Transcendence or Transphysicality?

[WalkerW]

...when the Bible speaks of heaven and earth it is not talking about two localities related to each other within the same spacetime continuum or about a nonphysical world contrasted with a physical one but about two different kinds of what we call space, two differents kinds of what we call matter, and also quite possibly...two different kinds of what we call time. We post-Enlightenment Westerners are such wretched flatlanders. Although New Age thinkers, and indeed quite a lot of contemporary novelists, are quite capable of taking us into other parallel worlds, spaces, and times, we retreat into our rationalistic closed-system universe as soon as we think about Jesus. C.S. Lewis of course did a great job in the Narnia stories and elsewhere of imagining how two worlds could relate and interlock. But the generation that grew up knowing its way around Narnia does not usually know how to make the transition from a children's story to the real world of grown-up Christian devotion and theology. (N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, HarperOne, 2008: 115)

Given Wright's analysis, does the concept(s) of

open up the door for Mormon transphysicality?

[mfbukowski]

Yep.

It's the only way King Follette could be literally true.

We Mormons don't have a clue what we have.

[mfbukowski]

On another thread, Nathair posted this:

Brother Shirts makes some beautiful points about looking for truth wherever it can be found.

It's worth the wait, but if you want to cut to the chase, around minute 44 Kerry speaks of the worlds being created through the vibration of sound.

"In the beginning was the Word"....

Abraham 4 makes it clear that God organized the worlds by verbally speaking and defining them- see how many times you can find the words "said" "called" "ordered" or a synonym in this chapter!

[WalkerW]

See Margaret Barker, “An Overview of Temple Music,” Temple Studies Group Symposium II: Temple Music: The Meaning and Influence, Temple Church, London (30 May 2009).

I mention it in my recent NT Daily article.

[WalkerW]

Given the recent controversy over Rob Bell's book and the idea of heaven and earth uniting, I'm excited to see what direction biblical scholarship and Christian beliefs go on this matter:

So is it heaven for Christians who say they are Christians and hell for everybody else? What about babies, or people who die without ever hearing the Gospel through no fault of their own? (As Bell puts it, "What if the missionary got a flat tire?") Who knows? Such tangles have consumed Christianity for millennia and likely will for millennia to come.

What gives the debate over Bell new significance is that his message is part of an intriguing scholarly trend unfolding simultaneously with the cultural, generational and demographic shifts made manifest at Mars Hill. Best expressed, perhaps, in the work of N.T. Wright, the Anglican bishop of Durham, England (Bell is a Wright devotee), this school focuses on the meaning of the texts themselves, reading them anew and seeking, where appropriate, to ask whether an idea is truly rooted in the New Testament or is attributable to subsequent church tradition and theological dogma.

For these new thinkers, heaven can mean different things. In some biblical contexts it is a synonym for God. In others it signifies life in the New Jerusalem, which, properly understood, is the reality that will result when God brings together the heavens and the earth. In yet others it seems to suggest moments of intense human communion and compassion that are, in theological terms, glimpses of the divine love that one might expect in the world to come. One thing heaven is not is an exclusive place removed from earth. This line of thinking has implications for the life of religious communities in our own time. If the earth is, in a way, to be our eternal home, then its care, and the care of all its creatures, takes on fresh urgency. (Jon Meacham, "Is Hell Dead?" TIME, 14 April 2011)

[mfbukowski]

Given the recent controversy over Rob Bell's book and the idea of heaven and earth uniting, I'm excited to see what direction biblical scholarship and Christian beliefs go on this matter:

VERY cool stuff!

How did you get so smart anyway??

[Mudcat]

Had to rep you for the N.T. Wright citation. He has some pretty neat thoughts that I dig from my own Evangelical perspective.

I like Dr. Kaku as well, though he is a very distant Deist, if one at all. He's a great communicator. I could go on a rant about what I disagree with him on..... but will save it for know.

I can't speak as an LDS, but I don't know that his view fits the paradigm very well. From what I could gather from the video he seem to think that the black holes are possibly linked to the "umbilical cords" to other universes.

IMO, this would seem to be an untenable game changer in some respects, because it would point towards the finite nature of matter. By that I mean, if one universe must borrow something from another universe to exist, then it would stand to reason it is only as big as what it borrowed. Ergo no particular universe is infinite and all are quantifiable.

If such were true, then matter is finite.

Also, though LDS could work around the notion I think, there is the issue of what black holes are suspected to do. IIRC, they sort of compress matter into some disorganized and hyper compressed pile.. at least theoretically. This would make sense in one respect, in that in an LDS paradigm God made all this out of a bunch of disorganized stuff. However, if such were the case He would do so by first disorganizing some stuff he or some other perfect God organized.

To put it into to human terms, it would be like loaning your son a lawn mower eternally.

I think the parameters of "perfection" would have to adjusted by LDS to compensate. But I can't quite tack down why.

Just some thoughts Walker.

Respectfully,

Mudcat

[mfbukowski]

Well the question comes what does "organized" mean, and I guess that is a relative term.

Organic molecules are "organized" but cells made up of organic molecules are "more organized" than the molecules themselves, etc, on up the ladder until you have some organic molecules which can think when organized into a brain, and ever more complex brains etc.

If we use an organic model we can understand, what we call "eating" is just re-organizing some already partially organized stuff into some more organized stuff, turning a fish into human brain cells for example.

Maybe the universes just "eat" each other, growing in complexity.

What do I know?

[Mudcat]

Well the question comes what does "organized" mean, and I guess that is a relative term.

Well I was speaking of what "organized" meant in regards to LDS. I assume there is some specificity in that respect. But perhaps it's just an ambiguous term to LDS.

Organic molecules are "organized" but cells made up of organic molecules are "more organized" than the molecules themselves, etc, on up the ladder until you have some organic molecules which can think when organized into a brain, and ever more complex brains etc.

I'll let this lay for the moment. Though this distinctly touches on a discussion we were having on another thread.

If we use an organic model we can understand, what we call "eating" is just re-organizing some already partially organized stuff into some more organized stuff, turning a fish into human brain cells for example.

Maybe the universes just "eat" each other, growing in complexity.

Sniff, sniff...

I think I smell a reification fallacy in our midst.

But if we assume that universes eat other universes to exist, it doesn't contribute to the notion of infinite matter.

[Nathair/|\]

On another thread, Nathair posted this:

It's worth the wait, but if you want to cut to the chase, around minute 44 Kerry speaks of the worlds being created through the vibration of sound.

"In the beginning was the Word"....

Abraham 4 makes it clear that God organized the worlds by verbally speaking and defining them- see how many times you can find the words "said" "called" "ordered" or a synonym in this chapter!

Thank you, I feel validated now.

[mfbukowski]

Sniff, sniff...

I think I smell a reification fallacy in our midst.

But if we assume that universes eat other universes to exist, it doesn't contribute to the notion of infinite matter.

Lol! Sniff sniff indeed!!

Nah, it was just an analogy- a metaphor. "Sleeping pills make us sleep by virtue of a faculty of causing sleep". That "faculty" would be a reification. It's actually no explanation at all- we just made up a "faculty" which explains nothing.

Note that reification is generally accepted in literature and other forms of discourse where reified abstractions are understood to be intended metaphorically,[2] but the use of reification in logical arguments is usually regarded as a fallacy. For example, "Justice is blind; the blind cannot read printed laws; therefore, to print laws cannot serve justice." In rhetoric, it may be sometimes difficult to determine if reification was used correctly or incorrectly.

Why do we need infinite matter?

Imagine this earth- conservation of matter and all that. Evolution (on my view) has pushed the same matter around for millions of years yet life becomes more complex. Every breath you take includes oxygen molecules which were once part of dinosaurs; the carbon atoms that make up each of us could have been from the first organisms which ever existed.

All I am doing is taking the same idea and making it just a little bit bigger.

[mfbukowski]

Thank you, I feel validated now.

Are you pulling my leg?

That's a great thread! I don't know why it doesn't have a million responses by now!

[Nathair/|\]

Are you pulling my leg?

That's a great thread! I don't know why it doesn't have a million responses by now!

Nah, I know I'm not in your league...yet. It makes me feel good when the big boys quote me. Plus my depression is acting up a bit and you can't get a green card in Montana for it yet.