Long lives of the antedeluvian patriarchs

[Guest]

I didn't mean to imply it was, more I was asking if you thought any physical body, even a divine one would be able to survive such a journey.

Since the most common form of Mormon ontology is a materialist one, I don't see what the problem would be. So long as all the parts are there what's the problem?

Well if He isn't capable of doing so, as we understand the laws of physics, how is He the God of worlds without ends?

I might not be following your argument. Is this just the old argument that the materialist God of Mormonism doesn't fulfill the classic Greek 'omnipotence' considerations?

The usual response to this is that God to be omnipotent doesn't need to do everything logically conceivable but only physically possible. Although if one accepts the premise that there is matter co-eternal with God then even logically you end up with same conclusions assuming that the laws of physics just arise for the nature of matter co-eternal with God.

Even if this is the only universe, he simply could not travel to all those worlds given distance, time and speed limitations. Additionally if I understand the concept of expansion correctly, would some of those worlds be traveling away from him at FTL speed? Are those worlds now on their own?

No because you missed the premise of my argument which is this is all done at the creation of the universe in a conscious way. But maybe I'm still missing what you're arguing for.

So far as I know there is no claim that God has to travel in his body to an other world in our universe in a faster than light fashion. If you're familiar with a scripture that claims that I'm all ears. I confess I'm just not seeing the theological claim that is a problem.

[_Themis]

It's where he starts and finishes. He approaches it all with the conclusions in hand and an unwillingness to change it. It's the opposite of how science is done, or how one seeks the truth.

I don't think that is accurate (assuming you were speaking of me). I'm more than willing to change my views and do so at a reasonable rate. Indeed the whole value of venues like this one to me is to help me question my assumptions. It's just that most people here inexplicably wish to argue from a fundamentalist viewpoint. Which I confess I still can't figure the attraction of. It's doubly odd since I don't quite see how making appeals to such a worldview could change the mind of anyone except a pretty narrow class of members. After all fundamentalists simply will reject science and that line of questioning. So at best it's a place for fundamentalists who ceased being fundamentalists but in a fundamentalist way didn't want to examine any of the other options. C'est la vie I guess. I'll give it a while longer.

It's not that I'm wiggling but simply that since I already reject the premises of your argument (fundamentalism) you're are rarely arguing with any claim I'm making.

Sorry but you started with certain conclusions about the church before you even became to look at any evidence. You have shown over and over you are not willing to question these conclusions. The only thing you will change has to leave these conclusions intact. You can call us all fundamentalists all day if it makes you feel better, but it doesn't change this fact. The real difference between us is I did question my conclusions/beliefs. I'm not fixed on concluding the church is not what is claims, so I am willing to go with where the evidence leads. It's not my fault the evidence is against LDS claims. Evidence that has been around a long time, and the evidence against is only getting worse as science collects more knowledge about the world. And the main excuse is God doesn't want me to know, but wants me to have blind faith no different then any religious con-artists asks for.

[Guest]

Sorry but you started with certain conclusions about the church before you even became to look at any evidence. You have shown over and over you are not willing to question these conclusions.

I question them all the time.

Everyone comes to any question with certain conclusions. The point of inquiry is to be open to ones conclusions needing to be revised. However one only revises them where there are good reasons to do so. Thus far no one has provided any good reasons or evidence.

As I've said repeatedly I come to forums like this to learn. So the whole point presupposes that I'm here to change my views.

You an call us all fundamentalists all day if it make you feel better, but it doesn't change this fact.

Note I'm not calling you fundamentalists. Rather I'm saying the view of religion you are critiquing is a fundamentalist one which is completely irrelevant for anyone who doesn't already hold that view of religion. That is I'm making a claim about the type of arguments you are putting forward. You're attempting to make a reductio ad absurdum argument with the premise that is to be rejected as absurd being the fundamentalist view. Which is fine but makes zero sense to raise to a person who doesn't hold that premise.

All I'm asking is that you argue against what I actually believe not what I don't believe. I'm all for changing my views if someone raises a good argument for their being wrong. I do so regularly. But for reasons I just honestly can't quite figure out no one wants to argue against my beliefs but instead against the beliefs of family or friends they have that are Mormon.

I've even tried to be accommodating and answer questions as best I can about my beliefs when asked. But still people prefer to argue against something else instead. The closest people have come is to saying that be a good Mormon I have to be a fundamentalist. But no one really made much of an argument along those lines. (I think it easy to demonstrate it false so I'm not saying that's a fruitful line of argument)

[_spotlight]

I confess I don't see the problem although I should note your comment rests on an equivocation fallacy.

Nope. I am giving it as wide a berth as possible in your favor. Although your comment here essentially reveals the utter uselessness of revelation due to lack of precise definition of the terms involved. The word used is element in the plural. To be exacting we'd have to go with the definition of that term as used in the 1830's and say it cannot be referring to anything other than the elements of the periodic table. This is reasonable since that is after all what the "tabernacle of man" is composed of. To allow it to morph in meaning with the scientific progress of the times renders it meaningless.

(Assuming the meaning of the term "matter" in D&C 93 is the same as the technical meaning of the term in physics)

Actually the word was element in plural form.

Again it is quite interesting to me how few here seem to want to appreciate hermeneutic issues and instead tend to read everything from a fundamentalist style ignoring completely different ways of reading scripture (as well as noting the standard uncontroversial standard that texts must be read in terms of their context).

Sorry, not seeing how I took any meaning out of context. You are the one asserting that we can't be certain of any context. That's quite a defense strategy. Of course you must lose sight of what it is you are defending with such an approach.

Anyway if you think there's a contradiction here please make it explicit by noting your premises, logic and (if appealing to texts) defending your exegesis.

Webster 1828 good enough for now. I'm not interested in accepting your attempt to shift the burden of proof.

[_Fence Sitter]

Clark,

It seem the more I dive into your concepts of Mormonism, the less I recognize it. Granted you may have all sorts of good reasons for these views, but it is hardly the Mormonism I know and would be completely unrecognizable to the TBMs with whom I associate, live and are related.

In your defense (or at least in my understanding of what you believe) you have thought a lot about the problems the traditional concepts of Mormonism create, the need to move away from the classical definition of a God who is omni everything, the need to reinterpret (or as you put it read carefully) scriptures so that our understanding of the problematic stories in scripture are less problematic and so on.

I think you are missing a big problem here. These miracles you are reexamining, these myths, stories and so on to which you are attempting to provide a more naturalist view, are part and parcel of what defines Mormonsim. In my opinion when you remove the miraculous from these stories you are taking away the divine. What is the point of worshiping a being who is just a greatly advanced scientist?

I enjoy our discussions Clark.

Thanks

[Guest]

(Weird double post)

[_ClarkGoble]

Although your comment here essentially reveals the utter uselessness of revelation due to lack of precise definition of the terms involved.

It implies an inescapable vagueness. Although I'd say this isn't just a feature of revelation but of signs in general. However usually we can get close enough.

The word used is element in the plural. To be exacting we'd have to go with the definition of that term as used in the 1830's and say it cannot be referring to anything other than the elements of the periodic table. This is reasonable since that is after all what the "tabernacle of man" is composed of. To allow it to morph in meaning with the scientific progress of the times renders it meaningless.

Quite right. I should have said element not matter. However to say it only means the elements of the periodic table (assuming Joseph Smith even knew what those were in 1833) seems to require support.

I think a safer and more defensible reading is simply saying there are fundamental constituents of reality that are eternal. I think assuming on the basis of "element" (which was a perfectly fine word outside of chemistry) that he's speaking of atoms is illegitimate.

I'd add that various people have followed up Quinn's arguments in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View that the proper context for the section is the loose conception of neoPlatonism in early America. i.e. more Emerson less Priestly.

Sorry, not seeing how I took any meaning out of context. You are the one asserting that we can't be certain of any context. That's quite a defense strategy. Of course you must lose sight of what it is you are defending with such an approach.

LOL. Again the issue is hermeneutics and just being aware of the difficulty of reading any text. None of this is controversial which is why there often are, especially with religious texts, numerous possible readings. I'm simply noting that a completely uncontroversial view in hermeneutics is to pay close attention to the original context of the author. With regards to Moses the purported context is Moses, a semite living thousands of years ago. The secondary context is Joseph Smith in 1830-31. Thus any exegesis has to take seriously those two contexts.

Webster 1828 good enough for now. I'm not interested in accepting your attempt to shift the burden of proof.

Shifting the burden of proof for what? I'm not attempting to prove Moses 1. You're the one who raised it as an argument against a local flood. Thus logically the burden is on you to defend the reading you are making of Moses 1 as part of your argument against a local flood.

[_Themis]

Sorry but you started with certain conclusions about the church before you even became to look at any evidence. You have shown over and over you are not willing to question these conclusions.

I question them all the time.

Everyone comes to any question with certain conclusions. The point of inquiry is to be open to ones conclusions needing to be revised. However one only revises them where there are good reasons to do so. Thus far no one has provided any good reasons or evidence.

As I've said repeatedly I come to forums like this to learn. So the whole point presupposes that I'm here to change my views.

I think you are a good person, but there is mountains of evidence to show the church is not true. Many play apologists for years before becoming open-minded enough to accept the facts, and I recognize you could be on that slow path. I came into it with the same conclusions as you, but fortunately I was open-minded enough at the time to accept these mountains of evidence for what they mean. Not many years earlier I would would be doing the same kind of things you are. I did over the decades with issues like a global flood.

Note I'm not calling you fundamentalists. Rather I'm saying the view of religion you are critiquing is a fundamentalist one which is completely irrelevant for anyone who doesn't already hold that view of religion. That is I'm making a claim about the type of arguments you are putting forward. You're attempting to make a reductio ad absurdum argument with the premise that is to be rejected as absurd being the fundamentalist view. Which is fine but makes zero sense to raise to a person who doesn't hold that premise.

All I'm asking is that you argue against what I actually believe not what I don't believe. I'm all for changing my views if someone raises a good argument for their being wrong. I do so regularly. But for reasons I just honestly can't quite figure out no one wants to argue against my beliefs but instead against the beliefs of family or friends they have that are Mormon.

I've even tried to be accommodating and answer questions as best I can about my beliefs when asked. But still people prefer to argue against something else instead. The closest people have come is to saying that be a good Mormon I have to be a fundamentalist. But no one really made much of an argument along those lines. (I think it easy to demonstrate it false so I'm not saying that's a fruitful line of argument)

People critique more then just the fundamentalist view, but the fundamentalist view is the one Joseph built it around. The problem is not things like fallibility, but how far off you want to go to make it work so you can still believe it is true.

[_The CCC]

The Fundamentals of the Church are pretty simple. That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, for we have seen him standing on the right hand of God. Everything else is an appendage there of.

[_ClarkGoble]

It seem the more I dive into your concepts of Mormonism, the less I recognize it. Granted you may have all sorts of good reasons for these views, but it is hardly the Mormonism I know and would be completely unrecognizable to the TBMs with whom I associate, live and are related.

By and large the typical member has barely read the scriptures and couldn't pass a test on pretty simple theological and scriptural claims that are important official parts of Mormonism. I say that not to criticize them simply to note that for most people religion is not primarily about knowledge of theology, history or even scriptural narratives.

Nothing I'm saying really is that controversial within Mormonism and it's not hard to find prominent general authorities who have held the views I've outlined (except perhaps some of esoteric physics that got brought up - here just meaning the theological claims). The most controversial thing you could get in what I've said is about Noah but there's pretty prominent writings by John Widstoe saying the same things. Further probably the majority of professors at BYU believe the same sorts of things.

...the need to move away from the classical definition of a God who is omni everything

This actually is quite old and goes back to Joseph Smith. Again none of this is really controversial and it even used to be taught explicitly in church manuals.

I think you are missing a big problem here. These miracles you are reexamining, these myths, stories and so on to which you are attempting to provide a more naturalist view, are part and parcel of what defines Mormonsim. In my opinion when you remove the miraculous from these stories you are taking away the divine. What is the point of worshiping a being who is just a greatly advanced scientist?

I don't think I'm taking away the miraculous. What I'm suggesting is that miracles accord with natural law and that we tend to read the stories in a fashion the texts themselves don't warrant. i.e. there is a much wider range of acceptable readings. Typically when I make these readings I try to go out of my way not to say this is the only reading. Just that some readings are more defensible than other readings.

To the larger point, that's the key theistic debate point. Is a more limited materialist God (which is very much what Joseph Smith emphasized) more or less worshippable than the more Greek like conception of God as the source of all being.

The interesting point there is that of course the traditional view of God is losing adherents. The major thrust of philosophy in the late 18th century onward was the problem of such a God. (This is the point of Nietzsche's death of god in a way, although it was more his noting that despite claiming they didn't worship such a god philosophers were still holding on to the ideas of such a god in their arguments) You have Heidegger noting that the traditional God is not a "God before whom one could sing and dance."

So the question then becomes what makes God worthy of worship? Is it the Greek conceptions of God? (which are essentially bound up in arguments for his existence) To me the deist implications of such a conception of God as either Being or the source of Being is that I can't even figure out what the point of worship would be for such a thing.

Not arguing against those who do. Just that to me the distinction between atheism and this omni God is pretty negligible. It's just that the atheists note that it's hard to get excited about God as Being.