Mormonism's OA and the mighty F-S chain

[I Have Questions]

Putting the thread back on track…

The closest to an unofficial theory comes from Cleon Skousen in his "personal search for the atonement". This is a lecture that exists in the realm of the mission field, where most missionaries get exposed to a copy of the lecture but it's all behind closed doors and never, ever would be allowed to be discussed by the MP.

There are two things in the world, intelligence and matter. Matter must be filled with intelligence, otherwise God couldn't command it to move. Each intelligence that inhabits a piece of matter is a person like you or I. Happily obeying God's command if called upon. Presumably, though I don't recall this being said, it's been a really long time, those intelligences that excelled at obeying commands moving pieces of matter around would get the chance to move up in the "spheres of creation" and become a higher level being, like a bug or something. Even in that talk this isn't said, but it's the only thing that would make sense. Mormons have an active belief that reincarnation is hog wash, and this likely forces the mind from thinking about the implications. The talk gives the sense that in the pre-existence, we're out there as part of the universe as an eternal "I" that perhaps took part in making the earth move into place as God formed it -- or something. At some point, perhaps luck but possibly skill, "I" was selected to be born as a spirit.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Skousen’s theory about the universe is deeply rooted in Western democratic thought. Skousen’s universe is a democracy with trillions upon trillions of tiny intelligences who all vote as a unanimous bloc and who get to choose what is moral. If God were to do something these trillions of tiny intelligences deem to be unjust or immoral, they would withdraw their support and he would cease to be God. In Skousen’s universe, God is 100% beholden to the whims of these tiny intelligences.

Makes total sense.

[Limnor]

Skousen’s theory about the universe is deeply rooted in Western democratic thought. Skousen’s universe is a democracy with trillions upon trillions of tiny intelligences who all vote as a unanimous bloc and who get to choose what is moral. If God were to do something these trillions of tiny intelligences deem to be unjust or immoral, they would withdraw their support and he would cease to be God. In Skousen’s universe, God is 100% beholden to the whims of these tiny intelligences.

Makes total sense.

Interesting. What stops a cosmic vote of “no confidence” beyond the other side? If the smoothies in the terrestrial and telestial become dissatisfied is there a bulwark against a post-mortal rebellion?

[Gadianton]

Skousen’s theory about the universe is deeply rooted in Western democratic thought. Skousen’s universe is a democracy with trillions upon trillions of tiny intelligences who all vote as a unanimous bloc and who get to choose what is moral. If God were to do something these trillions of tiny intelligences deem to be unjust or immoral, they would withdraw their support and he would cease to be God. In Skousen’s universe, God is 100% beholden to the whims of these tiny intelligences.

Makes total sense.

I can see why a person would be skeptical of God as the greatest populist, but I do agree with Skousen that God, by necessity, is partially a subjective construct by his worshippers. Supposedly, Skousen got this idea from John Widtsoe, who was one of the main deep doctrine science guys of Mormonism (for Limnor).

Very central is John Milton. He was a politics nut himself, and it's obvious that the war in heaven comes directly from Paradise Lost, from its general influence. Paradise Lost, from the perspective of some, could be considered the greatest work of atheism of all time. And that's because it shows so clearly that God as God is a matter of perspective, "better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." So I think all the intelligence stuff is just an extension of thinking about God's authority as partially subjective, from Paradise Lost. "Though in prison, my mind was free."

And here's the clincher, I think orthodox believers implicitly agree with Milton on this point. In other words, I hold it as an orthodox Christian belief that for God to be God, he must be acknowledged not just by his followers, but by his enemies, as God. Failure for the wicked to acknowledge God "shakes his throne" -- quite literally dethrones him as God, in my opinion.

One of the most important theological writings of all time is Jonathan Edwards "The end of the wicked as contemplated by the righteous". The doctrine of the viewing of the damned is central to what it means to be a Christian, in my opinion. Believers secure their negative space to punctuate God and define themselves in the form of a vast eternal hell. The more sinners in hell, the more exquisite their joy, as Edwards clearly shows.

But the Scripture seems to hold forth to us, that the saints will not only see the misery of the wicked at the day of judgment, but the forementioned texts imply, that the state of the damned in hell will be in the view of the heavenly inhabitants; that the two worlds of happiness and misery will be in view of each other. Though we know not by what means, nor after what manner, it will be; yet the Scriptures certainly lead us to think, that they will some way or other have a direct and immediate apprehension of each other’s state. The saints in glory will see how the damned are tormented; they will see God’s threatenings fulfilled, and his wrath executed upon them

By having immediate apprehension of "states", and as he draws out with some explanation of the psychology of those saved, Edwards seems to preclude the possibility of Milton's stoic Satan who stares back from hell defiant. It's like, if my neighbor drives up in a new Mercedes, I may very well be jealous, but maybe I'm not. Edwards doesn't allow the possibility of not being jealous. In his depiction, my neighbor isn't watching me watch him drive up the street in his nice car, he's directly apprehending my state of jealousy. Everyone is assigned their necessary psychological states in order to maintain God acknowledged as God because God must be acknowledged as such in order to really be God. That's the implication. Otherwise, you could simply have the viewing of the damned and the Saints could react in their own ways.

There are other ways to avoid this problem such as self-consigning. The idea that we'll go where we feel most comfortable. In my opinion, all such doctrines imply the subjective side of God, that he doesn't just have all the power, but everyone must agree he's right, even his enemies.

[Limnor]

A recurring biblical image of God is fire. God “being” fire as part of His nature. If that metaphor holds, would fire need agreement or recognition in order to burn? Gold is purified as dross is burned away, stubble burns, clay hardens, but fire itself remains the same by its nature. Does there have to be moral acknowledgment of God’s justice, or does He just exist?

I’ve been thinking about what it means that God is described as both love and fire. In both cases, encountering God could produce very different experiences depending on the condition of the heart of the person encountering Him.

MG asked me about hell a while ago, and I mentioned the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in and the idea that some can stand inside the fire while others cannot. That imagery comes close to how I tend to think about it.

The psalms also seem to suggest something similar, that there is no escaping God’s presence. So when scripture says “our God is a consuming fire,” I sometimes wonder if that
nature may have very different effects, depending on the person, when He draws near.

So in summary, maybe it’s less about “who recognizes God,” then “who, or what, God is.”

[Physics Guy]

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.

Blake’s expert opinion notwithstanding, I think that Milton did something subtler with the character Satan in Paradise Lost than a lot of readers notice.

For example, Satan doesn’t say that it’s better to be free in Hell than to serve in Heaven. He doesn’t give a damn about freedom: he wants to reign. Kind of sucks for all his followers. Satan took the one top spot and they’re all still stuck serving, only now they’re in Hell.

Milton’s Satan is a smooth-talking narcissist. He’s supposed to sound good, but you’re supposed to suspect his every word.

[Gadianton]

You're absolutely right that in theory, it is about what God objectively is, Edwards would be the last to deny it. The question is if such accounts are believable within their own articulation.

The problem is in that gap between an OA demonstrating necessity and then referring to this necessity as "God" and the intuitions real people have such that they come to believe in a creator in the first place; trust the creator, fear the creator, or whatever the case is. We must share a common language with God in order for anything outside of the barest ontological pointer to connect a revealed God with "God".

Imagine if God rightly decided not to save anybody, and a hundred billion end up in hell, while in heaven there is only the love between three, as Augustine supposed. A thousand billion years later, nobody in hell has any idea what "love" is nor any concept of God, for that matter. That doesn't change the fact that presumably, God is still God, the brute necessity for "everything," which is analogous to two and two necessarily making four. But is this what people really had in mind when they spoke of God on earth? The fork in the road comes when deciding if the word "God" properly fits with pure necessity, if that necessity isn't personal, because "personal" demands that God and humans speak a common language. A prime mover that doesn't share in human language and thought is just the laws of physics or the meta rules that determine what the laws of physics can be. If theists are comfortable calling Roger Penrose a fellow theist because he believes reality is comprised of mathematical twisters, then I'm happy to admit defeat.

However, if that happens, what I predict is that, okay, we all agree the structure of reality is "God". But now, we wonder if either the structure of reality itself or some being within the structure of reality has created us for a purpose. We come up with a different word that means what we originally meant by "God" but agnostic about ultimate necessity, and now we have a new colloquial reference to the idea that used to mean "God" but we allow theologians to keep the abstract term that is quite impossible to ever connect to the world of people.

[Limnor]

Great input gad. I’d offer the following for consideration:

Classical Christianity portrays people as made in the image of God so we might share God’s language not because we understand God from the outside, but because the capacity to understand God is already present within human consciousness, imprinted upon us. Maybe instead of saying humans must share a language with God first, it could be said that God entered human language Himself.

From the viewpoint of necessity, then, we could say that since the necessity produces minds capable of truth, love, and meaning, then the ground of necessity must contain those traits. What grounds consciousness, love, and truth? The risk—across the board—is backwards explaining everything to arrive at an answer that satisfies what we would prefer to hear rather than meaningful truth.

I agree that philosophy alone cannot produce a satisfactory answer on a personal level—I think it was malkie who said you can’t argue God into existence. But the Christian claim is that God reveals His nature personally. We are repeatedly told Jesus is the visible expression of the invisible God.

I think this relates to the idea of a Trinity. It’s not just a mysterious formula, it’s a way to explain how God can be personal in His very nature. If God were a solitary individual characterized as love, we’d end up with a different philosophical puzzle—how could God be love before anything else existed?

Started to ramble off at the end there and lost my own plot a little but I really enjoyed your thoughts about “language” in particular.

[Gadianton]

but what it suggests nowadays is that maybe there is a way to translate degree of probability of existence into degree of greatness, because a lot of a modern economy is precisely about discounting sums of money in proportion to risk

There seem to be multiple ways of getting things into existence from nothing, unless some of those ways reduce to others. Enron/bitcoin/wmd math is one way. OAs work from thinking about necessity. But there is this other way, extrapolating what reality must be like if I'm an unbiased sample. The anthropic principle, the doomsday argument, and the most popular one, the simulation hypothesis get a whole of stuff existing in reality based on averageness rather than greatness. Then there is all the SETI stuff; the massive amounts of stuff proposed to explain no contact -- the dark forest etc.

If Mormons go down one of these routes, it's closer to the simulation hypothesis I think. We're just one of countless others doing something similar. Convergent evolution means that humans could be the highest form of being in physical reality.

[malkie]

Speaking of SETI: