Calm

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.

The one he quoted….”intelligences” in scripture are actually referring to spirits. ”and by ‘intelligences’ we are to understand personal ‘spirits’ (Abraham 3:22, 23)”

Do you not consider this authoritative? (Serious question, not challenge) https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/the-pearl-of-great-price-teacher-manual-2018/the-book-of-abraham/abraham-3-1-28?lang=eng

Does this include those intelligences who never get to be part of the oneness of God but stay non progressing for eternity?

Just thinking about the likely implications of your interpretation if I understand your assumptions about intelligence correctly (infinite preexistent beings)….I don’t see how you avoid having an infinite number of intelligences waiting an infinite amount of time as simple intelligences for their chance to be chosen by God to move on with their progress. Iow, there will be some intelligences that never get a chance to progress because their opportunity is always in the future.

I agree with this to some extent, it’s where I first went in thinking about this. Also the difference in hoping to prove something wonderful (heaven) vs something awful (thousands are suffering torture in horrendous, systematic ways in our Church and leaders hide this), but then I considered they may be focused on looking on it as proving something hopeful (Tim Ballard is a good man doing good things effectively and more or less ignoring or downplaying what this means about everyone else). But I suspect there are more nuanced ways to look at it, which is why I am hoping Teddy ashes his POV and reasoning on leadership involvement and what this implies to him about their character (good? bad? both?)

Really? In what ways? Sorry, ignore that…my brain getting attracted by the shiny.

Which is why it’s a pure fun exercise meant to entertain my brain and not anything I would teach as informing doctrine or think this is the way God conveyed it to prophets, especially not in the past. I believe God speaks to prophets and others in the way they are familiar with, pushing expectations of boundaries at time to help us become better people, by why would he leave us with confusion, which is what I see happening if God used the language or ideas of modern physics with Joseph or others. Hopefully no one takes my “speculation alerts” seriously because they are not meant that way. My mother got this idea started for me back in my youth (perhaps unintentionally now I think about it given some of her book choices later on, though perhaps she just got caught up in the woo stuff because finally she found others besides me who enjoyed talking about the mind and spirit in new ways), but online discussions have embedded this into my psyche by now.

I see the meaning of “literal children” as “we belong to him as family” rather than being special since every human has that relationship with him according to LDS doctrine….meaning for me it’s an all in relationship for all of us, one I believe we chose…which is different than our mortal families from a mortal point of view (we don’t chose our parents in this life because we aren’t present when the choice is made). I hesitated to use “literal” because it isn’t doctrinally defined in the sense we know the mechanics of the relationship, how it happened, so I don’t usually use it to describe my own beliefs, but it’s commonly used in my experience*** and I was approaching the fundamental ideas we have as doctrine even if we don’t know what lies underneath that “fundamental level”. Not as common in general conference as I thought though….

Some would say this is how all promises through the Church pretty much operate, what the scriptures teach….enduring to the end in hope of things not seen. (I don’t see it that way, it just struck me as familiar when you said it)

Yep, I go there too. We talk as if we understand the mysteries so much better than others, but don’t define much of the why and how in that much more useful ways once we get past the statements of what God’s work and glory is and we are the literal children of God, imo…ends up being it’s turtles all the way down. At best we have taken it a few steps further (and I love the direction it goes, so highly invested in we are part of God’s family and he wants to bring us fully along to where he is, etc). I have lots of speculative fun trying to figure out the possible physics behind the revelations, I tend to approach the atonement and why it happened that way more from how it changes our material nature, changes of state (and then I move to psychological) rather than economics (using the idea of debt for a situation that involves a Lord of infinite resources never made sense to me) or social theories of justice and mercy…while recognizing they are really two different categories, so probably don’t inform each other and we certainly have no revealed doctrine on basic physical mechanics beyond nothing is created out of nothing.

This started a line of speculation in my head that similarities in families could be a result of similarities in intelligences that arose (but can something eternal even be said to ‘arise’?) from us being in vicinity of each other and God grouping us as families according to these similarities of intelligence that then get expressed spiritually and physically….but it’s not an appealing idea to me because first, parents who are abusive to their kids and the kids end up not wanting to be identified as like them at all with them (telling them they are inherently, eternally like their abusive parents just seems wrong to me) and second, that would mean God is promoting in-group behaviour (like always with like) rather than encouraging us to engage with people very different than us since the eternities past of our existence, which seems counterproductive to promoting our ability to love all of his children as one.

I was thinking more along the lines as what it could tell us about the basic form of spirits vs specific features such as hair and eye color….that he had a nose vs whether or not the nose was long, wide, narrow, button, hooked…. Unless prophets also saw visions of Jesus during his mortal life, they would have nothing to compare his likeness to (no painting or photo). And if they did see such visions, it makes sense to me if the visions were accurate portrayals, the premortal Christ would choose to appear the same whether he was or not to avoid confusion and not necessarily how he would appear to others in the Spirit World who had no need to see his future mortal existence (just as I believe my husband’s grandfather chose to appear young and in his typical overalls 60 years after his death to his grandmother on her death bed to help her move past her fear of dying and not being recognized by her husband….those overalls were long gone and what resurrected being would choose overalls as a fashion statement ). It is correct though there is no strong reason to assume even the basic form that was seen was not also taken on like the specific appearance for just that time and purpose or projected to the prophets’ minds to avoid confusion. If one assumes it is likely that way because it’s the simplest explanation, then the same reasoning must deal with the burning bush, pillar of cloud, and other visualizations of the spirit of God.

That’s interesting. I love blackberries. That’s a story I want to dig out.

What of Christ’s appearance to Nephi or the Brother of Jared before he was born?

Can we not shift the subject to personal too much until teddy explains what he sees the behaviour of the First Presidency and the Apostles implying during the past two years, especially the silence from Elder Ballard? He has mentioned this possibility a number of times before, but has never clarified how he sees this as happening in the greater context of Doug Anderson being under the supervision and working for these men (threads have often been locked because of getting personal or political and since this is a really important part of the narrative, I don’t want that to happen again). So perhaps others can wait to comment until teddy gets a chance to fill out his idea on how this could have happened given what we know of how the Church operates plus even we accept TB’s narrative, Elder Ballard was fully aware of the announcement and was committed to resolving problems when he first heard about it. So what came next that there was silence from him and other leaders and Doug Anderson retained his job? And what does that mean about the characters of the men leading the Church if you think they participated in a coverup for Doug Anderson (TB states there is a coverup and that seems to imply to me that top leaders are going along with it, but perhaps teddy sees a different possible scenario). This isn’t my thread, so I am just asking as a favour because I am very curious. I can’t imagine a situation where the leaders don’t come off as incompetent or corrupt and that doesn’t seem to be how Teddy views our First Presidency and Apostles, so I am very sincerely very curious about how he imagines this. At the very least his explanation may help me understand other faithful members who accept Tim Ballard as possibly telling the truth.

There are currently two different types of sealings, a parent child relationship and a marriage relationship. I may be wrong in my understanding of adoption sealings, but I believe the language was the same or very similar to how they would seal parents and children (for parent child sealings originally—until the revelation commanding our sealings to our actual parents, both had to be living as far as I know, though marriage sealings were done by proxy quite early on).

But Saints believe spirit is a material and can be seen if not touched***, such as Christ’s spirit before his birth. ***which may have to do with the type of material rather than being no material…we can see our warm breath in cold air or smog for example, but in day to day experience we typically would describe it as not being able to be touched, the shape felt by our hands though we might say we feel it when the air currents move

Can something have unending numbers but not unending creation?

Or he may hear a lot, but who knows how much is help with administration of God’s Church and the greater stewardship over all humanity because that has to be an awful tangled mess of a balancing act.

Or that they all ignored a valid (rather than misguided and uninformed, though based on common perceptions of the time) appraisal of Satanic rites taking place with the structure of the Church for 35 years. I was in Canada during in the 90s and still heard of the Utah satanic claims then and many times since. They must have had really good cleaning crews at their beck and call for these sacrifices and literal bloodbaths in the temple or chapels such that no one ever noticed unexpected blood drops on the carpets from these murders.