Mormonism's OA and the mighty F-S chain

[Limnor]

I want to thank you for such a stunningly wonderful and insightful essay!!! This has some of the deepest most fascinating ideas in it I have read in years. I shall have to re-read a few times and digest, but just wow! I noticed you didn't much bring in Joseph Smith's idea of eternal intelligences. Not sure yet if that changes anything, but it did seem to be something that might increase what you are saying in some way or another.

The eternal intelligence concept makes this even harder, because if Father God was once an intelligence, you get an additional OA comparative-greatness problem. Wouldn’t it be “greater” if God were not a being in a prior state, but the source of the state itself?

[Gadianton]

Here's the core concept distilled...

In a certain town there's a blacksmith who makes the best swords anybody has ever seen. How did he get so good? Well shoot, everyone knows his dad is the blacksmith in the next town over, and his work is just as fine, makes sense; taught his boy everything he knows.

The above is the gist that I get from the Joseph Smith quote about the son resurrecting himself as the father also resurrected himself, implying he was a savior. In the analogy, being a savior would be like being a blacksmith. How could you be a blacksmith unless you learned the trade from dad? But this isn't quite what I'm after in the OA, right? I believe this is the efficient cause in Aristotle and the "Kalam" CA. Where did dad learn to pound steel? Go over one more town, his dad is still alive and pounding blades at 93.

I think the efficient cause is the superficial goal of this quote, and is rarely the intuition when Mormons talk about Gods. If all we need is to explain the son's skill, he can decide not to have kids, retire, and fish. But now, when people talk about their retired town blacksmith being the best, there might be some grumblings. Yeah, he made a great blade, but his dad did just as fine of work, and then passed the trade down -- part of being a great blacksmith is passing down the craft! And what about the Grandfather? Heartbroken. What lesson didn't he teach his son, such that his boy was unable to instill the most important lesson there is about being a blacksmith to his own boy -- to continue the work!

For the F-S chain, since we're dealing with perfect beings, we don't expect mistakes to be made in passing down the craft of godhood. However, I think this gives a rough intuition for how the chain interrelates. The "royal line" of blacksmiths going back 20 generations. The brand of the line reflects on each individually. Mormons are caught between the intuition that anybody can get to the top, and the intuition that okay, there's the top, but then a secret upper crust beyond that. A royal line of fathers and sons who were both saviors and creators. I tried to establish why the latter intuition seems to win out.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

What about 5th dimensional branching?

FtheOG creates S#1 which creates new branch
S#1 becomes F#1 in new branch
F#1 -> S#2 creates new branch
S#2 -> F#2 and so on

Edit: In other words, the act of creating Himself necessitates a new Universe, i.e., let there be light.

The trouble is that would be a beginning—a first father.

Not necessarily. In my mind, so it could be totally wrong and I’m open to that, a 4th dimensional setting is everything that exists and has always existed and will exist. It always exists. Within this context the 5th dimensional multiverse is essentially a braided rope with each strand being a universe. Each new branch is a strand that’s just folded into the existing structure, but that new strand has always existed, too. There’s no beginning or end from this perspective. From a 3-d perspective, sure, it looks recursive and progressive, but from a higher dimension it all just exists.

in my opinion, a god at the Christian level of understanding, by its own nature, would necessitate being outside this dimension in essence and function. Because it doesn’t, as far as I can comprehend it, conform to 3rd dimensionality.

[Limnor]

The trouble is that would be a beginning—a first father.

Not necessarily. In my mind, so it could be totally wrong and I’m open to that, a 4th dimensional setting is everything that exists and has always existed and will exist. It always exists. Within this context the 5th dimensional multiverse is essentially a braided rope with each strand being a universe. Each new branch is a strand that’s just folded into the existing structure, but that new strand has always existed, too. There’s no beginning or end from this perspective. From a 3-d perspective, sure, it looks recursive and progressive, but from a higher dimension it all just exists.

in my opinion, a god at the Christian level of understanding, by its own nature, would necessitate being outside this dimension in essence and function. Because it doesn’t, as far as I can comprehend it, conform to 3rd dimensionality.

This solves regression across time but it solves it by saying “it’s just always been that way forever into eternity.” There’s no “first cause,” no ontological grounding, no reason for the chain to exist in the first place. The Christian view you describe places God outside that loop and is the reason for the existence.

[Gadianton]

Wouldn’t it be “greater” if God were not a being in a prior state, but the source of the state itself?

I agree this is a valid OA concern, especially if you're a non-Mormon thinking about it. Mormons seem to jump in, positioned as they were in history, on the pop-science of the 19th century, and see themselves as thinking like scientists rather than theologians. I'm suspending a lot of belief for this exercise and trying to restrain myself to the internal logic of Mormonism the best that I can.

I think they just took it for granted that stuff exists along with God, and that it's silly to believe in "immaterial matter", which is sort of a wrong way of saying they reject God being outside in terms of "necessity".

If I were to jump in with my own voice, I'd look at the Euthyphro dilemma as a starting point, and ask if it's better that God is good because he created an arbitrary list of rules or if he's better because he follows the existing rules perfectly?

would necessitate being outside this dimension in essence and function. Because it doesn’t, as far as I can comprehend it, conform to 3rd dimensionality.

You certainly can reject all that and this gets to the heart of the very deepest most deep question there is. Does the law of non-contradiction precede physical reality, or does physical reality come first? The "laws of physics" are something different, they are after the fact constructions by us.

Theologians jump at the chance any time they have it to let everyone know things such as the law of non-contradiction must be true in order for the sentence "physical reality comes first" to even mean anything. So I say this knowing that's the knee-jerk reaction.

[I Have Questions]

Gad, just to make sure I’m on the right wavelength here, you’re arguing that if God is defined as the greatest possible being (as in the Ontological Argument), then Mormon ideas about many gods, infinite chains of gods, and humans becoming gods creates logical problems, and Mormonism’s attempt to solve this with an infinite Father–Son chain only partially works. Do I have that right? (I’m not great with long essays about complex thoughts).

[huckelberry]

I realize Gad is thinking within the Mormon thought system to see how it works. My first reactions are from outside but I have thought of a point from LDS. It is from long ago so my memory has no details. My seminary teacher provided us all with copies of Lectures on faith. In connection with this ideas of Pratt (I do not remember which Pratt) was considered. Glory of God referred to ground of all power and order which is eternal. An individual who is divine such as Jesus is completely connected with this Glory.

Perhaps this idea of eternal Glory is a bit to close to traditional ideas of God to get Mormon focus but I doubt that Joseph Smith BY had different ideas. Perhaps the OA presents a problem, is not the power order and intelligence which an individual receives greater than an individual recipient?

[Limnor]

If I were to jump in with my own voice, I'd look at the Euthyphro dilemma as a starting point, and ask if it's better that God is good because he created an arbitrary list of rules or if he's better because he follows the existing rules perfectly?

Not to (further) derail from your thought experiment, but to extend the Euthyphro dilemma as aligned to OA:

If God follows rules He didn’t originate, wouldn’t the source, or the being?, who originated the rules be greater and therefore the one worthy of worship?

[Gadianton]

Gad, just to make sure I’m on the right wavelength here, you’re arguing that if God is defined as the greatest possible being (as in the Ontological Argument), then Mormon ideas about many gods, infinite chains of gods, and humans becoming gods creates logical problems, and Mormonism’s attempt to solve this with an infinite Father–Son chain only partially works. Do I have that right? (I’m not great with long essays about complex thoughts).

If God is defined as the greatest possible being, then Mormons have subconsciously, it would seem, created a chain of Gods that is logically sustainable, and in my view is a better solution than the trinity, both of which must work out God from a starting point where one member, Jesus, has a body, and there are multiple beings (the trinity), and the OA assumes exclusivity. I think there are some hugely problematic elements involved such as ditching the doctrine of deification, but I think they have elected to do so. See the AI thread where MG pitched Blakes theory of a supreme commander God with a bunch of subservient Gods beneath him. This fails from the OA perspective because the supreme commander God is clearly a greater being than a newbie exalted Lou Midgley. It's like in the banking industry, everyone and their dog is a Vice President. It's a watered down title. "Exaltation" appears to mean become a VP, not becoming a CEO. There still can only be one CEO. I believe there is a little slip in logic here that allows an infinite number of CEOs.

Caveat: all this kind of thinking requires a huge suspension of unbelief. I would first ask a person, have you ever read a metaphysical theory that you think makes sense? Almost everyone will probably say "no", because even metaphysics from atheists will sound pretty insane. Many philosophers are not fans of metaphysics. So concerning the viability of the F-S chain, I would first ask: do you think metaphysics is dumb? If "yes", then that's all I need to know to say that you will think the F-S chain is dumb and I really have no fight. If "no", then I want to know what's dumb about it.

[Gadianton]

If God follows rules He didn’t originate, wouldn’t the source, or the being?, who originated the rules be greater and therefore the one worthy of worship?

It's not really a derail at al. From wiki:

It is generally agreed that whatever God wills is good and just. But there remains the question whether it is good and just because God wills it or whether God wills it because it is good and just; in other words, whether justice and goodness are arbitrary or whether they belong to the necessary and eternal truths about the nature of things

that's the dilemma.