and choose which parts of Mormonism you follow, this is obviously an essential part of Mormon theology. (Let's not even go into the fact that your interpretation of Article #13 as talking about character rather than actions is dubious at best; I actually se no Article that clearly supports the notion that Mormonism is concerned with character rather than behavior.)
The thing you're missing is the principle of milk before meat. The utilitarian aspect of Mormonism is something you see as an end in itself,
No, I don't see it as an "end", I see it as a means. In fact, it's a very effective means for getting people to improve their character. But that doesn't make it moral.
Let's say Article of Faith #2 said "Every Mormon child should undergo brain surgery to eliminate aggressive behavior and to eliminate desire for non-procreative sex."; brain surgery could be very safe and effective in getting people to stop doing bad things. Would the existence of Article #13 make up for the existence of such an Article #2? Wouldn't you consider any religion that requires brain surgery on children for its members immoral, no matter what its other tenets might be?
The thing you're missing is the principle of milk before meat.
I think you're evading the issue. Just answer this question: according to Mormon theology, will God actually reward me for charity, punish me for sin, and assign me to one of the three Kingdoms after death according to my behavior in the world? Or are these beliefs merely an educational device? And if they are an educational device, were they created by men or by God?
That's because Sun's implementation, like every other Java implementation (and there are quite a few) is required to adhere to a written specification.
What you're pointing at as a "written specification" of "Java" is a book on the Java language. Standardizing the Java language isn't the problem, standardizing the libraries is. There are specifications for the Java libraries. Conformance of new implementations is checked via a test suite. As far as I know, no implementation besides Sun's and its licensed derivatives passes that test suite.
So, therefore, in reality, there is only one implementation of Java, plus a bunch of ports. The notion that Java is an "open" "standard" with multiple implementations is a myth created by Sun to make the platform more appealing to ABM people.
The Mormon church exemplifies charity according to your definition. I know of many, many examples of charity from the Mormon chuch (because I was involved in them) that I could not find in the press
... Without denying the actuality of evil, I prefer to see the Mormon Church in terms of it's capacity to heal sinners, as opposed to prevent sin.
You keep supplying evidence for the statement "many Mormons are good and the Mormon church does good". I agree with that statement. Like any large population, the Mormon church has its share of good people, and it causes the others to behave themselves. And Mormon practices probably actually produce large numbers of people who aren't just behaving in good ways but are genuinely good people.
None of that says anything about the morality of Mormon theology itself. We can eliminate bad behavior with brain surgery and achieve generosity through electrical stimulation of the brain. We can eliminate the desire for non-procreative sex through drugs. The fact that we can produce what you consider moral behavior in this way doesn't make the application of procedures that achieve it moral.
Your attacks on Mormon theology as reward based are well-taken, but misguided. It's not a flaw of Mormon theology, but of many Christian cultures to see the rules as a series of checklists
You're quite right: many Christian denominations are. I didn't claim that Mormonism was unusual in this regard. I also didn't "attack" Mormon theology, I simply consider it immoral.
So you see, while it may be true that Mormons (like many other people) do "confuse good deeds and good character" this is a result of Mormons failing to live up to their own religion. It is an indictment (and a valid one) of Mormons, but not of Mormonism.
No, it is a fundamental flaw of Mormon theology (as well as of many other religions). The Mormon Articles of Faith specifically tell people that they will be rewarded or punished, and therefore utilitarian considerations are a built-in part of the theology. If Mormonism didn't want its adherents to make this confusion, it could simply eliminate rewards and punishments from its teachings; everything else would remain unchanged: practices, laws, teachings, theology, etc.
Through practice the action - which may at first be done reluctantly - may be engrained in your character.
That is a good and valid principle: people become better people by becoming accustomed to doing good deeds. We teach children that way, and we also use rewards and punishments until they have learned. And that's probably the way heaven and hell were originally intended: as metaphors and teaching devices. But the Mormon church (as many others) never resolves the issue; it maintains these notions as "articles of faith". And, what is worse, it uses these promises of rewards to recruit people into the religion. Despite all the protestations of tolerance, in the end, it still ends up as "my god gives you more rewards than your god, that's why you should join us".
"Mormon attempts to legislate morality". I gather from this you are referring to Mormon opposition to legalizing gay-marriage
No, I'm not referring to it specifically. I don't care whether gay marriage is legalized or not. It's a non-issue that is being used to get people like you to the polls to vote for people like Bush.
We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own cconscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.
But that, in itself, constitutes intolerance to other religions. While your church permits others to worship as they choose, when they don't share your views about what is sinful and what is not sinful, then you try to restrict how they can act. And, furthermore, you actively attempt to change others to conform to your notions of morality, including by coercive means.
Laws are inherently mor
The Mormons - with their vast financial and capital resources and strict hierarchal organization - are frequenty fist-responders to international crises. [...] We've got a vested interest in long-term financial growth in these nations too. Although currently limited to Mormon members, the Perpetual Education Fund is one such example.
Yes, and why do Mormons collect all this money and use it in this way? Among other things, because it helps the organization grow, because church members are pressured to do it, and because you can brag about it (as you just did). Those acts may still be good, but they are not charity, because charity is self-less. Charity would be for the Mormon church to give the money to nondenominational aid organizations or to local churchas; but combining one's own religion and aid is not charity, it is taking advantage of vulnerable people for one's own benefit.
And you encourage this selfish thinking at the individual level: you say that "if you do this, then you'll be rewarded after death; if you don't do this, or if you do that other thing, then you'll be punished after death". The Mormon church appears to have a particularly pernicious form of this tit-for-tat deal compared to other churches by promising restoration of the healthy body and mind after death, playing on fears about the body and dying (that is tempered by the fact that its notions of "heaven and hell" are considerably more palatable than brimstone and fire).
In different words, when an atheist and a Mormon perform the same good act, then in the atheist, it's a sign of good character, while in the Mormon, it's probably just a desire for a reward that causes him to behave in that way.
Another issue is Mormon attempts to legislate morality. Why is that an issue? First, you are imposing your own religious beliefs on others that way. Second, you are depriving people of the ability to be good by simply making it illegal to commit sin.
These are just exemplary points, but they illustrate that fundamentally Mormons (they are not alone in this) confuse good deeds and good character, and this confusion is deliberate because it furthers the worldly goals of the church.
Religions and churches like the Mormon church are analogous to prisons. Prisons keep bad people from doing bad things, but they fail to turn bad people into good people. When a prisoner refrains from doing evil, you don't know whether it's because he has become a good person or because he simply was prevented from being bad in prison (a problem parole boards face). And while the existence of prisons arguably has a positive effect on society, and while we need them until we come up with something better, prisons are not moral institutions, and many of the principles by which they operate are immoral.
What do you hope to gain with snide comments like this? The Mormon church believes:
They aren't "snide comments". You make judgements about supposed discriminatory speech by others; that makes your own morality and ethics very much an issue.
You may contest all of this as you wish, of course, but in the end I just have to ask why we would be so careful to come across as non-racist and non-sexist if we truly were?
You attempt to establish that your church doesn't discriminate simply by redefining the terms to suit your needs. But it's pointless to debate this further. My own faith tells me that you have chosen a religion that is immoral in both some of its fundamental tenets and some of its practices, and that includes, specifically, its practices in third world nations. Therefore, I think it's pointless to continue this discussion: to me, you are trying to defend the indefensible and you simply have no moral basis from which you can make arguments about issues of discrimination or development. Furthermore, if your own faith doesn't already tell you that the actions of your church are wrong, nothing I say will likely change you.
Confirmed it by scrolling half a page down the article and reading "Powered by ASUS", nifty logo and all...
The article on Newsforge does not mention ASUS.
(However, going one link further, R-Cubed's site does say "built on ASUS", but leaves open the question of whether they changed the machine in any way.)
We've made great strides with treatments, and it's possible (I think) that with time our treatments could reach the point of allowing people with HIV/AIDS to surive and live as healthy people. This is the type of "cure" I was referring to.
Well, that's not a cure, and our treatments are already almost to that point. But that's not an option for third world nations.
I'm not sure about only. If it was the only response, we'd give up our drug and vaccine research, wouldn't we? Are you suggesting we do so?
Drug and vaccine research is very useful for developed nations. But it's not a solution to the AIDS crisis in the third world.
then you've made (in my opinion) a disciminatory remark.
Making a discriminatory remark isn't the same as discrimination, just like sexual innuendo is not the same as rape.
It is possible to hold disciminatory or imperialist atitudes without "real mistreatment".
Holding a discriminatory attitude isn't the same as discrimination, just like being horny isn't the same as having sex.
Or would you have me - and others like me - stand by and listen to discriminatory rhetoric without opposing it because the rhetoric - until it is acted out - is merelely "uninformed"
Quite to the contrary: you should use the opportunity to counter it. But if you equate a discriminatory attitude with discrimination, you will never have the opportunity; discrimination is illegal, and if discriminatory speech becomes illegal, you simply can't talk about it.
(I find it ironic that a Mormon would want to "oppose discrimination", given the discrimination that the Mormon church actually practices against all sorts of groups. Of course, you have the legal right to choose to practice whatever religion you like, but I consider your choice immoral.)
That notebook looks just like an ASUS notebook. Did they just rebrand it, or did they actually change it?
I don't think I said anything about an HIV vaccine. I was talking about a "cure".
A cure is even less likely than a vaccine. To date, there is not a single viral disease that can be cured using drugs, and most viruses are far simpler to eliminate than HIV. Over the next several decades, HIV infection, at best, will become a manageable chronic disease for people in wealthy nations. And if HIV ever gets cured, it will likely be by gene therapy, which simply does not work for third world nations.
Medicine simply does not have a solution to the world-wide HIV epidemic. The only realistic response to the HIV epidemic is in patient, long-term development efforts.
I do think that many people engage in various forms of reverse-discrimination or cultural imperialism when they talk about 3rd-world nations
People may say things that are uninformed or prejudiced, but that's not discrimination or imperialism. Discrimination and imperialism are real mistreatment of specific people and groups of people. Equating the two is bad because it stifles debate and stifles the opportunity to eradicate misconceptions.
Yes, the "Hitler card" as in the "all jews must die" mentality coming from Iran's Hitler, or did you not hear that from the Iranian President?
Iran's president denies the Holocaust, he wants to eliminate Israel, and he institutes discrimination against Jews in Iran. He may also sponsor terrorism against Jews elsewhere in the world. That makes him an evil man, a demagogue, and and opportunist, but none of that puts him in the same league as Hitler.
In any case, the problem of people like you is that you escalate rather than deescalate. People like you think because Iran's government is evil (which it is) and because other people who happen to share your religion have been badly mistreated in the past (which they have), you have some sort of special license to do whatever it takes to reduce your risk and survive. That stance is not only ethically unjustifiable, racist, and plain evil (in a banal sort of way), it also simply doesn't work.
Israel isn't being destroyed by Iran or the Palestinians, it's being destroyed by people like you, on both sides of the conflict.
War monger? I hate war. But I hate Hitlers of the world MORE.
Ah, the Hitler card: just define any group, nation, or political leader you don't like as a Nazi or Hitler, and all of a sudden, you think your position is justified. The irony is that that kind of simplistic us-vs-them thinking is pretty much what defines Nazis and Hitlers. People like you exist in all nations and all peoples, you mistake your self-righteous convictions for morality, and, in the end, you are just evil.
I guess it is so much easier to call people names.
You should know; you do it so often.
Explain that to me. It sounds like you think women are inherently weaker creatures then men in more than just the physical sense
That style of argumentation is inflammatory and unproductive, and I suggest you'll get along better in the world if you stop these "when did you stop beating your wife" style arguments.
In any case, rather than try to explain to you the link between women's rights and HIV/AIDS, I refer to article that explains the link. There are lots more articles on it on the Internet if you bother to look for them.
Then you start going off about a magic pill? Huh?
You have been arguing that investing in an HIV vaccine is important in order to help children and other people not responsible for their infection. With that argument, you implicitly assume that a practical, effective HIV vaccine can be developed at all. Right now, that's wishful thinking.
Improving women's rights and economic development in third world nations is difficult politically and very expensive; that's why policy makers are looking for a "magic pill" (an HIV vaccine) to avoid having to make tough political decisions or spend a lot of money.