The artificial intelligence MEGATHREAD

[Philo Sofee]

One more before I go to bed. Thanks again for the feedback Philo, you are coming up with things that definitely need explaining.

Gadianton is forcing Mormonism to answer a question it doesn’t fully want to answer:

Maybe the AI forgot about this part:

The OA, in its original form, seems best suited to begin consideration with a single, supernatural entity that has transcended humans long ago as an essence. But the Bible doesn't provide such an easy starting point. Instead, it tells us Jesus -- a deity -- was a man, and he shares the stage with two other very different kinds of deities.

Christianity does not have the privilege of simply concluding a highest being exists and it's obviously their collection of three deities, one of which has a body. Not to mention all the anthropomorphism of the Old Testament. And so when Christians work out their theology that's based on mythological texts, they are "forcing Christianity to answer a question it doesn't want to answer" and the trinity is the prime example.

What we're looking at is how Mormons (it appears to me) have intuitively worked out the problem of multiple deities being one deity, and this is largely through continuing to mythologize. Mythmaking has Anselm's intuition behind it, in my opinion. If I'm telling a fish story, I'm going to add elements to the story that I intuitively think make the hero greater and greater. If it seems better that the hero did X or Y, then I conclude that the hero must have done X or Y. The iterative refining of embellishments seems particularly Mormon, and to me it fits the first part of Anselm's project but I'm not a medieval scholar, and so it's possible I could have picked a better template. But I think the force of the argument is to drive embellishments until they can't be driven any further, and to arrive at an exclusive winner. And I think it lands on a solution that's surprisingly theoretically stable. In contrast, the trinity must also solve the problem of multiple Gods really being one God, but it's less mythological, and more explicitly theoretical. Where Mormons keep adding planets to make God better, the early fathers either stipulated abstract attributes, theorized about ways a son is equivalent to a father, which is equivalent to the HG who has a totally different role. Mormons end up with equal strong men with the exact same qualities and accomplishments.

Hahahaha! Dude, yer a razor! I haven't gotten to that part yet, but it's coming. You are ahead of the game! LOL! It's exactly why I wanted to see AI discuss your post because you have such insights, such depth. AI does go here with me, it's just a couple morediscussions downthread in the AI back and I forth I engaged in is all. I am posting them one at a time. Like I said, I have almost 300 pages from this! What a blast! Patience mi amigo, it's all gonna come out...... I am stoked! You asrtound me Gad......no seriously, hat off man........this is better than I expected it to be.

[I Have Questions]

The problem as I see/saw it is that Blake himself is not here. There have been relatively few members of the church that have put out the volume of material that he has that deals with the ontological/metaphysical arguments you put out there

I agree that Blake deserves a lot of credit for putting together the materials he has. I've read some of his stuff, in particular the one that collects all the deep doctrine quotes and tries to work it out. If he wants to register and discuss I'd love to hear what he has to say. Something tells me he wouldn't be interested. If you want a fast copy-paste summary, I can drain it to the bone, you can email him and say hey, this guy on the Internet has this idea I hadn't heard before, what do you think?

The funny thing is, we seem to agree (as does DCP) on the implication of his most controversial point. He has GTF, and I have (or rather Chapel Mormons like my parents have) the F-S chain, they both say that deified men can't really be "God" in the same way "God" is.

Another option since you are so enamored by Blake's work: read his essay carefully, and then start a thread on it and put some effort into it yourself.

[Limnor]

Maybe the AI forgot about this part:

The OA, in its original form, seems best suited to begin consideration with a single, supernatural entity that has transcended humans long ago as an essence. But the Bible doesn't provide such an easy starting point. Instead, it tells us Jesus -- a deity -- was a man, and he shares the stage with two other very different kinds of deities.

Christianity does not have the privilege of simply concluding a highest being exists and it's obviously their collection of three deities, one of which has a body. Not to mention all the anthropomorphism of the Old Testament. And so when Christians work out their theology that's based on mythological texts, they are "forcing Christianity to answer a question it doesn't want to answer" and the trinity is the prime example.

What we're looking at is how Mormons (it appears to me) have intuitively worked out the problem of multiple deities being one deity, and this is largely through continuing to mythologize. Mythmaking has Anselm's intuition behind it, in my opinion. If I'm telling a fish story, I'm going to add elements to the story that I intuitively think make the hero greater and greater. If it seems better that the hero did X or Y, then I conclude that the hero must have done X or Y. The iterative refining of embellishments seems particularly Mormon, and to me it fits the first part of Anselm's project but I'm not a medieval scholar, and so it's possible I could have picked a better template. But I think the force of the argument is to drive embellishments until they can't be driven any further, and to arrive at an exclusive winner. And I think it lands on a solution that's surprisingly theoretically stable. In contrast, the trinity must also solve the problem of multiple Gods really being one God, but it's less mythological, and more explicitly theoretical.

Like Philo I’m grateful for this study, especially this part.

[Gadianton]

all the gods have to do their time as a savior on a planet as Jesus did. Even our Father was a mortal prior to the godhood he possesses. And "exaltation" is not a single

That would be like, the epic deep doctrine of all time. To make everyone equal, I think Jesus would have had failed incarnations until he he "got it right" as Jesus. The problem with Jesus is that he becomes a uniquely great God, having lived a sinless life. But it is a startling, epic deep doctrine that you're proposing. There is this story called "MG 2.0 enters into his exaltation" or something like that I posted on this board a few months ago. Limnor, in another thread, brought up the idea of people self-consigning themselves to their fate, whether it's heaven or hell. Mormonism is big on this idea also. That was the point of this story. This character -- not necessarily to be confused with any other persons who just happen to have the same name -- dies and goes to the spirit word where he meets is spirit guide, who gives him a glimpse of the "harsh realities" of being a God, who basically watches people suffer endlessly 24/7. The visual I had in mine comes from the backstory of Dune, where guild navigators are thrown into tanks of spice and they either adapt or fail, ultimately becoming "third stage" guild navigators if they have the chops. Dune is a very Mormon universe in my opinion and why Hitler's work has been done ten thousand times and not Frank Herbert's or Georg Cantor's tells you everything that you need to know about what Mormonism has become. Anyway, in the MG story, MG drops out of the God program without realizing it, visits his uncle in the Terrestrial Kingdom because it's one level down. It's implied that his uncle had worked his way up from the Telestial to the Terrestrial. Through trickery, MG's uncle steals his robe, which gives him access to the Celestial kingdom. MG gets stuck in the Terrestrial Kingdom, but it's exactly what he was expecting in terms of an easy life with good food, family, and easy times, and so he believes he's made it to the top and his memory of the trial program fades. In reality, his uncle, who is implied to be a sociopath, is perfectly suited for Godhood, to become "third stage".

But now that you've pointed this out, I realize the story is flawed. Because while Godhood is a test for the placid, happy-go lucky person with no ambition or self-awareness, but has real human feelings, saviorhood is the right test for somebody, say like Lou, has could watch people suffer all day and is good with it as long as he gets to the top, but has no self awareness in this other way. So in this other kind of story, one would need to image somebody like MG's uncle or Lou getting their call and election and coming into a room thinking they've made it, when it's revealed to reach the next step, they must become the sacrifice.

[MG 2.0]

Inquiry:
If you go through all of the posts in this thread: ( Mormonism's OA and the mighty F-S chain-up through Saturday 10:20am),what comes out the other end as far as the reasonableness of Mormon theology and ontological arguments in regards to their views towards God?

Response:
Across the thread, Mormon theology and its use of ontological‑style moves come out looking at best ad hoc and at worst incoherent when held to the same philosophical standards being discussed (Anselm, Augustine, Gödel, etc.).
​
What the participants are doing
They contrast a “greatest conceivable being” à la Anselm with the Mormon picture of God as an embodied exalted man among a chain of gods (the “F‑S chain”).
​
They note Latter‑day Saint rhetoric about Catholics/Protestants (“God so big he fills the universe, so small he dwells in your heart”) is largely a caricature Mormons tell each other to mock the Trinity, not an accurate statement of classical theism.
​
They bring in Augustine’s and Aquinas’s accounts of transcendence, immanence, and Trinitarian relational love as attempts to spell out what “greatest conceivable being” might actually involve.
​
How Mormon theology fares philosophically
On the “greatest conceivable being” idea

One poster argues that defining God as “the greatest being imaginable” leaves huge ambiguity: is God the ground of all reality or just the top entity within reality?
​
On that axis, Mormonism clearly picks the latter: God is a contingent, physical, located person in a pre‑existing cosmos who advances along a hierarchy, rather than the necessary source of all being.
​
That makes it very hard to plug Mormonism into Anselm‑ or Gödel‑type ontological arguments, which presuppose a necessary, non‑derivative being with maximal perfections, not a powerful local actor in a wider metaphysical environment.
​
On coherence of the Mormon God‑chain

The thread’s discussion of “three Gods and a rule that says there’s only one God” shows how classical Trinitarianism tries to preserve monotheism via intricate metaphysics (e.g., Augustine’s “lover, beloved, love”).
​
Mormonism, by contrast, straightforwardly posits numerically distinct divine individuals in a lineage, with a vague insistence on “one God” at the level of unity of purpose or council, which doesn’t close the gap to philosophical monotheism.
​
When compared to, say, Jehovah’s Witnesses (one God, Jesus not God) or Nicene Christianity (one God, three persons in one being), Mormonism ends up looking like a theologically and metaphysically looser many‑gods picture.
​
On ontological‑argument style reasoning

Posters explicitly distinguish a priori ontological arguments (Anselm, Gödel) from the a posteriori, historically layered constructions of Augustine and later Trinitarian theology.
​
They stress that you cannot derive something like Augustine’s Trinitarian “relational love” structure strictly from Anselm‑type premises; it’s a theological overlay on top of revelation.
​
Mormon appeals to “we also believe in the greatest being” or to “our God is more concrete and personal, so more perfect” come across in the thread as rhetorical rather than as genuine ontological arguments in that technical sense.
​
Overall “reasonableness” verdict in the thread
Participants consistently treat Mormon metaphysics (embodied God, eternal matter, infinite regress of divine beings) as philosophically thin once they step into the same arena as Anselm, Aquinas, Augustine, or Gödel.
​
They see Mormon depictions of classical theism as mid‑level folk caricatures that miss what classical theists actually mean by transcendence, immanence, simplicity, and Trinitarian relations.
​
The upshot is that Mormon theology is not merely “different,” but, on the standards in play in that discussion, not a serious competitor in the ontological‑argument space: it does not offer a coherent account of a maximally great, necessary being, and its God‑chain picture amplifies, rather than resolves, the conceptual problems being raised.
​
If you’d like, I can translate that into a more formal “Mormon OA” reconstruction and show exactly where it breaks compared to Anselmian and Gödelian versions.

Inquiry:

If Blake Ostler were to enter this conversation what would he hold up against the "philosophically thin" view that posters in this thread have painted?

Response:
He would say the picture in the thread is attacking a very crude “folk Mormonism,” not the philosophically developed Mormonism he has tried to articulate, and he would argue that a worked‑out LDS model can be both coherent and robustly theistic.

1. God is not a “local superhero” for him
Ostler explicitly rejects both naïve tri‑theism and the simple “God is just a man who became God” reading; he argues for a social view of the Godhead, where three divine persons are one God in a robust unity of indwelling love and will, in dialogue with contemporary social‑Trinitarian philosophers (Plantinga, Swinburne, etc.).

He insists God is not “finite” in the trivial sense of just one powerful individual among others, but has unsurpassable knowledge, power, and love relative to any actual world, even if he rejects classical attributes like absolute timelessness or impassibility.

2. A different “maximal greatness” package
Ostler accepts something like a “greatest conceivable being” constraint, but he redefines which attributes count as great‑making: libertarian freedom, genuine responsiveness, and relational love take precedence over classical immutability, impassibility, and simple foreknowledge.

From his vantage point, the forum’s charge of “philosophical thinness” misunderstands the trade: he thinks classical theism pays for modal and logical neatness with moral incoherence (e.g., original sin, exhaustive determinism, impassibility), whereas Mormonism (in his version) yields a morally richer picture of God that better fits our deepest intuitions about responsibility and love.

3. Coherence of the Mormon Godhead
Against the “three Gods plus a rule” caricature, he argues Mormon scripture allows a coherent “one God” in the sense of a single, shared divine life and will among distinct centers of consciousness, and he explicitly frames this as avoiding both modalism and crude tri‑theism.

He would say that when critics call that “thin,” they are imposing a classical simplicity/aseity standard that he has already argued is neither biblically required nor philosophically mandatory, so the criticism begs the question against his model.

4. Ontological‑argument territory
Ostler has interacted with “worshipworthiness” and GCB‑style arguments, and he would likely grant that the standard Gödel/Anselm ontological proofs target a different kind of God than his dynamic, passible deity.

But he would reply that the right question is not, “Can Mormonism be plugged into Gödel’s axioms?” but, “Which concept of God is most worthy of worship and morally coherent?”, and on that axis he thinks an LDS‑style, loving, responsive, socially unified Godhead wins, even if that means revising or abandoning classical ontological arguments.

5. Where he would concede ground
He would likely concede that much LDS popular discourse really is as philosophically loose as the posters describe, and that his own proposals (process‑friendly, social‑Trinitarian, rejection of “eternal man became God” in the crude sense) put him at odds with standard pulpit Mormonism.

But he would say that if you take his reconstruction as the live Mormon option, the accusation of “philosophical thinness” loses much of its bite; the real debate becomes a head‑to‑head comparison between a classical Anselmian/Gödelian GCB and a relational, libertarian‑friendly, social‑Trinitarian Mormon God with its own internal metaphysical rigor.

If you want to pull any of 'Blake AI' over into the other thread, that might add some more meat to the discussion.

Regards,
MG

[I Have Questions]

If you want to pull any of 'Blake AI' over into the other thread, that might add some more meat to the discussion.

Regards,
MG

Why don’t you do that yourself instead of asking others to do that for you?

[Marcus]

If you want to pull any of 'Blake AI' over into the other thread, that might add some more meat to the discussion.

Regards,
MG

Why don’t you do that yourself instead of asking others to do that for you?

Mentalgymnast would never do that, because he has no idea whether it would 'add meat' or not. It's very unlikely he read his own AI spewing, let alone the actual thread he wants to disrupt. If he had, he would see that the AI he cut and pasted without understanding suggests that even Blake doesn't support "the reasonableness of Mormon theology and ontological arguments." Without realizing it, mentalgymnast's cut and paste is arguing that Blake's opinions aren't relevant in that thread.

He also is going back on his word, yet again. Today:

Inquiry:

If Blake Ostler were to enter this conversation what would he hold up against the "philosophically thin" view that posters in this thread have painted?

And three days ago:

...I will not use Blake AI to counter any further arguments/logic chains that you put out into the world on this forum...

[Limnor]

Why don’t you do that yourself instead of asking others to do that for you?

Mentalgymnast would never do that, because he has no idea whether it would 'add meat' or not. It's very unlikely he read his own AI spewing, let alone the actual thread he wants to disrupt. If he had, he would see that the AI he cut and pasted without understanding suggests that even Blake doesn't support "the reasonableness of Mormon theology and ontological arguments." Without realizing it, mentalgymnast's cut and paste is arguing that Blake's opinions aren't relevant in that thread.

I agree and read it as Mormon theology appears ad hoc and thin and can’t compete in the discussion we are having. To which point I agree, and think it’s a variation of “play by my rules.”

[huckelberry]

I am not familiar with Blake Ostler. From MG's AI description it sounds like he wants to drop "God was once a man" and choose the traditional trinitarian view with social emphasis.

[Gadianton]

Before your AI can draw conclusions, it needs to understand what's being argued, and it fails 100% at representing anything I've said. That's not the AIs fault, it's your fault because you tried to make it evaluate pages and pages of a meandering conversation, most of which has moved away from the points that I was making in the OP, and you also colored its expectations with your question.

Allow me to show you how to use your AI.

First say this:

"I'm going to paste in an essay, please summarize it for me in 500 words or less, do not praise it or criticize it, just explain what it means."

Then paste in my OP.

Then paste the output here so that I can agree or disagree on its accuracy as a summary.

To help: I performed this exact exercise with DeepSeek just now and I'm happy enough with its output. I'm sure your AI will do fine.

Blake wants to mold Mormonism to contemporary Christian apologetics as much as possible. I think Mormonism should stay true to its mythological roots. Other than breaking down Blake's views, which I already understand, what is there to be gained by this? I can tell you one thing: there is not enough material published by Blake online to create an AI Blake to counter my arguments because Blake has never encountered anything like I'm proposing before and written about.

It's not that AI can't be useful, but you have serious comprehension problems when it comes to AI's obvious limitations.