The Origin and Literal Fatherhood of God

[_JAK]

Canucklehead quoted Coggins7 thus:

“Do I know God is infallible? Yes. How? Because I know he exists, I've experienced his power, love, and nature, and have nor reason to doubt the attributes ascribed to him in the scriptures or by his servants.”

JAK:
Prove it.

This is only bombastic, buttery prattling poppycock, Coggins7. No evidence.

That you have emotions, emotional responses, are a victim of religious propaganda – yes, we could without doubt establish that if we had your complete biography from cradle up.

Muslims have experienced the same blind faith as they take on suicide missions against specified targets. Beliefs in God myths are responsible for more deaths through wars (historically) than any other single belief. I don’t suggest you’re a suicide bomber. Your belief in the absurd based on emotional feelings in no way establishes your claim (assuming the above is an accurate quote).

You could be honest and say that you believe in God. On this board alone, you have been given reason to question such a sweeping statement absent evidence beyond your own feelings. Feelings are misleading and unreliable. No matter how convinced you are, reason should inform you, advise you that others have vastly different perceptions who come from vastly different backgrounds.

You have no reason. That’s clear.

There is not the slightest reason in your verbose, pious, sanctimonious, pretence.

It does demonstrate how completely your intellectual integrity has been destroyed by religious dogma.

JAK

[_Canucklehead]

Canucklehead quoted Coggins7 thus:

“Do I know God is infallible? Yes. How? Because I know he exists, I've experienced his power, love, and nature, and have nor reason to doubt the attributes ascribed to him in the scriptures or by his servants.”

JAK:
Prove it.

Yes, that is the essence of what I was getting at! :)

[_Coggins7]

What is meant by “God”?

God is a perfect form, representation, and example of what we would call homo sapiens; He is a glorified, exalted man, having all power, all knowledge, as wisdom, and all attributes in a perfect and ultimate sense. All his attributes: perceptual, cognitive, psychological, emotional etc., are developed and raised to their ultimate potential and expression.

What’s the distinction of “Fatherhood” as stated?

Our relation to him is literal, not allegorical or symbolic.

It appears to mean that “God” (whatever that is as yet undefined) has a father. It’s the implication and we have some concept of father which is specific in heredity of humans and other species (race horses, for example).

This is the implication of the King Follett Discourse.

If that’s the case that “God” has a father, what is the evidence for the claim?

Nothing. This can only, like many core Gospel truths, be known if revealed by God himself. Other than that, it simply makes more sense than the traditional Christian view of the wholly "other" God who was just always there, floating in an abyssal void of nothingness until he decided to create something.

It also posits, as I pointed out before, a great continuity between ourselves and himself, in the sense of a direct loving familial relation, and all who came before him, in a great, eternal, and incomprehensibly vast plan of happiness for intelligences, begotten of God, who are all, ultimately, related to each of us throughout the eternities.

If the claim is that the claimed “God” has a father, what’s the implied claim for the father of the father of “God”?.

Only that the means by which all gods before our Father attained there godhood has been, and will be, the same throughout eternity. We would call this the Gospel of Jesus Christ (in our particular case here, on this earth, this is "his" Gospel as he is the central organizing focus of it).

Now what is the meaning of “Literal”? I know what the word means in standard usage as I’m sure amantha does. However, in the context of this topic, it has no meaning, not even muddy. Does it contrast with figurative fatherhood?

Our spirit bodies, those corresponding in general to our present physical bodies, are begotten of him, not "created" in the sense that animal life is his creation. We are, as spirit beings, his literal descendants.

What’s the alternative to “Literal Fatherhood of God” as expressed in the topic?

Allegorical or symbolic fatherhood, as in saying that God is our "father" in the sense that he has brought us into the Kingdom of God, or in the manner that we understand Jesus can be called a father, in that he is the author of our salvation.

These are valid understandings of God, but do not convey Joseph's meaning as understood in the Church.

[_Coggins7]

Again, you're just talking Mormon mythology. We could also talk about the creation as a product of a galactic butter churn and look for life orienting connections between the butter-making cosmos and the microcosm of day to day worldly chores including, making butter. I don't know what you hope to get out of a discussion like this, all you can do is state your mythos and that's that. There's really no straight-forward way to argue for or against any mythology. So what can I say, have fun, knock yourself out.

Gad, take the snarky Madalyn Murray O' Hare cheap shots to another room. This is not why I opened this thread. If you have something of substance to add, as to why, in a philosophically substantive manner, you have problems with the concept, then fine.

Otherwise...

[_Coggins7]

I agree with Stephen Robinson on this one. thought not canonized the KFD and the ideas taught are quasi official because of the level of use and reference this discourse had receieved. The basic concepts are official doctrine-God was once a man and we can become gods. Now exactly how God was a man and what it means for us to become gods I think can be debated and a number of reasonable conclusions that may differ in view can be reached. For example, my read of the KFD leads me to conclude that God was not a man just like us. Rather, he was a man like Jesus. He was the creator of a world, in my opinion, the first world ever and he was the savior of that world.

The idea that the Father was a savior as Jesus himself has been taken up by other LDS authors, but the bolded phrase interests me. As the KFD itself seems to indicate that there has never been a time when there were no gods engaging in creative activities and providing mortal experiences for their children, where do you get the idea that our world was the "first world"? The first world in our universe of 100 billion galaxies? The first world in any reality anywhere throughout eternity? That would seem to contradict the ideas of the KFD, which posit an endless, beginningless regression into the past within which the plan of salvation has always been in operation and through which our Father progressed to his present condition. As Joseph said, our task is to become gods as all gods have done before us. This phrase includes our Father in Heaven but explicitly references innumerable other beings of equivalent stature.

I believe the eternal existence of intelligences is official LDS doctrine and canonized in scripture. So yes, we have always existed in some form. The idea that there is an infinite regression of Gods is, in my opinion, speculative and non official LDS doctrine.

Well this is one of the points I wanted to get at. While I agree it is "unofficial", outside of Blake Ostler and perhaps a few other LDS intellectuals, most members, at least those I have known in my 40 some years, would balk at a label of "speculative"

Joseph, and other prophets since his time who have articulated this doctrine (Joseph Fielding Smith say), have clearly not understood it as speculative.

The idea that our particular Father in Heaven is, in some sense, the first god of all gods, seems to smack of the very Alexandrian philosophical assumptions that initiated much of the Great Apostasy in the first place. I say this because it implies some kind of transcendent metaphysical novelty to our Father that both undoes the eternal continuity of the plan of salvation and seems to reintroduce to the Gospel the idea that, before this god existed, there was a void of irreducible ontological nothingness and that the plan of salvation is, therefore, in a very real sense, the de novo creation of God the Father, as if he and he alone were responsible for reality itself.

I do not believe it can be confirmed from LDS canon and in fact conflicts with it. Prophets and apostles certainly have taught the concept though so I may be all wet. Yet if one can set aside less pleasant teachings from Prophets that we do not like why not this one? It seems to me that God the Eternal Father was at least the first God and has existed for all eternity. He is the head God of all other gods. He created the first world and was a savior for it and started the ball rolling so to speak.

Well, of course, anything that comes through the spirit of prophesy is scripture, so that canon is open ended and keeps growing, even when doctrinal truths are not canonized officially.

The doctrine of a mother, or mothers, in heaven certainly seems necessary in the LDS scheme of eternal families and exaltation. However, your church currently seems to downplay this one. I am not sure where it stands.

I'm quite partial to the manner in which it stands in The Hymn of the Pearl.

[_Canucklehead]

Do I know God is infallible? Yes. How? Because I know he exists, I've experienced his power, love, and nature, and have nor reason to doubt the attributes ascribed to him in the scriptures or by his servants.

How do you know that your experience with God was an infallible one and that you are not simply misinterpreting your experience? Why should I believe you when you make assertions (which I have no objective means of verifying) regarding the nature of your god?

Despite taking up the challenge to have such an infallible experience for myself, I have not been so rewarded. Why would an infallible god reward some people with completely unambiguous experiences, not open to misinterpretation whatsoever, whilst others are not given the same privilege?

Why should those of us who have not had an unambiguous god-experience take the word of those who claim to know his nature (whether it be Mohammed, Joseph Smith, Coggins7, Charity or anyone else)?

Could you take a stab at answering those questions for me? Thanks.

[_Coggins7]

That would derail the thread, unfortunately. I recently went over this issue at length with Amantha here:

http://www.mormondiscussions.com/discus ... sc&start=0

[_Canucklehead]

The original post of this thread specifically states:

The status of the concept of the origin of God. Specifically, the concept that God himself was at one time a human being who was born, grew, and existed on a terrestrial planet similar to this one, and who, through obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel, or the eternal laws of existence, became a God, and that we are following a similar progression in our own case as mortals. Is it settled, uncontroversial doctrine for most Saints? Is it unofficial doctrine, but yet considered "orthodox" and for all intents and purposes, a fundamental Gospel principle? Is it a theory or speculation?

You claim that your concept of god is infallible. I wish to know the basis for this claim. My questions are entirely on-topic. If you will not defend your assertion, then there can be no further intelligent discussion on the topic that you proposed.

Furthermore, seeing as this thread has pretty much died over the past few weeks, I don't see how your answering my questions will somehow cause it some kind of "damage".

[_Kolohe]

Doctine is what the Church teaches.

Truth is what exists in reality, irrespective of whether the Church teaches it or not.

I believe all the doctrines taught by Pres. Monson; I also believe the truths he doesn't teach, but I only teach the doctrine.



Personally, Ill take Brigham Young and Joseph Smith over Blake Ostler and Robert Millet anyday.

[_Tarski]

The human mind is not equipped to consider infinity.

Which infinity?
c? aleph_0? aleph_1, aleph^aleph? The first inaccessible cardinal? Infinite volume manifolds? The class of all classes?
On what do you base your assertion? It can't be your knowlege of transfinite arithmetic.

Can man understand the infinitesimal?