Moses 7:32 - knowledge in their day of creation

[Calm]

7 hours ago, Nofear said:

Since intelligences are uncreate and self-existent the only philosophically coherent position to me is that they are are simple (i.e. without constituent parts).

I assume you have read Ben’s comments on intelligence in the other thread.  Would be curious about your reaction to them since if I understand correctly you see intelligence as a self aware entity that gets embodied.  Am wondering if you see that as doctrinal, etc or if you agree with Ben that current doctrine doesn’t go past our creation as spirits (however and whatever that involves).

Ben has provided a lot of information about leadership discussion on this matter I was not aware of and am wondering about others’ knowledge, etc in this area.

This is one post that pulls a lot of his info and thoughts together, there may be another one that I may remember, but I am in the middle of a doctor’s appt so have to wait on checking:

 

Edited November 19, 2025 by Calm

[Nofear]

51 minutes ago, Calm said:

you agree with Ben that current doctrine doesn’t go past our creation as spirits

I agree with Ben that we really don't know anything about what occurs before our creation of spirits. The best we have is that they are uncreate and self-existent from the D&C.

Just recently had Gemini find me several quotes that assert we specifically don't know know about the nature of how intelligences are joined with spirit bodies. Turns out there are several. That being the case, I am quite certain that it has no real relationship to viviparous conception and births. Numerically it just doesn't work out. Whatever the process is it has been specifically withheld from us in mortality. Perhaps it would offend our sensibilities.

My assertion that intelligences are simple is a logical deduction not a revealed position.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Nofear said:

My assertion that intelligences are simple is a logical deduction not a revealed position.

Why do you favor intelligence as the starting point of our personhood rather than our spirits? (I do too, just curious about others)

I am assuming the way you use “intelligences” rather than “intelligence” means you see our stage involving solely intelligence as an element being present as us still being some sort of entity.

Edited November 19, 2025 by Calm

[Nofear]

46 minutes ago, Calm said:

Why do you favor intelligence as the starting point of our personhood rather than our spirits? (I do too, just curious about others)

Some of the early brethren have taken a position that while intelligence is uncreate, it is when we organize intelligence together in some for or another then we have identity. But, I don't take that position. My personhood or identity may not be able to express itself embodiment but having an unique component that is indivisible, indestructible, can't be reproduced solves a whole host of philosophical puzzles associated with identity (e.g. ship of Theseus, the teleportation problem, Lock's Prince and Cobbler.

52 minutes ago, Calm said:

I am assuming the way you use “intelligences” rather than “intelligence” means you see our stage involving solely intelligence as an element being present as us still being some sort of entity.

I conceptualize intelligences as matter and having the same ontic reality that physical and spirit matter do. Consequently, I am happy to refer to intelligent matter. But, I don't know that referring to intelligent matter as either a particle or a wave would be appropriate, but, being a unique thing I can refer to a quantum of intelligent matter (which would be associated with a single identitiy) and quanta of intelligent matter (which would be associated with intelligences). The use of the term intelligent matter naturally distinguishes between an intelligence in an unembodied state as opposed to one that is embodied or not.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Nofear said:

My personhood or identity may not be able to express itself embodiment but having an unique component that is indivisible, indestructible, can't be reproduced solves a whole host of philosophical puzzles associated with identity (e.g. ship of Theseus, the teleportation problem, Lock's Prince and Cobbler.

For me it is the issue of evil.  If God is the one who chooses the combination of components for our personality, if we are evil, is he not the cause of that evil?  Some might say choosing to embody an identity that will choose evil makes him responsible for it, but I can accept that as that would be him still giving a chance to someone else before the act to be condemned happened rather than prejudging them as opposed to choosing to create the being.

There are other weaknesses, so it’s more I am more comfortable with there being an uncreated person of some sort though not satisfied with that solution at this point.

[Nofear]

12 hours ago, Calm said:

For me it is the issue of evil.  If God is the one who chooses the combination of components for our personality, if we are evil, is he not the cause of that evil?  Some might say choosing to embody an identity that will choose evil makes him responsible for it, but I can accept that as that would be him still giving a chance to someone else before the act to be condemned happened rather than prejudging them as opposed to choosing to create the being.

There are other weaknesses, so it’s more I am more comfortable with there being an uncreated person of some sort though not satisfied with that solution at this point.

That's also a very powerful argument. Creatio Ex Nihilo and softer variants fail Galen Strawsen's The Basic Argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen_Strawson).

[Benjamin McGuire]

56 minutes ago, Nofear said:

That's also a very powerful argument. Creatio Ex Nihilo and softer variants fail Galen Strawsen's The Basic Argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen_Strawson).

The Book of Mormon - which doesn't really have a lot to say on the pre-existence - moves in the direction of denying absolute agency to deal with the problem of evil. It describes a limited agency in mortality and combines this with a limited responsibility. That is - sin is only attributable when certain conditions exist. There has to be law. The law has to be applicable. The individual has to be in a condition where they can act and not be acted upon. And so on. I think that the pre-existence doesn't significantly move the needle in the problem of the creation of evil - it just recontextualizes it. The idea of self-aware intelligences that pre-exist spirits doesn't help either.

[Nofear]

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The Book of Mormon - which doesn't really have a lot to say on the pre-existence - moves in the direction of denying absolute agency to deal with the problem of evil. It describes a limited agency in mortality and combines this with a limited responsibility. That is - sin is only attributable when certain conditions exist. There has to be law. The law has to be applicable. The individual has to be in a condition where they can act and not be acted upon. And so on. I think that the pre-existence doesn't significantly move the needle in the problem of the creation of evil - it just recontextualizes it. The idea of self-aware intelligences that pre-exist spirits doesn't help either.

"The idea of self-aware intelligences that pre-exist spirits doesn't help either." ... well, I certainly don't make the argument that preembodied intelligences are self-aware.

Anyway, your comment isn't germane to what I wrote. I don't even disagree with the body of the comment. What I did say was that the idea of self-existent, uncreate intelligences does it avoid Galen Strawsen's The Basic Argument. True as the Book of Mormon content you bring up is (and it is true) ... it still falls victim to The Basic Argument without additional content.

Edited November 20, 2025 by Nofear

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The idea of self-aware intelligences that pre-exist spirits doesn't help either.

I agree, it’s more that it feels like it should help and therefore is more comfortable to hold in my mind as a possibility even though it doesn’t actually move the needle off the problem, lol.

[teddyaware]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

I agree, it’s more that it feels like it should help and therefore is more comfortable to hold in my mind as a possibility even though it doesn’t actually move the needle off the problem, lol.

What’s so difficult to understand about the following very simple declaration of eternal truth? From the following, it’s perfectly clear that all intelligence — and that includes the uncreated intelligence that pre existed the creation of the spirit bodies of man — exists in a state of independence, possessing the ability to think and make choices. Again, how is it possible that an uncreated, self existent entity could be independent and have the power to act for itself unless it also possesses the ability to think and make decisions?! It’s also clear that the independence and decision making power of uncreated truth and intelligence is so fundamental to existence that without nothing at all could exist! It may be difficult to wrap the human mind around such profound and glorious principles of truth, but just because these things don’t fit comfortably within conventional thinking doesn’t render them untrue.

29 Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.

30 All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, TO ACT FOR ITSELF, AS ALL INTELLEGENCE ALSO; otherwise there is no existence. (Doctrine and Covenants 93)

Edited November 20, 2025 by teddyaware

[Calm]

49 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

What’s so difficult to understand about the following very simple declaration of eternal truth?

Not much if you don’t dig into it, but just accept it as a basic fact….which is why it is so popular, imo.

The issue I was talking about though is the problem of evil.  
 

And before you hit the idea of opposition, opposition in all things doesn’t have to require evil where there is good.  Why not two good outcomes that cannot both exist requiring us to choose between them?  One force pushing from above vs one force pushing from below does not inherently make one of them righteous and the other evil.

Edited November 20, 2025 by Calm

[mbh26]

On 11/19/2025 at 8:48 AM, Nofear said:

Nobody responded to you. The last question is, of course, yes, God created our spirit bodies. It is in that sense They are our literal Heavenly Parents.

To the first question, what can intelligences do without a body, my position is not much. Since intelligences are uncreate and self-existent the only philosophically coherent position to me is that they are are simple (i.e. without constituent parts). Being simple the intelligences would lack the ability to perceive or remember information. Consequently, anything action taken by an intelligence would be indistinguishable from random. Our intelligences only truly show our capability when embodied --- linked with a machine (body) that provides us perception and memory. While the core of our identity is self-existent, in some sense we didn't "begin to be" in any non-trivial sense until our Heavenly Parents gifted us with bodies.

Quote

 

Nobody responded to you. The last question is, of course, yes, God created our spirit bodies. It is in that sense They are our literal Heavenly Parents.

 

Well thanks for responding.  What I was getting at was the idea that there are many resurrected beings that go on to have their own spirit children.  Perhaps they might be our literal spirit parents, while God with a capital G (Elohim) is our Father in a more indirect sense.  

Michael Rush has a theory similar to infinite regression that our Heavenly Father (Elohim) was once played the role in his iteration of the plan of salvation, that Jesus Christ now plays in the current iteration of the plan of Salvation.  He postulates that when Jesus Christ becomes God the Father in the next iteration of the plan of Salvation, the Holy Ghost will be called as the one to atone for the sins of mankind in the next iteration of the plan of Salvation.  He postulates that Jehovah was the Holy Ghost when Elohim took upon Himself a mortal body and attoned for the sins of the world during the prior iteration of the plan of Salvation.  But how could Jehovah have served as the Holy Ghost if Elohim had not yet begotten Him spiritually?  Or is it just a case where the scriptures often call grandchildren and great grandchildren sons and daughters even though they are actually several times great grandchildren?  The other attempt to explain this is to say that perhaps intelligences had more ability before our spirit birth than we thought?  What does it mean when Elohim says that His Beloved Son was with Him from the beginning?  In what way could Jehovah be with Him before Jehovah was spiritually born?  

Edited November 20, 2025 by mbh26

[Benjamin McGuire]

4 hours ago, Nofear said:

What I did say was that the idea of self-existent, uncreate intelligences does it avoid Galen Strawson's The Basic Argument.

I am not sure I understand what you are saying here - but earlier you made this comment:

6 hours ago, Nofear said:

That's also a very powerful argument. Creatio Ex Nihilo and softer variants fail Galen Strawsen's The Basic Argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen_Strawson).

It seemed to me that you were suggesting that self-existence, uncreated intelligences avoid the problems argued by Galen Strawson. I would argue that they do not. There is no question that the Book of Mormon's theology run's into issues with Strawson's argument - but - the Book of Mormon's position isn't that we have free will in mortality. The position of the Book of Mormon is that we won't have free will until after the resurrection and the subsequent judgement. And only then do we become free to act without being acted upon.

[mbh26]

4 hours ago, Nofear said:

Quote

 well, I certainly don't make the argument that preembodied intelligences are self-aware.

Didn't Cleon Skousen make that kind of argument.  It's the trust that God has built up with the eternal intelligences existing in all matter that allows God to command the elements.  It's these intelligences that demand justice.  In Cleon Skousen's view, the multiverse was and still is to some extent a great democracy of intelligences.  I've also heard that each of these intelligences already possess a gender prior to their spiritual births.  Hence we never chose our gender nor did God.  It's an eternal property of the intelligences.    

 

 

[Benjamin McGuire]

3 hours ago, teddyaware said:

From the following, it’s perfectly clear ...

Except that it isn't clear at all. The simple fact that God places truth and intelligence into a sphere and allows it to act within that sphere (which is what this passage of Section 93 says) seems to contradict the point you are making. If it is God placing truth and intelligence into a sphere - then there is no agency there - that is being acted upon and not acting. And then (assuming that truth and intelligence are somehow self-aware entities and not merely attributes of God as the passage suggests), there action is limited by the sphere in which they exist. Again, this is not being ultimately responsible for the condition in which you find yourself. Let me ask a simple question to illustrate. Who decided which of your intelligences were given spirit bodies? Was it God, or was it the intelligences themselves? Were the intelligences capable of organizing themselves to become spirits in your theory here? Was there ever a first intelligence who, through the sheer power of its own will was able to organize spiritual matter and form for itself a body and then to gather more material matter and take physical form, and so on? If none of us did this, Galen Strawson's problem still exists for us - even if those intelligences had some capacity for agency and self-awareness.

[mbh26]

15 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Quote

The position of the Book of Mormon is that we won't have free will until after the resurrection and the subsequent judgement. And only then do we become free to act without being acted upon.

 

I'm not sure how you're defining free will.  For me free will means that we're free to choose our actions not that we can choose what the consequences of the those actions are.  Not even God can choose what the consequences of an action will be.  The consequences of a given action exist independent of God.  At least that's how I was taught.

Edited November 20, 2025 by mbh26

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 hour ago, mbh26 said:

Michael Rush has a theory similar to infinite regression that our Heavenly Father (Elohim) was once played the role in his iteration of the plan of salvation, that Jesus Christ now plays in the current iteration of the plan of Salvation.

This isn't much different from the early LDS speculation involving multiple mortal probations - where someone could return to mortality, not as an ordinary man but as a savior of worlds - to give up immortality and embrace mortality but to also maintain the power to return to that immortal state after mortal death. This was part of the background to what we now refer to as the Adam-God theory.

[Nofear]

59 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I am not sure I understand what you are saying here - but earlier you made this comment:

It seemed to me that you were suggesting that self-existence, uncreated intelligences avoid the problems argued by Galen Strawson. I would argue that they do not. There is no question that the Book of Mormon's theology run's into issues with Strawson's argument - but - the Book of Mormon's position isn't that we have free will in mortality. The position of the Book of Mormon is that we won't have free will until after the resurrection and the subsequent judgement. And only then do we become free to act without being acted upon.

I would say that we have moral agency now. I'm not a determinist or a compatiblist. But I have no idesire to engage you with such a discussion. We might have similar positions or very different. We explain things differently and setting up the common core of language and concepts is sometimes tedious. I don't feel like doing that right now.

[Benjamin McGuire]

13 minutes ago, mbh26 said:

I'm not sure how you're defining free will.  For me free will means that we're free to choose our actions not that we can choose what the consequences of the those actions are.  Not even God can choose what the consequences of an action will be.  The consequences of a given action exist independent of God.  At least that's how I was taught.

All that this really convinces me of is that you haven't read (or haven't understood) Galen Strawson. The Book of Mormon cuts through the problem of choice (the problem that Strawson presents of Radical Freedom versus Ultimate Responsibility) by redefining agency within the context of two polar opposites - "things to act and things to be acted upon". When something only acts and isn't acted upon, this represents Strawson's position of Radical Freedom. Lehi positions this radical freedom only in the resurrection: "And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon". And only in that context can man have ultimate responsibility. Prior to that point, man has only a limited freedom and not a radical freedom. Lehi explains that this limitation is caused by the mortal condition ("according to the flesh") but also points out that radical freedom simply cannot exist for man because "man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other." There is more to his explanation, but this is probably enough for this discussion. And because of mankind's limitations, the Book of Mormon teaches that man only bears responsibility for his actions to the extent that there was actual choice. And many, the Book of Mormon explains, have no actual choice and so have no responsibility at all.

So we can talk about free will as being free to choose our actions, but the reality is that our choices are already circumscribed in both Lehi's and Strawson's thinking. And for Strawson, part of the problem (including your comments in the quote I am responding to above) that we think that we have radical free will whether we have it or not (emphasis mine):

Quote

And here our natural thought may be expressed as follows: even if my character is indeed just something given (a product of heredity and environment, or whatever), I’m still now able to choose (and hence act) completely freely and truly responsibly, given how I now am and what I now know; and this is so whatever else is the case—determinism or no determinism. ... The argument that RF is impossible seems powerless when faced with this conviction, which is reinforced by the point just considered, according to which something in itself negative—the absence of any general sense that our desires, pro-attitudes, character, and so on are not ultimately self-determined—is implicitly taken as equivalent to some sort of positive self-determination. We certainly don’t ordinarily suppose that we’ve gone through some sort of active process of self-determination at some particular past time. Nevertheless, it seems accurate to say that we do unreflectively experience ourselves rather as we would experience ourselves if we did believe that we had engaged in some such activity of self-determination. This, I propose, is one of the foundation stones of the general human phenomenology of free agency. (Strawson, 2020, The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Agency, 358)

Lehi gets away from this by simply suggesting that as long as we can be acted upon, we cannot have radical freedom, and consequently, we do not have ultimate responsibility. In the Book of Mormon, the poster child for this idea is the small child (and this is a topic that Strawson does discuss in the article I reference above).

So I distinguish between a limited agency and an absolute agency. And within that difference, the consequences of action (at least in a moral sense) are not predetermined or set in stone (in fact the idea of atonement makes that statement problematic) but are relative to the degree to which the agency that is engaged can be compared to radical agency. Only when we can act (and not be acted upon) argues the Book of Mormon can we have ultimate responsibility (consequences). And that cannot occur in mortality where so much of our condition is predicated by the conditions of our mortality (or as Lehi says, "men are free according to the flesh").

As far as what you were taught - I am not sure how far Sunday School lessons go to prepare you to engage with Strawson ...

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 minute ago, Nofear said:

I would say that we have moral agency now. I'm not a determinist or a compatiblist. But I have no idesire to engage you with such a discussion. We might have similar positions or very different. We explain things differently and setting up the common core of language and concepts is sometimes tedious. I don't feel like doing that right now.

And yet it is you who introduced Strawson to the discussion ...

[Nofear]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

And yet it is you who introduced Strawson to the discussion ...

Addressed somebody who wasn't been answered and responded to Calm. Was a side discussion not relevant to the main thrust.

[mbh26]

17 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

As far as what you were taught - I am not sure how far Sunday School lessons go to prepare you to engage with Strawson ...

Yeah, this is the first I ever heard of Strawson.  I'm not sure I'm finding him very helpful or enlightening at first glance.