Mormonism's OA and the mighty F-S chain

[Limnor]

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.

Liebnitz says God is by nature good—that seems to be how he solves the dilemma. Am I reading his conclusions accurately?

[Gadianton]

I'm not sure if he tried to solve it. I'd have to look that up. It's one of those paradoxes when you hit rock bottom. If I recall, Plantinga is fully okay with God's will being arbitrary. Not sure he used that word though.

Mormonism very much believes both the physical world and the "laws" exist independent of God. The relation to this thread is that the intuition that God would be greater if he created the laws runs up against this dilemma. Well, we must take "intuition" with a huge grain of salt. Plantinga may think its obvious that such a God will be greater.

[I Have Questions]

I'm not sure if he tried to solve it. I'd have to look that up. It's one of those paradoxes when you hit rock bottom. If I recall, Plantinga is fully okay with God's will being arbitrary. Not sure he used that word though.

Mormonism very much believes both the physical world and the "laws" exist independent of God. The relation to this thread is that the intuition that God would be greater if he created the laws runs up against this dilemma. Well, we must take "intuition" with a huge grain of salt. Plantinga may think its obvious that such a God will be greater.

Do you think that part of the challenge on this is that Mormonism doesn’t really hold firm positions on anything theologically speaking? Sure “God was once a man” and “we can become Gods” have been touted around by leaders here and there, but new leaders can throw that kind of stuff (quietly) under the bus by simply not emphasising it. I’d suggest that Mormonism over the years gives the impression that it really doesn’t have a firm grip on what it thinks of God, even though the leaders and lessons over time have gone into great detail about what the after life might contain. You’re perhaps trying to argue against a fluid position.

For example:
Chapter 1 Gospel Principles

God is the Supreme and Absolute Being in whom we believe and whom we worship. He is “the Great Parent of the universe,” and He “looks upon the whole of the human family with a fatherly care and paternal regard”

Chapter 47 Gospel Principles

Joseph Smith taught: “It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God. … He was once a man like us; … God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith [1976], 345–46).

And

They will have everything that our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have—all power, glory, dominion, and knowledge (see D&C 132:19–20).

And

Exaltation is eternal life, the kind of life God lives. He lives in great glory. He is perfect. He possesses all knowledge and all wisdom. He is the Father of spirit children. He is a creator. We can become like our Heavenly Father. This is exaltation.

So the same manual is teaching that yes, God is the absolute being, but also that he was once a man and therefore not the absolute being, and also that we can become the same as God, which refutes the notion of God as the absolute being.

[Gadianton]

There definitely isn't a whole lot of consistency, and the more recent the source is the more it tries to water it down. I know what I was taught, what my parents believed, what other ward intellectuals believed, what other missionaries believed, and so on. I absolutely agree though that there's a huge tension in older materials between God as the only game in town, and God as just another banking VP.

[Gadianton]

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?

Yeah, that sounds like a typical way a theology person would frame it, which seems to make the "Glory of God" like the force in Star Wars, right? I guess all the Gods could be equal then, but if I pick one and say that guy is the most powerful, I can think it to the exclusion of the others.

[Limnor]

I don’t read Plantinga as describing God’s will as arbitrary. Rather he says God is good by His nature and can’t will against that nature, not because of external law. I understand it the same way that God “is” love. This doesn’t really help solve Mormon metaphysics but I tend to agree with Philo that trying to explain those metaphysics using classical theist philosophy may never get you there, because applying thoughts about a single deity concept to a multiple deity worldview seems like a mismatch.

[Limnor]

I have other questions, but not sure they are helpful to the OA problem. Like:

How does an exalted being “make” an eternal intelligence his child? If intelligences are uncreated and eternal, how do they get changed into spirit children? They wouldn’t be children like you think about regular children—because they were somehow “formed.”

And if we were all eternal intelligences—including Mormon god for at one point, together with us reaching back into eternity—what did Heavenly Father do as an intelligence that resulted in his being picked over any one of us as the one who formed the rest?

[Gadianton]

Philo, thanks for posting. While I don't mind you posting that in this thread just bear in mind a mod might move it to the AI thread. I consider it a productive example of using AI, in contrast to -- eh hum -- you know who.

If intelligences are:

Eternal

Uncreated

Ontologically co-equal

Then God is not ontologically special at the level of being.

You guys have a good point there. I'm not actually doing ontology as in "what is base reality", but then neither is Anselm. Anselm isn't figuring anything out like, is there one substance in the world or two? What is the one substance? Is it mind? Matter? God? He's making God necessary, but he isn't establishing God as necessity itself. Godel's version I believe can be said to close that gap. For Godel, God becomes the root of all of his positive properties. Whereas with Anselm, God exists because the most beautiful thing must exist, but, beauty isn't clearly grounded as necessity in God. There's ontology in biology and math and other subjects where you're categorizing things, and that's what Anselm is doing -- what exists in mind only and what exists in reality. Fish have a backbone and snails don't. He's performing a very narrow application of ontology.

He’s treating Mormonism as if it’s trying to satisfy the OA.

Is this the same AI that clearly recognized I cut Anselm's OA argument in half and I'm only using the first part? It also had decided that I agreed with Kant. If I agree with Kant, there is no chance I'm going to try and make Mormonism satisfy the full OA -- I'm definitely not trying to make the F-S chain a necessity, and certainly not necessity itself.

You are absolutely right that in terms of base reality, God is no more primal than intelligence or matter, or even the rules that he follows else he "ceases to be God". But that's not what I'm concerned with in this post. It was already long enough .

[MG 2.0]

Philo, thanks for posting. While I don't mind you posting that in this thread just bear in mind a mod might move it to the AI thread. I consider it a productive example of using AI, in contrast to -- eh hum -- you know who.

Of course you would.

Regards,
MG

[Gadianton]

because applying thoughts about a single deity concept to a multiple deity worldview seems like a mismatch

True -- but I can't tell if you're saying this is uniquely a Mormon problem. My point is kinda that it all starts with the Bible and the idea that three Gods are one God. And one has a physical body. There's a whole lot of ontological cost to get to that one being. (ontology = categorizing)

you've got to work out things like equivalencies of beings with different construction and roles; in one case, a glorified body in heaven. The F-S chain goes fully reductive so we can skirt those questions.

My point is -- who is really solving the one God problem most effectively? I think a case can be made that the mythological F-S chain may do a better job.

Islam recovered Aristotle first and it's a whole lot less messy for them because Allah is actually one God.