One common theme nearly universally agreed upon by Deists is the fact that it is important for humans to keep learning and to use reason to have a better understanding of God. This is why I feel abusive copyrights and patent laws actually go against my (and other Deists’) beliefs and encourage you to violate laws which are unjust and attempt to shut down reason in favour of capitalism.
This entry is a crosspost from my blog promoting Deism Accept Reason it is never my intentions to “convert” people to Deism, but simply make people aware of what we are about. Many people who read this are most likely Deists but didn’t know it. The idea behind Deism is not much different from the ideas behind infopolicy.
As Deists many of us like to look to Thomas Jefferson for inspiration and learn from what he has said, I will thus use one of his quotes to summarise this best:
“Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.”
When Galileo tried to teach his peers the sun did not revolve around the Earth he was punished by the church for going against the bible. Today we look at this as an act against education and democracy. When the printing presses were first invented they were banned outright or monopolised by governments in an effort to control who has access to new information saying it was to protect the industry. Today we view this as an act against education and democracy. The first automobiles were severely handicapped in various countries around the world as governments attempted to protect the stagecoach (and like) industry. Now people have developed tools which can allow them to share their culture in ways that someone 20 years ago would not have even thought of as being possible… and governments want to shut these down too to protect the media industries. It is the same old government which is afraid of new technology and trying to fit everything into what it knows, and not allowing progress to take us into the future.
Where this gets dangerous is the fact that governments are trying to uphold corporations’ “right” to patent gene research; schools cannot teach about or do research into certain parts of the human body simply because some corporation as claimed they own it. Courts have sided with the media industry to sue college professors for attempting to release their findings in how insecure various technologies are.. under the guise of the DMCA. An artist who made buttons with a slogan which was found as an excerpt from J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was sent a cease and desist by one of Mr. Tolkien’s errs.
What if the G-Scale in music was copyrighted? What if sports teams strictly followed copyright and did now allow fans to paint their faces or to make their social networking avatar their logo? How can we say it is okay for copyright to live longer than an artist, and still support free thinking? How can we stand by and allow EDUCATION to be outlawed and still call ourselves Deists? I can’t and that’s why I will continue to do what I am doing, and keep sharing my culture and keep researching and educating myself and others. Abusive copyrights and patents are against my faith.
Falkvinge on Infopolicy: Abusive Copyright and Patent Laws Go Against My Faith:
Travis McCrea.
One commo… http://tinyurl.com/42oyfbw
“Many people who read this are most likely Deists but didn’t know”
I would guess that the majority of readers here are atheists, then agnostic. You would probably also have Pastafarians and Invisible Pink Unicorn worshipers.
Not sure there will be that many deists remaining
I would agree with the general feeling that people of any of the three Abrahamitic branches of monotheism (Islam, Judaism, Christianity) would be in a stark, next-to-vanishing minority not just here, but on any Europe-based tech blogs. Northern Europe in particular.
While it’s interesting to see different justifications for the dismantlement of the monopolies, in the end, it can’t come down to faith; policymaking can never be based on dogma. At least, not in a secular society where policymaking is separate from religion.
But these twists and turns of different philosophies can be useful to overcome psychological locks when discussing with people on the street. That’s another matter, and one for activists and getting votes, in particular in a society more controlled by religion.
I actually beg to differ there, Rick. Nearly every “human” phenomenon boils down to being faith-driven.
From our faith in a particular currency to our belief that mercy, justice and compassion are desirable traits in an individual. Our belief in criteria which have no real grounding in the realities of the physical universe is what defines and maintains our society.
Faith – or belief – is a necessary component and the chief drive for what we call the market economy, for instance, and is one of the chief cornerstones which Marx and his contemporaries sought to remove from that equation by the hypothetical implementation of a planned economy. We all know how well that went.
The market is the centerpoint of every nation today, it’s both surprising and quite depressing to actually realize how very little of it is supported by Adam smith’s original “enlightened self-interest”.
Dismantling monopolies is a solution arrived at by empirical data and logic. The maintenance of said monopolies is upheld by faith – in this case, fear of the unknown. It’s surprisingly easy to convince a consumer to leap to the defense of anything based on his faith in their semi-shoddy services than it is to persuade that consumer to try to make an enlightened choice..
Which is why Sony still sells products, despite having a long and persistent track record of treating their customers with contempt. Even Microsoft is better at PR these days.
many deists start agnostic but realize they still believe in some form of higher power, and thus are more deist. others are christians who dont actually follow the bible as it is written (thankfully) and they too are really closer to deism. free thinkers are atheist agnostic and deist. this applies to all of them or should.
It’s hard to find a genuine “atheist” as that stance too is upheld by faith. Most people with a smidgeon of intellectual integrity acknowledge that they’re somewhere in the agnostic gray-scale.
A place which lends itself excellently to Deism as it assumes that any creator entity capable of formulating a universe would have little or no reason to tamper specifically with what amounts to a cluster of bacteria in the corner of a petri dish except out of scientific curiosity.
Deism is basically the preferred religion of the reasoning empiricist.
RT @piratbloggar: Falkvinge on Infopolicy: Abusive Copyright and Patent Laws Go Against My Faith:
Travis McCrea.
One commo… http://tinyurl.com/42oyfbw
RT @falkvinge Abusive Copyright and Patent Laws Go Against My Faith http://is.gd/K0tZQB #infopolicy
RT @falkvinge Abusive Copyright and Patent Laws Go Against My Faith http://is.gd/K0tZQB #infopolicy
Who said that upholding copyright and patent-law had anything to do with favoring capitalism. It is not necessarily so. I think in fact you might be missing out on some pretty hard arguments against intellectual property from certain capitalist thinkers.
I realize it is quite normal to think that whatever is not what I want, must therefore be capitalism, since I am definitely not a capitalist. Or even that everything that is done in favor of big corporations must be capitalist. But I think using that kind of language is encouraging the right-left battle of everyone against everyone which is quite dangerous and unhealthy for people.
Please take a look at
http://mises.org/store/Against-Intellectual-Property-Digital-Book-P10469C94.aspx
Free-online: http://mises.org/books/against.pdf
and
http://mises.org/store/Against-Intellectual-Monopoly-P552.aspx
Free-online: http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.htm
About: http://mises.org/daily/5108/Ideas-Free-and-Unfree-A-Book-Commentary
Two very interesting books, giving many good arguments against such laws.
The argument works for most “atheists” as well, since most of those believe in reason just as much, if not more, than your average Deist. Most people in Western civiliziation who call themselves atheists actually have a relationship to either humanism or science (or both) which very, very closely matches religious faith.