Calm

Back from the appointment: I think you misunderstood. I said I couldn’t factor evil intent into the greater good explantation, not that I am assuming it fits somehow. And even if I do trust there is an answer, I don’t believe it will be ‘the innocents’ mindless, excruciating or endless suffering is okay because….’. I don’t believe some of my suffering where I have been reduced to the level of nonthought, just feeling agony (thankfully only got there a few times in my life) was somehow useful, helped me learn anything and my suffering was so temporary it comes nowhere near the level of suffering of the above examples you point to above, so I don’t see inherent purpose in that type of suffering either…and add to that evil intent, it wasn’t a necessary part of a natural world, but a choice by someone to harm another….the only thing learnt there are some people can be scum imo. If I saw effective community effort to protect and restore when possible (freely handing out drugs to those in need, resisting of corruption by those who can make things happen, etc), I might feel differently about it, but we have been given great knowledge of widespread corruption and greed that needs to be fought as well as resources that could eradicate many diseases and poverty if we worked effectively together, but it doesn’t happen because of human nature and instead appears to be getting worse….it’s not reasonable to me to see much learning how to be better people overall occurring on a grand enough scale to balance out the level of suffering that is present. And since God judges us for our thoughts as well as our actions according to Jesus, I don’t buy the usual interpretation that God allows the wicked to kill and torture so the innocents’ blood will stand as a witness against them. (Alma 14:11) especially given Alma and Amulek’s blood was not required for the same purpose and God protected and rescued them with the prison walls collapsing and them walking out unharmed while their jailers were killed (though they had suffered, been deprived and tortured iirc while in prison). This is one episode I think will have to wait for me to be okay with until I actually see the women and children who were killed and hear their POVs of their experiences as well as God’s explanation. I am not inspired by what Alma says in this case.

Those are man made evils, evil intent is involved, intentional removal of others’ agency and therefore are not seen by me as answered by the argument I used for natural disasters (and even there that pushes the boundaries for me). Added: I said “not acting for the greater good”

I agree. Am curious as to how you would respond to people pointing to the Community of Christ and other schisms (don’t see any others besides CoC as successful enough in growth to merit consideration as having authority and guidance from God as I believe this should be a time of growth, reaching out to the world) as evidence that the Restored Gospel lacks authority using the same argument. My response is faith based on my personal experiences plus the doctrine is the most logically satisfying I know at this time even with its gaps, but I suspect there are Anglicans and others who view their chosen faith in the same way, so my response really only works from a personal angle.

But we could apply this to something like surgery. Most of us could not imagine a reason why someone would cut open a child and remove an organ unless we knew the greater context of appendicitis and recognized not only the medical necessity, but the possibility that it was healing. I am not saying that experiencing horrors inflicted by nature and man must be similar in an eternal context, I am just not sure how we can remove the possibility when it’s so easy to find examples where lack of knowledge turns things horrific that aren’t. Now there is a huge difference because the intent of who we see as the actor in these cases…the murderer is evil, malicious; the surgeon is beneficent. I think you could extend the analogy a bit to cover natural disasters by viewing the doctor as God and the biological processes that cause the illness as the actors who are restrained or overcome by miracles, as in sometimes the doctor judges there will be more harm done by the cure than the illness and so allows nature to take its course. Think of standing by and letting your child suffer a fever when you could act remove it, but it’s not high enough to be dangerous and you don’t always want to suppress the body’s natural reaction….like taking fever reducer before a vaccination to remove all likely suffering be abuse that may lessen the effect of a vaccine. But that reasoning isn’t that applicable imo when actual evil intent is involved. That’s not nature taking its course, but one actor moving with intent to destroy the agency of another. I have to go to an appointment so that all I have for now. Not sure I have anything to add anyway. That last bit, evil men intentionally hurting others is something I haven’t resolved even if I am comfortable saying that each actor is expected to act morally in the level,of knowledge they have. We know that the surgeon means no harm and good will come of it even without our personal actions, so are justified in not intervening. I see this as likely similar to God and the natural disasters of life, big and small. It’s part of our ‘biological processes’. Evil intent changes that imo though. And I haven’t fit not acting for the greater good into that because other miracles do seem to show God is capable of ensuring agency when he acts.

I think your idea is clearer*** by modifying it to ‘without violating man’s agency in these circumstances, then God can surely find a way to prevent ______ without violating man’s agency as well’. Confusion might occur if someone thinks you are just referring to the ability to do miracles and not doing miracles within the context of maximizing man’s agency while doing so…which I do see as a problem with our beliefs. If it was only minor stuff we claim God did, that would be one thing. There seems to be at least some miracles that push/force action to go a certain way annd therefore belief may become knowledge….at least knowledge in the sense we typically use it and that would violate agency, such as the death of the firstborn. That was a massive demonstration of God’s power. Even if it didn’t permanently move Pharoah’s heart, how many others who experienced it personally believed that the God of Israel existed and was supreme etc because of such a demonstration? Same with the Red Sea miracle. I think people could be skeptical still with the raising of the dead, thinking it some sort of trick, also the wine and bread and fish, even the bears could have been captured ahead of time and the released on cue because they knew he would be mocked for something when he appeared….but wholesale targeted death (just the firstborns and no others) in that day and age is rubbing people’s nose in the reality of God and his power. Recognizing the issue does not mean I reject the premise of God respecting man’s agency, I just believe we need to refine our explanations more. I am also open to such undeniable, very public miracles being embroidered reality, but if we accept these stories and teach them as examples of God’s power in our talks and lessons, then we need to deal with them as accurate representations. ***assuming here I have interpreted you correctly.

I find this position very troubling as well. And quite wrong. His assassination created a much greater platform and grew his audience tremendously. But all the people I know who saw Kirk as more extreme also condemned his murder, so hopefully the numbers of those who actually saw his killing as a good thing are small in proportion and their numbers seem greater simply because they are quite vocal.

And what does “Godhood” mean to you that does not apply to “godhood”?

In one sense yes, I don’t believe Heavenly Father took up certain roles until after he went through mortality. But Christ was God (acted as Jehovah) before his mortality and thus I believe Heavenly also acted as God in another sense prior to his mortality.

I obsess about my own errors, I don’t pay attention to them in others unless the errors make reading confusing, which I don’t remember happening with your posts recently. I have no memory of your errors. They must not have caused reading difficulties. If I even noticed them, they were quickly forgotten. I try to remind myself if others’ errors don’t bother me, then my errors probably don’t bother others, so I should relax but it doesn’t help. I am too programmed by my history. Cleaning up mud and broken debris on your property and dealing with the heartbreak of loss of memories (assuming this may have happened to you like it often does with floods) on top of your wife’s health….no need to worry about muddy writing here. If it bugs you that much, in a couple of months when life has slowed down you can always review and edit.

Good to see you again, Ryan. Checking your profile, it’s just over a year since you last posted. Glad you broke the drought.

Okay. Following so far. Makes sense to me. Did this ability have any determined structure at its beginning to it or was it random? Iow, did God know before he gave them their ability to think and choose how this ability would work and therefore what choices they would make or did he somehow hide the result from himself so he had no control over what those abilities would be in detail at least? Iow, what led Satan to choose pride while some other being choose humility? PS: My last semester at university included a class on the various foundations of Psychology and what the basic assumptions meant. Behaviourism and Humanism were studied in detailed, especially in the area of what actually determines our behavior. So I tend to look at religious beliefs in the same way, dissecting them back to the most basic assumptions about humanity. This is probably why I am asking for more detail. It’s one of the parts of belief that fascinates me the most—what ultimately makes is who we are.

Maybe you could summarize what each of these mean in a sentence or two for those of us who can’t focus long enough on the article to get the meaning for ourselves, please?

Depends on how it’s done. Those who are attracted to minors but do not want to act on such attractions need to be less stressed to control their behaviour, to direct it into constructive avenues away from abuse. Acceptance by others so they feel less isolated, less on their own can be very helpful. Shaming for even thoughts that pop into their heads, but are controlled is also highly stressful and it would be better to limit the stigma to those who abuse minors….especially since iirc the majority of child molesters are opportunists, not pedophiles. And that is where the focus should be imo (behaviour, don’t create the opportunities where possible, train people to recognize them and what making use of them looks like, etc). In no way should there be acceptance of acting on such temptations imo. I am no expert here, but assume even acting on those attractions in ‘safe’ ways (non minors who look or act like minors or AI generated) would tend to strengthen the attractions and in the end make them harder to control. I just realized derail….sorry. Will delete if you want.

Tony is who I thought of, because he is newer to the board, not a member, but interested in many things LDS. And iirc, we haven’t talked about Brian Stubbs for awhile, so for those who get exposure only to academic ideas here, it might be something new. I can see both Morgan’s POV because I felt cheated when I considered your post as possibly AI generated and yours because of habits of writing.

That makes sense. What a fantastic memory. Me too. Whether I want to or not, I always read my writing thinking ‘what is someone looking to dismiss what I say going to zero in on?’, so I might come across as less confident than I am in a particular position/belief. But you don’t with your caveats, just shows to me you don’t assume perfect knowledge and stay open to being wrong, so maybe it’s the same with my stuff….which would be good because that is my goal, to be open to correction even when I know I am right. My memory is poor these days, so I guess my writing is naturally less repetitive (maybe it just appears that way to me). Your writing isn’t so much repetitive as consistent though. I also had one teacher who pounded into us to avoid repetition of words and phrases to make our work more interesting, so even now 50 years later, I just can’t let myself use the same word too often (except of course the basic building blocks that one has to use). I used to keep a thesaurus by my side when writing even the most trivial thing…then thesaurus.com got bookmarked. I was hoping Alexa would substitute for actually having to open a new tab to search, but it’s too limited. This compulsion for variety in wording helped me acquire a decent size vocabulary at least.

Oh no! Another English teacher. I must be vigilant. I will never escape! (The prequel to this is in another thread)

Formatting it that way makes it easy to read, for which I am grateful, but I was wondering before if you stuck your work into AI to polish it before posting. Not complaining, just feedback as I suspect these days you can get negative reactions from sounding too formal or whatever is the vibe of AI writing. I edit and re-edit my posts over and over, even years after posting if I happen to come across an error. Had some very impressive English teachers who dinged me for minor errors (and I had one memorable argument over whether “colour” was an acceptable spelling…urgh, still annoys me big time she didn’t allow it when it was all over my library books, in the dictionary as an alternative spelling, and always looked more natural, more right to me). That and having a sister who was an English Lit prof—who is even more obsessive than I am—drives me to read and reread to ensure perfection. Relaxed on grammar issues mostly though, thank goodness. And I put my punctuation where I want it these days. Just spelling still rules me with an iron fist. So much time wasted over the years looking up correct usage, etc, lol. Are you trying to mimic AI with this? Not sure what you mean here.

Deleted

I missed a couple of posts and misunderstood the conversation, so deleting…

Do you mean in his mortal human form or do you believe he sets aside his resurrected human form at some time in the future? I have seen some nonL.DS Christians say the latter, so I want to be sure I understand your position (they didn’t identify what denomination they were, so can’t be sure, but from what else they said they appeared to be either Evangelical or Fundamentalist, using Navidad’s distinctions).

Is there a reason why you continue to use “Gods” as opposed to “gods” even though some of us have repeatedly said capitalizing the “g” implies a belief we don’t hold? Is there an issue for you with using “gods” instead?

And what was the internal source of his pride and lust, what caused him to think like that?

Kind of hard to resist the ice cream, for sure!

It started last time with notifications being slow. That just happened again, but everything else seems fast enough, not instantaneous as it can be at times, but not long enough to make me think “this is slow”.

I get it for embarrassment and anxiety. Emotions I find difficult to control in myself.