Seeing Things Differently -DanP the apologist excuse.

[Gadianton]

That’s what Mormon deep doctrine teaches.

I keep meaning to come back to this. I had a good laugh when I saw it. I'm not sure it's true although I personally somewhat believed it. If you have more information I'd be interested. The first discussion teaches the omnis. And not just God, when the earth is Celestialized as a sea of glass, it will be a giant urim and thummim for Celestial beings to peer into and see all things past present and future.

But I believed something like this might be true. It always bothered me that the war in heaven seemed staged. If Satan was second in line and really that smart, then he must have thought he could win the war. Maybe it was like Putin winning against NATO, but there was a chance. And evil generally, must be an existential threat even to God else the whole thing seems so pointless. It's a video game with a relatively linear walkthrough.

Anyway, the statement brings to mind a new apostle meeting with his seniors for the first time in the temple and they tell him their most sacred truth that nobody is running the ship.

[honorentheos]

It is an exploration with the goal of finding clarity when we refer to something like will. If will is the direction of action, is that to say it is like water which inevitably finds the lowest point and flows that direction when it is above it in some way? Do we hand wave away the question of if there is a need for conscious decision making to call something a willed action so long as the action is considering our internal desire to move in that direction? So the only other alternatives are those where we do something based on external forces that prevent us from doing what we want? But why then do that in place of what we want other than due to some additional input where the consequences make it the option we do "want" after all given action moved that direction?

At what point does it becoming meaningless to refer to will then?

I think i made a description of will which was intentionally quite broad. It would exclude things like slipping on a steep slope and starting an unwilled downward journey. (Yes, being on a steep slope would be willed unless first carried there by force.)

I suppose a person might make a narrower meaning of will for some specific purpose. My broad view is intended to consider interworking and interdependence of the varous aspects of a humans thought and actions.

That still leaves us to do the work of figuring out what we mean though. The definition doesn't mean we avoid figuring out what it means to have will.

[honorentheos]

I think that's an honest summation of your position. So long as you feel you are piloting the car, that's good enough for you. Could be it's a dummy wheel and the car is a Waymo going to a destination based on programming and what the lidar is telling it about the environment. But no matter. "How you feel" is your criteria? You are locked in.

Again, it's a pretty good argument against free will that this is how the evidence is engaged but that's cool.

Using that analogy is one way of looking at it. I do think that much of the time we are literally on autopilot. But when it comes to making choices about those things that I’ve mentioned, good and evil, virtue and vice, light and darkness…in other words, right and wrong, or how we’re going to use our time, I think we disengage from autopilot and are able to take control of the wheel.

Regards,
MG

Ok, give me an example that demonstrates an executive decision is being made, definitively.

[malkie]

22 Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones;

23 And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born.

If I recall correctly, by Mormon theology each of us humans started off as one of the intelligences referred to in Abr 3.

Some questions come to mind.

• Did these intelligences have free will (in the sense that we are discussing the concept in this thread)?
  
  • If so, in what sense, and at what stage of our existence, did Mormon God give us humans the gift of free will?
  • If not, in what way could any of the intelligences be said to be "noble and great", if they could not make free choices in order to be so.
    
    And would that mean that Mormon God also did not have free will?
• Let's assume that at some point Mormon God did give us the gift of free will, a "quality", or "feature" that we did not previously have.
  
  • Is it not fair to say that Mormon God imposed free will upon us, and that thereafter we were stuck with it, because there is no (?) mechanism by which we can rid ourselves of it?
  • I'd say that's a pretty unfriendly and arrogant way to treat intelligences that were co-eternal with you.
• Oh, Mormon God knew/knows best, you say? That would imply omniscience, would it not? So that there would be no conceivable circumstances under which it would be better for us not to have free will.
  Are "we" currently considering Mormon God to be omniscient, or not?

[Res Ipsa]

The problem is that your claims about your God are self-contradictory and incoherent.

I read through your post a few times. You make some good points. It is true that when discussing (as a believer) God’s attributes and powers one can, if not thoughtful and careful, get tangled up in knots.

The post you were responding to was an example of that.

Over the years I’ve watched Closer to Truth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closer_to_Truth

…and watched as Kuhn demonstrates through interviews with a wide range of scholars and theologians that there are a lot of bright people who agree on some things and disagree on some things. Some of those things being of major import. Nature of God. Consciousness. Free Will. Etc.

They each would like others to accept their ‘truth’ or views in regards to those things of importance.

So many different ways of viewing reality. If he were to sit all of these people down in the same room it is more than likely none of them would leave having converted to another point of view in regards to ‘truth’.

I often will, maybe without processing it fully in my mind, say and do things that I’m hoping might change hearts and minds. People do that.

To view an all powerful God who can literally do anything is almost beyond expectation and belief. But you’re right, if a monotheist is going to put forward the assertion that God is omnipotent and all powerful we/I cannot place personal limitations on that God that we worship.

I did that. I am wrong (I think) in having done so. My bad.

And you’re right. I will at times make arguments that don’t follow along logically. I will rely on a foundational principle of ‘I believe’ and build upon that. In doing so I’m doing to fall into some illogical and fallacious traps of my own making.

I’m in the room, have my beliefs, they’re different than others, and I can offer nothing of any real evidence…rationally…to change hearts and minds or to add value to the conversation. Why? Because I am not able to present rational arguments or information that others will value as being evidentiary. Even though those arguments might be convincing to me.

Anthropic theory and others we’ve discussed along the way.

So you’re right. When discussing these things ‘of the heart’ it is very difficult to discuss things without coming back to ‘I believe’ or ‘this is what I feel’. Granted, trying to limit one’s discussion to purely rational/logical ways of viewing the world are going to butt heads against ‘the spiritual’.

It may well be that these discussions become more or less a series of non sequiturs on my part as I try to fit pieces of a puzzle together in which there are some pieces missing.

Anyway, I concede that I did through some limits on God that I should not have and would not have if I had given it a bit more thought.

But I didn’t.

Regards,
MG

We all make arguments that turn out to be sound and not sound. It's a thing that happens.

I have no interest in changing your religious beliefs. I have no claim to secret or superior or special knowledge. I'm just in the pool with all the other sentient bits of carbon. I can tell you how I think about things, but I can't claim to know how well my thinking corresponds to objective reality or represent that your life would be better if you thought about things the way I do.

I think what you said right here gets right at the thing that has you and I at loggerheads:

I’m in the room, have my beliefs, they’re different than others, and I can offer nothing of any real evidence…rationally…to change hearts and minds or to add value to the conversation. Why? Because I am not able to present rational arguments or information that others will value as being evidentiary. Even though those arguments might be convincing to me.

So why are you trying to construct rational arguments in the realm of faith? Why is faith not enough for you? Why do you need to rely on reason when faith is something beyond reason?

Here's my deal. Good postmodernist that I am, I know that can deconstruct the distinction between faith and reason. Postmodernism, not surprisingly, is contradictory in effect. On the one hand, it leads to cynical and hopeless nihilism. But it also is empowering because it deconstructs the necessary connection between cause and effect that artificially restrains us from taking actions that have a shot at making this a better world. It argues for try something, see how it goes. If you don't get the desired effect, try a different approach. So, postmodernism itself, in my opinion, deconstructs into both powerlessness and powerfulness.

You and I agree that the current level of divisiveness in our society is a serious problem. I think there is pretty good evidence that a major cause of that divisiveness is claims of superior access to objective truth. I think it is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to both claim superior access to truth and be genuinely accepting of other points of view. And the world is full of examples of people who are able to rationalize horrific behavior because of their special truth. (Can't help it -- been immersed in the Chad Daybell trial.)

So, even though I know that I can deconstruct any distinction between faith and reason, I think one way forward may look like Gould's NOMA. Even though we know we can make many counterarguments, why not treat faith and reason as fundamentally different things? I know I don't speak for all, or even a majority of non-believers, but why not acknowledge that faith in some kind of supreme being has been part of the human experience for a long time. Maybe longer than reason has been. Certainly longer than science has been. We've got brains with evolved biases toward patternicity and intentionality. That means that belief in a Supreme being of some kind is not going to disappear any time soon, even if there is no such being.

All of us sentient bits of carbon have been asking for thousands of years: what does all this mean? Where does this insignificant speck of carbon fit in this universe whose vastness is beyond its comprehension. I think these are hard questions for organisms evolved to find patterns and look for explanations. And I think that giving each of us room to find some kind of meaning in this odd experience called life is important enough to zealously protect. (Which is the source of my unapologetic support of the free exercise cause.)

So, why not let faith be faith and reason be reason? I think the enlightenment has driven faith to try and establish itself as a part of reason. And I think that comes as a cost. The more faith tries to function like reason, the more it loses the qualities that made faith a thing worth protecting. Whenever someone (not you) proclaims that "science is religion," I shake my head. If religious faith is indistinguishable from reason, then there is no justification for giving it the special place in our society that it has. What good is the free exercise of religion if literally everything is religion? Why shouldn't faith reclaim its lost ground and stake out its position as an important aspect of being human that has nothing to do with reason.

I think I've watched you struggle with this for years. And I get it. When I was LDS, I took some pride in the notion that my religious belief was more rational than that of other Christians. It provided explanations for things that other religious hand waved off as "mysteries." (Despite the fact that Mormonism had plenty of its own "mysteries." Still, it offered so many explanations that appealed to my rationality as well as my spirituality.

But why should I demand that my spirituality be rational? If I truly believed that faith was the substance of things hoped for -- the evidence of things not seen -- why did I demand rationality. If God's ways truly are not man's ways, why should I demand that God's ways conform to man-made rationality?

If your faith in God is irrational, so what? Why should you expect it to be rational? Why is it not enough to say "I have faith in a loving creator God who has a plan that will bring me back to live with him. I don't know the details or understand how it all works, but I trust him to make it happen." As a skeptic, nonbeliever, I don't think I have any argument against that. Why would I? I don't think I have anything to offer that would make you feel better about your place in the universe or give you a happier life.

What I'm suggesting doesn't mean that there wouldn't be disagreements between believers and non-believers over issues like government mandated prayer in schools, etc. The borders between the Magesteria are fuzzy, and we'll have to negotiate lots of things. But, when rationality isn't perceived as threat to faith and vice versa, I think it gives us more room to work things out rather than beating on each other.

I strikes me that this may sound like a big ask for believers. I don't think that it really is because it removes faith from reason based attacks. Moreover, the ask is similar for non-believers: stop demanding that faith be rational. We have lots of research that says humans aren't the rational actors we think we are. I think it's fair to say there is lots more to being human than rationality. So, why not make faith irrelevant to reason and reason irrelevant to faith?

And if that doesn't work, let's try something else.

[drumdude]

That’s what Mormon deep doctrine teaches.

I keep meaning to come back to this. I had a good laugh when I saw it. I'm not sure it's true although I personally somewhat believed it. If you have more information I'd be interested. The first discussion teaches the omnis. And not just God, when the earth is Celestialized as a sea of glass, it will be a giant urim and thummim for Celestial beings to peer into and see all things past present and future.

But I believed something like this might be true. It always bothered me that the war in heaven seemed staged. If Satan was second in line and really that smart, then he must have thought he could win the war. Maybe it was like Putin winning against NATO, but there was a chance. And evil generally, must be an existential threat even to God else the whole thing seems so pointless. It's a video game with a relatively linear walkthrough.

Anyway, the statement brings to mind a new apostle meeting with his seniors for the first time in the temple and they tell him their most sacred truth that nobody is running the ship.

John Larsen is one of the few people who can keep it all straight in his mind and untangle it. I’m not capable of that feat, I just have to rely on the same vague memory as you.

[Gadianton]

Did these intelligences have free will (in the sense that we are discussing the concept in this thread)?

There are two theories about intelligence. The Russian doll theory, and what's basically the reductionist theory. The Russian doll theory maintains libertarian free will. I think in Church we usually encountered the Russian doll theory (my parents spoke about it this way), but surprisingly, I believe the reductionist theory has more support in church writings, including Bruce R. McConkie, if I recall.

The Russian doll theory is that you are fundamentally an "intelligence" - a tiny "unit of free will". That intelligence is put into a spirit body, which is then put into a physical body. but the spirit body and physical body are just shells. Those tiny units of free-will existed forever into the past, and so for an infinity of time, we were disembodied "free will bits" or "disembodied selfs"--- doing what? Some believe perhaps we occupied matter and were the link between God's commands and matter's obedience, and we worked our way up. Cleon Skousen teaches something like this. In this theory, God obviously did not give us free will as "we", the intelligences, are an ontologically different thing from matter-- bits of will co-existing with God if not prior to God.

It's a very attractive folk theory to the point of saving the individuality of yourself as non-reducible definitive thing, just as MG experiences it. But upon inspection, it becomes totally absurd.

The more intelligible theory is reductionist:

https://rsc.BYU.edu/joseph-smith-prophe ... rn-science

In Doctrine and Covenants 93:29, the prophet also writes, "Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.” In addition, the Prophet taught, “There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is fine and pure” (131:7). Combining these teachings, “spirit element,” also called intelligence, or the light of truth, has always existed. Through a spiritual birth, this light (energy attributes) is transformed into spirit bodies (pure, refined matter), but it cannot be created nor destroyed. In other words, any change in energy attributes corresponds to a change in mass. It seems the prophet Joseph clearly understood and taught this principle.

This is a totally different theory, and, it's one that makes Mormons feel like their religion is more compatible with science than other religions. So intelligence is "spirit element", a real material thing, and your self is not an intelligence, in fact, there is no self as such. The spirit elements come together to make a spirit body, and you are born as a spirit --- you have a definite beginning. With this theory, the same challenges to the idea of free will as a body with a brain. Having a Mormon spirit of this type controlling the brain is having one system bound by material laws controlling another. If free will can't exist for a person with a brain only and no soul, adding this version of the Mormon spirit doesn't help. In this theory, God also does not give us free will, as there is no such thing.

Since Joseph said there is no such thing as immaterial matter, the Russian Doll theory more compatible with MG style free will, is essentially eliminated.

[Gadianton]

Here's another good one:

https://rsc.BYU.edu/pearl-great-price-r ... everywhere.

Continuing, he rhetorically asked, “What are they? Why, they are organized intelligences. What are they made of? They are made of the element which we call spirit, which is as much an element of material existence, as earth, air, electricity, or any other tangible substance recognized by man.” Concluding, he said, “we would call it a spiritual body, an individual intelligence, an agent endowed with life, with a degree of independence, or inherent will, with the power of motion, of thought, and with the attributes of moral, intellectual, and sympathetic affections and emotions”

[Morley]

I read through your post a few times. You make some good points. It is true that when discussing (as a believer) God’s attributes and powers one can, if not thoughtful and careful, get tangled up in knots.

The post you were responding to was an example of that.

Over the years I’ve watched Closer to Truth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closer_to_Truth

…and watched as Kuhn demonstrates through interviews with a wide range of scholars and theologians that there are a lot of bright people who agree on some things and disagree on some things. Some of those things being of major import. Nature of God. Consciousness. Free Will. Etc.

They each would like others to accept their ‘truth’ or views in regards to those things of importance.

So many different ways of viewing reality. If he were to sit all of these people down in the same room it is more than likely none of them would leave having converted to another point of view in regards to ‘truth’.

I often will, maybe without processing it fully in my mind, say and do things that I’m hoping might change hearts and minds. People do that.

To view an all powerful God who can literally do anything is almost beyond expectation and belief. But you’re right, if a monotheist is going to put forward the assertion that God is omnipotent and all powerful we/I cannot place personal limitations on that God that we worship.

I did that. I am wrong (I think) in having done so. My bad.

And you’re right. I will at times make arguments that don’t follow along logically. I will rely on a foundational principle of ‘I believe’ and build upon that. In doing so I’m doing to fall into some illogical and fallacious traps of my own making.

I’m in the room, have my beliefs, they’re different than others, and I can offer nothing of any real evidence…rationally…to change hearts and minds or to add value to the conversation. Why? Because I am not able to present rational arguments or information that others will value as being evidentiary. Even though those arguments might be convincing to me.

Anthropic theory and others we’ve discussed along the way.

So you’re right. When discussing these things ‘of the heart’ it is very difficult to discuss things without coming back to ‘I believe’ or ‘this is what I feel’. Granted, trying to limit one’s discussion to purely rational/logical ways of viewing the world are going to butt heads against ‘the spiritual’.

It may well be that these discussions become more or less a series of non sequiturs on my part as I try to fit pieces of a puzzle together in which there are some pieces missing.

Anyway, I concede that I did through some limits on God that I should not have and would not have if I had given it a bit more thought.

But I didn’t.

Regards,
MG

We all make arguments that turn out to be sound and not sound. It's a thing that happens.

I have no interest in changing your religious beliefs. I have no claim to secret or superior or special knowledge. I'm just in the pool with all the other sentient bits of carbon. I can tell you how I think about things, but I can't claim to know how well my thinking corresponds to objective reality or represent that your life would be better if you thought about things the way I do.

I think what you said right here gets right at the thing that has you and I at loggerheads:

I’m in the room, have my beliefs, they’re different than others, and I can offer nothing of any real evidence…rationally…to change hearts and minds or to add value to the conversation. Why? Because I am not able to present rational arguments or information that others will value as being evidentiary. Even though those arguments might be convincing to me.

So why are you trying to construct rational arguments in the realm of faith? Why is faith not enough for you? Why do you need to rely on reason when faith is something beyond reason?

Here's my deal. Good postmodernist that I am, I know that can deconstruct the distinction between faith and reason. Postmodernism, not surprisingly, is contradictory in effect. On the one hand, it leads to cynical and hopeless nihilism. But it also is empowering because it deconstructs the necessary connection between cause and effect that artificially restrains us from taking actions that have a shot at making this a better world. It argues for try something, see how it goes. If you don't get the desired effect, try a different approach. So, postmodernism itself, in my opinion, deconstructs into both powerlessness and powerfulness.

You and I agree that the current level of divisiveness in our society is a serious problem. I think there is pretty good evidence that a major cause of that divisiveness is claims of superior access to objective truth. I think it is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to both claim superior access to truth and be genuinely accepting of other points of view. And the world is full of examples of people who are able to rationalize horrific behavior because of their special truth. (Can't help it -- been immersed in the Chad Daybell trial.)

So, even though I know that I can deconstruct any distinction between faith and reason, I think one way forward may look like Gould's NOMA. Even though we know we can make many counterarguments, why not treat faith and reason as fundamentally different things? I know I don't speak for all, or even a majority of non-believers, but why not acknowledge that faith in some kind of supreme being has been part of the human experience for a long time. Maybe longer than reason has been. Certainly longer than science has been. We've got brains with evolved biases toward patternicity and intentionality. That means that belief in a Supreme being of some kind is not going to disappear any time soon, even if there is no such being.

All of us sentient bits of carbon have been asking for thousands of years: what does all this mean? Where does this insignificant speck of carbon fit in this universe whose vastness is beyond its comprehension. I think these are hard questions for organisms evolved to find patterns and look for explanations. And I think that giving each of us room to find some kind of meaning in this odd experience called life is important enough to zealously protect. (Which is the source of my unapologetic support of the free exercise cause.)

So, why not let faith be faith and reason be reason? I think the enlightenment has driven faith to try and establish itself as a part of reason. And I think that comes as a cost. The more faith tries to function like reason, the more it loses the qualities that made faith a thing worth protecting. Whenever someone (not you) proclaims that "science is religion," I shake my head. If religious faith is indistinguishable from reason, then there is no justification for giving it the special place in our society that it has. What good is the free exercise of religion if literally everything is religion? Why shouldn't faith reclaim its lost ground and stake out its position as an important aspect of being human that has nothing to do with reason.

I think I've watched you struggle with this for years. And I get it. When I was LDS, I took some pride in the notion that my religious belief was more rational than that of other Christians. It provided explanations for things that other religious hand waved off as "mysteries." (Despite the fact that Mormonism had plenty of its own "mysteries." Still, it offered so many explanations that appealed to my rationality as well as my spirituality.

But why should I demand that my spirituality be rational? If I truly believed that faith was the substance of things hoped for -- the evidence of things not seen -- why did I demand rationality. If God's ways truly are not man's ways, why should I demand that God's ways conform to man-made rationality?

If your faith in God is irrational, so what? Why should you expect it to be rational? Why is it not enough to say "I have faith in a loving creator God who has a plan that will bring me back to live with him. I don't know the details or understand how it all works, but I trust him to make it happen." As a skeptic, nonbeliever, I don't think I have any argument against that. Why would I? I don't think I have anything to offer that would make you feel better about your place in the universe or give you a happier life.

What I'm suggesting doesn't mean that there wouldn't be disagreements between believers and non-believers over issues like government mandated prayer in schools, etc. The borders between the Magesteria are fuzzy, and we'll have to negotiate lots of things. But, when rationality isn't perceived as threat to faith and vice versa, I think it gives us more room to work things out rather than beating on each other.

I strikes me that this may sound like a big ask for believers. I don't think that it really is because it removes faith from reason based attacks. Moreover, the ask is similar for non-believers: stop demanding that faith be rational. We have lots of research that says humans aren't the rational actors we think we are. I think it's fair to say there is lots more to being human than rationality. So, why not make faith irrelevant to reason and reason irrelevant to faith?

And if that doesn't work, let's try something else.

I appreciate your effort, Res, but this is never going to work. You’re trying to trick me.

Any arguments that I make from faith, are ones you’ll use logic and science to reject. You will use logic and science to require vaccinations, that I reject on faith. You’ll use logic to keep me from requiring school prayer and teaching intelligent design in the classroom. You’ll use science like a weapon against the gay conversion therapy that God told me to provide. You’ll use science and logic to argue against racism that my holy books teach. Eventually, you’ll want laws that allow for interracial marriage, contraception, and divorce. You will never stop with your logic and science.

I recognize this ruse for what it is. You’ve already told me I don’t need God (or my faith!) in my discussions on free will. You are trying to rob me—and my creator God—of our power. You grant me my faith, but give me nothing to defend it with. It’s a pretty small closet that you’ve relegated me to—a nasty little space that you’ve said you’re not even interested in visiting.

[/devil advocate]

[I Have Questions]

There is very strong evidence that our brains make choices before any conscious awareness that there is even a choice to be made. Then, our brains make up a story to rationalize the choice. The story includes the feeling we have that we made a conscious choice. That doesn't mean that we never make conscious decisions. But it does mean that the subjective feeling we have of making choices is not a reliable indicator that a conscious choice has been made.

That is fundamentally the issue that believers in any particular faith need to address. That they believe they’ve made a free and conscious choice in belief in one of the plethora of Gods available, but there’s strong evidence that they haven’t. “It felt right” isn’t a rebuttal.