Questing Beast Posted August 30, 2011 Posted August 30, 2011 The pantheism which you put forth here does not comport with what you say below about the "insularity" of each individual human. You can't have it both ways: Either everyone and everything is part of God (contingent), or are actual individuals (necessary beings). Mormonism opts for the monistic notion that we (and all matter & energy) are coeternal with God, i.e., that each of us is a necessary being.Pantheism is a definable set of beliefs. I do not study or ascribe to any "ism". If there are similarities that is no surprise. If my "dogma" carried no similarities to any "isms" then I would be worried. After all, "God" is the Cause of Existence in the first place. So it is impossible for anything existing in this universe to bear utterly alien aspects or originate from some other cause.We are not "made" to be "insular," we are insular by nature. Only thus are we immortal, eternal beings, as indestructible as matter & energy, and all governed by natural law.This notion that even "God the Father" is as we are, unmade/uncreated, immortal, eternal, without cause, always existing, is impossible to comprehend as it is impossible to be.No empirical matter, even ourselves, can exist without a Cause. If every sapient "soul" has always existed as such, then in total, all sapient souls would comprise the "mind of God", i.e. the total mass of infinite matter; making "God the Father" into merely one finite mind/intellect among an infinity of intellects. That is no object for worship, in my humble opinion. Rather, the concept of the totality of infinite Existence would be the closest concept worthy of worship; not any of the parts.So we are "made" to be this way, because the totality of Existence wills this never-ending process to be, and we are manifestations of that process. The immanence of God in Mormon doctrine is in stark contrast to the Judeo-Christian dogma of a self-existent transcendant God, who is the only reality, and from whom all being takes shape and apart from which there is no individual being of any kind (if there is evil, only that God can be the author of it).Indeed, the "immanence" is what many Mormons find attractive in the theology of Joseph Smith. Yet even as a child I had difficulties with it: I could never comprehend how a glorified man could be responsible for Existence in the first place: somebody/something must have come up with "God the Father". When I understood what part eternal matter and intelligences played in the theology, it only advanced the ultimate question one enormous step further back: what Is responsible for the existence of the eternal matter?To hold a concept of "God" that is deliberately constructed to be immanent, or comprehensible, is in direct opposition to the scriptures of those Judeo-Christian writers of antiquity; who asserted that God is in fact incomprehensible and too vast in intellect for humans to comprehend ("My ways are not your ways neither are my thoughts your thoughts; for as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts".)Do you see the internal contradictions in your dogma? It is precisely that pantheistic tendency which discredits Judeo-Christian dogma and leads to self-contradictory "death of God" theologies. No wonder that young people flee from such dogma in modern times. Indeed, Europeans generally cannot understand how Americans can be so foolish as to believe in such absurd dogma. And they are right.I see a contradiction here in your assertion that Mormonism is in "stark contrast" to Judeo-Christianity, and yet my dogma discredits that same dogma because what I have said is pantheistic to you.What is this "death of God" that you lump me in with? Since disassociating myself with Mormon theology, "my God" has only gotten bigger. This has occurred all the more obviously to me, because my ignorance makes all that I know about "God" very, very small indeed. Yet by admitting this severe limitation, I find that "God" is ironically made more immediate to me: as part of "God" I can never be disconnected or forgotten or lost. My every thought is a "God thought". And thankfully, I am spared going through a period of error, wherein I must learn by experience that my thoughts being "God thoughts" does not mean that everything I think to do is alright, because it is "God" thinking it, ergo it cannot be wrong. Millenarians have tended to fall into that fallacy, excusing all manner of criminal and immoral behavior, because to question the validity of their thinking would be to deny their asserted return to innocence, etc. But to recognize the truth that nothing is separate from the God of Existence in the first place", does not mean that free will is any less; or that contrast and opposition are any less. "God" wills all opposition into empirical existence so that our existence will become life eternal; i.e. in full knowledge and possession of Joy through experience. And I believe that no matter how long it may take some souls, everyone is created to discern Joy and ultimately to attain it....
Questing Beast Posted August 30, 2011 Posted August 30, 2011 ("My ways are not your ways neither are my thoughts your thoughts; for as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts".)My every thought is a "God thought".Wait for iiiit....
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