The artificial intelligence MEGATHREAD

[Philo Sofee]

I'd say give MG a chance to respond. I'm about ready to go to bed anyway. Yesterday, one glass of wine turned into another and into some other stuff. Just like ole Joe and the boys, eh? Nothing could be more fundamentally Mormon than strong drink and bat-crap crazy theology.

Lol! Sleep well my friend. We shall see us all tomorrow. I am really genuinely looking forward to seeing how all this washes out in the long run. I'm gonna go find my Blake Ostler stuff and re-read some......I am very glad he at least became one of the better Mormon expositors of infinity as it applies to Mormon theology. Everyone else apparently thought it was way past their pay grade like I did.....Lol.....

[Limnor]

I'd say give MG a chance to respond.

It will be interesting to see if MG—or rather, Ostler as filtered by AI and MG—will support your ideas, as he originally seemed to automatically frame what you are saying as opposition.

[I Have Questions]

I am committed to following AI rules to the letter from here on out.

You've promised that several times before and not kept your promise. Your word is worthless.

[MG 2.0]

not a bad summary. It will error on the side of over-the-top praise unless you prompt to criticize, and then error in the other direction. If MG can invest enough of his time into posting his output here I'll read it. One problem I suspect he will have is his AI inventing quotes or positions to sound like Blake without actually being very Blake. MG gives his AIs really open-ended tasks. For a 5 minute investment from MG, I can spend an hour just sorting out what is credible response and what is hallucination.

I'll throw in the response given to the question I asked Perplexity:

Blake Ostler would likely say that Gadianton’s whole setup is aimed at a version of Mormonism he explicitly rejects; under Ostler’s view, most of the F‑S chain problems never get off the ground.

1. No infinite regress of F‑S Gods
Ostler reads King Follett and Sermon in the Grove as not teaching an infinite genealogical chain of divine Fathers and Sons; instead he develops “monarchical monotheism,” where the Father is “the eternal God of all other gods,” not one more link in an infinite regress. On this picture, there simply is no endless pedigree problem in which your God’s “grandfather” might be an ex‑garbage man deity, because the Father at the top is not a promoted sinner in a longer chain but the ultimate God in a monarchical structure.
​

2. Worshipworthiness, not OA “greatest being”
In place of an Anselmian OA where “God” must be the absolutely greatest being across all possible worlds, Ostler talks in terms of worshipworthiness: the being who is worthy of our ultimate trust, dependence, and devotion. That property does not require uniqueness in the strong Anselmian sense (there could be multiple worshipworthy beings) and does not require solving fine‑grained ranking problems between Father and Son or among deified humans. So the move, “if Father and Son tie or if exalted humans exist, OA implies no one is really ‘God’,” largely misses how Ostler is framing the divine attribute set.
​

3. Deification remains robust
Because he rejects both creation ex nihilo and the classical ontological gulf between God and creatures, Ostler already allows that humans can become genuinely divine without collapsing worship into a mere “consolation container.” But since he doesn’t build the system on an infinite F‑S pedigree, the OA‑style argument that “any gap in the chain or any non‑Savior ancestor demotes your God” doesn’t touch his model; deified humans share fully in the divine life under a monarchic head, rather than being propped‑up “garbage Gods” whose status depends on an infinite flawless ancestry.

4. Trinity vs. Mormon Godhead
Ostler also thinks the classical Trinity is conceptually confused in important ways, but his alternative isn’t the F‑S chain; it is a robust social trinitarian Godhead of three distinct divine persons united in perfect love, will, and shared divine life. Thus, the comparison “Trinity patching 3=1 by fiat vs. Mormonism’s F‑S chain as a better OA‑driven ontology” mislocates Ostler: he would say both that the classical 3=1 metaphysics fails and that the F‑S chain is not the best way to cash out Mormon distinctives.

5. On infinities and rarity of Saviors
Gadianton’s Hilbert‑hotel worries about countable infinities of Saviors versus “rarity” rely on a very particular reading of Mormon infinity that Ostler doesn’t need to endorse. For Ostler, divine life, relational love, and worshipworthiness are not primarily number‑theoretic properties, so Cantorian orders of infinity do little real work in sorting out who counts as God or whether Christ’s role is unique and salvifically central for us.

In response to huckelberry's latest post ( Tue Feb 24, 2026 12:40 pm) Perplexity came up with this:

Blake Ostler does make a move that is very close to what you’re gesturing at with “Glory of God” as an eternal ground of power and order to which divine individuals are fully connected, though he systematizes it in somewhat different language.

Where Ostler overlaps your point
In volume 1 of Exploring Mormon Thought, Ostler argues that early LDS thought (Lectures on Faith, Pratt, Roberts, Widtsoe) contains a notion of God as a being-in-process embedded in an already existing eternal order, including eternal intelligences, laws, and a kind of pervasive divine light or power.

In later work, he emphasizes that what makes the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost “one Eternal God” is not that there is only one individual, but that there is an eternal, fully divine life or glory they share; individuals participate in this divine life rather than being metaphysically independent sources of it.
​
​He also treats the “light of Christ” / “true light” theme in Restoration scripture as an all‑pervasive divine influence or order through which persons are drawn into communion with God and even become gods as their bodies are “filled with light,” which is very close to “Glory of God is the ground of all power and order, and a divine individual is completely connected with this Glory.”
​

Where he differs or nuances it
Ostler is careful to preserve Joseph’s teaching that the Father is embodied and fully divine “from everlasting to everlasting,” so he won’t say simply that “Glory” is greater than the individual; rather, the Father is eternally a fully divine person whose glory/life is inseparable from this eternal order.
​
He works hard to avoid a strict Platonic “impersonal ground” reading: the eternal order (laws, light, glory) is not a separate deity higher than the Father, but something the divine persons eternally instantiate and share.

Bottom line
So yes: Ostler absolutely develops a view where (a) there is an eternal, pervasive divine light/glory/order that is the ground of power and intelligibility, and (b) divine persons like the Father and Christ are fully and perfectly “connected” to or participants in that eternal glory. That is substantially the same type of move you’re (huckelberry) recalling from your seminary discussion of Pratt plus Lectures on Faith, even if his terminology and the details of dependence/asymmetry are more carefully worked out.

Ostler has written extensively on philosophical views of God, Mormon style.

Here is his Dialogue essay dealing with the subject:

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-cont ... N02_67.pdf

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

I am committed to following AI rules to the letter from here on out.

You've promised that several times before and not kept your promise. Your word is worthless.

I will respond to you this time.

I will not post any material from AI unless it is used strictly on this thread, and this thread alone.

Even though I am doing so unwillingly.

Regards,
MG

[malkie]

nevermind

[Philo Sofee]

You've promised that several times before and not kept your promise. Your word is worthless.

I will respond to you this time.

I will not post any material from AI unless it is used strictly on this thread, and this thread alone.

Even though I am doing so unwillingly.

Regards,
MG

MG we need to see your entire set up with the prompt as well. Come on, total honesty. I did, you can. AI is not objective, so the questions absolutely MATTER about how it answers, which means the answers are going to be able to be dissected and analyzed. I, in good faith gave my prompts, I expect the same good faith from you so we can truly come to a greater understanding of this fascinating theology. It's not about seeing if it is right or wrong, that is not my intent. I want to see how you approach it and how your version of AI responds with what kind of history, logic, science,lphilosophy etc. I hope that's not asking too much of you to be temple recommend honest with this project.

[MG 2.0]

I will respond to you this time.

I will not post any material from AI unless it is used strictly on this thread, and this thread alone.

Even though I am doing so unwillingly.

Regards,
MG

MG we need to see your entire set up with the prompt as well. Come on, total honesty. I did, you can. AI is not objective, so the questions absolutely MATTER about how it answers, which means the answers are going to be able to be dissected and analyzed. I, in good faith gave my prompts, I expect the same good faith from you so we can truly come to a greater understanding of this fascinating theology. It's not about seeing if it is right or wrong, that is not my intent. I want to see how you approach it and how your version of AI responds with what kind of history, logic, science,lphilosophy etc. I hope that's not asking too much of you to be temple recommend honest with this project.

I did put the prompt back in my original post now on page 86 of this thread. Here it is again:

"How would Blake Ostler, in short form, respond to Gadianton's arguments?"

Fairly straightforward. Nothing tricky.

I hope the AI response, rather short and sweet, has given you enough 'food for thought' for a response. I look forward to it. You are much more well read than me.

I mean that.

Regards,
MG

[Gadianton]

1. No infinite regress of F‑S Gods
Ostler reads King Follett and Sermon in the Grove as not teaching an infinite genealogical chain of divine Fathers and Sons; instead he develops “monarchical monotheism,” where the Father is “the eternal God of all other gods,” not one more link in an infinite regress.

I'm aware of his idea. Why should I care, when Blake is the only Mormon who believes it? Why does Blake bow before sectarian ministers and submit to such an outdated idea as the cosmological argument? Why do you hide your candle under a bushel and preach false doctrines out of fear of the judgments of men?

Anyone who was born and raised Mormon knows that the doctrine is endless Gods extending back into the past, and endless Gods extending out into the future. When you look into the mirrors of the temple set against each other on opposite walls, do you see a first image? NO! Why desecrate the faith of your fathers with these false ideas?

You can think of the actual Mormon doctrine as saying we, on earth, are at the number 0. Ahead of us is eternity future, and behind is eternity past. If you ever go to the temple, stand between the mirrors and think of yourself as the number "0".

My prompt to Gemini, since you hold AI in such high regard:

sort of: I'm more interested in modern understandings of infinity, in countable infinity, can every being be said to be both father and son?

If the chain is like the set of Integers {..., -2, -1, 0, 1, 2,...} then yes, every being is both. Because the chain extends infinitely into the past (the "negative" direction), there is no "first" member. Every single being in this set has a predecessor (father) and a successor (son).

Proof of "Every Being is Both": For any element n in the set Z, there exists a "father" (predecessor n-1) and a "son" (successor n+1). Because Z is infinite in both directions, the condition n-1 E Z and n + 1 E Z holds true for every n."

Source: Any standard undergraduate text on Real Analysis or Set Theory, such as Notes on Set Theory by Yiannis Moschovakis or naïve Set Theory by Paul Halmos.

The cosmological argument models eternity as a ray (extending forever from one point), Mormonism models eternity as a line. Concerning whether all of reality is best described as a ray or a line, I asked this question:

did david lewis have a position on either?

Yes, David Lewis, one of the most influential 20th-century analytic philosophers, explicitly defended the possibility of the "Integer Line" model (where every cause is an effect) against the Kalām argument.
Lewis’s position is that an infinite regress of causes is logically and metaphysically possible. He addresses this primarily in his work on the philosophy of time and his defense of "Humeanism."

The Argument: Lewis held that as long as each individual "link" in the chain is explained by the previous link, the entire chain is explained. He rejected the idea that the chain as a whole needs a separate, external efficient cause.

how would you rank david lewis in terms of importance to 20th century metaphysics, as regarded by other philosophers, not the general public?

In the eyes of professional philosophers, David Lewis is almost universally ranked in the top three most important metaphysicians of the 20th century. Most would place him alongside Ludwig Wittgenstein and W.V.O. Quine, and within the specific sub-field of "Analytic Metaphysics," he is often regarded as the single most influential figure of the post-war era.

So there you have it. I've got virtually every Mormon who has ever lived from Joseph, to Brigham young, to Bruce R. McConkie and my mom who says Mormons believe in an infinitude of Gods shooting into infinity past and future. And in such a belief, there must be a line of Gods who were both Savior and Father. And this belief is logical, by the authority of David Lewis, the greatest modern metaphysician, and the entire fields of real analysis and number theory. On your side, you've got you, Blake, probably no other Mormons except maybe DCP who is embarrassed by many of his own teachings, a bunch of sectarian ministers bearing the robes of false priests, and Aristotle.

Perhaps you should read my OP and think about what you actually learned in Seminary as a Mormon.

[MG 2.0]

Perhaps you should read my OP and think about what you actually learned in Seminary as a Mormon.

Did you cover two through five in the list provided?

Regards,
MG