gods are like ants in the sugar bowl.

[_Tarski]

Here is an argument that one might try to apply.

The infinite chain of gods and embryonic gods in Mormon cosmology have a set of values and these vlaues have always been. Its part of a pattern. But these values are just there and the gods can't help themselves. They just value procreating and watching their offspring develop. The just repeat this song and dance but have no independent foundation for these values. It is the mere subjectivity of the gods. They are like ants in a sugar bowl driven to value these behaviors. There is no objective reason for these values, it is just a fact about these gods.
Perhaps the gods need a god to provide a foundation! But no, that wouldn't help either would it (infinite regress).

So whats wrong with this that doesn't also apply if the beings aren't gods?

One wonders just why one needs to be a god in order that ones values be seen as anything but empty and useless.
Why, oh why can't values be based on the intersubjectivity and practices of communities of beings?

Well, they can and are. No gods needed for meaning and value and no imagined eternity of heaven.

Between the extremes of solipsistic subjectivity and the silly imagined world of necessary universal intrinisic meaning existing outside anything human there is the reasonable world of intersubjectivity formed by communal practices developed slowly ever the centuries and upon the foundation of human nature layed by evolution.

[_Analytics]

One wonders just why one needs to be a god in order that ones values be seen as anything but empty and useless.

Well put!

Even if it were proven that “intrinsic meaning” was not only a well-defined concept but something that actually existed, it doesn’t define morality. The universe could be an intrinsically nasty place and God could be an inherently evil dominator. Such a place would have intrinsic meaning and all of the other things that Dawkins’s world is supposedly lacking. But those things don’t define what one aught to do.

Emerson claims that the basis for morality is within your own soul, not out there is an intentionally designed, intrinsically meaningful universe.

He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he.

[_Gazelam]

Your discussing the small amount of knowledge that has been shared with us. We have no idea how Our Father in heaven spends his time. We have been taught that the same sociology that exists among us here will exist among us there, and we know that the like minded will gather amongst themselves (hense kingdoms) but beyond that we don't really know how perfect beings socialize.

I posted an interesting quote from orson Pratt on the science thread about how Gods might communicate with one another, as opposed to talking, instead speakingto one another in the same way that the Holy Ghost impresses revelation to our minds. Interesting stuff I thought.

[_Tarski]

Your discussing the small amount of knowledge that has been shared with us. We have no idea how Our Father in heaven spends his time. We have been taught that the same sociology that exists among us here will exist among us there,thought.

And yet so many denials (from Coggins) of the idea that this kind of sociality can provide meaning and a moral environment.
So I guess you must be begining to see the point. There is meaning and ethics with or without the gods.

[_The Dude]

...the silly imagined world of necessary universal intrinisic meaning existing outside anything human

ROFL@!

...there is the reasonable world of intersubjectivity formed by communal practices developed slowly ever the centuries and upon the foundation of human nature layed by evolution.

What else do you need? Why?

I'd like to see an argument for that that doesn't turn circular and, well, teeter on irrational>?

[_Bond...James Bond]

Okay this is offtopic, but since it's Tarski's thread I'd like to say that with your Sun avatar you're the first person who has ever truly "owned" the "Sunbeam" ranking.

[_Mercury]

Your discussing the small amount of knowledge that has been shared with us. We have no idea how Our Father in heaven spends his time. We have been taught that the same sociology that exists among us here will exist among us there, and we know that the like minded will gather amongst themselves (hense kingdoms) but beyond that we don't really know how perfect beings socialize.

I posted an interesting quote from orson Pratt on the science thread about how Gods might communicate with one another, as opposed to talking, instead speakingto one another in the same way that the Holy Ghost impresses revelation to our minds. Interesting stuff I thought.

Gazzy, you are practicing Formalized Wishful Thinking.

[_The Nehor]

Your discussing the small amount of knowledge that has been shared with us. We have no idea how Our Father in heaven spends his time. We have been taught that the same sociology that exists among us here will exist among us there, and we know that the like minded will gather amongst themselves (hense kingdoms) but beyond that we don't really know how perfect beings socialize.

I posted an interesting quote from orson Pratt on the science thread about how Gods might communicate with one another, as opposed to talking, instead speakingto one another in the same way that the Holy Ghost impresses revelation to our minds. Interesting stuff I thought.

Gazzy, you are practicing Formalized Wishful Thinking.

That depends entirely on whether he has any idea what gods do. Some people do.

[_Chap]

There have been major streams of thought within the Buddhist tradition that seem to address the LDS 'God is the same kind of thing as we are, only exalted' view in an interesting way.

The view of the Buddhists in question has been that just as human beings are involved in an endless wheel of karmic causation (from desire, to suffering, to desire ...) through what is claimed to be the illusion of self-hood, so are the gods themselves. They may live lives that are infinitely more privileged than ours, but ultimately they too need release from the self-hood illusion through Buddhist enlightenment.

I do not want to de-rail the thread into a discussion of Buddhism, but that does seem to show that others have recognised some of the problems with certain views of god-hood that are being raised here.

[_barrelomonkeys]

I think everyone should read this book pronto.

http://www2.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring99/gunsgerms.htm