American Idol for Gods

[_The Nehor]

No, the sham can't. I've heard the Islamic version of heaven and even what supposedly Heaven's Gate led to. Apples and oranges. My description (inadequate though it would be) is nothing like the one they gave. Also, what I felt and saw makes me LESS likely to commit murder. So yes, my experience was nothing like theirs.

What differs is the details added to the core experience. The core experience - the power to convict the individual that the experience comes from God and shares some "truth" - remains constant.

Everything I've seen and read indicates that weak-willed people have a tendency to fly to extremes. I think your examples exemplify this. I don't know enough about Heaven's Gate dogma to comment much on this. However, the Islamic extremists focus on the political goals of their God. I have seen no evidence whatsoever that those involved in promulgating it by the sword pay any heed at all to the lessons of the Koran regarding kindness, forgiveness, and the like. Why do these devout believers willing to sacrifice their lives for their God think some of his word is worthless? There is more going on there then simple devotion to God. Apples and oranges.

Is that right? You are not well informed. Part of the reason that Islamic extremists are successful is that terrorism is only a part of their agenda - they also engage in strenuous charitable acts. They build roads, schools, provide food for people who would otherwise have nothing.

Besides, this is besides the point, Nehor. The point is that you are convinced - due to the intensity of your experience that it could not be triggered by a sham. The content of what these other people believe is irrelevant to my point. The only relevance is the intensity of their conviction that their experience MUST come from something real, that it could NOT be caused by a sham.

To a degree you'll find this in my own faith. Those who trumpet their faith but violate God's laws routinely or those who spend their time trying to recreate consecration or becoming cranks about the Word of Wisdom but ignore lessons on charity and sacrifice.

This is nothing but a rabbit trail to avoid the real point.

I'll try one more time: the point has to do with power of conviction.

Can people be powerfully convinced of things that are, in actually, a sham?

The obvious answer is YES, of course they can. So powerfully convinced they cut off their own genitalia.

I can't believe I'm having to argue that my religious beliefs are different then those of the insanely murderous.

Let me try a different tact here. Let's take an unreligious serial killer or a castration fetishist. How do they reach the point that they are willing to do these things without intense religious experiences? What conviction drives them? Should I assume that someone who gets some kind of perverse pleasure from doing these things has had a more intense spiritual experience then I have? Or even one of the same type?

I don't see how rewriting one's moral code requires religious experiences in the first place. I don't see how a religious experience on the types I've experienced could in any way, shape, or form lead to the kinds of madness you're suggesting. I take that back. My experiments with Satanism might compare. An interesting thought. The only time I even momentarily considered such black crimes....

Okay, I'm convinced on the point that others can gain conviction from spiritual experiences that rival or surpass mine or any other LDS believer. I would not argue that they felt any of the fruits of the Spirit of God in the process: peace, comfort, charity, etc.

I guess the conclusion I reach is this. Some of them may not have been convinced by experiences but by other things (whatever motivates the above serial killer). Those who have dark spiritual experiences may be more convinced of it then I am but they're likely morally bankrupt by that time if they can believe it totally. They will also be very messed up.

[_amantha]

If your god is the a priori embodiment of perfect morality than he is also perfect in every conceivable way.

This seems unremarkable on the surface, until we point out that Amantha has modified God's embodiment of perfection with the term a priori. Yet the Gospel, as taught, mentions or implies nothing regarding God's attributes being a priori. Indeed, the true character of God cannot be known other than by revelation. Hence, as in the First Vision, or through the confirming witness of the Holy Spirit, God's nature comes to be known to mortals as a line upon line learning process, mediated by the Spirit. Our knowledge of him is hardly independent of experience.

Further, whether or not he is perfect in every conceivable way (which I would accept, including in ways not yet conceivable), is irrelevant to the manner in which he is known.

If he is perfect in every conceivable way, then we are speaking of a being who is self-contained and has no need of any imperfection such as human beings to participate in his perfection. This being lacks motivation. Morality is about choice making. A perfect being has no need to make choices because s/he already exists in a state of perfection. Any choice would necessarily be in the direction of less perfection.

This argument breaks down along several dimensions for the following reasons:

1. There is no necessary reason to believe that, although God is perfect respecting his own personal attributes, that this perfection extends to specific aspects or regions of the universe around him, as the argument itself implies. However, our author seems to accept, for some reason, the assumption (and this does not appear to be a sound logical conclusion from first principles) that since God has no need of further personal perfection, he therefore can have no desire to perfect other things/beings outside himself.

This does not follow in any necessary sense from God's perfect personal attributes, nor does in follow from what LDS theology actually teaches (and Amantha is, at all events, criticizing LDS theology) about God, ie., that he is a God of love and other feelings and perceptions that exist within him in perfection. Amantha, like the Medieval schoolmen, is trying to construct a deductive, semi-mathematical abstraction, a cosmic strawman with which to knock down the God whom LDS actually worship.

Our author claims:

then we are speaking of a being who is self-contained and has no need of any imperfection such as human beings to participate in his perfection.

Amantha here does not understand LDS theology, which does not teach that God is self contained in the neo-Platonic, transcendent sense in which she appears to think necessary. God himself, thought personally perfect, is himself embedded in a reality external to him, a reality of which he is master and commander, but which he did not create from whole cloth and the eternal laws of which he cannot himself deviate without becoming non-God.

To say that God "does not need" imperfect creatures to participate in his perfection is to claim that God does not need perfect creatures to participate in his perfection (assuming the imperfect creatures could become perfect). But if God is not motivated by abstract principles of logical necessity only, but by perfect passions, desires, and pure, perfect love, it is the case that he can desire imperfect creatures to exist that they may become perfect and achieve the same perfection he experiences.

In becoming perfect, these sons and daughters do not confer on God any further personal attributes of perfection. They do, however, increase the joy he has in being perfect. If our joy will be great in the Kingdom of Heaven over one soul saved, imagine this in the many billions, trillions, and numbers stretching into mind numbing infinity.

Amantha's position here, interestingly enough, in claiming for God both total perfection and, at the same time, putting strict restraints on what God can do and what might motivate his actions and designs, denies to her perfect God both free will and any perfections relating to desires or perceptions outside strict deductive logical rules, which she apparently thinks are all that would govern the mind and motivations of a perfect being. For Amantha, God could be perfectly logically (I need no further perfection), but cannot have perfect feelings and emotions (I want the other imperfect intelligences around me to share in my perfection, not so much because I need them to, as because I want them to).

This being lacks motivation. Morality is about choice making. A perfect being has no need to make choices because s/he already exists in a state of perfection. Any choice would necessarily be in the direction of less perfection.

Again, God would lack motivation only if that God were the ultimate, transcended ground of being itself, and needn't have created anything at all. A God, however, who was himself, coexistent eternally with that universe(s), among an infinite number of other intelligences like himself of the same inherent capacity and potential, and who was capable of experiencing love and desire for the joy of others in perfection, would have no reason not to desire the perfection of those other intelligences.

Love, by its very definition, is not self contained, but expansive and communal.

Although God need not make personal choices relevant to his own state of being, the other intelligences do need to make choices, and God is that being who provides them the opportunities and conditions under which to make those choices. That God need not make moral choices relative to his own life experiences is not in question.

You can then argue, that it is simply god's nature to create and therefore create imperfect beings such as humans. If this is the case, then a volitional god becomes superfluous and all that need be posited for the creation of moral man is avolitional and amoral nature itself.

Moral man exists because of attributes inherent in eternal intelligence, not in God. God did not bring man out of whole cloth. He provides intelligence the opportunity to engage and interact with physical element and the conditions of mortality, but our choices are a intrinsic aspect of our "beingness".

If your physically limited "superman" god created me, he made a choice to do so and therefore decrees his less than perfect morality. If no choice was involved then we are not talking about a distinct, thinking, volitional being.

LDS theology takes no such positions. The strawmen abound here. God did not create you in any ultimate sense. He created the conditions for the emergence of a coherent, individuated self, and organized and created the conditions for your eternal progression. You and I and God had no choice (the one aspect of the universe in which fee agency is really of no relevance) as to our existing. Our only choice is the level of existence at which we will exist.



Loran

Again the discussion devolves into the special knowledge claim, i.e., knowledge of the special form of "limited" perfection of the Mormon god, whose qualities and quantities no one can understand except those who have sufficiently submitted themselves in order to receive a special revelation from this special and limited "perfected" being. Notice that the word "perfect" ceases to mean anything to the world at large.

The argument fails simply because Coggins7 cannot infallibly know anything. His whole argument is based on his own claim to perfection for he must first claim perfect knowledge before he can claim that his god is perfect. It is necessarily a circular argument and demonstrates the extent of self delusion that an imperfect being must go through to claim the special and limited perfection of his god, who, of course, must also become your god for you to not suffer eternal neutering. This argument is one which Coggins7 has failed to answer time and again on this board.

The utterly bankrupt crux of his argument is that his specially perfect god is able to bypass the imperfection of his mortal mind to assure him of his own specially perfect nature. The evidence that this is not true is in the nature of testimony bearing. Testimonies must be born again and again in order to not lose their stabilizing force in the belief in the supernatural claim--until sufficient affirmation blots out all doubt. If the communication of the spirit were infallible, no one would ever doubt it. Yet people fail again and again, thus proving both the fallibility of human certainty about anything and the fallibility of the alleged infallible source.

The whole of the Mormon religion is grounded in the same hubris that is found in most if not all dogmatic religions--the claim of personal infallibility. If they did not claim personal infallibility, their assertions would have no force.

Furthermore, for their specially "perfect" finite god to deprive them of their uncertainty would be to remove some of their agency and to do so is expressly forbidden. Your god cannot make you uncertain if your claims are true--another tautology which punches holes in your argument. You must ever be free to doubt. Your holy ghost witness is simply another way of saying "I am right and you can't prove that I am not." But I have proven it. You are fallible and therefore you are not certain that your god is perfect in the specially plead way that would like us to believe. You are not certain that your god has spoken to you. You only believe that you are certain and your occasional doubts are proof of the fallible nature of your imaginary god.

Stop vicariously exalting yourself in behalf of your imaginary Mormon eugenicist god. It is arrogant and it is divisive.

[_The Nehor]

Again the discussion devolves into the special knowledge claim, I.e., knowledge of the special form of "limited" perfection of the Mormon god, whose qualities and quantities no one can understand except those who have sufficiently submitted themselves in order to receive a special revelation from this special and limited "perfected" being. Notice that the word "perfect" ceases to mean anything to the world at large.

The argument fails simply because Coggins7 cannot infallibly know anything. His whole argument is based on his own claim to perfection for he must first claim perfect knowledge before he can claim that his god is perfect. It is necessarily a circular argument and demonstrates the extent of self delusion that an imperfect being must go through to claim the special and limited perfection of his god, who, of course, must also become your god for you to not suffer eternal neutering. This argument is one which Coggins7 has failed to answer time and again on this board.

The utterly bankrupt crux of his argument is that his specially perfect god is able to bypass the imperfection of his mortal mind to assure him of his own specially perfect nature. The evidence that this is not true is in the nature of testimony bearing. Testimonies must be born again and again in order to not lose their stabilizing force in the belief in the supernatural claim--until sufficient affirmation blots out all doubt. If the communication of the spirit were infallible, no one would ever doubt it. Yet people fail again and again, thus proving both the fallibility of human certainty about anything and the fallibility of the alleged infallible source.

The whole of the Mormon religion is grounded in the same hubris that is found in most if not all dogmatic religions--the claim of personal infallibility. If they did not claim personal infallibility, their assertions would have no force.

Furthermore, for their specially "perfect" finite god to deprive them of their uncertainty would be to remove some of their agency and to do so is expressly forbidden. Your god cannot make you uncertain if your claims are true--another tautology which punches holes in your argument. Your holy ghost witness is simply another way of saying "I am right and you can't prove that I am not." But I have proven it. You are fallible and therefore you are not certain that your god is perfect in the specially plead way that would like us to believe. You are not certain that your god has spoken to you. You only believe that you are certain and your occasional doubts are proof of the fallible nature of your imaginary god.

Stop vicariously exalting yourself in behalf of your imaginary Mormon eugenicist god. It is arrogant and it is divisive.

That is exactly the point though. The perfect God can and does override our imperfect mind to grant testimonies to us. However, the experience does not last. To stay in touch with the divine you have to become godly. If you fail to do so the experience won't return. You won't have infallible knowledge. You'll have the memory of the event but no longer the certainty that accompanied the original event. When everything is reconfirmed to me every time there is with the experience the reinforced memory of all the previous ones. Only then do I remember what they were truly like. If you stop having them then you can follow what you will and reach whatever conclusions you will and the experience becomes a hyped emotional experience.

Knowledge does not deprive anyone of their agency anymore then knowing that smoking is harmful compels people to stop. People are not strictly rational. Why people expect people to act like it and for God to treat us as if we are is beyond me.

[Dr. Sunstoned]

Again the discussion devolves into the special knowledge claim, I.e., knowledge of the special form of "limited" perfection of the Mormon god, whose qualities and quantities no one can understand except those who have sufficiently submitted themselves in order to receive a special revelation from this special and limited "perfected" being. Notice that the word "perfect" ceases to mean anything to the world at large.

The argument fails simply because Coggins7 cannot infallibly know anything. His whole argument is based on his own claim to perfection for he must first claim perfect knowledge before he can claim that his god is perfect. It is necessarily a circular argument and demonstrates the extent of self delusion that an imperfect being must go through to claim the special and limited perfection of his god, who, of course, must also become your god for you to not suffer eternal neutering. This argument is one which Coggins7 has failed to answer time and again on this board.

The utterly bankrupt crux of his argument is that his specially perfect god is able to bypass the imperfection of his mortal mind to assure him of his own specially perfect nature. The evidence that this is not true is in the nature of testimony bearing. Testimonies must be born again and again in order to not lose their stabilizing force in the belief in the supernatural claim--until sufficient affirmation blots out all doubt. If the communication of the spirit were infallible, no one would ever doubt it. Yet people fail again and again, thus proving both the fallibility of human certainty about anything and the fallibility of the alleged infallible source.

The whole of the Mormon religion is grounded in the same hubris that is found in most if not all dogmatic religions--the claim of personal infallibility. If they did not claim personal infallibility, their assertions would have no force.

Furthermore, for their specially "perfect" finite god to deprive them of their uncertainty would be to remove some of their agency and to do so is expressly forbidden. Your god cannot make you uncertain if your claims are true--another tautology which punches holes in your argument. You must ever be free to doubt. Your holy ghost witness is simply another way of saying "I am right and you can't prove that I am not." But I have proven it. You are fallible and therefore you are not certain that your god is perfect in the specially plead way that would like us to believe. You are not certain that your god has spoken to you. You only believe that you are certain and your occasional doubts are proof of the fallible nature of your imaginary god.

Stop vicariously exalting yourself in behalf of your imaginary Mormon eugenicist god. It is arrogant and it is divisive.

I was hoping that perhaps you would tackle my arguments and propositions in a point/counterpoint manner and actually engage in a coherent, philosophically discussion in a ordered, methodological way. What I see here is a leap into an entirely different argument regarding an entirely different aspect of the discussion, having engaged none of my detailed points, and followed by more fevered pleas to divest myself of my hubristic delusions reminiscent of cries of those who tell me to wake up and realize who the real enemy in the war on terror is (the conservative Jews in the White House and Exxon).

Oh well. Could have been a nice thread.

[_amantha]

That is exactly the point though. The perfect God can and does override our imperfect mind to grant testimonies to us. However, the experience does not last. To stay in touch with the divine you have to become godly. If you fail to do so the experience won't return. You won't have infallible knowledge. You'll have the memory of the event but no longer the certainty that accompanied the original event. When everything is reconfirmed to me every time there is with the experience the reinforced memory of all the previous ones. Only then do I remember what they were truly like. If you stop having them then you can follow what you will and reach whatever conclusions you will and the experience becomes a hyped emotional experience.

Knowledge does not deprive anyone of their agency anymore then knowing that smoking is harmful compels people to stop. People are not strictly rational. Why people expect people to act like it and for God to treat us as if we are is beyond me.

Thank you for admitting that the spiritual witness does not convey absolute certainty; that you do not know without a shadow of a doubt; that you must persist in desiring to believe in order to accrete your testimony.

This skill is native to all humans and requires no supernatural intervention.

I understand the desire to believe. It can bring comfort and I believe that all humans are capable of believing just about anything they put consistent and determined investment in.

This is the whole point of my thread. Why do I want to invest considerable ongoing effort to maintain a belief in a plan which purports to deprive 99.9999999% of the participants of their creative powers.

The salvation of the ordinary Christian who believes that grace alone has saved him is much more appealing. My time would be better spent creating spiritual memories around that concept.

Your creed lacks force and verve. It offers nothing but family reunions (with the very few who will qualify) in a realm designed to exclude the unworthy masses from passing on their seed. That's really it in a nutshell. Your assertion that this Celestial Kingdom of yours is the "only" place where pure love can exist is just your hope and is likely just be your animal stubborness in wanting to be right about your spiritual investment. That behavior would certainly correlate with the nature of animal evolution.

What you are experiencing is your faith, not knowledge and I accept that. I don't wake up every day having to shore up my current knowledge that gravity will work today. You, on the other hand, must reinforce your spiritual memories with periodic spiritual witnesses. This is faith my friend.

[_The Nehor]

That is exactly the point though. The perfect God can and does override our imperfect mind to grant testimonies to us. However, the experience does not last. To stay in touch with the divine you have to become godly. If you fail to do so the experience won't return. You won't have infallible knowledge. You'll have the memory of the event but no longer the certainty that accompanied the original event. When everything is reconfirmed to me every time there is with the experience the reinforced memory of all the previous ones. Only then do I remember what they were truly like. If you stop having them then you can follow what you will and reach whatever conclusions you will and the experience becomes a hyped emotional experience.

Knowledge does not deprive anyone of their agency anymore then knowing that smoking is harmful compels people to stop. People are not strictly rational. Why people expect people to act like it and for God to treat us as if we are is beyond me.

Thank you for admitting that the spiritual witness does not convey absolute certainty; that you do not know without a shadow of a doubt; that you must persist in desiring to believe in order to accrete your testimony.

This skill is native to all humans and requires no supernatural intervention.

I understand the desire to believe. It can bring comfort and I believe that all humans are capable of believing just about anything they put consistent and determined investment in.

This is the whole point of my thread. Why do I want to invest considerable ongoing effort to maintain a belief in a plan which purports to deprive 99.9999999% of the participants of their creative powers.

The salvation of the ordinary Christian who believes that grace alone has saved him is much more appealing. My time would be better spent creating spiritual memories around that concept.

Your creed lacks force and verve. It offers nothing but family reunions (with the very few who will qualify) in a realm designed to exclude the unworthy masses from passing on their seed. That's really it in a nutshell. Your assertion that this Celestial Kingdom of yours is the "only" place where pure love can exist is just your hope and is likely just be your animal stubborness in wanting to be right about your spiritual investment. That behavior would certainly correlate with the nature of animal evolution.

I didn't admit that the spiritual witness does not convey absolute certainty. I stated that the witness is certain but the certainty leaves the mind of the human unless followed. The certainty is there. However it diminishes.

Why should you follow the plan? The first cause would be because it is true and works. Also because even if your obscenely high percentage (which is believe is incorrect) were accurate shouldn't you seek out the best you can find? If 99% of humanity willingly walked into annihilation or even contentment (which is what those who fail to achieve exaltation largely achieve) is that good reason to not seek out the best?

[_amantha]

I was hoping that perhaps you would tackle my arguments and propositions in a point/counterpoint manner and actually engage in a coherent, philosophically discussion in a ordered, methodological way. What I see here is a leap into an entirely different argument regarding an entirely different aspect of the discussion, having engaged none of my detailed points, and followed by more fevered pleas to divest myself of my hubristic delusions reminiscent of cries of those who tell me to wake up and realize who the real enemy in the war on terror is (the conservative Jews in the White House and Exxon).

Oh well. Could have been a nice thread.

I don't have to attack each point. Everything you affirmed goes to your spiritual witness. You claim that your god has some kind of perfection which is limited. What does that even mean? Of course it means nothing. It means whatever you say it means based on your special and "infallible" communion with god.

Filling the page with words that have special meaning to you only, does not a good argument make. I will not make your arguments for you. Your theology, as with most dogmas, first seeks to redefine the language in order to coopt willing minds. Perfection for you has only the meaning you choose to assign to it. Your theology revolves around your spiritual witness. If that fails, so does the rest. Having a Carteresque summit with Hamas only lends credence to Hamas. Debating your vacuous theology line by line only gives credence to your vacuous theology. It's unnecessary. It is enough to know that your "plan of salvation" is all about spiritual eugenics in a very ugly form. Why would anyone want to pursue a spiritual witness of that?

To the rest of us a perfect entity is impossible. We have no experience of that. We don't make that claim. A perfect entity would be "done," "whole," "complete." Yet your "perfect" being is "perfect" in some other way. He is "personally perfect." And this is meaningless gibberish except to those who wish to buy it in the free market place of enslaving ideas. Caveat emptor.

[_amantha]

I didn't admit that the spiritual witness does not convey absolute certainty. I stated that the witness is certain but the certainty leaves the mind of the human unless followed. The certainty is there. However it diminishes.

Why should you follow the plan? The first cause would be because it is true and works. Also because even if your obscenely high percentage (which is believe is incorrect) were accurate shouldn't you seek out the best you can find? If 99% of humanity willingly walked into annihilation or even contentment (which is what those who fail to achieve exaltation largely achieve) is that good reason to not seek out the best?

So your certainty is an uncertain kind of certainty. Whatever do you mean?

Stop twisting in the wind.

[_Coggins7]

Thank you for admitting that the spiritual witness does not convey absolute certainty; that you do not know without a shadow of a doubt; that you must persist in desiring to believe in order to accrete your testimony.

He admitted no such thing. You're not following the arguments being made Amantha, but you are, quite clearly, having a very good one with yourself and some imaginary enemies not present in this forum.

[_amantha]

Thank you for admitting that the spiritual witness does not convey absolute certainty; that you do not know without a shadow of a doubt; that you must persist in desiring to believe in order to accrete your testimony.

He admitted no such thing. You're not following the arguments being made Amantha, but you are, quite clearly, having a very good one with yourself and some imaginary enemies not present in this forum.

You won't have infallible knowledge. You'll have the memory of the event but no longer the certainty that accompanied the original event.

If people can fail to get an infallible witness then how is the witness infallible? There is a weak link in the chain. It is apparent, at least from The Nehor's description, that your god does not go out of his way to overcome your infallibility. Then from whence is your certainty?

It is in your faith.

I have no enemies here. I merely disagree with your dogma. It is repulsive and deserves to be seen for what it really is, not how the Jason Bourne's of the world wish to perceive it.




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