lonetree

When I withdrew myself from the church, I felt that distancing from people was the main part of it.
Both now and then I like being on my own. When I was part of the church, the LDS members and friends I had seemed to know that & knew how to keep their distance. There was on the one hand no 'pressure' of any kind to stay with the Church. But there was also a keen sense that these people really cared about my decisions & wished that I would change my mind. I don't know how they did that complicated balancing act, but it was genuine, and I value it to this day. 
     Incidentally, when I still lived in my former ward, I happened to see an LDS friend by chance while driving. He gave me a tentative wave as his car passed in front of me. It is one of my regrets(& sins of omission) that I did not wave back.

True.  True.  Very good point.

He can't shake my faith but I've managed to place a biblical dent or two in his religion of choice in the past. I like to think I can handle my "troubles" with out including HR.  

lol, I've had those types of "discussions" too...this one is evolving somewhat. Apparently he had read about Old Testament scripture fragments being found in Egyptian funeral masks...and Smith (I have gotten him to quit calling Joseph, Joe Smith or Ol' Joe) claimed to translate from Egyptian and scriptures in a mummy.
 
Yeah, I know but at least its Q&A and not "Hey, I'm trying to save your dumb Mormon self from going straight to heck"  

At least these were in the form of questions-even if coached.
The little religious discussion I hear at my workplace usually consists of someone not really questioning but indignantly spouting off about why they 'can't' believe this or that. They're Not interested in what you think-only in what they just can't believe. Most days I'm glad that talking about such topics is discouraged by management.

This sounds familiar.
     The last time I attended a sacrament meeting was in the mid 1990s, & the ward had recently changed from having the sacrament at the end of the morning to the beginning. It was a little disconcerting, because up until then(through all my investigating and early membership) I had been thinking of the Sacrament as the pinnacle of the Sunday morning experience. It seemed only fitting to have it at the end. 
     The thing is, I was under the impression that the change -then- came from higher authorities of the church. Of course I could be mistaken; sometimes I have to remind myself that the 90s were a long time ago.

Cloudflare is often used by websites to protect themselves from DDOS attacks, and yes, the message you are seeing is a symptom of enabling the "I'm under attack" option within the cloudflare control panel. The only reason you'd do this is if someone was actively running a DDOS attack against your website, and that is probably why lds.net was offline for a few minutes too.
The 5 second redirect you are seeing primarily means standard HTTP DDoS attack traffic will never hit the lds.net webserver. Instead, the load is taken by cloudflare themselves who have a much larger infrastructure and are more easily able to handle it.
As long as cloudflare has been set up properly, it's actually really quite difficult to DDoS a website using it to the point that most attackers just give up.

Yes, exactly why you don't set the law, unfortunately you would probably vote for people who are inclined to believe like you do.
 
This is such a horrendous idea . . . the problem with "people inciting hate and violence" is who determines what is "inciting hate and violence".  The law turns into thug rule; I have the majority power so I determine what is "inciting hate and violence".
 
Eventually, given enough time laws that lock people up for "inciting hate and violence" end up turning into political laws that lock people up because they simply disagree with the way things are run.
 
And please don't give me the you can't yell "fire" in a theater, most people have absolutely 0 clue as to why it is this way-and it has nothing to do with speech but with property rights.

I suppose on this one I would start with the full quote in question:
 
He was responding to questions about whether there was a "gay lobby" in the Vatican."If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" First, I would point out that in Catholic (and most Christian) social teachings there is a difference between homosexuality with regards to attraction and acting on those attractions. A person with homosexual attraction who does not act on it certainly does not sin, and as such it is reasonable that Pope Francis would see no fault in that person. Since the question was about a "gay lobby" in the Vatican, it would be reasonable to conclude that the members of said lobby would be celibate clerics, meaning that they would be unlikely to be acting on sexual attraction either way. Even if this is a reference to homosexual people in general, including those who act on the impulse, then the quote still seems reasonable since he included the "and has good will" part. Generally, when the pope (back to John XXIII) refer to people of good will, they are referring to Christians and non-Christians alike who are seeking the truth to the best of their ability. If a person is homosexual, and even if said person acts on their tendencies, if they do so out of ignorance of its sinfulness nobody (the pope included) ought to pass judgement on them for it. Again, the "good will" part presupposes that, if the person is ignorant of the sinfulness of the action, there is no reasonable way they would not be ignorant. That doesn't mean that they haven't heard somebody say "homosexuality is a sin" (most people probably have), but it does mean that they haven't heard it from any source or in conjunction with any argument that, were they free of biases, they should have accepted. On the critique on "criticizing Islam," I think he's more getting at saying one should be respectful when critiquing another's religion, not necessarily that such critiques should not exist. In other words, you can say "Islam is wrong because," but at the same time you should not be deliberately making fun of what other people view as being sacred. I don't think that's necessarily an unreasonable position to take. As for other social teachings, it should be noted that in his recent trip to the Philippines, he upheld Church teachings on things like traditional marriage and contraception. In the past, he has also declared "the door closed" on things like allowing women to become priests. As for why the liberal media loves him, well, as much as I love the guy, he does sometimes make it fairly easy to be taken out of context. Also, some of his views really are what we might consider "liberal" (i.e. on immigration, the economy, climate change, ect). His position on each, however, seems in keeping with traditional Christian values. He's liberal on immigration because it allows for opportunities for the poor in poor countries and helps keep families together which might otherwise be separated by national borders. His stance on the economy differs from the "communism" he is accused of in that communism teaches that you should take from the rich and disperse to the masses, while Francis has advocated the Christian concept of the rich giving to the masses. The end effect is the same, but the means is important. As for climate change, well, whether you believe it's man made or not, if it is there is then you can certainly understand why one might want to curb it. Anyway, that's my take on it

Yes, time will tell.
As far as the media goes, it does bother me a tiny bit that they keep making him out to be a hero to the liberal cause, but at the same time I wonder if this is what is what like when Paul VI was Pope and the world was waiting for him to change the Church's stance on contraception...and when he didn't, it caused many Catholics to leave the Church.  I figure something like that might be right around the corner when the Pope doesn't say what the media expects him to say.  

Unfortunately, there are a lot of Catholics who don't adhere to Church teaching. As for Pope Francis, please don't let the liberal media fool you. They like to distort things and take things out of context that the pope has said. He is absolutely not in line with what liberals/progressives believe at all. He is Catholic and adheres to all the Catholic teachings regarding abortion, sex, homosexuality, and all the other hot topic moral issues.

I am a little envious of people who can quote poetry.

I have a number of prejudices.  First:  I do not believe that a backward country like North Korea could develop technology to hack a kindergarten class computer system.  Second:  I do not trust the media capability of reporting a story based in any kind of technology.  I also believe our media in the USA has a strong political bias.  Bottom line - I do not believe that Sony hack story as currently reported.

I think it's time to close this thread.  It is now closed.

Watched the "Borg" collection, a Star Trek selection of episodes that revolves around the Borg faction (Sci fi zombies, I mean cyborgs, that steal your tech and then turn your people into them, in generally unpleasant ways). Includes the introduction, major events, and the conclusion episodes. Includes episodes from Enterprise, The Next Generation, and Voyager.

I like the Borg story arcs a lot, except for one thing, the introduction of the Borg Queen in Voyager i think that really ruined a lot of what made them frightening and less integrated with the machine. But still quite enjoyable.

Civilization Beyond Earth (a computer game)

Could man be drunk for ever
    With liquor, love, or fights,
Lief should I rouse at morning
    And lief lie down of nights.
But men at whiles are sober
    And think by fits and starts,
And if they think, they fasten
    Their hands upon their hearts.
 
-A. E. Housman

She immolated a live animal - a mammal, no less - when it was in no way necessary for the purpose of killing it. And then bragged about it. She was doing more than "killing a rat", she was torturing a helpless animal. What is wrong with a normal mouse trap, why must they burn the animal alive? Ask yourself that question. What she did was indefensibly wrong.
 
Maybe you didn't notice, but there's a clear distinction between killing something out of necessity and torturing something then bragging on a blog about it.

I think it was the burning of a live creature that is the issue for the poster. It also seems there was no reason for that. And the bragging about it. So, deplorable behaviour? Yeah. (I am in favour of slaughtering raccoons in this part of the world; which are definitely Pests and is against the law. But to burn them alive and make the occasion for some sort of celebration? Uh, no)

I think it was the burning of a live creature that is the issue for the poster. It also seems there was no reason for that. And the bragging about it. So, deplorable behaviour? Yeah. (I am in favour of slaughtering raccoons in this part of the world; which are definitely Pests and is against the law. But to burn them alive and make the occasion for some sort of celebration? Uh, no)

I think it was the burning of a live creature that is the issue for the poster. It also seems there was no reason for that. And the bragging about it. So, deplorable behaviour? Yeah. (I am in favour of slaughtering raccoons in this part of the world; which are definitely Pests and is against the law. But to burn them alive and make the occasion for some sort of celebration? Uh, no)

I didn't want to share my opinion until after reading the blog post.  I think I can understand what you mean and I agree to a certain extent. The way she handled it was wrong, but again based on that post,  she seemed so clueless...the whole post is way too teeny-bopper for my liking to be honest and quite irritating, so perhaps we should cut her some slack, she will grow and know better next time (hopefully).

I think it was the burning of a live creature that is the issue for the poster. It also seems there was no reason for that. And the bragging about it. So, deplorable behaviour? Yeah. (I am in favour of slaughtering raccoons in this part of the world; which are definitely Pests and is against the law. But to burn them alive and make the occasion for some sort of celebration? Uh, no)

I would have assumed that a sister of a missionary would be strongly ethical - that being heavy on mercy and compassion.
 
I was wondering what your position was on this blog?
 
This person traps an animal with a glue trap, and after discussion of how to kill it, decides it would be a good idea to burn it alive. She laughs afterwards and celebrates with a pizza.
 
How would you deal with something like this if you were a colleague, or if you were a missionary leader? I would have assumed someone who devotes their time helping people would be merciful and kind, and yet I see nothing but sadism here.