Calm

I wasn’t picking on him. I just think given the modern context it is highly problematic to use slavery as a metaphor for relationship between God and man. There was a very different context/world view back then that we likely can’t even get our heads around to understand all the layers of meaning that were involved for them. It is not on Paul if we start to imply some forms of slavery are good, it’s on us. God has continued to give us greater light and knowledge. I see it as refusing the gift if we won’t use it for things like this. I think it’s a bad idea to try and liken scriptures to ourselves that come way too culturally baggaged and even involve criminal behaviour. In this case it is too easy to infer that God is okay participating in criminal behaviour. There are plenty of other scriptures we can use that won’t take us so far down a dangerous path. I feel the same way about scriptures that promote child abuse, such as using a rod to discipline children or being okay with stoning offspring for disrespecting parents. It’s okay imo to simply say whatever they were trying to say back then, we aren’t able to translate it in a moral to our time way, whether because of our lack of understanding or because God has taught us better paths in some ways.

Which was what? A guy who saw slavery as normal?

Slavery is a removal of agency. Even if one chooses rather than agency being taken from you to give agency up and let another be your ruler, I don’t think that’s what God wants, even if it’s him. He wants us to choose to follow him and to continue to do so to grow our agency, not abdicate it. Given the limitations of career choice, education, even limitations of food and shelter, slavery perhaps wasn’t a huge difference from being in the economic lower classes, subsistence living, so it’s understandable if it was easier in Paul’s day to rationalize slavery, but we should know better being able to experience more freedoms in our lives, especially for many of us, freedom from fear of starvation or homelessness (though even in this board there are those who have endured that and face the possibility of it happening again. Also Paul’s culture had a different world view than we do of relationships between classes, a patron-client community. There are some benefits from that type of relationship that we lack, but I believe God wants us to move past both types of community and all others of this fallen world into a celestial relationship of oneness.

That is unfortunate. On what grounds?

ESPN was willing to sue Notre Dame because they wanted to investigate incidents involving players, so not sure how shy they are at offending the school. Granted it was almost ten years ago. Perhaps attitudes towards ND have changed. https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/14980628/notre-dame-fighting-irish-police-department-operate-secret?utm_source=chatgpt.com

A search online (I am not familiar at all with this topic) shows allegations of prejudice at ESPN over race, sex (including harassment and comment about women provoking domestic violence), anti Muslim, Jesus and Notre Dame, Christmas, homosexuality, disability discrimination (one a skin condition, another hearing).

Lapse in professionalism, sure. Careless, sure. Kind of juvenile, yep. Not that funny, definitely. Not sure if indicative of a vicious strain of anti Mormonism. Would depend on what else he has done in the past and will do in the future. “Is college sport media and BYU's sport rivals creating a safe harbor for expressions of intolerance and prejudice against Latter-day Saints that would be unacceptable if directed at other religious or minority groups?” Generally speaking, if there is intolerance against one group, it is highly likely there is intolerance against another. What is notable is victims often don’t notice it because it’s not important to them or they accept prejudice in ways they refuse to when they or loved ones are targeted, unfortunately demonstrating their own prejudices, imo. I tend to wonder whenever I hear something along the lines of “is (fill in your own sensitive topic) the last acceptable prejudice?” Heard that or something close from LDS, Catholics (there is even a book on anticatholicism with that title), other faiths, minorities, whites, overweight community, disability communities, women, men….which seems to imply socially acceptable prejudices in general are alive and well and not winnowed down to the last one yet.

So you see AI as equivalent to some random guy on the internet offering different ideas? (Don’t have an issue with that, just curious) I use ChatGPT too, so not criticizing any use. I would never give it much weight though without doublechecking links to be sure they say what it claims they say (which they often don’t, it tells me all the time someone said something when it’s just extrapolated from my question or whatever it does) as well as having prior knowledge to be familiar enough with biases out there that might get imported into its programming. I find it out of place in a serious discussion though a random opinion is called for. Its use often comes across like someone is trying to appear educated when they don’t have a clue or are too lazy to do the work themselves. Better not to contribute, imo. (Saying this as I just used it to research a response to Pyreaux in a topic I was clueless on, but I did admit to being clueless and rather than an analysis, I was looking for examples of behavior I suspected were out there…and they were…allegedly). I find it useful as a research tool getting me started with links and using it when I am too lazy or unable to do the work myself but feel the need to respond quickly or just want to throw something on the page to show I registered their comments and was thinking about it…and I realize using AI to show I am thinking about something is the opposite of what I should do.

It’s not basic if the words are not defined. It’s shallow. It’s not a progressive development either. That would be starting out from a solid, well defined position and building on that. When you don’t define words, you re asking people to guess what you mean. This is mostly acceptable when all are familiar with words and the words are not representing complex ideas. However, if they do represent complex ideas or ideas that are undeveloped or widely vary among individuals or groups, this is problematic. You may have a strong sense of what a word means for you. Assuming others share the same understanding as well when complexity and uncertainty over meanings increase is foolish and leads to miscommunication.

Do you see this ChatGPT comment as an authoritative or academic analysis? Am wondering how you weight contributions from Chat.

It may be expectations and experience. My husband being a professor, I have known a lot of professors and academics. Ben’s comments mostly read as confidence in the content and his knowledge to me as I would expect in a college class lecture while teddy and longview come off as arrogant quite a lot because I think of conversations with them more like talking to someone at church or in a SS class and feeling I am getting lectured…which I don’t see as appropriate from someone who has no stewardship for this purpose. I admit I value academic analysis in these conversations usually more than I value personal opinions that I have no way of knowing were inspired or misguided (unless the Spirit gets involved). Part of that is because academic training teaches us (or should) to look critically at our own ideas and test them against not only what is already known, but others’ analyses. It’s much harder to tell if personal opinions have been similarly tested or just based on untested, unstudied first impressions. Bias is a problem for both, but my experience is without training to recognize bias in ourselves, more have a problem restraining it and accepting its presence in their own ideas. Thus they talk of plain or obvious or face value meanings that aren’t actually plain or obvious or face value, but loaded with baggage. And that reads as pretty massive arrogance to me. It takes some work for me to try and adjust my gut reaction to that type of perceived arrogance and I am not always successful. I should add that if an academic starts lecturing on a subject that they do not show they have studied in depth as they would their field or they also begin to talk of obvious readings, etc, I can easily switch to viewing them more like I view Sunday School lecturers and other amateurs/hobbyists while if an amateur shows an in depth familiarity with discussion surrounding a topic, I can switch into viewing them as more academic as I have a number of posters here over the years, though I will still reserve some skepticism if I am not familiar enough with the topic to tell if they are aware of the baggage surrounding it and take that into account or not.

Or since it was used later as a possible example of what Joseph experienced, it followed the same pattern…given the meaning while he was left to put it into words of his choice. And reminiscent of how we liken the scriptures to ourselves, though without as great of an understanding of the original text.

I wonder if you see longview and teddy’s comments in the same way. I see three posters that are quite confident in their interpretations (and more than three to be blunt and just in case anyone is wondering, I include myself here when it comes to a few certain core beliefs that I do not see as speculation, but essential, but being a female of my age I learned quite young the necessity of diplomacy).

Pulling out what I consider as key points of Ben’s How would I know ... on any of these questions. These are not things on which we have authoritative statements. “Now was this spiritual matter before God organizes cognizant? Was it self-aware? Did it have agency? Could it accept or reject the organization of God? We have no idea - and anything that can be said about that is pure speculation. It is not speculation (according the statements above) that mankind does not exist until they are organized from that pre-existing matter as spirits.” To me Ben is not saying we weren’t this or that, he is saying it’s unknown. Saying he doesn’t believe someone’s conclusion doesn’t have to mean one believes the opposite.

My mom appealed to the image of a termite queen eternally and infinitely pregnant (yes, it was a joke…she wasn’t impressed by how most described the eternal fate of exalted women).

What is interesting to me is that the interpreter was not given the Swedish version he needed to give to the Swedish members, but only the English one and he was left to translate what he understood…which may have been different from what another translator experiencing the same thing might have ended up with. Makes me wonder why the visual text wasn’t in Swedish, why did God want the translator to be involved in the translation, not just reading a given version?

Is there anything in scripture that requires “intelligent” to be referring to “self awareness” and not some other aspect of what we think of as the mind? Maybe making intelligence include self-awareness is adding complications where it doesn’t actually exist. Did Joseph ever describe the organization into an “intelligence” or “a spirit” in terms of the beginning of self awareness? longview (and zealous and teddy iirc), could you accept “an intelligence” as identical in meaning in scripture to “a spirit” if the idea of some sort of pre-existent self awareness being existed before being organized into a spirit was not seen as contradictory or controversial, but a possibility, if speculative, iow, something that we now incorrectly and confusingly call “an intelligence” because it means something different than how Joseph used the term. Ben, does your reading of official church doctrine prevent the possibility of prior to being organized into a spirit, there was a self aware, self existent though very limited being we might see as human or protohuman? Not as official doctrine, but reasonable speculation?

How is it not explained away by saying it is interchangeable, meaning talking about the same thing as “spirits”? Like saying water is hot or water has the temperature of 125 degrees Fahrenheit? At least that is how I am reading him, he is saying Abraham is not referring to the element or whatever you want to call it of intelligence here, that thing that is similar to truth, but rather it is being used in the sense it is the same as spirit (being). There the only thing implied is what would be implied by the plural form of spirit or “spirits”. I may be missing your point…or Ben’s for that matter, but if so perhaps where I am missing it can be pinpointed by the (for me at least) clarification that follows of both discussions, first Ben’s and then Longview’s. Ben’s discussion as I understand it…. It doesn’t make sense to use the plural form in the first use of “intelligence”, “more intelligent” to make that plural (as in more intelligents); this usage is for an attribute. And it’s an attribute of a spirit as it’s comparing two spirits, not something else called an intelligence at this point. The second use is a variation, “intelligence” and not “intelligent”, so is describing beings. The debate appears to be if it is describing the ones previously called spirits or a different set, possibly new beings or what longview claims, the spirits mentioned but in some previous form. But the context is not a flashback to before they were spirits. It’s in the same time period as when they are called spirits. They are referred to spirits and intelligences in the same context, looks like interchangeable to me. God says he “dwell[s] in the midst of them all“ (the “them all” being “they all” previously labeled spirit” and then adds “in the midst of all the intelligences thou hast seen”. What Abraham saw was previously referred to as spirits (I am assuming here with the use of “hast seen” that God didn’t just refer to spirits as he talked about which was “more intelligent”, but was giving visual examples like he had of the Sun, etc.). If you disagree with this analysis that spirit and intelligence(s) are used for the same being at the same time period, where is the earlier reference to a pre spirit being, someone who is not yet a spirit? If the “intelligences” are who God was telling Abraham about and not some new variation, they were the beings in the state he earlier labels as a spirit. To Longview’s discussion: I can see this following phrase as ambiguous: “the intelligences that were organized before the world was”. This could be read to mean intelligences that were organized into spirits before the world was” meaning first they were intelligences and then got made/organized into spirits, but the problem here is God also says “over all the intelligences thine eyes have seen from the beginning”…..which seems directly connected to where God is talking before about spirits since God hasn’t talked about any other state of existence prior to saying this. There is no separate context that makes the use of “spirit” a Part A of the conversation and “intelligences” a Part B. It is all a discussion about one sort of type of being where God is highest among them, that are first called by God spirits and then called intelligences, just as one might first use “men” and then “males” and mean the same beings in the same state of being. Interchangeable use then, not two different subjects even if “intelligent” is first used as an attribute for spirit. Male can be used as an attribute though it would have come across as repetitive in the past, male men, where now it could be understood as those who socially identify as men and who are biologically male). So it seems to me imo to mean ‘the intelligences, or in other words, the spirits that were all more or less intelligent than each other and all less intelligent than I am, that were organized before the world was’ rather than the alternative ‘intelligences that were organized into spirits before the world was’. Seems like this is similar to saying “I am more American than you are” and then “we are Americans”, the first use is discussing an attribute and it makes no sense to they are more Americans than you are” even if talking about a plurality, the second is a group of beings. Or back to the male example…’He is more male than the other guy’, meaning more masculine vs “they are males”. Usage changes over time, just as “males” and “men” were once interchangeable, they are not now. It appears once in LDS teachings, spirit and intelligence were interchangeable, but new ideas got attached to the word “intelligence” and so it means something else, something else that can distort how scripture gets interpreted now if once assumes the current definition was also in use by Joseph.

You seem to be skipping over his point: So intelligences=spirits in this verse, so they are persons, etc. (hopefully I have this right and it will show I am actually understanding Ben’s comments and not pushing his words through my assumptions too hard)

Good point. Just percolating ides here, not pushing anything as truth or insight…. I think this comment can be interpreted as spirit and intelligence being equal, in the same category just as apples and oranges are fruit rather than intelligence being part of the make up of a spirit, if not all of the building elements….or something else like a process that allows the spirit to convert energy to action or still something else. Perhaps intelligence for a spirit is similar in purpose (in scripture) to God’s breath on our physical tabernacles. Intelligence added to our spirits made us living spirits. This was originally taught though, right?, once upon a time in church manuals….or was it all word of mouth, added by teachers as “clarification” because that was how they were taught….because I am certain I was taught this in Primary, as in my intelligence had been clothed in a spirit, which was then clothed in a body like a hand is clothed in a glove (and this was the example used when I taught Primary in the 80’s for the spirit and physical body). I can’t remember when I first learned and thoroughly accepted the idea of this three step process. Only much later (30s, maybe 40s or even later did I learn some members interpreted scripture as two step as God organized our Spirits and/or adopted them as his children. I had read some teachings that I interpreted meant intelligence was the building material for spirit, but I had just assumed that was a less common interpretation that for some reason didn’t want to see humans independent at all of God, wanted us to see God fully as our creator rather than a similar relationship to earthly parents (providing us with the ability to progress).

So Ben, in your view is official church doctrine just silent about what we were before we were God’s spirit children (which is similar to my own position I am thinking, but not sure because I haven’t discussed this topic quite in this way before, trying to be more explicit on what is and isn’t said) or is it implying we were nonexistent as personalities, that God pulled together different elements to form a whole person and so is fully responsible for who we were in the beginning because he chose what elements to combine? If so, this doesn’t seem to be much difference in terms of agency of men to creation out of nothing in terms of who is ultimately responsible for behavior (since God constructed our personality and the environment in which we evolved).*** I am wondering if it is accurate to say for this view the only sense humans can be described as pre-existing is in the same sense our physical bodies can be said to be preexisting before our conception, the atoms and molecules that currently make up our body or whatever these were in turn made of could be found somewhere in the universe. ***it seems like that is how it’s taught, moral agency is solely a gift from God https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/agency-and-accountability-study-guide?lang=eng

I did find this… curious how you would appraise it (obviously not an official source of doctrine just because it’s on this site): https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/topic/intelligence Btw, is this an accurate depiction of early development of these ideas? https://bycommonconsent.com/2009/04/15/tripartite-existentialism/

How can something not be a being and yet act for itself? That sounds like having agency.

Do you believe our doctrine to be revelation and scripture based alone or includes filling in gaps of that exist in our revealed knowledge through reasoning? I am asking because the choice of “elaborate” suggests you see the Discourse as adding details that weren’t present in the scripture. Joseph does not appear to me to be claiming this is revealed knowledge, but reasoned.

He has chosen to participate elsewhere tonight, so I think you are correct.