I attended a church before I moved where nearly 1/3rd of the members were doctors. It was a small congregation, maybe 60 attendees each week. I don't think a week went by where there was not a single beeper or cell phone ringing in church. But everyone tolerated it well because we knew that if we didn't want the doctors to come to church when they are on call, the church would be emptied considerably, and many of our most valuable members would only be able to come every other week. Most of the pagers or phones that they had did not have a vibrate option. They are doctors, not gadgeteers. They get the free phone (or the cheapest phone) that comes with their cellular plan because they don't have the time or don't want to get frustrated with all the extra features. Personally, I don't think that it should be legal to manufacture phones w/out a vibrate option.
Quite honestly, I really DON'T remember what was done before we had cell phones. Did doctors stay at home the whole time they were on call? If that is the case, I think that we can all suffer a few beeps every once in a while so that doctors can leave their houses and live their lives while on call. Insisting that they stay home so that we don't hear beeping is a bit selfish. (Jonathan1 - No, sometimes you can't use your computer without a mouse. There are certain functions where it's absolutely nessecary. Or at least where it would be easier to WALK to CompUSA and buy a replacement. I couldn't do my job without modern technology. (web designing) Or if I use technology that's a few years old I'd be forced out of the job. Sometimes you simply have to move with the times - survival of the fittest)
It's not the beeping in public places that bothers me as much as it is the people who try to hold a conversation on their phones in a theater or at a church service. The least they can do is answer it, whisper "hold on" to the person on the phone and then leave the room.
Personally, I ALWAYS leave my phone on vibrate as a curtesy to others around me.
Lotak - I remember reading about a year ago about how Bluetooth would make things easier. Soon all phones will have Bluetooth capability. There would be a bluetooth broadcaster in the church sanctuary that would broadcast an instruction to all the phones to switch to vibrate mode. I think that this would be a far better solution. But the problem is the slow adoption of Bluetooth.
There are so many ways to get in touch with someone if need be, such as answering machines, voice mail and email. Maybe not in real time, but damn close. It's proven that many people are not sensible enough to turn off their f---ing phones in certain public places where these intrusive ring tones are not appreciated and I fully agree with anyone who installs a blocking device in church, theaters, cinemas, restaurants and even airplanes.
i've had a cell phone since cell phones were available and extremely expensive and very large. even though i was young and not making much money. they're handy and i like having one. that said, let me also say that while they can be great to have, they are hardly a necessity.
i was quite disgusted with these gold plated diamond studded phones coming on the market that will cost 20 to 200 grand. pretty no one is so important in our society that they have to have a cell phone welded to them. they may think that they are but they're not. and stop screaming into your phone. no one cares what you are saying. stop showing off and being stupid and pretentious and tiresome and selfish.
that's not to say that a cardiac specialist or a brain surgeon shouldn't have a cell phone, and they can always set them to vibrate. and to answer the person who didn't know what doctors did before cell phones - pagers have been around for decades. also, those people on transplant lists carry them and have been carrying them for years. also, one can leave a message and say that i am at 'such-and-such' a place. common sense.
anyway, in this consumer-mad society, people whine about all their toys. what a bunch of low-life losers. even the poorest person in North America is living large compared to the rest of the world. kids are dying of hunger and going blind for want of simple medicines. people are drowning in floods and dying in earthquakes. many nations are engaged in long-term vicious civils wars, real wars by the way, not one made up for the media. AIDS is devastating Africa and diseases we don't worry about are killing off entire generations in developing nations.
and what do we do? we sit and watch it on CNN and whine that we need bigger tvs, faster cars, bigger boats and more, More, MORE. and if you resemble that remark and are resentful of what i am writing: then well and good, you should get angry, not at me, but at yourself. the world does not revolve around you and your toys. remember the saying: I USED TO CRY BECAUSE I HAD NO SHOES UNTIL I MET SOMEONE WHO HAD NO FEET.
What if you are a doctor though? Or have one of those "transplant" beepers where they beep you when awaiting an organ transplant? Obscure possibilites, true - especially that second one - but possible.
Then don't go to church if you are awaiting an organ. Besides, and don't take offense, this is just an opinion.. why would you really go to church if you're awaiting an organ? I really don't think it would make a difference.
This is a tough call for me. I guess it really comes down to two things; safety, and freedom.
Safety: Even though the chance of missing a call is not _likely_ to cause any real danger, it is a possibility especially in the case of a doctor.
Freedom:We have to balance the freedom of the priest with the freedom of his parishoners. And the freedom of the mobile phone toting parishoners who feel they need to stay in touch with the non phone carriers who want to go to church in peace.
So for me I believe that people should be able to go to church and not hear a cell phone, but I also believe that people should have a right to have their phone on but they should also be considerate and put their phone on a silent/vibrate mode while in church, a library or the movie theater, etc. I don't know how you could handle this in a church, but if I ran a movie theater my policy would be: If your phone rings or beeps, etc. during the movie then you are out and they take your name, etc. If it happens a second time with the same person then you are banned from the theater for a period of time, say 6 months. A third time and you are not welcome back for a year. That would be enough to induce most people to be SURE their phone was off or in silent mode before they went in. Of course, that probably wouldn't work for a church.
This issue takes me back to when digital watches first came out and for several years after that. It seemed like everybody liked to set them to beep once or twice on the hour. You would be at a house of worship or at a movie and you would hear this chorus of beeps over several seconds around the top of the hour. The other thing that would happen is that people would have their alarms set and not know it or not even know how to turn them off and they would go off in church or theaters and other places where they would disturb others. Pagers too went through this as they were much more prevalent than phones much earlier. They would go off, the person would turn red and either silence it or run out of the auditorium, theater, chapel, etc. Eventually people learned to turn off the annoying watch beeps and alarms and to get silent mode pagers and keep them on silent mode. This will happen with phones too. It is just too early.
So, in the final analysis I think the rights to carry a mobile phone for purposes the owner of the phone feels are important enough outweigh a persons right not to be occasionally annoyed. Especially when you consider that mobile phones are likely to be less and less annoying as people get used to them and as society is more sensitive to the annoyance factor of them. Believe it or not, there is no inviolate right to peace and quiet in public places. Remember, cell phones aren't the only noise makers in church. Babies probably cause more of a disturbance than phones. Do we want to ban them or muzzle them? Of course not. I am a parent and I went through that stage with all of my kids. All week long you try to get them to talk and you cheer over any unintelligible giberish they scream out. Then you take them to your place of worship and they continue to "talk" to you and you try to hush them up. Or they cry or make some other noise. You try to get them to stop crying or talking or whatever. It doesn't work. The people turn around and look at you with that look that says "can't you control your baby? Take them out!" And then you do take them into the lobby.
Of course, this is just my considered yet humble opinion.
What's the area of coverage of these "blockers"? Presumably it must be (roughly) spherical - all other things being equal.
Don't know about anybody else but I don't recall seeing that many spherical churches!
So - either there must still be a valid signal in the corners (ie the "blocked" area is smaller than the church) or the blocking must extend beyond the legal boundaries.
That could make for an interesting precedent. Think how chuffed you'd be if you ran a 24/7 IT support function and suddenly discovered that your mobile/pager didn't work because you lived or worked next to a Church (or Cinema, or Restaurant etc).
so what, if it IS some sort of emergency, i would rather be in the house of God anyways... 8)
I also agree - there are situations where a ringing phone just is not on. In Hospitals and aircraft in the UK we are required to turn off mobile phones - there is no requirement to deactivate pagers as far as I have seen. In church the ring of a mobile phone is not acceptable and people should turn them off without being forced to do so. For the FEW who absolutely have to be contactable vibro mode is available in many phones and the excuse that a person eg a Doctor needs to be contactable cuts no ice with me. Switch them off - or silence them.
Hmmm... I always thougtht one of the basics of Christianity was tolerance. It would appear I'm wrong.
Do you REALLY want to go there? I don't want to see this thread turn into an anti-Christian Jihad, so I'm not going to respond to this. And you're doing this on Easter Sunday of all times <sigh>. :cry:
Bluetooth solution
Linear Mode
