Religion

Depicting the pope as a sort of Superman, a star, is offensive to me…the pope is a man who laughs, cries, sleeps calmly, and has friends like everyone else. A normal person.

If I had to take my family to court and convict them of being followers of Christ, I am not sure where I would find the evidence.

There is no safe place in Gaza right now. Bombs can land at any time, anywhere. A small metal shack with no electricity or running water on a jetty in the blazing seaside sun does not seem like the kind of place frequented by Hamas militants - the Israel Defense Forces’ intended targets. Children, maybe four feet tall, dressed in summer clothes, running from an explosion, don’t fit the description of Hamas fighters, either.

I was wondering what’s it like to die. I thought I was going to die, and I didn’t know whether it was going to hurt, whether it was going to be quick. That’s one thought that struck me…You become religious very quickly. Oh yes, made a lot of promises. That’s why I still believe in God.

A corporation is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends. Protecting the free-exercise rights of corporations like Hobby Lobby, Conestoga, and Mardel protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control those companies.

Is it illegal for me to ask what religion a corporation is during a job interview?

I’m absolutely, utterly, and completely certain that God wouldn’t be homophobic. I'd much rather go to hell - I really would much rather go to hell - than go to a homophobic heaven.

It's the one thing we can all relate to no matter what religion, what color, what nationality: we can all relate to sex and love.

There are a lot of politicians who said things about Bowe Bergdahl before he came home, and then…suddenly changed their mind…The best is the people who had tweeted their thoughts and prayers to Bowe Bergdahl. Then all this stuff happened, and they went back and deleted their prayers. You can’t delete a prayer.

Under the Obama regime, the president and his allies are intentional in pursuing these conflicts from the perspective that you must sacrifice your most sacred beliefs to government the instant you start a business. You have the protection of the First Amendment as an individual, you see – but the instant you start a business, you lose those protections.

In a way, being a Mormon prepares you to deal with science fiction, because we live simultaneously in two very different cultures. The result is that we all know what it’s like to be strangers in a strange land. It’s not just a coincidence that there are so many effective Mormon science fiction writers. We don’t regard being an alien as an alien experience. But it also means that we’re not surprised when people don’t understand what we’re saying or what we think.

I think by the age of about nine I recognized that there were a lot of different religions, and it was an accident I happened to be born into one of them. If I had been born somewhere else, I would have had a different one. Which is a pretty good lesson, actually. Everyone should learn that.