Does this seem very "intelligent" to you? - updated 22Feb

[malkie]

I was thinking about the Elder Gilbert thread today, especially this brief exchange:

The world is full...well, at least there are a lot of them...of people that second guess God. Armchair quarterbacks are a dime a dozen.

I, for one, do not second-guess God. I only second-guess the great many lying fraudsters who claim to speak for God.

I started working backwards from that idea, and before too long my thoughts led me to this:

Intelligence has several meanings, three of which are: (1) It is the light of truth that gives life and light to all things in the universe. It has always existed. (2) The word intelligences may also refer to spirit children of God. (3) The scriptures also may speak of intelligence as referring to the spirit element that existed before we were begotten as spirit children.

Guide to the Scriptures: Intelligence

If we could get in touch with our inner eternal "intelligence"[3], and ask it/her/him for an opinion, I wonder how many of us would wish that that "more intelligent than all" guy had just minded his own business and left us alone to get on with ours.

As far as I can see, there's no indication that our "spirit elements" were suffering, or even uncomfortable or unhappy in any way with how we were in the beginning. But the guy who decided that he was smarter than all of the rest of us also decided that he was going to drag us along into his scheme - kinda like "I'm #1 god. I'm from the eternal government, and I'm here to help you. You'll like it - honestly, you'll see!". #1 god creates something called "spirits" for us - apparently, as future eternal archeologists may find, a kind of transitional form between intelligences and physical beings.

We're all roped in, willy nilly, expected to just take smarty-pants' word for it that we were going to be better off, and look what happens: war breaks out because one third of of the spirits don't like the plan that #1 god created to make himself even more powerful than he was to start with, and so he banishes them.

The other two thirds are eventually sent to earth as spirits clothed in corporeal beings, apparently to learn a bunch of lessons. But we don't remember any of what went before, and, independent intelligent beings that we are, not all of us can just take it on faith that the story told to us by the people Equality mentioned - the ones claiming to represent #1 god - is true: And we don't much like it that we're told that we will be punished if we don't eventually fall in line. Some of us will find ourselves punished for eternity. What the Fetch! Remember, we were there from the start, before #1 god got his fancy ideas.

Effectively we (members of this board, and every other human past, present & future) are here because #1 god was bigger and stronger than we were, and forced us to exist under his dictatorship.

#1 god then set up an organization (called the church) here on earth, and allows his favourite humans, known as "leaders", to pass on his dictates to us (or so they say), and "seal" punishments on us for breaking arbitrary rules - things that hurt nobody else, but are defined as "sins".

Although some of these leaders are real pr!cks, and are totally full of themselves, one of the worst sins we can commit is to criticise them, even if the criticism is valid. We are just expected to be obedient, to learn to do what we are told, even if it goes against our strongest inner values of right and wrong.

This is the so-called Plan of Happiness, even though we may have been perfectly happy originally, and would rather have been left alone. We cannot know if that's the case, because we're not allowed access to that information - it's been blanked out from our memories before we were sent to become humans on earth.

#1 god tells us, through his leaders, that he wants all of us to have the opportunity to become like him (a bit of vanity - what if that's not what we want), but he also tells us that his ways are not our ways, so really we have no clue if any of it is true. But one thing seems fairly certain: we were all OK as we were before #1 god set us on this road, but now at least one third of us will not be OK.

Am I the only one who feels a bit uncomfortable with this "plan"?

[Everybody Wang Chung]

The Plan of Salvation is ridiculous. The idea that worthiness gets to be defined and judged by one space entity's specific standard, and failure to meet it results in worse outcomes than if we had never met this space entity? Being told we chose this plan while having our memories of that choice erased creates a Catch-22 where we are held accountable for a contract we can't remember signing.

Makes total sense.

[Gadianton]

Great thoughts there, Malkie, I do have to wonder what the 1/3d think about, after having lived from infinity in the past in a good situation up until the time of gaining a spirit body. They vote for the wrong candidate, and even though the right candidate wins 2-1, for voting for the wrong guy they're sent to outer darkness from then until infinity future.

[Limnor]

If intelligences are eternal and God Himself progressed, and presumably Grandfather God before him backwards into eternity, why is our participation in this particular version any more binding over any other plans we surely must have at least heard about. Wouldn’t eternal intelligences have already existed under prior Gods’ administrations?

[Everybody Wang Chung]

If intelligences are eternal and God Himself progressed, and presumably Grandfather God before him backwards into eternity, why is our participation in this particular version any more binding over any other plans we surely must have at least heard about. Wouldn’t eternal intelligences have already existed under prior Gods’ administrations?

[Limnor]

Keep following it and even God the Father is your eternal intelligence brother or something.

I’m not sure if there is an official explanation for the metaphysics but I imagine there would be something like “we don’t know a lot about that.”

[Rivendale]

Don't forget. The memory wipe has a gradient. When you die and "wake up" you still don't recover your eternal self. You must wait for the 13 year old to baptize yourself and subsequently ruminate on the pros and cons of the decision. Your eternal self is purposely kept in a state of ambiguity after death only to be revealed when?

[Rivendale]

If intelligences are eternal and God Himself progressed, and presumably Grandfather God before him backwards into eternity, why is our participation in this particular version any more binding over any other plans we surely must have at least heard about. Wouldn’t eternal intelligences have already existed under prior Gods’ administrations?

How does an eternally existing being gain an advantage? Slackers don't count. They could be eternally slacking?

[malkie]

The Plan of Salvation is ridiculous. The idea that worthiness gets to be defined and judged by one space entity's specific standard, and failure to meet it results in worse outcomes than if we had never met this space entity? Being told we chose this plan while having our memories of that choice erased creates a Catch-22 where we are held accountable for a contract we can't remember signing.

Makes total sense.

Before I was converted to Mormonism I never thought about these things, because in Presbyterianism, we humans are not the same species as the Church of Scotland god. And, at least till I became a Mormon I don't recall ever hearing any church talk about anything much other than New Testament stories, and a sprinkling of the Old Testament, and sermons on common morality.

God was the personage of the popular CoS hymn:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise.

Immortal, invisible, God only wise

There was no "back story", and no expectation that the after-death existence for a human could be other than being sent to hell, or becoming a member of the heavenly choir. And only the most wicked of creatures went to hell.

[malkie]

If intelligences are eternal and God Himself progressed, and presumably Grandfather God before him backwards into eternity, why is our participation in this particular version any more binding over any other plans we surely must have at least heard about. Wouldn’t eternal intelligences have already existed under prior Gods’ administrations?

I think that the #1 god was literally the first to transcend in any way whatever limitations there were in the intelligences-only universe.

So we have nothing to do with Elohim's father, grandfather, etc.

However, I do have to admit that the whole hieing to Kolob idea of never being able to access the actual origin, and the idea that Elohim has done only what his father god did before him, does potentially lead to non-equal infinities. And that there's a whole bunch more non-equal infinities in the future for each of Elohim's children who obeys all of the rules and rituals of Mormonism.