A Thought Experiment: Is Mormonism Ultimately Non-Theistic?

[_Jason Bourne]

Darth

As I studied Brigham's AGT I totally understood how he could come up with the ideas. They can fit quite nicely into the teachings about god living on an earth, God the Father having a father and so on.

[_honorentheos]

I specifically said in the thread you are currently reading that Mormons should take the attitude that they don't care what other people think about their beliefs regarding the nature of God.

Perhaps I misread MFB, but I think what you suggest above, Darth, is exactly what he is suggesting as well. I won't speak for MFB, but if any of our past discussions apply here, I think I see what he is getting at.

His suggestions about Adam not being a proto-typical "Man!" but rather just a single point on the line of evolution that happens to be "our most primitive ancestor" can be read to say that our ability to know more about Adam is limited. Which in turn makes it irrelevant. If our current state of knowledge tells us that Adam has to be "some blob of protoplasm", or perhaps more correctly a biological form from which we have inherited certain traits, then that is what he is.

When you talk about absolutes, MFB says "Ok!, but limit the set of absolutes to what pertains to us. Everything beyond that doesn't apply to us anyway, so who cares?" Or, as you suggest, he doesn't care what others think about this theological view because ultimately it works for him.

Or something like that.

Which is fine, really. I think it advances your earlier point in some ways that because LDS theology necessitates an understanding of the nature of man that precedes both this life (both as spirits and as intelligences) as well as precedes the events that led Elohim to become our God (as intelligences) and if one believes in the notion of the "Church of the First Born" that all who are saved and exhalted through Christ ultimately become His children, and He their Father then one has to still question the notion of LDS "Theism". Unless it is a sort of solipsistic theism in the end that we are advancing towards...(by the way - the part about the church of the first born is a necessary point to try and explain the Book of Mormon's twists and turns in Mosiah about the Son and Father. It still doesn't really fix it, but it is more evolved than the assumptions most apply about being "one in purpose".)

I personally would have voted for the laws of the universe as being the real root of LDS theism, but Brigham Young almost had Orson Pratt's apostleship for suggesting this in the Seer so I guess not.

See this link and the entries for January 27, 1860 and March 4, 1860 for some further debate on the subject by the leadership under BY. It's interesting stuff.

[_asbestosman]

Infinite regress may not be very pretty from a philosophical point of view, but I don't see any logical prohibition of it as such.

It becomes a problem of logic when you are stuck trying to define God. If you make the mistake Blake Ostler makes and formulates a God who has to know every state of affairs in the past, he's stuck with a God who either doesn't know every state of affairs, or can never stop remembering.

Why can't He remember infinitely fast (think Zeno's paradox--you travel the last infinity steps in a finite amount of time)? If He can't remember infinitely fast, then why can't He simply recall only the finite subset of relevant events, or ponder infinity relevant events as a group instead of individually?

Now if someone is willing to let go of omnipotence, the burden eases, but you still get stuck with a host of metaphysical problems. How do you even begin to transverse an infinite set for example?

To traverse an infinite set, you need to put some sort of order on it. For example, we can traverse all rational numbers be considering all pairs of natural numbers. We can traverse this by looking at those pairs on a grid and then numbering each par in a triangular fashion. In order, the pairs might be (0,0), (0,1), (1,0), (0,2), (1,1), (2,0), (0,3), (1,2), (2,1), (3,0), etc.

However, this is not always possible. There is no way to traverse all real numbers one step at a time in the way we could do so for the rational numbers since the reals are uncountable.

Maybe, though, I'm misunderstanding what you are saying. Is the question one of how do we start from point A and then traverse an infinite number of points afterwards? I see no mathematical problem with it. Heck, we do it all the time if you think about Zeno's paradox. However, that doesn't necessarily apply to Godhood since we are talking about infinite time instead of infinite steps. Perhaps that could be solved if time is infinite from one observer but not another. Think about what happens when falling into a black hole. For the guy who falls in, time eventually stops (although he'd be dead long before then), but for those of us on the outside, the time is finite.

[_asbestosman]

The "problem," if you view it is a problem, is that in Mormonism, God is relative. Elohim is God relative to us, but not relative to the multiverse because there is a mechanism by which a human becomes a god. By definition, a god in Mormonism is a human who has successfully completed this process. God being "eternal" is relative, not absolute. No matter how big you want the number to be, at some point there had to be a first god because gods are not self-existing. Matter is self-existing in Mormonism, as are spirit and intelligence.

That's a good point. It's definitely a difference between (traditional) Mormonism and most Christians. However, I do think it's logically possible for God to have been God for an infinite amount of time and yet have had a point at which He was not God. I'm thinking of something akin to transfinite ordinal numbers such as omega*2+n (where n is a finite integer).

If our Heavenly Father became God, then necessarily there was a time when he was not God. You don't have to become something that you already are.

Actually, this presents a good problem for my infinite torus model of gods. The problem is that there is a time when God was not God, but if we have a loop that goes in circles--even infinitely long circles,--then it would follow that there is some time after attaining godhood where God reverts to intelligence--non-godhood. This amount of time may be infinite, but it still presents an uncomfortable idea--that of death even though that death may take an eternity to be reached.

When I think of the torus model of gods, It's kind of like Ouroboros in reverse, or that Escher picture floatingboy posted of the hands drawing each other.

The response should be that this is what we believe the nature of God is, and if you don't like it, who cares?

Generally that is my response. I'm just not completely sure what parts of it are official doctrine. I simply like toying with the possibilities.

[_asbestosman]

In any event, trying to tart up Joe Smith's chicanery and delusions with mathematics is a serious disservice to the later.

To me, mathematics is about fun. Sometimes I really don't care if the model I form from math correlates well with reality. It's like when we think about Hilbert's Hotel. I doubt such a thing exists in reality.but it's a fun play what-if with Hilbert's Hotel.

You will note that I never claim that my mathematical model proves that Joseph Smith is correct. I'm not even sure that my model is correct. I just think it's fun. I'd have the same amount of fun if it happened to support Scientology, or even Pastafarianism.

[_mfbukowski]

I thought I was being clear but perhaps I was not.

I agree that we care too much about being part of "Christian theology" (actually apostate Thomistic theology) without really understanding the incredible strength of our own position. If properly understood, I think our position would have such a firm philosophical underpinning that, though it could be questioned, it would place us squarely in a humanistic, materialist milieu which would at least make argumentation on an intellectual level understandable to atheists and others not usually seen as "religious people".

My discussion of Adam was an analogy for looking for a "first cause" or "first god" in the chain. I felt that we were beyond looking for first causes, and was making the point that looking for a first cause as a first god was like looking for Adam's ultimate ancestor- who would have been a blob of protoplasm, the ancestor of all living things.

I don't exactly believe what I am about to say, but I seem to have to alter my terminology to get understood here, so I will use the terminology most will understand.

This is all metaphysics, and as such, is of course, not falsifiable, but I see it as a way to understand all these things in my own mind, and I personally find utility in that fact.

I believe in successive big bangs, followed by successive big crunches. (not exactly what I believe, but that is quick and direct)

But if time and space dissolve and are re-formed, can two such big bangs be called "successive"? Such a position obviously implies more than one time reference, which I also believe- call it God's time vs our time. Let's say that "god's time" includes the vantage point from which it would be theoretically conceivable to know about successive big bangs.

I also believe that the universe is made of what LDS call "intelligence" which is a force which causes unification and causes the universe(s) to "evolve themselves" in a repeatable pattern based on "natural laws" which are in principle, observable regularities. You put the same stew together with the same rules for how it will be mixed and you should always get the same results right? Chemistry relies on this fact.

So with these presumptions, one could say that gods themselves might "evolve" (I hate that word)- lets say "proceed"- or "become"- simply out of intelligence- and the stuff of the universe.

So looking for the "first god" is like looking for the "first man" in an evolutionary world. It is a woefully inadequate way to understand what a first man OR first god might be. Where does one draw the line? That does not mean there is not a line- it just means that definitions become very important.

So to make it as clear as I can, you could have successive evolved/evolving gods ruling over successive big bangs, each one of those constituting its own "eternity" and, relative to all that was knowable in that "eternity", and for all practical purposes, "Absolute" for that eternity.

Yet nothing is really "absolute" in a Platonic, unchanging form kind of way, but it may appear to be absolute because our limited point of view.

I believe that these principles parallel a humanistic, materialistic world in which God is a man, but in a sense, evolved-changed-becoming more than we can now imagine. One might notice some similarities to the notion of eternal recurrence in Nietzsche (though that is nearly universally misunderstood) and others of his notions, and a lot of similarities with Pragmatism and the metaphysics of Whitehead. I believe all of these can take on a new meaning within the context above.

[_huckelberry]

mfbukowski notes,:"So with these presumptions, one could say that gods themselves might "evolve" (I hate that word)- lets say "proceed"- or "become"- simply out of intelligence- and the stuff of the universe."

This statement puts together one line of LDS thought that I have heard. It has the attraction of fitting with modern understandings of natural processes. You contrast it with Platonic forms which compared to the modern picture of a universe of process seem severly outdated.

If you have a first God who creates the natural laws which cause process then that God has authority to shape reality and to shape people. That shaping to no nonlds includes such impoortant things as creating eternal life for people who naturally have no such thing. That power gives God authority to judge.

Maybe it is not all bad but the LDS view you present appears to alleviate god of that kind of authority. I cannot see how Satan would not have access to the same scientific understanding and power as God. Is there any reason all Spirits would not have equal authority to determine how where and in what way they live in eternity? By what possible power could Satans power be limited?

Perhaps there is a conflict between Gods style and Satans and a few times Gods has had some sort prevalent influence. Perhaps in the next billion years that will be reversed? Is there any reason why not?

[_mfbukowski]

mfbukowski notes,:"So with these presumptions, one could say that gods themselves might "evolve" (I hate that word)- lets say "proceed"- or "become"- simply out of intelligence- and the stuff of the universe."

This statement puts together one line of LDS thought that I have heard. It has the attraction of fitting with modern understandings of natural processes. You contrast it with Platonic forms which compared to the modern picture of a universe of process seem severly outdated.

If you have a first God who creates the natural laws which cause process then that God has authority to shape reality and to shape people. That shaping to no nonlds includes such impoortant things as creating eternal life for people who naturally have no such thing. That power gives God authority to judge.

Maybe it is not all bad but the LDS view you present appears to alleviate god of that kind of authority. I cannot see how Satan would not have access to the same scientific understanding and power as God. Is there any reason all Spirits would not have equal authority to determine how where and in what way they live in eternity? By what possible power could Satans power be limited?

Perhaps there is a conflict between Gods style and Satans and a few times Gods has had some sort prevalent influence. Perhaps in the next billion years that will be reversed? Is there any reason why not?

Responding in the context you have set, I suppose you could say that God is the living embodiment of the natural laws of the universe including the agency of intelligences.

Satan, in opposing natural law, cannot prosper. It is like rowing against the tide. Perhaps through his pride, he thought he could triumph, but is mistaken.

In martial arts, it is always wise to use natural laws like gravity and momentum, to allow your enemy to defeat himself. Perhaps there is an analogy there. Even in the Fall of Adam we see the story of how Satan defeats himself by opposing God's plan. It was always the Father's objective for Adam to become mortal, and such was the natural law of the universe.

[_huckelberry]

"Satan, in opposing natural law, cannot prosper. It is like rowing against the tide. Perhaps through his pride, he thought he could triumph, but is mistaken."

mfbukowski, I am a bit taken aback. Why would one think of Satan as opposing natural laws. They are the basis of his existence the same as mine. I cannot imagine he would wish to avoid his own self. I can imagine he could have different political ideas. He may have ones that repell me but is that the same as opposing natural law?

I am familiar with ideas that see demands of justice or perhaps love to be part of natural law but that would fit with natural laws proceeding from an eternal creator . Does it work to have natural law of love without an eternal lover determining that condition?

[_TAO]

Perhaps there is a conflict between Gods style and Satans and a few times Gods has had some sort prevalent influence. Perhaps in the next billion years that will be reversed? Is there any reason why not?

If this is the case (not saying it is), it is one of the reasons why God is so picky with exaltation. The people who get it MUST know to do the right things.

So no, no switches any more - for a good reason.

Although I'm not sure this is the case in the first place though...