tesuji

I agree. We're not talking about trying to control how other people dress. We're talking about what is right, about the ideal, what we should teach our kids. Self-control is certainly important. It's the only thing nowadays standing between a man and porn addiction.

I assume that most women who dress immodestly don't do it because they want to be leered at. Maybe some do enjoy asserting that kind of sexual power. But whether they are asking for it or not, they are denying the reality of the situation. Gentlemen won't leer if they can help it. But it is still abuse toward the men around her.

My teen daughter doesn't seem to understand modesty either. She sees too much immodesty in the Babylon world around her, I guess, and she like to be fashionable. There are tons of reasons why immodesty is bad. But my short answer is that it's wildly inappropriate, and if you listen to the Holy Spirit it will tell you so. To a woman who doesn't understand how the male brain works - just trust me, we males are hard wired to respond in a strong way to immodesty. Elder Packer said without this, men would probably not settle down into families (too many down sides, from the worldly male point of view...) For me personally, immodesty is probably a lot like someone offering a glass of fine wine to an alcoholic. You can tell me I shouldn't be weak, but that's no practical help. You might feel for some reason you should have the right to dress like a streetwalker if you want. Maybe you should. But follow the prophet on this, if for no other reason than charity toward the men around you.

Just finished The Life of Brian, heavily filtered on Vidangel. I've always wanted to watch this but was too leery. But Vidangel recently added it. I enjoyed a lot of it, was bored for some of it, and enjoyed the last 1/4 a little less. How much you enjoy this will depend on how much you like satire and black comedy, Monty Python style, and how much you think it's specifically satirizing Jesus and Christianity. The Pythons have said they intended the satire to be broader than that and I tend to agree with them. I particularly enjoyed the following scenes, since I've been studying Latin and the Romans lately--

I think I understand you. Thanks for your thoughts. A little skepticism toward any doctrine is good I think. What I mean by rationalizing things away is that if a person applies enough skepticism they can convince themselves to mistrust (and dismiss) anything, even authentic revelations from God. At some point Mormons need to have faith in the scriptures and words of the prophets - the less naive among us realize more what that entails and the included caveats, but even they must have faith. I'm not insisting on faith in this particular sermon by Ballard. But at least in the scriptures and in modern revelation.

I would say it's more than "some man's opinion." It's a formal address given by an apostle given in a church meeting, which was published by Desert Book. This is well above the standard of a member who gets some ideas or personal visions and publishes them (e.g. Julie Rowe). This discourse is also recommend in an LDS manual, Doctrine and Covenants Instructor’s Guide: Religion 324-325, which calls it "An excellent pamphlet discussing Doctrine and Covenants 76," https://www.lds.org/manual/doctrine-and-covenants-instructors-guide-religion-324-325/the-vision-part-2-lesson-29-section-7650-70-92-96-113-19?lang=eng Is it doctrine? Depends on what you mean. Doctrine can just mean "a teaching." Is it official doctrine? That's harder to defend. See my comments above, where I recommend taking this with a grain of salt, as everything. However, it's also easy to rationalize everything away, including the scriptures, if a person wants to. As always, use the Spirit as a your guide and test every doctrine against the scriptures and official statements by prophets.

Thanks. Just what I wanted to know.

Question for those who have seen Deadpool: I automatically dislike the irreverant, crass look of this movie. However, I wonder if I would like it if it was edited for content. Watching it on Vidangel, I couldl make all the swears silent and skip over all the other R stuff. Would this movie be enjoyable, even watchable, if you took out all the R-rated content? Or would too much of the story be missing? Or is it just offensive, no matter what you remove?

Question for those who have seen Deadpool: Based on how it's been marketed, I automatically dislike the irreverent, crass look of this movie. However, I am technically in the target audience (comic book nerds). I wonder if I would like it if it was edited for content. Watching it on Vidangel, I could make all the swears silent and skip over all the other R stuff. Would this movie be enjoyable, even watchable, if you took out all the R-rated content? Or would too much of the story be missing? Or is it just offensive, no matter what you remove?

My wife and I enjoyed Man Up recently. If you like romantic comedies and fun-loving Brits, check it out. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/man_up_2015/ Note: We watched it heavily content-filtered on Vidangel. We would not have enjoyed it otherwise. England has apparently returned to the bawdiness of Shakespeare's time :} https://www.vidangel.com/movie/man-up

I still can't see why anyone would ever want to take a gun to church. Guns in church make me feel extremely much less safe.

One of many enigmatic (to me) passages in the four Gospels. This is one of the reasons I find this book so fascinating. Is Jesus thinking so far above us that we can't fathom him? Or is it some cultural thing we don't understand? Or is it a corruption of the text? Or none or all of these? A while back I found a nifty tool, called the LDS Scripture Citation Index, hosted by BYU: http://scriptures.byu.edu/ Although apparently only two, minor citations in this case, unfortunately. (See the right pane): http://scriptures.byu.edu/#::c08c0f22c8

Is this thread working now? Maybe we should start a new "continued" version?

I hope this never happens but, you know, Last Days. This semi-related scripture comes to mind, about what we can expect the world to become: Also a reminder about how cool Zion will be...

Is it in the scriptures anywhere? I can't think of a place, right off.

Here's one thing I found from Elder Bednar, with a quick Google search, that seems to kind of back up what Ballard says, although Elder Bednar is talking about the importance of being born to earth to receive a body.

Yes, certainly I advise taking it with a grain of salt, like anything else you hear. I think there is a continuum of "trustablility" for things like this. Near the far end, most trustable, I would put the scriptures, official statements by past prophets, and official unanimous statements by the current 15 apostles and prophets. This talk isn't quite that far toward the end of the continuum. But this talk was given by an apostle and apparently published by Deseret Book (see the PDF linked). So I would judge it more "trustable" than some other things. Carborendum, you said, "I do believe this position has been repeated by a number of apostles over a long time period." What do you mean by "this position" - do you mean 1) the doctrinal position stated in the talk by Ballard that I posted, or 2) the position that "This talk falls into the category of one man or small group of men sharing their opinion?" If you mean the position taken by Ballard, then I would love links to those other statements. In the past I have heard members saying that it's easier to progress in this life when you have a body, but I don't remember ever hearing or reading any actual statements by general authorities.

Yes, that's how it affected me to. If it's easier to progress and to repent in this life, and if we must do it eventually anyway, then it makes sense to do it right now. Also, helping others to do the same thing becomes a great service to them.

I read the following recently, from talk by Elder Melvin J. Ballard in 1922. It's had a profound effect on my life, so I thought I would share it: "It is my judgment that any man or woman can do more to conform to the laws of God in one year in this life than they could in ten years when they are dead. "It is much easier to overcome and serve the Lord when both flesh and spirit are combined as one. This is the time when men are more pliable and susceptible. "We will find when we are dead every desire, every feeling will be greatly intensified. When clay is pliable it is much easier to change than when it gets hard and sets. "This life is the time to repent. "That is why I presume it will take a thousand years after the first resurrection until the last group will be prepared to come forth. It will take them a thousand years to do what it would have taken but three score years and ten to accomplish in this life. "I grant you that the righteous dead will be at peace, but I tell you that when we go out of this life, leave this body, we will desire to do many things that we cannot do at all without the body. We will be seriously handicapped, and we will long for the body, we will pray for that early reunion with our bodies. We will know then what advantage it is to have a body. "Then, every man and woman who is putting off until the next life the task of correcting and overcoming the weakness of the flesh are sentencing themselves to years of bondage, for no man or woman will come forth in the resurrection until they have completed their work, until they have overcome, until they have done as much as they can do." p.12, "The Three Degrees of Glory," Melvin J. Ballard, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, 1922 http://www.shields-research.org/General/LDS_Leaders/Q12/Ballard_Melvin_J/01Three_Degrees_cap400x100.pdf

I wanted to like The 100 but way too much sex and violence. Way too much. Also, very targeted toward teens or YA (but, lots of sex and violence?). Anyway, the teen thing was turn off since I'm way past teen. Any time there was a crisis, the adults characters moved to the sidelines and the teens alone solved the problem, often by disobeying the adults in authority. And yeah the lesbian episode is when it totally jumped the shark for me. I just think the creators of these CW network shows are plain wicked. The same with their show Reign, which is ostensibly targeted toward teens, but the first episode had way too much sex so I was done right there.

Well, I certainly believe that everything from before is still recorded in our spirit/minds, but we have the veil blocking all that right now And that the Spirit can give utterance to things beyond our normal mortal ability

I think it might be common for Mormons to think babies remember things from heaven. I am skeptical. Baby's brains are hardly developed. I suspect they have forgotten everything and are basically clueless. I hope I'm wrong, because it's nice to think they might remember heaven. Maybe someone can point out to me when church leaders have said that babies remember heaven. However, in any case, there's no doubt their spirits are still sweet and heavenly, having been entirely uncorrected yet by this mortal world. The following are beautiful sentiments that make me I hope I'm wrong. Having had the privilege of fathering two sweet baby daughters, now I'm going to start to cry, because they are more grown up now...

If you are serious, not joking, maybe someone here will explain about the 95%. I believe it refers to the calculated mass-energy in the universe. Something like that. Most of what apparently makes up that total, we don't have any idea what it is - 95% of it. Normal matter comprises only 5% - what is the rest? I didn't say "buff science buff."

Vidangel just barely got notice that they are being sued by four major studios. So it's just the very beginning of the process. They apparently have a great lawyer. ST: Enterprise I enjoyed, although it appeared to mark a turning point in focusing more on sexual aspects. New Generation and Voyager weren't like that, as I recall. I also really disliked the Vulcan woman character, whatever her name was (no one remind me, please). TURN: violence and sex both. The violence is pretty regular in the show - it is technically a war movie, after all - but no I don't enjoy that either. The sex is not every episode, but is usually PG13 or worse. We're in the habit of skipping past that stuff. Sad.

This is a fascinating thing. We don't know what 95% of the universe is, to best of our current understanding. Am I the only one who wonders if at least part of dark matter is the spirit world? Spirit is matter, but a more refined type that we can't see with our mortal eyes. It will be fascinating to keep following these topics - dark matter, dark energy, dark radiation - and see how long it takes scientists to get some idea of what is going on. The latest I've seen is they think maybe a lot of the "missing" matter (dark matter) is just bajillions of black holes, but that this would also call into our question about how the universe was made. Also, of course, we have the new findings of gravity waves. Now is a great time to be a science buff I also like that all this (should) keep us all humble - a reminder that science, as wonderful and useful as it it, doesn't really have much of a clue about anything. Yet.