I am not trying to attack anyone who downloads music illegally.

I just thought it was morally repulsive that I had tbm roommates in college who would attack and shun people who drank not just alcohol, but coffee and tea, yet had no problem stealing music. This kind of behavior really exposes how backward mormon values are.

My jaw dropped.
So something you can go to jail for is OK?

The irony of the mormon sense of morality is that it is miscalibrated by false "morals" such as the word of wisdom and other various "commandments" that, to an outside observer, actually have no inherent moral content.

Meanwhile some common morals that are obvious to most people slip past some mormons, simply because they have a harder time judging the true proportions of the moral question at hand...because they are using a distorted standard.

Example...I had a TBM coworker who didn't drink, didn't swear, and had that honest innocent face. He was happy to be our designated driver all the times we went out drinkin' an' cussin' (military).
But one night we're driving and he admits doing something dishonest (minor white-collar workplace cheating/stealing), and was asking us if we thought it was OK...Just polite silence and/or no-I-wouldn't-do-that-you-could-get-in-big-trouble from the rest of tipsy f-word-addicted heathens. It was OBVIOUS to the rest of us, and I wondered how he could even ask himself that.
As an exmo I recognized the dissonance he was having trying to apply the "perfect" standard of the "gospel" to everything...and coming up with the WRONG answer to an otherwise simple, easy, moral question.

IMO it's an inevitable consequence of snubbing your nose at the "wisdom of the world" and secular law and using your own private moral standard. Yes, there's a certain courage in disregarding commonly accepted morals...because yes they can be wrong...but there's also risk. The risk lies in not realizing that your private moral standard may also be wrong.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/04/2012 05:43PM by amos2.

Those of us who make our living via media communications want to be paid for the work we do, much, I suspect, like everyone else.

I would love to take some jerk Napster type's paycheck and see how he/she reacts.

It is stealing. So much so that copyright law in this country is one of the few areas of law where the accused is generally considered guilty until proven innocent.

Think I'll go have some, coffee/ beer/tea or something.

Timothy

It's just stealing - and no, I don't do it myself.

You do realize napster is now a paid for service right???

The other thing is that not sure if you are in the US but if you are someone must be giving you the feel good speech on they are out there getting all the pirates. They are not by a long shot. So much so that there is a 3+ warning rule before they shutoff your internet. After such you can just switch ISPs and start again.

I work with computers and it is tough to prosecute against downloaders. Torrenters are downloading 1s and 0s from many different places and reassembling them. The casual people that go out and get a few songs from a shady source are the only ones that get hit.


They recently had a judge rule that you cannot define a person by an IP address which further hampers prosecution.

Just thought I would let you know what I see working in the tech world.

The WOW is about obedience to the church. The church wants members to pay an honest tithe. I don't think they care if you cheat others. Of course, if you get caught, just don't tell anyone you're a mormon.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/04/2012 06:02PM by Strykary.

I must be one bad sinnin' mf'er then 'cause I partook in all the vices listed PLUS downloaded music for awhile....

I wouldn't even dignify their pretzel logic by calling a moral code.

I think you are too sensitive. Moral repulsion should not be reserved for something like downloading music.

Oh I get it, that was sarcasm, right?

No, not at all. I think it is silly to be morally repulsed by such behavior. The behavior isn't correct by any means, but this post suggests that the original poster suffers from some exaggeration issues or is incredibly too sensitive.

Maybe morally repulsive was too strong, but the point stands. If you are a thief, you are not someone I am going to take seriously when you attack someone for drinking coffee. Sorry, I am just not.

I also clarified I am not coming at anyone who downloads illegally. If you do it though, I do not want to be attacked from you for drinking coffee.

Also sensitive is a weird thing to say. It was an observation of weird behavior displayed by tbm's. I would say being overly sensitive would be someone who gets upset when coffee is brought into their place of residence.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/05/2012 05:35PM by archaeologymatters.

Paul Toscano, one of the September Six, said this about Mormon morality. I think he sums it up very well:

"Members are relentlessly pressured to strain at gnats by avoiding alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, facial hair, tattoos, body piercing, R-rated movies, public displays of affection, nudity, erotica, masturbation, necking, petting, pre-marital sex, disrespect or questioning of authority, dissent and anger, while being constantly encouraged to swallow camels by tolerating elitism, racism, misogyny, lack of intimacy, homophobia, xenophobia, moral superiority, purification by exclusion, institutional secrecy, theological correctness, spiritual abuse, class discrimination, disdain for civil liberties, and the abdication of personal judgment and responsibility."

Arrrrrrrrg...

This subject is a big bone of contention for me and my family. While no one is perfect, which is true, and everyone always has room for improvement, which is true and some people because of issues of abuse or whatnot, addictions or whatever in their past have much work to do......

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to not adhere to what they preach. While they preach Jesus Christ and the atonement, they have rules and guidelines for supposed righteousness that contradict the traditional gospel of the Christian church and have set up their own rules for righteousness.

Now some may say that the whole ball of wax of religion is corrupt and it doesn't matter, it's all crap...that is missing the big point of exposing the COJCOLDS for the lying machine that it is.

I bought my present house from a Mormon. He purposely did NOT reveal that they knew the sewer had a problem. After we moved in, the sewer backed up into our cellar and a neighbor informed me that the people KNEW and that they had Rotor Router here to check it out before they sold us the house. That is illegal and our agent was ready to go to bat for us, contacting the closing attorney to see if we could sue. Not only that, but the previous owner, who was a Mormon in good standing, also lied to the appraisal/tax agent of the town and told them that the attic was finished, with heating and cooling which raised the value of the property and the taxes on us. When we found that out, we invited the town's tax assessment agent over to see for himself, that the attic was not finished and did not add to the square footage of the house.

To be righteous in Mormonism, you need to have a complete food storage...and a full extra freezer (which is so stupid because if you loose electricity, there goes all the food in the freezer). You need to come from a line of righteous ancestors, preferably Pioneer stock. You need to abstain from smoking, drinking coffee, alcohol and dress like you just resigned from the local nunnery. You have to tithe, go to church for three hours and have your teen in 6 am seminary.

Other than that, you can lie, be fat as a house and no one will confront you about misapplying the WOW, you can slander/gossip/cheat/steal others and you are fine.

I know of another family who boasts about "we don't drink caffiene in this house' yet they are fat as houses, been called on the carpet by the IRS and other agencies for cheating and lying and stealing.

Mormons have a different code of ethics than everyone else. All of their ethics revolves around the organization of their church and their supposed redeemer and the golden rule be damned.

We lived in BYU approved housing for a year.

The apartment complex had a shared internet connection, and if you did not have your computer password protected, anybody in the complex could browse the hard drive of any other person.

Since I do not claim to be spotless, I'll confess that I browsed the computers of my neighbors.

Many of them had a Napster folder (early part of this century) and it was full of downloaded music. Many of them also had folders containing porn that were labeled "Private."

I have told the story before on here, but I'll tell it again. There was one guy who was particularly annoying. I found some porn on his hard drive and printed a picture on his printer, complete with the file name and path so if his wife found it she'd hopefully know where it came from.

I don't know if anything came of it. I'd like to think his wife found it and got mad at him. I'm not against somebody looking at porn, but if they are self-righteous, I like to see them taken down a notch.

T-Bone

Mormons always talk about how Coffee is unhealthy and therefore wrong because it has caffeine, never mind the fact that the church has no official stance on other caffeinated drinks such as Mountain Dew (which I always see TBMs drinking).
Cake, ice-cream, chocolate, candy, pop-corn, soda, juice, obesity, etc. are all perfectly okay, but coffee? They wouldn't even consider drinking it!
Also, doesn't the word of wisdom say that we should eat meat in moderation? I haven't seen any Mormons become anal when someone eats a giant slab of meat, but if someone drinks coffee they start thinking condescendingly of said person. Ridiculous.

I was always dismayed by how many of my fellow missionaries would say things like "Before I leave I'm going to sell my [crappy used] bike to some stupid greenie!" I know of at least two that actually did. I guess in their minds sleeping in til 8 a.m. was a sin, but screwing people over was not.

I'm afraid that too many mormons think that their kids are learning morals just by attending church meetings and activities. Sorry folks, but you gotta instill good morals in your kids at home.

I remember back in the 1980s when I worked at a local college. A member of the High Council asked me if they had Lotus 1-2-3 software available. "Great," he says. "If I give you some spare disks, will you copy it for me?" Stealing intellectual property isn't thought of as stealing.

Speaking of the WoW:

Once when I was a Ward Clerk, the Bishop brought in a box of chocolates for bishopric meeting. A counselor chose a candy with coffee center. You would have thought he had just been poisoned. He even got a tissue to wipe off his tongue! I had to confess to the brother that I wouldn't have known that I had eaten a coffee flavoured candy.