On Thu, 15 Apr 2004, Daniel Crookston wrote: > Actually, yes, improving yourself by learning about Linux (if that's a hobby > of yours,) getting a college education (if you have the opportunity and > whatnot,) and eating a nutritious (not healthy - I don't know about you, but > my breakfasts are good and dead when I eat them) breakfast are important > parts of being a good person, and are therefore a part of attaining > salvation. Speculating about things that we can't possibly know and that > aren't really important to us are not.
Sorry, I'm with Ashley on this one. First of all, prophets from Joseph Smith to McConkie have talked about this doctrine, so it's not something "we can't possibly know". Secondly, Joseph Smith taught that "It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God". I'd say that this topic is very central to "the character of God," and therefore of at least some importance to us. I still think the "not vital for our salvation" answer is a cop-out. In physics, we don't say that because string theory is less well-defined than other theories, or that we don't have as much to work with, or that it doesn't affect uds directly, that it's a waste of time to talk about it. We try to dig down to the core of it, and find out the most information we can about it. That's what it's all about--that thirst for gaining knowledge. We research, we study, we hypothesize--and if future experiments, or "revelations" to use the analogy, reveal that our hypothesis was wrong, we don't say, "Oh, that's what you get for speculating about something that wasn't revealed!" We simply take the new knowledge we've found and move on. Why should religious knowledge be any different? What reason could there be for not wanting us to study and learn more about a particular topic? ~ ross oops: obligatory on-topicness ... let's see ... I always wanted to create an open-source tool that would manage a "library" of books, with a powerful system of cross-referencing abilities, so that as I read, say, GEB, I could cross-reference pages in it to other books it made me think of, from C.S. Lewis to Asimov to the Old Testament. Are there any projects that have already been started like this? It could be a useful tool for studying religious topics as well as secular. > > Is understanding Linux vital to your salvation? Is getting a college > > education vital to your salvation? Is eating a health breakfast this > > morning vital to your salvation? > > > > Just because it's not vital to your salvation doesn't mean it's not > > important. Sounds like a cop-out to me ;-) > > > > ~ ross -- This sentence would be seven words long if it were six words shorter. ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
