Tag: freedom
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Freedom of Religion
The Restored Gospel would have not been possible without freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. It is no coincidence that the world was only ready for modern revelation in the United States where those freedoms are at least theoretically guaranteed. The LDS Church does not go where it would be…
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Choices We Can Make
I am a believer in the concept of moral agency. This is primarily a religious view. The freedom to choose is baked pretty deeply into Mormonism. But another secondary reason it that it seems counterintuitive at best that humans would have evolved a sense that we have freewill if it were only an illusion. That…
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Armistice
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the guns fell silent. World War One was supposed to be the war to end all wars. Over a hundred years of that theory being proven wrong makes me sad. I swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States and…
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Freewill and Power
Some people have more self control than others. Some people have power over others. We are not free in an absolute sense. But if we only have the illusion of self control then that would be a strange twist of evolution. If we believe we are sentient and have the freedom to choose we are…
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Columbus/ Indigenous Day
Today Americans (well US people anyway) are fighting over who’s heritage is more important. In one corner is the European colonizers that started with Columbus. In the other corner are the indigenous peoples of what would eventually be called the Americas. There were some Nordic settlement in North America long before Columbus but they didn’t…
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With Age Comes Wisdom
What do you think gets better with age? If you use your brain your whole life you will use it better in your old age than you did in your youth. There are exceptions of course but the reason old men and women are forced to retire is that we become more dangerous as the…
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Freedom to Think
What does freedom mean to you? I’ve been discussing Victor Frankl with my wife Stephanie and we’ve been arguing over what it means to be free. I hate to admit it but she’s more libertarian these days than I am. She sees only a very broad definition of freedom as freedom at all. This is…
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We were a GM town
Janesville had a General Motors plant for almost a hundred years. Over that time the city got more and more car friendly and less and less pedestrian friendly. Cars were everything here. They were transportation, they were good paying union jobs, and they were freedom. But the plant closed years ago. The lot is an…
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The Right to Offend
I am convinced that the principle of free speech is a heavenly one. It is predicated on the freedom to choose liberty and eternal life (2 Nephi 2:27). It is an essential element in the righteous need to tell the truth. Sometimes the truth offends people, but that offense is not a sufficient reason to…
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Conscience is Atomic
For many years I have asserted that freedom of religion is an inferior way to talk about liberty than freedom of conscience. The biggest reason I have put forth is that appeals to religion shut out a significant portion of the population. It is, and I know this from experience, hard to convince an atheist…
Latter Day Sinner 