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

[malkie]

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.

I wonder if #1 god ever considered giving his fellow intelligences the choice of being left alone to do their own thing.

I also wonder if the 2-1 break was exact, an infinite repeating decimal fraction of an infinite number of intelligences, or was just rounded up for convenience.

Before the war in heaven, did Mormon god know that the result would be the loss for eternity of 1/3 of his spirit children, and could not find a way to hold on to them, make a compromise of some sort. As the smartest of all, was he out of ideas?

What if 99.999999 .................% had chosen Satan's plan? Would #1 god have just written off the vast majority of his children, as easily as he appears to have written off 1/3 of them?

[malkie]

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?

I've hear it said that a person will accept the Mormon gospel in the spirit world only if they would have accepted it while living, if they had had the opportunity. If that's not true - if the likelihood of acceptance is greater - then the church is doing mankind a disservice by sending out missionaries to preach to the living.

But judging by the success rate of missionaries on earth (currently about 5 baptisms on average per missionary), there's probably not a lot of success in the spirit world either. But we can assume that every dead person at least gets to meet the missionaries there.

Just for rough numbers - any corrections or suggestions welcome - I'd guess that the average number of people that a companionship has significant contact with is 2 years x 300 days x 4 people per day = 2400. So the conversion rate is about 2400 ÷ 5 = 480 per companionship, or very roughly 1 in 1000 per individual.

So the final acceptance rate for the gospel could actually be about 2/3000, or 0.067%

[Physics Guy]

Mormon metaphysics and theology remind me of crackpot physics. The standard theory being admittedly tricky, somebody decides that they can do better all by themselves, and they start by tossing out the weird notions and making things simple and down-to-earth.

Pretty soon they find that their simple picture has serious problems, but by that point they've got a self-image as a genius or prophet to sustain. They can't just admit they were wrong and start again, so they go on adding complications that are at least as weird as anything they rejected. Or else they just doggedly double down on their simple premises, even when their simplicity starts looking more like absurdity.

Theology may not be so much like physics, but the crackpot impulse to replace something made by thousands of minds over centuries with something one has dreamed up oneself isn't about even trying to understand reality. It's about narcissism. So I think the homespun prophet and the crackpot scientist have a lot in common.

[Res Ipsa]

Mormon metaphysics and theology remind me of crackpot physics. The standard theory being admittedly tricky, somebody decides that they can do better all by themselves, and they start by tossing out the weird notions and making things simple and down-to-earth.

Pretty soon they find that their simple picture has serious problems, but by that point they've got a self-image as a genius or prophet to sustain. They can't just admit they were wrong and start again, so they go on adding complications that are at least as weird as anything they rejected. Or else they just doggedly double down on their simple premises, even when their simplicity starts looking more like absurdity.

Theology may not be so much like physics, but the crackpot impulse to replace something made by thousands of minds over centuries with something one has dreamed up oneself isn't about even trying to understand reality. It's about narcissism. So I think the homespun prophet and the crackpot scientist have a lot in common.

That's a great observation!

[Philo Sofee]

Mormon metaphysics and theology remind me of crackpot physics. The standard theory being admittedly tricky, somebody decides that they can do better all by themselves, and they start by tossing out the weird notions and making things simple and down-to-earth.

Pretty soon they find that their simple picture has serious problems, but by that point they've got a self-image as a genius or prophet to sustain. They can't just admit they were wrong and start again, so they go on adding complications that are at least as weird as anything they rejected. Or else they just doggedly double down on their simple premises, even when their simplicity starts looking more like absurdity.

Theology may not be so much like physics, but the crackpot impulse to replace something made by thousands of minds over centuries with something one has dreamed up oneself isn't about even trying to understand reality. It's about narcissism. So I think the homespun prophet and the crackpot scientist have a lot in common.

Ha! Fascinating and good insights, as usual PG......

[Limnor]

Mormon metaphysics and theology remind me of crackpot physics. The standard theory being admittedly tricky, somebody decides that they can do better all by themselves, and they start by tossing out the weird notions and making things simple and down-to-earth.

Pretty soon they find that their simple picture has serious problems, but by that point they've got a self-image as a genius or prophet to sustain. They can't just admit they were wrong and start again, so they go on adding complications that are at least as weird as anything they rejected. Or else they just doggedly double down on their simple premises, even when their simplicity starts looking more like absurdity.

Theology may not be so much like physics, but the crackpot impulse to replace something made by thousands of minds over centuries with something one has dreamed up oneself isn't about even trying to understand reality. It's about narcissism. So I think the homespun prophet and the crackpot scientist have a lot in common.

Military leaders too.

[huckelberry]

Malkie, I thought the idea of eternal intelligences vague and dubious. I remember thinking they were like seeds with little ability to act or enjoy so that spirit and physical birth started the possibility to act choose and enjoy. I do not know a Mormon clarification saying your view wrong and Book of Abraham leans your way.

I do not think Mormon theories want to Leave the idea of created by God behind completely. Perhaps partially in a vague way some of the time it does.

[Limnor]

I sometimes find it ironic that Mormonism presents itself as a comprehensive frameplonet, yet some deeper metaphysical issues like eternal intelligences don’t seem to receive the same level of attention that Protestant (those are Travis’ typical opponents) issues do. I’ve watched Travis Anderson press others—effectively!—on YouTube, but no one asks him stuff like this. And if they do, they get a three word “we don’t know” response and return to attack. Critique is valuable, but it really does go both ways.

[malkie]

Malkie, I thought the idea of eternal intelligences vague and dubious. I remember thinking they were like seeds with little ability to act or enjoy so that spirit and physical birth started the possibility to act choose and enjoy. I do not know a Mormon clarification saying your view wrong and Book of Abraham leans your way.

I do not think Mormon theories want to Leave the idea of created by God behind completely. Perhaps partially in a vague way some of the time it does.

Thanks, huckelberry.

As I understand it, intelligences have always existed, and #1 god was originally one of them. He was simply the first to elevate himself above the others - perhaps the first to realize that there could possibly be something other than an amorphous sea of equipotent intelligences. And so he took it upon himself to organize the rest, and effectively imposed his will upon them. I haven't seen anything to suggest that at that point the other intelligences were given any choice in what happened to them. Perhaps, as you suggest, they were so primitive that they had no ability to make choices.

I'm sure if MG drops in he'll put us straight.

[malkie]

Mormon metaphysics and theology remind me of crackpot physics. The standard theory being admittedly tricky, somebody decides that they can do better all by themselves, and they start by tossing out the weird notions and making things simple and down-to-earth.

Pretty soon they find that their simple picture has serious problems, but by that point they've got a self-image as a genius or prophet to sustain. They can't just admit they were wrong and start again, so they go on adding complications that are at least as weird as anything they rejected. Or else they just doggedly double down on their simple premises, even when their simplicity starts looking more like absurdity.

Theology may not be so much like physics, but the crackpot impulse to replace something made by thousands of minds over centuries with something one has dreamed up oneself isn't about even trying to understand reality. It's about narcissism. So I think the homespun prophet and the crackpot scientist have a lot in common.

That's a great observation!

I agree, Res. I just haven't been able to decide yet if PG was suggesting that I'm playing the role of the "somebody [who] decides that they can do better all by themselves". I kinda like the idea of being a crackpot scientist, preferably without the narcissism, but perhaps this is hubris speaking.