harmony wrote: If Runtu is correct, Smac = maklelan. Judging by his posts, I'm not sure Runtu's right, although he may be. Smac's always had a smart-alecky tone, that maklelan doesn't usually have. Smac's a poster from FAIR/MAD, a smart guy, very legal-minded, not surprising since he's a newly minted lawyer in Provo. It seems to me like he's in the prosecutor's office there. Maklelan sounds like he's still in grad school. Somehow I thought he was studying for some sort of degree in religion. I don't remember if Smac is a BIC, but maklelan is a convert. Smac and Confidential Informant (whose former name I've forgotten) carry the legal ball over on MAD for any questions about the law and church history.
Oh, thanks for the update harmony (if smac is mak). Can't tell who's who or who isn't who they appear to be without a program. Someday they're going to have to dump all these boards together so people will know who they're talking or not talking to.
Bond
"Whatever appears to be against the Book of Mormon is going to be overturned at some time in the future. So we can be pretty open minded."-charity 3/7/07
Rollo Tomasi wrote:In many ways BYU is more like a seminary class than a university. Yes, BYU has some excellent colleges and profs (especially in the business area), but I have always expected a university to be the most open place in society to debate, discuss, explore, theorize, etc., both sides of any issue (including religion and theology), and BYU is just not that place.
Just my $.02.
It's a university run by the church. If someone wants gay pride parades and theological speculation they should know better than to go to BYU.
Why? BYU is still a university dedicated, one presumes, to honest intellectual inquiry. Supporting the faith and creating a stimulating intellectual environment, even in religious studies, do not have to be mutually exclusive.
There is a very long gap between gay pride parades and honest intellectual debate.
God . . . "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, . . . and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him ..."
Bond...James Bond wrote: Oh, thanks for the update harmony (if smac is mak). Can't tell who's who or who isn't who they appear to be without a program. Someday they're going to have to dump all these boards together so people will know who they're talking or not talking to.
Rollo Tomasi wrote:In many ways BYU is more like a seminary class than a university. Yes, BYU has some excellent colleges and profs (especially in the business area), but I have always expected a university to be the most open place in society to debate, discuss, explore, theorize, etc., both sides of any issue (including religion and theology), and BYU is just not that place.
Just my $.02.
It's a university run by the church. If someone wants gay pride parades and theological speculation they should know better than to go to BYU.
Why? BYU is still a university dedicated, one presumes, to honest intellectual inquiry. Supporting the faith and creating a stimulating intellectual environment, even in religious studies, do not have to be mutually exclusive.
There is a very long gap between gay pride parades and honest intellectual debate.
Guy! Welcome back! We've missed you, especially on this thread.
maklelan wrote:It's a university run by the church. If someone wants gay pride parades and theological speculation they should know better than to go to BYU.
My point is that BYU is not really a 'university,' at least not in sense of open debate and discussion. Otherwise, I agree with you.
There's plenty of open debate and discussion, but when a professor decides that their employer is wrong and refuses to respect their employers wishes, why should the employer be obligated to allow them to continue? Outside of that, the students can debate and discuss pretty much anything they want.
This is an incredibly simplistic and ignorant view of what a university is and what it does. One example, the institution of tenure was created precisely to protect faculty who say or write unpopular things, even those that make their employers angry. Administrators are not always the final aribters of what can and is said in the classroom or what is published in scholarly outlets. They have a say, to be sure, and one is naïve to assume that all speech or "scholarly" writing is equally tolerated or should be tolerated. But to suggest that university administrators rightly possess unfettered power to sculpt scholarly speech to their liking (and consistent with their material or other interests) is wrong-headed on many levels.
A university is not a business. It is not a typical type of organization. It is a unique creation that operates by unique rules. The blanket analogy to other private organizations to justify small minded behavior is wrong and it shows a manifest amount of ignorance to make it. (Not to say there are no similarities, just that there are many important differences.)
God . . . "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, . . . and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him ..."
Rollo Tomasi wrote:In many ways BYU is more like a seminary class than a university. Yes, BYU has some excellent colleges and profs (especially in the business area), but I have always expected a university to be the most open place in society to debate, discuss, explore, theorize, etc., both sides of any issue (including religion and theology), and BYU is just not that place.
Just my $.02.
It's a university run by the church. If someone wants gay pride parades and theological speculation they should know better than to go to BYU.
Why? BYU is still a university dedicated, one presumes, to honest intellectual inquiry. Supporting the faith and creating a stimulating intellectual environment, even in religious studies, do not have to be mutually exclusive.
There is a very long gap between gay pride parades and honest intellectual debate.
Guy! Welcome back! We've missed you, especially on this thread.
Thanks. I travelled for work almost non-stop from mid-Oct to mid-Nov, and then suddenly when I returned home, I couldn't find this discussion board anymore. I stumbled upon a link to it yesterday, so here I am.
God . . . "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, . . . and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him ..."
Bond...James Bond wrote: Oh, thanks for the update harmony (if smac is mak). Can't tell who's who or who isn't who they appear to be without a program. Someday they're going to have to dump all these boards together so people will know who they're talking or not talking to.
Bond
Does it really matter?
Well...it would be nice to know if Runtu is right about who he's talking to. If Runtu has confused smac and Mak, and they are two different posters, then it would probably be nice for him to know that. If smac and Mak are different people, it would probably clarify Mak's answers a bit more. Runtu is upset (and rightly so) because it is obvious that he had a correspondence with smac. It seems that smac was privvy to at least some of Runtu's background, and is now, apparently, marginalizing it (f they are the same person).
Also...if smac is an accomplished attorney, then he is playing games with his identity here, pretending to be a grad student working on a religious studies paper.
For what it's worth, I DO NOT think that smac and maklelan are the same person. If they are, then smac is posting under two different identities as MAD.
Maklelan is a pundit listed on the MAD board. Dan G has been a Nazi about sock puppets, so that's not likely to be the case.
Last edited by _Yoda on Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Bond...James Bond wrote: Oh, thanks for the update harmony (if smac is mak). Can't tell who's who or who isn't who they appear to be without a program. Someday they're going to have to dump all these boards together so people will know who they're talking or not talking to.
Bond
Does it really matter?
Well...it would be nice to know if Runtu is right about who he's talking to. If Runtu has confused smac and Mak, and they are two different posters, then it would probably be nice for him to know that. If smac and Mak are different people, it would probably clarify Mak's answers a bit more. Runtu is upset (and rightly so) because it is obvious that he had a correspondence with smac. It seems that smac was privvy to at least some of Runtu's background, and is now, apparently, marginalizing it (f they are the same person).
Also...if smac is an accomplished attorney, then he is playing games with his identity here, pretending to be a grad student working on a religious studies paper.
For what it's worth, I DO NOT think that smac and maklelan are the same person. If they are, then smac is posting under two different identities as MAD.
Maklalan is a pundit listed on the MAD board. Dan G has been a Nazi about sock puppets, so that's not likely to be the case.
I may well have confused the two. If so, I'm sorry. Either way, I really do hate the idea that you can't talk to someone without it being a competition. It seems to me common sense to avoid nut jobs. And if I take maklelan's advice and just leave, then "the nutjobs have won."
guy sajer wrote: There is a very long gap between gay pride parades and honest intellectual debate.
Could it be that the BYU Administration is unable to see this distinction and thus they are against all thought that veers from what they consider to be approved doctrine?