DiscussMormonism.com

Posted: **Wed Jun 27, 2007 3:24 pm**

I have already had a run in with Beckwith's pseudo-arguments in the past.

Beckwith thinks he can prove mathematically that the Mormon God is impossible.

I don't believe in the Mormon God but Beckwith's argument is flawed (as usual). If Beckwith's arguments against eternal progression were true then transfinite arithmetic (as well as simple limits) would be illogical (which it isn't).
This was pointed this out to him but he would not listen to reason.

Here is his argument:
(see http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/tex ... j0100a.txt for the full essay)

(Premise 1) A being of limited knowledge gaining in
knowledge entails the increasing of a finite number.

(Premise 2) Starting from a finite number, it is
impossible to count to infinity.

(Premise 3) The Mormon view of eternal progression
entails a being of limited knowledge gaining in knowledge
until his knowledge is infinite (remember, the Mormon
universe contains an infinite number of things).

(Conclusion 1/Premise 4) Therefore, the Mormon view
cannot be true, for it is impossible -- given premises 1,
2, and 3 -- for eternal progression to entail that a
being of limited knowledge gains knowledge until his
knowledge is infinite.

(Premise 5) The Mormon doctrine of eternal progression is
entailed by the Mormon concept of God.

(Conclusion 2) Therefore, the Mormon concept of God is
incoherent.

Posted: **Wed Jun 27, 2007 6:54 pm**

topping (where's Coggins now?)

Posted: **Wed Jun 27, 2007 7:28 pm**

Right, and Xeno paradox proves that motion is impossible.

As to why one couldn't add an infinite as the last step, I'll never know, but I'm sure it was in one of his premises somewhere . . .

Posted: **Wed Jun 27, 2007 7:31 pm**

I like this bit from the essay:

Someone may argue that the Mormon God receives his infinite
knowledge from his own "Heavenly Father" God all at once when he
reaches a particular point in his progression. Although there are
a number of replies to this argument,[31] one is to point out that
this response does not _really_ explain how the Mormon God acquires
his infinite knowledge. It merely places the problem on the
shoulders of a _more distant_ God, who acquired _his_ supposed
omniscience from an _even more distant_ God, and so on into
infinity.

Appealing to an endless series of contingent beings as an
explanation for why all the Mormon gods are omniscient explains
nothing. Consider the following: If Being A does not have the
sufficient reason for his omniscience in the being who created him
(Being B), but requires other prior conditions (i.e., B receiving
his omniscience from his creator, Being C, and C receiving his
omniscience from his creator, Being D, _ad infinitum_), then the
necessary conditions for the omniscience of _any one_ of the gods
in the series are never fulfilled and can never be fulfilled in
principle. It follows from this that none of the gods in the Mormon
universe could have ever actually attained omniscience. Whether a
Mormon god "progresses" to infinite knowledge or receives it all at
once from his own superior God, the Mormon concept of God is
nevertheless incoherent.

Sounds neat to me. Hey. Beckwith can't be all bad after all ...

Posted: **Wed Jun 27, 2007 7:37 pm**

Chap wrote:I like this bit from the essay:

Someone may argue that the Mormon God receives his infinite
knowledge from his own "Heavenly Father" God all at once when he
reaches a particular point in his progression.

Who says He has to receive it that way? Why can't He receive infinite knowledge all on His own?

Furthermore, why is the infinite series any worse than the Christian ex-nihilo always-been-omniscient God? Seems just about equal to me. In fact, I suppose it's possible that our Heavenly Father is the first in the series. Or maybe there never was a first. Mormon doctrine seems unclear in this. Hey, maybe it's a loop with an infinite circumfrence kinda like the Riemann sphere for the complex plane.

It does not follow, despite assertions to the contrary, that if it's an infinite loop that there none of them could become infinite because they all have dependencies. I think this is the point of transfinite arithmetic that Tarski was trying to make. I may have a knack for math, but I'm not a PhD. Beckwith is proudly displaying his mathematical ignorance. Beckwith's assertion appears to rely on the premise that there can be no such things as infinite sets that extend infinitely backward or have infinite dependancies. It's the argument about an actual infinite. I fail to see how he's proved anything in this regard.

It is rather like Xeno's paradox.

Posted: **Wed Jun 27, 2007 8:05 pm**

asbestosman wrote:Furthermore, why is the infinite series any worse than the Christian ex-nihilo always-been-omniscient God? Seems just about equal to me.

Me too.

If Beckwith really wants to bash the Mormon god, then he ought to jump on board Tarski's point about the absurdity of mammal-god. Oh, but then Beckwith would have to accept evolution.

Posted: **Wed Jun 27, 2007 8:21 pm**

Someone may argue that the Mormon God receives his infinite
knowledge from his own "Heavenly Father" God all at once when he
reaches a particular point in his progression. Although there are
a number of replies to this argument,[31] one is to point out that
this response does not _really_ explain how the Mormon God acquires
his infinite knowledge. It merely places the problem on the
shoulders of a _more distant_ God, who acquired _his_ supposed
omniscience from an _even more distant_ God, and so on into
infinity.

This argument is similar to an argument against an Intelligent Designer. If an intelligent designer exists, that designer would have had to have been designed by an even more intelligent designer and so on, ad infinitum.

Edited to add: Is Beckwith a proponent of ID? If so, he has a problem with his logic.

Posted: **Thu Jun 28, 2007 3:26 pm**

I'm not sure what the point of this thread is. Beckwith is well known as an evangelical apologist who critiques LDS doctrine. Obviously, I don't agree with this stance. Indeed, if you wanted something more compelling as a parallel to his crituqe of atheism, Beckwith argues that the LDS faith is incompatible with objective moral obligations. You can read Blake Ostler's rebuttle here: http://www.fairlds.org/New_Mormon_Challenge/TNMC06.html (Note that Blake doesn't argue that Mormons can act morally, but rather that Mormons have access to an objective metaethical grounding of obligation. That's because he understands what he is replying to.)

So what am I to make of this thread? If it is meant to be a "gotcha" moment where it is revealed that Beckwith isn't an agreement with the LDS faith, then I hate to burst your bubble, but this should be familiar to anyone whose has an interest in LDS apologetics. Is the implication that agreement with Beckwith on one subject means one must agree with him on all subjects? No one would flat assert such a transparently misguided view, but you never know what the rhetorical tactics might be. You're always recommending Dennet Tarski. Do you agree with everything he says? Is it because Tarski thinks this is a good argument he wants to share with everyone? Clearly not. What's going on here?

Posted: **Thu Jun 28, 2007 5:13 pm**

A Light in the Darkness wrote:I'm not sure what the point of this thread is. Beckwith is well known as an evangelical apologist who critiques LDS doctrine. Obviously, I don't agree with this stance. Indeed, if you wanted something more compelling as a parallel to his crituqe of atheism, Beckwith argues that the LDS faith is incompatible with objective moral obligations. You can read Blake Ostler's rebuttle here: http://www.fairlds.org/New_Mormon_Challenge/TNMC06.html (Note that Blake doesn't argue that Mormons can act morally, but rather that Mormons have access to an objective metaethical grounding of obligation. That's because he understands what he is replying to.)

So what am I to make of this thread? If it is meant to be a "gotcha" moment where it is revealed that Beckwith isn't an agreement with the LDS faith, then I hate to burst your bubble, but this should be familiar to anyone whose has an interest in LDS apologetics. Is the implication that agreement with Beckwith on one subject means one must agree with him on all subjects? No one would flat assert such a transparently misguided view, but you never know what the rhetorical tactics might be. You're always recommending Dennet Tarski. Do you agree with everything he says? Is it because Tarski thinks this is a good argument he wants to share with everyone? Clearly not. What's going on here?

The deal is that Beckwith uses the same logic when he attacks Mormons as when he attacks atheists; his position is essentially that unless God exists and has certain properties, then it is impossible for there to exist objective morals. Neither Atheists nor Mormons believe in a God with those properties, therefore it is impossible for there to be objective morals in a Mormon universe or in an atheist universe.

Of course I think Beckwith is wrong. The issue isn't whether or not you agree with everything Beckwith says. The issue is whether or not you'll consistently apply his logic to all non-Evangelical paradigms.

Posted: **Thu Jun 28, 2007 5:35 pm**

Hi ALITD,

Here is something in that FAIR article you referred us to.

Blake Ostler's FAIR essay wrote:Beckwith maintains also that there is "an unchanging moral law that is true in every possible world."10 Of course, it follows that based on Beckwith's view God must also exist in every possible world. Remember that a "possible world" is a maximally inclusive description of the ways things can possibly be. If God exists in every possible world, it means that no matter how we conceive things, it is impossible to consistently think of any way the world could possibly be without including God. However, this latter proposition is dubious at best.

Thus, there is a very simple reason why Beckwith's position regarding the relationship between the "classical" God and moral law cannot be accepted. On Beckwith's view, moral laws and principles are metaphysically necessary in the sense that they obtain in every possible world. It is indeed impossible to imagine that there is some possible world where it is morally right to torture children just for fun. However, as I have shown in response to Parrish, the notion that God exists of logical necessity in the sense that God exists in every possible world is false.11 God (as conceived in the classical tradition defended by Beckwith) does not exist in those possible worlds where there are vast amounts of unjustified evils. It follows that there are possible worlds where God does not exist but the moral laws still obtain in those possible worlds because they are necessary truths. Thus, it also follows that moral law cannot be dependent on God, or be included within God's nature, because they can exist even if God does not exist.

It seems to me that Beckwith, and others who locate necessary moral truths in God's nature, have simply substituted necessary truths about moral goodness with truths about God. However, necessary moral truths have a different logical status than God, and thus we run into an incoherent view. The view that moral goodness must be independent of God's existence in some sense is strongly supported by our moral intuitions. Consider the following conditionals:

P. If God did not exist, no one could be morally good or bad.

Q. If God were not loving and just, no one could be morally good or bad.

These conditionals seems obviously false to me.

This is the core argument by Ostler that "Beckwith's Argument is Necessarily Unsound".

Blake Ostler believes that moral laws can exist even if God doesn't exist. Beckwith and Coggins disagree with Ostler; they believe that it is impossible for moral law to exist without God. Do you see the point now?

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