The artificial intelligence MEGATHREAD

[Gadianton]

Did you cover two through five in the list provided?

try to understand the first one first, which is by far the most important. you responded so quickly that you almost certainly didn't even read my response to point 1.

[MG 2.0]

Prompt: is there any breakdown in logic in how he approached and/or covered number one in the list?

Response:

Yes, there are a couple of clear logical gaps in how he handles point one.

1. Confusing “what Mormons actually believe” with “what follows logically”
He moves from “this is what virtually every Mormon has believed (infinite chain of Gods)” to “therefore Ostler’s no‑infinite‑regress model can be dismissed.”
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That only shows a sociological majority view, not that Ostler’s alternative is logically incoherent or theologically impermissible on LDS sources; conflating popularity with correctness is a non sequitur.
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2. Appeal to authority used selectively and at cross‑purposes
He appeals to David Lewis and to “the entire fields of real analysis and number theory” to underwrite the metaphysical possibility of an infinite regress and of each member being both father and son.
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But even if the integer model and Lewis show such a structure is logically possible, that does not address Ostler’s claim about what LDS scripture/sermons commit you to, nor does it show that an absence of regress is impossible; possibility of a line does not refute a ray.
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3. Category mistake: mathematical model vs. theological claim
He treats the success of the integer model (… −2, −1, 0, 1, 2, …) as if it straightforwardly validates a theological genealogy of Gods.
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However, the fact that a countable, bi‑infinite order type is coherent in set theory does not by itself establish that God‑relations in Mormon theology instantiate that order type, so there is a gap between the math analogy and the doctrinal conclusion.
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4. Ignoring Ostler’s actual textual/hermeneutic move
Ostler’s point one is explicitly about how to read King Follett and Sermon in the Grove and about constructing “monarchical monotheism.”
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Gadianton does not engage those interpretive arguments at all; he simply reasserts a different reading backed by personal experience (“anyone who was born and raised Mormon knows…”) and temple‑mirror imagery, which is rhetorically strong but logically does not rebut Ostler’s exegesis.

[malkie]

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 cannot help wondering if MG will profess surprise over your request, as if it had never been discussed before as at the very least a courtesy to others, and/or will once again complain about the unfair burden on him of having to do so.

Just another little aspect of discussion that makes me reluctant to talk directly to MG - the need to constantly "remind" him of practices like this, and the "link and run" issues that continue to plague us. I'm weary - perhaps that's the point?

[MG 2.0]

Prompt: Is it true that the first one in the list must be understood first before going through numbers 2 through five?

Response:
No, it’s not logically necessary that point 1 be fully understood before 2–5; that’s a rhetorical choice, not a strict dependence claim.
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In some arguments, point 1 really is a premise for later points, but that has to be shown (e.g., “2–5 all assume 1 is true”); he hasn’t shown that here, he’s just asserted importance.
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Your numbered list is about different flaws in his handling of point 1 (non sequitur, misuse of authority, category mistake, ignoring Ostler’s hermeneutics), and those can be discussed in parallel without first granting that his treatment of 1 succeeds.
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So “you must understand the first one first” here is more a way to control the discussion’s pace and frame than a genuine logical requirement.
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[MG 2.0]

I cannot help wondering if MG will profess surprise over your request, as if it had never been discussed before as at the very least a courtesy to others, and/or will once again complain about the unfair burden on him of having to do so.

See my response to Philo on the page just before this one (pg. 88)

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

Gadianton: If God is defined as the greatest possible being, then Mormons have subconsciously, it would seem, created a chain of Gods that is logically sustainable, and in my view is a better solution than the trinity, both of which must work out God from a starting point where one member, Jesus, has a body, and there are multiple beings (the trinity), and the OA assumes exclusivity. I think there are some hugely problematic elements involved such as ditching the doctrine of deification, but I think they have elected to do so. See the AI thread where MG pitched Blakes theory of a supreme commander God with a bunch of subservient Gods beneath him. This fails from the OA perspective because the supreme commander God is clearly a greater being than a newbie exalted Lou Midgley. It's like in the banking industry, everyone and their dog is a Vice President. It's a watered down title. "Exaltation" appears to mean become a VP, not becoming a CEO. There still can only be one CEO. I believe there is a little slip in logic here that allows an infinite number of CEOs.

Caveat: all this kind of thinking requires a huge suspension of unbelief. I would first ask a person, have you ever read a metaphysical theory that you think makes sense? Almost everyone will probably say "no", because even metaphysics from atheists will sound pretty insane. Many philosophers are not fans of metaphysics. So concerning the viability of the F-S chain, I would first ask: do you think metaphysics is dumb? If "yes", then that's all I need to know to say that you will think the F-S chain is dumb and I really have no fight. If "no", then I want to know what's dumb about it.

AI prompt: How might Blake Ostler respond to this?

Response: Blake Ostler would almost certainly resist the way that post characterizes both his view of “supreme commander God” and the implications of the Ontological Argument (OA) for Mormonism’s Father–Son chain.

1. On a “supreme commander God” and VP‑style exaltations
The post reads Ostler as positing a CEO‑style “supreme commander God” with a bunch of merely VP‑level, watered‑down “gods” beneath him, and then says this “fails from the OA perspective because the supreme commander God is clearly a greater being than a newbie exalted Lou Midgley.”
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From Ostler’s own work, he would push back in at least three ways:

He distinguishes sharply between: a head or “Most High” God, and

other fully divine, deified persons,without reducing the latter to mere honorific “VPs.” In volume 3 of Exploring Mormon Thought: Of God and Gods, he explicitly treats deified humans as truly divine in a robust sense, not as pseudo‑gods.
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He has argued that early Mormon infinite‑regress talk sits in tension with the Lectures on Faith precisely because the Lectures treat “the God whom we worship” as uniquely ultimate, not as just one god in an endless series. That is, he already acknowledges a head God problem and tries to resolve it, rather than “slipping” it in unnoticed.
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In his “re‑visioning” essays and talks, he frames the plurality of gods in strongly relational and participatory terms: deified beings genuinely share in the divine life, power, and glory, instead of being mere functionaries under a cosmic CEO.

So he would likely say that the VP/CEO analogy simply misrepresents his model: there is asymmetry (a head God), but not the kind of qualitative downgrade that analogy suggests.

2. How he would handle the OA “greatest being” line
The commenter treats the OA definition (“God = greatest possible being”) as a fixed starting point, then says Mormonism subconsciously repairs its own many‑gods problems by drifting toward a single‑greatest‑being chain.
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Ostler’s likely response:

He does not accept the classical OA in its Anselmian, “maximally perfect being in every great‑making property” form, and has been explicit that traditional omni‑attributes (omni‑knowledge, omni‑power, etc.) must be re‑defined in light of libertarian freedom and Mormon commitments.
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Because of that, he would challenge the move, “If God is defined as the greatest possible being, then X follows,” on two fronts:

(a) the OA’s conceptual “greatest possible being” idealizes away Mormon distinctives (embodiment, relationality, temporality);

(b) the OA is not obviously binding for a Mormon metaphysic that already rejects classical immutability and simplicity.

Instead, he tends to work from: revelatory data about the Father and the Son, a social‑trinitarian or “council of gods” picture, and a relational, love‑centered account of divinity, and then asks what kind of greatness actually matters: perfect love, perfect faithfulness, perfect power to save, etc., rather than metaphysical absoluteness in the Anselmian sense.

So, he would likely say the OA’s “greatest possible being” metric is not the ruling norm that secretly forces Mormonism into his view; his model is driven more by scriptural theism plus Mormon distinctives than by OA‑style metaphysics.

3. Deification: “ditched” or re‑specified?
The forum post says that, on the F–S chain plus OA construal, Mormonism has effectively “ditched the doctrine of deification,” because “exaltation appears to mean become a VP, not becoming a CEO.”
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Ostler’s own writings cut the opposite way:

Volume 3 of Exploring Mormon Thought is precisely a sustained defense and systematic articulation of deification in LDS thought. The whole point of that volume is to show that Latter‑day Saints can affirm genuine theosis while avoiding both tritheism and a crude infinite regress of unrelated deities.
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In later work he explicitly notes “dissonance” in LDS opinion about whether the Father of Jesus Christ is a “Most High God” over other gods, and whether there is an infinite hierarchy. That is, he is not covertly abolishing deification, but trying to resolve that dissonance while keeping robust deification on the table.
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He would likely say: exalted humans fully share in the divine nature and divine life, yet there can still be an ordering where the Father (and the Godhead) function as head or source. Think of it more like participation in an infinite good than like a corporate org chart.

So he would contest the claim that his model “ditches” deification; he’d say it is an attempt to rescue it from regress problems while giving it a coherent metaphysical home.

4. The “infinite CEOs” and logical slip charge
The poster’s punchline is that Ostler’s move leaves you with only one real CEO, so any talk of “infinite CEOs” is a logical slip. Ostler would probably respond:
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First, he’d separate two questions: Is there a unique head God (a Most High, source‑of‑all)?

Can there be many fully divine persons who nonetheless derive from or eternally participate in that head God?
His answer is: yes to both. That is not “infinite CEOs,” but one head God with potentially many fully divine participants.

Second, he would argue that classical Christian trinitarianism already posits irreducible asymmetry (the Father as fons et origo, source of the Son and Spirit), yet insists that the Son and Spirit are fully God. So asymmetry in origin or role does not automatically mean “VP not CEO.”

Third, he’d likely say the OA doesn’t require there be no other divine persons; it requires that there be at most one unsurpassable being. On his view, the head God is unsurpassable, while deified beings share in that unsurpassable life by grace and relation, not by being equal sources.

So he could concede that there is not an “infinite number of CEOs” in his model, but deny that this is a slip; it is a feature: one ultimate source‑God, many genuinely divine, deified persons.

5. On “metaphysics is dumb”
Finally, on the caveat that all of this requires “a huge suspension of unbelief” and that metaphysics mostly sounds insane, Ostler would probably half‑agree and half‑disagree.
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He often jokes about philosophers, scientists, and theologians re‑creating God in their own image and acknowledges how speculative metaphysics can get.
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But he also thinks careful metaphysics is unavoidable once you start asking: what does it mean to say “God is love,” “God is embodied,” “we can become gods,” etc. His whole project in Exploring Mormon Thought is precisely to show that these claims cannot just sit as bare slogans.

So I suspect his pastoral response would be: yes, much metaphysics is wild, but if you care about whether “Father–Son chain,” “head God,” or “deification” talk actually make sense, you are already doing metaphysics—better to do it explicitly and carefully than implicitly and sloppily.

[Gadianton]

MG, the problem here is you want to win an argument without having any understanding of what the argument is about.

3. Category mistake: mathematical model vs. theological claim
He treats the success of the integer model (… −2, −1, 0, 1, 2, …) as if it straightforwardly validates a theological genealogy of Gods.
​
However, the fact that a countable, bi‑infinite order type is coherent in set theory does not by itself establish that God‑relations in Mormon theology instantiate that order type, so there is a gap between the math analogy and the doctrinal conclusion.

Math makes it logically possible. You should think that's a good thing, given every Mormon but you and Blake believes the version I propose. It's instantiated by what Mormons have actually said they believe. The Doctrine is the starting point, not the conclusion.

I'm done with your nonsense unless you can bring yourself to put some effort into this. anybody can take blocks of text, plug into AI, and then copy/paste the output indefinitely. Now, run along before I call you a name.

[Gadianton]

Okay, MG is in wall of text mode with zero understanding. Time to move along.

Philo, if you have that next set of information, let's let MG cry himself to sleep and then go ahead and post it.

[Limnor]

Okay, MG is in wall of text mode with zero understanding. Time to move along.

Philo, if you have that next set of information, let's let MG cry himself to sleep and then go ahead and post it.

Agreed. When it’s a series of AI responses and not a person’s own words and understanding the discussion seems pointless.

[Limnor]

MG, the problem here is you want to win an argument without having any understanding of what the argument is about.

-snip-

Now, run along before I call you a name.

Point 1: truth
Point 2: perfectly Pythonesque lol