Anti-Mormonism ineffective? So says bsix

[_asbestosman]

This is why some religions dealt with the dilemma by coming up with ideas of predestination. Others are basically burying their heads in the sand.

I think the philosophical idea of compatibalism is interesting and perhaps even the correct answer for free will.

For me an even deeper question is that of what makes us differ from each other in the first place? Why did Jesus end up perfect before this life while we didn't? If our innate dispositions were caused by ourselves, then why is anyone different at all? If our innate dispositions were not caused by ourselves (whether it be by chance or be caused by God), then how can we be accountable?

I have never heard a good response to this question. The closest answer I could come up with one time when Tarski asked is that perhaps there were no initial conditions just as sine and cosine do not really have an initial condition at negative infinity, but they differ. Yet even that isn't quite an answer as it still doesn't explain why we end up choosing differently.

[_The Dude]

While I suppose one could make the case that it was a test we must pass, I still think that scirpture fits within a larger view of giving us an opportunity to learn to obey in the specific circumstance where we do not see "Big Brother" watching over us. I think it allows us to develop.

I really don't think the test idea makes scriptural or logical sense once one figures in scriptures about God's omniscience, "he knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it" (2 Nephi 9:20).

You just lost me. On one hand, this life helps us learn to obey without "Big Brother" watching over us, but actually God's omniscience means "Big Brother" is watching over us. This is a contradiction.

Furthermore, if God's omniscience doesn't make scriptural sense (according to you), then that's another contradiction, not an explanation.

[_asbestosman]

You just lost me. On one hand, this life helps us learn to obey without "Big Brother" watching over us, but actually God's omniscience means "Big Brother" is watching over us. This is a contradiction.

Actually it was a lack of explanation on my part. What I should have written is that although "Big Brother" is watching over us, it is no longer obvious that He is doing so. This provides a different environment in which we can grow.

Furthermore, if God's omniscience doesn't make scriptural sense (according to you), then that's another contradiction, not an explanation.

When did I say God's omniscience doesn't make scriptural sense? I think I said that the idea of testing to prove ourselves to God doesn't make sense in light of scripture about God's omniscience. I consider that evidence that people are misinterpreting the passage dealing with "proving" or testing people on earth.

[_beastie]

Abman,

Free will is an illusion, but a comforting one.

I was an atheist before my son became seriously ill with bipolar disorder, but had I not already been an atheist, I have no doubt that experience would have made me one. Our behaviors, our choices, our thoughts, that are attributed to "moral choices" by religionists and even many nonbelievers, are really the result of chemical ebbs and flow within the organic material of our brains. If these chemicals ebb or flow in the "wrong" direction, the individual will engage in immoral behavior due to impulses created by that chemical soup. Give that same person Medicine X and suddenly they become "moral" again.

[_CaliforniaKid]

I'm not sure free-will in the libertarian sense is even possible. People like to talk about quantum physics and indeterministic reactions at the sub-atomic level giving rise, ultimately, to indeterministic actions at the macroscopic level. But in this sense everything in our universe would be indetermined, not just human actions. And I'm not so sure those sub-atomic reactions are really indetermined in any meaningful sense, anyway. When you get right down to it, our decisions are determined by either determinate or indeterminate prior conditions-- they are either result of past cause-and-effect or of something like a random dice-roll (or both). Either way, "I" do not determine my own actions unless you define "me" as the sum total result of these prior conditions, which leads us back to compatibilism. Really, compatibilism is the only version of "free-will" that makes any sense at all.

[_Gazelam]

I hate the idea that I live in a nation of fundamentalist kooks.

Smoke some more weed, you'll feel better.

[_Gazelam]

And ABMan - couldn't this be the 'logic' that you require?

Part of the reason we come to earth (we are told in the LDS church) is to 'prove' ourselves, to be tested against god's commandments.

What good is this 'test' if > 99% of the people who come to earth, don't even really get to take it?

The LDS response might be something like 'well that's why we have work for the dead - so that everyone will get the opportunity in the next life'. But then, can we really say this life is the test then?

It just doesn't add up logically.

hopefully I explained what I was thinking well enough.

This is spoken about in Romans 2:11-15

11 For there is no respect of persons with God.
12 For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law;
13 (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.
14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)


We are being tested to see if by our will we will be virtuous and charitable. Having the gospel allows us to enter into covenants with God and receive additional guidance by the Holy Ghost. It slike a help in doing al the things we should be doing. If someone by their own will in central China lives a virtuous life, they are doing the work of God independently, and wil be rewarded as such.

The work for the dead is the paperwork after the work has been done.

[_Gazelam]

This is why some religions dealt with the dilemma by coming up with ideas of predestination. Others are basically burying their heads in the sand.

I think the philosophical idea of compatibalism is interesting and perhaps even the correct answer for free will.

For me an even deeper question is that of what makes us differ from each other in the first place? Why did Jesus end up perfect before this life while we didn't? If our innate dispositions were caused by ourselves, then why is anyone different at all? If our innate dispositions were not caused by ourselves (whether it be by chance or be caused by God), then how can we be accountable?

I have never heard a good response to this question. The closest answer I could come up with one time when Tarski asked is that perhaps there were no initial conditions just as sine and cosine do not really have an initial condition at negative infinity, but they differ. Yet even that isn't quite an answer as it still doesn't explain why we end up choosing differently.

I hope this helps.

As you know, all intelligence is not created or made (D&C 93:29). From this scripture take a look at Abr. 3:11-18. This "astronomy lesson" leads to another discussion halfway through vs. 18. The little phrase there "as also" turns the discussion from the organization of worlds to the organization of spirits. Just as Planets differ in size and sustainability of life, so do spirits. Some are organized weak as water, and others are capable of sustaining others. This si by their own nature, just as people here are born with different strngths of will. Christ showed himself from the beginning to be far greater than others. Those others were given the opportunity to challenge themselves and improve.

Gaz

[_asbestosman]

I hope this helps.

As you know, all intelligence is not created or made (D&C 93:29). From this scripture take a look at Abr. 3:11-18. This "astronomy lesson" leads to another discussion halfway through vs. 18. The little phrase there "as also" turns the discussion from the organization of worlds to the organization of spirits. Just as Planets differ in size and sustainability of life, so do spirits. Some are organized weak as water, and others are capable of sustaining others. This si by their own nature, just as people here are born with different strngths of will. Christ showed himself from the beginning to be far greater than others. Those others were given the opportunity to challenge themselves and improve.

Thanks Gaz, but I don't think it answers my question. That we aer different is not in dispute. The source of those differences (and by implication who is responsible for them) is. God organized our spirits, but didn't we already differ as pre-spirit intelligences? Is it your opinion that God is the one who Created Jesus with the disposition to be perfect but created us with dispositions such that we would not be perfect? I hd always thought that God organizing spirits had to do with God choosing leaders on Earth such as prophets and even missionaries. I didn't think it really answered the question as to why we differ from each other in our varying dispositions toward good or evil and ultimately we kingdom we will come to dwell in.

Let's ask the question another way. Did God create Satan wit the disposition to be evil, or did God merely create Satan while Satan's evil disposition was random / inherent in Satan's intelligence. If the former, then why is Satan punished. If the latter, then how could Satan have chosen to have an evil disposition while others did not? Was it random, and if so why is Satan punished.

[_Gazelam]

Let me share with you a small part of one of Hugh Nibleys essays.

In the Apocalypse of Abraham, a very important Jewish discovery, Abraham hails God: "God! Thou who dost bring order into the confusion of the universe, ever preparing and renewing worlds for the righteous."23 The Codex Brucianus (a new document) says the same thing: Creation is organization, and God is ever bringing order into the universe and is progressively ever preparing and renewing worlds for the righteous.24

But it is not enough to arrange matter in order and system. Such matter remains, for all its pretty patterns, inert. If you organize it, you've just got a geometrical structure or something similar, but it's still inert. It's only background stuff. The Pistis Sophia says that, without light, matter is inert and helpless.25 It must be improved by the action of light; according to these texts, you've got to put into it some animating principle. Whenever that active principle is withdrawn, the matter at once falls back into its original lifeless, inert condition. It's like removing an electric current from a tube of one of the inert gases—the tube shines as long as the charge goes through it; remove the charge, and it becomes just nothing again. "Matter must be improved by the action of light," and whenever the active principle is withdrawn, it at once falls back into its original lifeless, inert condition (like the inert gas argon). This vitalizing principle is referred to everywhere as "the spark," which you must have if anything is to happen. "Without this spark," says a very important new work called the Second Coptic Gnostic Work, "there is no awareness,"26 no consciousness. The electric eye that opens the door for you when you go into the supermarket is not conscious of you, that is, it's not thinking at all. It's purely automatic. An awareness, a consciousness, must be added to the electric eye, or it has no mind at all. That is the difference: things just automatically reacting, or, having a mind.

There are cabalistic teachings about how God's intelligence unites with matter to form light or life. This is called a unity—except that it goes by a concept of cabalism (medieval Jewish mysticism),27 for which reason we say that God is in everything because he animates everything. The Coptic Gospel of Truth, discovered in 1956 (one of the most sensational discoveries of our time, a tremendously important document, which caused enormous excitement when it was discovered; but then it started telling too much, so it got swept under the rug, though much has come to support it), says much the same thing: "Unity engulfs matter within itself like a flame."28 This contrasts with the absolute separation of matter and spirit in an all-or-nothing arrangement like that of the Gnostics and Neo-platonists whom the church Fathers followed—matter as either inert and wicked, or divine pure spirit, with no choice in between; it was corrupting to try to bring the two together. Later Christian theology has never been able to reconcile the two.

The early Christian apologist Aristides explains everything in terms of a "divine mixture," which produces the new type of life in the manner of the original creation.29 Melito of Sardis, one of the earliest Fathers of the church, referring to the physical universe, says, "By the power of God, all the world is moved and animated as the body is moved by the spirit."30 "When this vitalizing principle touches matter," according to the Psalm of Thomas (a very important Syriac text, recently discovered), "consciousness is expanded. The worlds of darkness gathered and beheld his brightness. They breathed his fragrance and orbited about him and bowed anew and worshipped him."31 They came into organization and started to orbit about him as he had determined. This is the "thought of life," working with the elements, which brings about creation, according to the Berlin Papyrus: "At the time of the creation, the great thought came to the elements, united with them, spirit joining with matter."32 Though now joined with spirit, matter is not spirit. It is still itself and is constantly undergoing a processing. Matter at every stage is in some form of processing. The way these writings talk about these matters is extremely interesting; it certainly beats science fiction

The part I bolded was what I really wanted to share. People are who they are. They were intelligences that wanted to be improved upon. God organized their intelligence and seeks to exalt them/us. People are exalted or remain damned depending on their strength of will that is inherent in them. This strength of will can be improved upon, but only through our own efforts. For God to force change upon these intelligences would be against the plan of salvation and would actually work counter to the plan. He is only as involed in our life as we ask him to be.