God Is An Atheist

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

Dude, there are a thousand different ways Mormonism is perfectly compatible with evolution, chief among them being not to take the Garden stories as inerrant, word-perfect textbooks on How To Create A World And Populate It With Hyoomins. I like Brigham's sci-fi speculations, but I think the real story is a little more subtle than he was able to get. See, for instance, my approximately five billion speculative sci-fi posts in the Creation vs. Evolution thread.

(Of course, if one doesn't believe in a literal Adam and instead thinks that the Temple Drama is a symbolic typological representation of populations -- in much the same way that the Whore of Babylon was not representative of a single particular woman -- undertaking the pre-mortal journey of our spirits from the divine world to inhabit our homo sapiens body, with every man an Adam -- his name meaning, after all, "Many" -- and every woman an Eve, then one is all-too-often accused by fundamentalists and critics alike of being a Neo-Orthodox, out-of-line-with-the-Brethren, merely-apologetic, Liberal, not-a-real-Mormon, de facto apostate. Odd how the critics and fundamentalists so often share such compatible premises ...)

[mfbukowski]

Evolution is science, and reconciling this with Mormonism's "God is a man" doctrine is becoming more of a problem. According to Evolution, we're still evolving. Ten thousand years from now humans could very well look different from how we appear today. So why does God appear just as humans do at this stage of our evolution? If he created us in his image, then why didn't he appear to Joseph Smith as a hunched over Cro-Magnon? It was "in the beginning" that he created man in his image, right?

There are so many things wrong with this post, I can't even begin to count them, probably the least of which is that you would probably be indistinguishable from a Cro-Magnon man.

Mr. Science you are not. You really should stick to your expertise. Oh yeah- what was that again?

Edited March 10, 2012 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

Dude, there are a thousand different ways Mormonism is perfectly compatible with evolution, chief among them being not to take the Garden stories as inerrant, word-perfect textbooks on How To Create A World And Populate It With Hyoomins. I like Brigham's sci-fi speculations, but I think the real story is a little more subtle than he was able to get. See, for instance, my approximately five billion speculative sci-fi posts in the Creation vs. Evolution thread.

(Of course, if one doesn't believe in a literal Adam and instead thinks that the Temple Drama is a symbolic typological representation of populations -- in much the same way that the Whore of Babylon was not representative of a single particular woman -- undertaking the pre-mortal journey of our spirits from the divine world to inhabit our homo sapiens body, with every man an Adam -- his name meaning, after all, "Many" -- and every woman an Eve, then one is all-too-often accused by fundamentalists and critics alike of being a Neo-Orthodox, out-of-line-with-the-Brethren, merely-apologetic, Liberal, not-a-real-Mormon, de facto apostate. Odd how the critics and fundamentalists so often share such compatible premises ...)

Not to mention that we are each to consider ourselves to be "Adam".

Ya think maybe there might be something there about a personal fall from grace? How do the fundamentalist critics handle that one I wonder?

I guess it means we should all run around in the garden naked. I think that's more your cup of tea than mine though

Edited March 10, 2012 by mfbukowski

[Xander]

There are so many things wrong with this post, I can't even begin to count them, probably the least of which is that you would probably be indistinguishable from a Cro-Magnon man.

Mr. Science you are not. You really should stick to your expertise. Oh yeah- what was that again?

The fact is the Mormon doctrine of God being a literal man who created us in his literal image demands explanation in light of science. Obviously you are in no position to explain it or else you would have. You've never really explained much of anything aside from telling people to go find their own truth (rolls eyes).

If God created man in his image then he did this with the first human. This means the first human looked like what Joseph Smith saw standing above him in the grove.

This flies in the face of science, and for you to pretend it doesn't is typical of those who think we're living in the matrix and can create our own truth. It doesn't matter if you believe humans began as a species as Cro-Magnon or Neanderthals, there remains a distinguishable difference in appearance.

In any event, science tells us that if God was in any way involved in the creation of man, then he was the one who created the first single-cell organism from which all life evolved. This means he created everything the same way, leaving nothing unique in the creation of man.

And no, I do not believe God is a personal God. There simply is no evidence to suggest that he is.

Edited March 10, 2012 by Xander

[Xander]

My expertise is in refuting absolute nonsense, which makes me a huge thorn in your side.

Here is the part where you claim to be right about every issue known to man, because we don't know what its like to be a bat!

LOL!

Edited March 10, 2012 by Xander

[mfbukowski]

It doesn't matter if you believe humans began as a species as Cro-Magnon or Neanderthals, there remains a distinguishable difference in appearance.

I don't take much of this literally, so you are wrong. It might be literally true but it doesn't matter to me if it is or not.

But you made the statement- so please tell me exactly what the differences are between Cro-Magnon man and present day man.

A 2003 sequencing on the mitochondrial DNA of two Cro-Magnons (23,000-year-old Paglicci 52 and 24,720-year-old Paglicci 12) identified the mtDNA as Haplogroup N.^[24] Haplogroup N is found among modern populations of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, and represent the northern branch of the out-of-Africa migration of modern humans. Its descendant haplogroups are found among modern North African, Eurasian, Polynesian and Native American populations.^[52]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cro-Magnon#Contemporary_early_modern_humans_in_Europe.3F

Recent research over the past 20 years or so, however, has led scholars to believe that the physical dimensions of so-called 'Cro-Magnon' are not sufficiently different enough from modern humans to warrant a separate designation. Scientists today use 'Anatomically Modern Human' (AMH) or 'Early Modern Human' (EMH) to designate the Upper Paleolithic human beings who looked a lot like us, but did not have the complete suite of modern human behaviors.

http://archaeology.about.com/od/earlymansites/a/cro_magnon.htm

Like I said- it makes no difference to me, but you are the one who said it.

[mfbukowski]

My expertise is in refuting absolute nonsense, which makes me a huge thorn in your side.

Here is the part where you claim to be right about every issue known to man, because we don't know what its like to be a bat!

LOL!

Have another one- heck it's Friday night.

[mfbukowski]

In any event, science tells us that if God was in any way involved in the creation of man, then he was the one who created the first single-cell organism from which all life evolved. This means he created everything the same way, leaving nothing unique in the creation of man.

Which is exactly what I believe. Is there any point whatsoever to this nonsense?

[Xander]

I don't take much of this literally, so you are wrong. It might be literally true but it doesn't matter to me if it is or not.

Ah, I forgot who I was talking to. You're the guy who never sees problems with anything because you can just create your own truth on demand and convince yourself that's some kind of genius move. Unfortunately for you, Mormon doctrine isn't nearly as flexible as your personal concept of "whack-a-mole" truth. It states that God is quite literally a God made up of flesh and bones.

Which is exactly what I believe. Is there any point whatsoever to this nonsense?

Yes, I just became aware of the fact that you disagree with Mormon doctrine. But it was Mormon doctrine I was addressing, not your personal opinion that is as flexible as gumby.

As I said, you can refer to whatever stage of human evolution you want, but God supposedly created man at his earliest stage. I just threw out Cro-Magnon as an example but clarified that Neanderthal would be closer to the point. We're talking about the earliest human form, after all. And we're talking about a God with two eyes, legs, two arms, eyebrows, etc just as modern human form appears today. Most of these features can be explained by Evolution. The human figure has changed dramatically as it has evolved. This pretty much excludes the possibility of the Mormon doctrine that God created us in our (his) present image, "in the beginning." If you can't see how that is problematic in light of science, then there isn't much else I can do for you.

You should have taken the red pill and told Morpheus to lump it.

Edited March 10, 2012 by Xander

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

Sheesh. Calm down, y'all.

...

If we want to actually talk about this, here's my simplified (bleary, burning-the-midnight-oil) speculative take (which is very amenable and open to revision and change):

"Intelligences" are uncreated. There is simply no "creation" about them; that's why they're free: they're eternal. We are all, at root, an Uncreated Intelligence which can inhabit different types of bodies, be they "celestial" or "earthy", as 1 Corinthians 15:40 states. We don't yet know the physics of how this all works; I have no idea how an Uncreated Intelligence is "breathed" into a body, because our knowledge basically just stops at a certain level -- hence all the particle accelerator experiments they're doing right now. As religious people -- people "of the book" -- we're trusting and having faith in a record of a source which has assured us that even if we do not currently posses the technology necessary to conduct reproducible experimentation capable of demonstrating the existence of this little spark of light inside of us, it is nevertheless there.

Yes, that's a faith claim based on a purportedly historical account of a visitation of an Intelligence with more knowledge than us; until we do have the means of testing it empirically, we just have to trust in the source. No one is forced to trust in this story; as Joseph Smith said, if he hadn't experienced what he had, he wouldn't have believe the story of it himself. Personally, I do not possess the knowledge necessary to perform a heart transplant, yet I trust that there are people out there who do. It's a problematic analogy, of course, since presumably I could go to med school and learn how to do it myself; and yet, until the procedure was developed, no one actually knew it was possible, except conceptually.

The details had to be worked out after the initial idea was presented -- if a doctor visits an isolated preindustrial tribe with no medical equipment and tells the people that such a thing is possible, I doubt they'd take him seriously, but they might record what he said and a few generations later come to realize that he was telling the truth. Same with scriptures: until we know how to halt senescence (see: Aubrey de Grey's research) we simply find tales of long-lived humans to be so much "primitive mythology".

Non-overlapping magisteria is silly; religion makes testable scientific claims. But we have to be careful of ruling things out prematurely, and judge things on a case-by-case basis. I don't believe the continents shifted in Peleg's day (despite the Ensign article by, I think, Elder Holland), but I'm fine with believing his family migrated into new lands and "divided the [known] world" between them. I don't believe in a literal flood which covered the entire earth, but I do believe Christ rose from the dead. Paradigms shift; things that seem impossible one day become obvious facts of life the next. Despite JFS's speculation that it would never happen, man has reached the moon -- and quite quickly, too, after the industrial revolution began.

So anyway. We've got Heavenly bodies and Earthy bodies. The Uncreated Intelligence can apparently inhabit both types, and having a body is desirable for all the things they've evolved to do -- ie, their potential to develop sympathy for other Uncreated Intelligences who inhabit bodies. How closely do the Heavenly bodies match their earthy counterparts? We don't know -- no one's taken a photo or a tissue sample of a Heavenly Messenger. Presumably there's some sort of biology going on there, but how on earth are we supposed to study it?

Yes, we're "in the image" of the Gods, but how close is the family resemblance? I'm "in the image" of my parents, but I certainly couldn't pass as my dad's twin. I'm about 5'8", Hispanic, and somewhat olive-toned. If you line me up with a snow-white 4'1" woman from Norway and a 6'11" black man from Kenya and a 300-pound Samoan, we're not exactly interchangeable on a superficial physical level. Yet we're clearly all human and part of the same species, so -- just as clearly -- there must exist a tolerable variation between what we look like and what celestial bodies look like. All our bodies and shapes and colors and sizes are beautiful -- there is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. (Of course, it's a misunderstanding of evolution to think that forms must change -- so long as the environment remains consistent enough, morphology can remain consistent indefinitely.)

What we do know is that convergent evolution leads to similar physical adaptations if environmental constraints are equivalent -- even across geographically-separated areas, and even across species which are only very-distantly related. Panspermia, currently a minority viewpoint, argues that the seeds of life are spread throughout the universe, meaning that all life, even interplanetary life, is potentially descended from the same root. Function and form are intertwined; given the same starting elements and similar planetary conditions (distance from the star, planet-size and gravity, etc.) there is no reason why similar forms cannot arise. (If this all sounds too embarrassingly like ancient astronauts, well that's just too bad for our PR guy -- after all, if you're looking at earth from the perspective of another planet, humans are the big-headed "aliens" who're trying to travel in our sci-fi rocketships to other worlds. Now take me to your leader.)

A seed can be carried on the wind into a field and grow "naturally" into a tree, with no help from outside. Alternatively, the tree can be a result of purposive causation -- ie, a human carries the seed there and plants it so she can eat the fruit it bears in a few years. Without the historical account written in her diary, it's very difficult to just see a tree growing and make a determination one way or another whether it had a "reason" for being there. Historical accounts of purposive causation are not very amenable to reproducible experimentation, because there is no way to isolate the key variable: the agent. Same goes for creation stories, albeit on a much grander scale.

So what about the "first man"? Well, if we're forced to take every single word in the Genesis account literally, there is simply no way to reconcile it with our current understanding of science. On the other hand, we have been expressly told in the Temple that some things are figurative. Brigham Young certainly didn't believe that Eve was literally taken from a rib. So which parts are figurative, and which are typological accounts of, essentially, a simplified Temple Drama? How do we decide?

Well, since Adam and Eve's names both mean "many", and we all become them in our reenactments, I think Adam and Eve are themselves figurative, just the same way as the Whore of Babylon or the Tree of Life visions are symbolic of underlying realities. She's not a "real" woman, and Nephi didn't walk up to a physically-existing tree, and yet the ideas they vividly represent are very real. So why can't "being raised from the dust" be taken as some sort simplified account of evolution from the primordial ooze? (Or, as I've heard hypothesized -- by, I believe Bokovoy -- "raised from the dust" might be an idiomatic term for being raised into a kingly position. Etc.) The Pearl of Great Price says "time" rather than "day", and the Gods are working on a different relative time-scale anyway.

(And it's nothing so neat as "one day = exactly 1000 years down to the last second", since 1000 years could just as easily be a reference to "a very long time", in the same way that having descendants as "numerous as the sands on the seashore" does not literally mean you should find a beach and count every grain to know how many grandkids you'll have.)

The point is: Adam and Eve -- "Many", according to Moses 1:34 and 4:26 -- are the "first people" in that they are the first batch of Uncreated Intelligences to be "breathed" into homo sapiens bodies. Clearly there were "humans" inhabiting Celestial bodies long before them, so they're really only the "first humans" -- ie, the first Uncreated Intelligence bound within a "theomorphic" body -- on this earth. When is "the beginning"? It can't be the beginning of the entire universe, since there was no "beginning" to eternal Intelligences in the Mormon doctrine which denies creation ex nihilo. It's more likely "the beginning" of the Plan of Salvation, relative (and pertaining) to this world, this dispensation. So why not pre-Adamites?

At any rate, it's perfectly possible to believe in the findings of science while fitting in the historical accounts in scripture in whatever hypothetical scenario is appealing. As Nibley was so fond of saying, science studies the stage, history and scripture record the play and the actors.

Edited March 10, 2012 by JeremyOrbe-Smith

[inquiringmind]

Hey CV, good to see you again!

As long as the tail isn't wagging the dog I'm happy, because if everything conceivable in existence exists because it has substance, I believe you seriously limit yourself to causation up, materialism. You run up against the wall of locating, or even conceiving of a �first cause�.

You are bound by the mechanics of cause and effect. Awareness is simply an emergent property of particles pushing and pulling on each other in mindless, intelligence-less laws of motion. You are applying �Newtonian Physics� to all of existence.

If you rely on substance interacting in mindless cause and effect mechanics, you can never have an original thought, as every thought must be preceded by another to cause the next. There can never be a point where you affect an effect without a cause, and the entire course of all existence could conceivably be plotted and determined.

And wouldn't that mean that there's no such thing as agency?

[mfbukowski]

Ah, I forgot who I was talking to. You're the guy who never sees problems with anything because you can just create your own truth on demand and convince yourself that's some kind of genius move. Unfortunately for you, Mormon doctrine isn't nearly as flexible as your personal concept of "whack-a-mole" truth. It states that God is quite literally a God made up of flesh and bones.

Yes, I just became aware of the fact that you disagree with Mormon doctrine. But it was Mormon doctrine I was addressing, not your personal opinion that is as flexible as gumby.

As I said, you can refer to whatever stage of human evolution you want, but God supposedly created man at his earliest stage. I just threw out Cro-Magnon as an example but clarified that Neanderthal would be closer to the point. We're talking about the earliest human form, after all. And we're talking about a God with two eyes, legs, two arms, eyebrows, etc just as modern human form appears today. Most of these features can be explained by Evolution. The human figure has changed dramatically as it has evolved. This pretty much excludes the possibility of the Mormon doctrine that God created us in our (his) present image, "in the beginning." If you can't see how that is problematic in light of science, then there isn't much else I can do for you.

You should have taken the red pill and told Morpheus to lump it.

You really should learn some Mormon doctrine. I thought you knew it, but oh well. God has an exalted CELESTIAL body and is not a Neanderthal body nor even a body like ours.

I presume you could say that he is at the last possible stage of what we in our present science call "evolution", that stage being exaltation- becoming as he is.

Your convoluted argument has no basis. We obviously have no scientific description of how a celestial body works- yet, but in principle, and on faith, I am sure we eventually will understand these things.

Literally.

[mfbukowski]

Sheesh. Calm down, y'all.

We're just blowing off some steam.

I hate video games. Shooting at Xander is much more fun than killing zombies, but just about as substantive.

Edited March 10, 2012 by mfbukowski

[Xander]

Your convoluted argument has no basis.

My argument isn't convoluted at all unless you want to turn Mormon doctrine on its head, which is apparently what you're doing. Yes, I know Mormon doctrine. I taught it as a missionary for two years. Mormon doctrine states that God the Father is an exalted man whose body is made up of "flesh and bones as tangible as man's" (D&C 130:22)

But more to the point, Mormon doctrine also states that God created man in his literal image. As the Encyclopedia of Mormonism explains, "In Church theology, the doctrine of the nature of God is established more clearly by the First Vision of the Prophet Joseph Smith than by anything else. Here, Joseph Smith saw for himself that the Father and the Son were two separate and distinct beings, each possessing a body in whose image and likeness mortals are created.... Latter-day Saints perceive the Father as an exalted Man in the most literal, anthropomorphic terms. They do not view the language of Genesis as allegorical; human beings are created in the form and image of a God who has a physical form and image."

You really didn't know this stuff?

The point still remains that if God created us in his literal image, at the beginning of Human evolution, then either 1) we never evolved from single celled organisms or 2) God's appearance to Joseph Smith was not indicative of what he really looks like. So far you've done nothing to resolve this problem. You've merely asserted that there is no problem and dismissed everything I've said demonstrating that a problem exists.

We obviously have no scientific description of how a celestial body works- yet, but in principle, and on faith, I am sure we eventually will understand these things

Irrelevant. Focusing on what we don't know doesn't explain the problems presented by what Mormonism claims it does know.

Edited March 10, 2012 by Xander

[tana]

And wouldn't that mean that there's no such thing as agency?

Yes, and that's why I'm trying to point out that it seems to me the LDS worldview has the tail wagging dog. If spirit is made of particles then everything is mechanical. One could never have an original thought as every thought must be preceded by another....hence, free will is illusion.

In my worldview consciousness is primary. It is not an assembly. It is not an acquired group of thoughts from past experiences, It is not ruled by laws of motion. It is ONE shared field of awareness. It is immeasurable and unimpeachable.

[Xander]

Well, if we're forced to take every single word in the Genesis account literally, there is simply no way to reconcile it with our current understanding of science.

Thank you. Finally, someone has the audacity to speak the truth on this.

On the other hand, we have been expressly told in the Temple that some things are figurative.

But not the image of God reference.

Brigham Young certainly didn't believe that Eve was literally taken from a rib.

That isn't the image of God reference.

So which parts are figurative, and which are typological accounts of, essentially, a simplified Temple Drama? How do we decide?

Why should we have to decide at all? Whatever happened to a Church led by true apostles and prophets who tell us what the scriptures mean so we're not tossed to and fro with the doctrines of men? Was that just a bad prank? In my experience, Mormons are left on their own, having to come up with their own rationalizations and interpretations of scripture in order to maintain faith, even more so than Protestants or Catholics. If they come up with something that works for them, the Church doesn't care and lets them believe it so long as they use it to stay active. So you can really make up your own doctrine and the Church won't disagree unless you go public with it and it causes controversy. Your speculation about "intelligences" is a perfect example.

But on this particular issue the Church has made it painstakingly clear that the Genesis reference to the image of God was not allegory. It was not metaphor. It was not symbolic. It was quite literal. Therefore, what you said above is true. It is impossible to reconcile this with science.

At any rate, it's perfectly possible to believe in the findings of science while fitting in the historical accounts in scripture in whatever hypothetical scenario is appealing.

So in other words, create your own truth, as mfbukowski advises. Not me. I have too much of an appreciation for reality.

As Nibley was so fond of saying, science studies the stage, history and scripture record the play and the actors.

Why believe anything Nibley had to say? He wasn't an authority. All he did was provide the necessary cognitive equipment for believers to perform the mental gymnastics needed to maintain faith.

[mfbukowski]

"Image"= two eyes, nose, mouth, arms, legs, trunk etc.

im·age/ˈimij/

Noun: A representation of the external form of a person or thing in sculpture, painting, etc. Verb: Make a visual representation of (something) by scanning it with a detector or electromagnetic beam. Synonyms:

noun. picture - figure - effigy - representation - reflection

verb. figure - picture - represent - reflect - mirror - depict

Edited March 11, 2012 by mfbukowski

[tana]

"Intelligences" are uncreated. There is simply no "creation" about them; that's why they're free: they're eternal. We are all, at root, an Uncreated Intelligence which can inhabit different types of bodies

Jeremy, over the years I have advocated on here for a oneness theme. A shared consciousness. Because through thought experiment I find it impossible to locate what exactly constitutes a separate to itself entity. How does one locate and define the genesis of an "uncreated intelligence"? A collection of thoughts gained and acquired through experiences cannot define an entity. This would make the entity the sum of it's parts, and make it linear. Thoughts, threads of logic must be be separate from the core awareness that comprehends them. There must be an unchanging core that has no personality characteristics. "Travel is fatal to prejudice,bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." - Mark Twain. Meaning, Thoughts, behavior can change through experiences, but if one defines the entity by it's knowledge, where is the starting point? Do we all get a certain quota of thoughts to start out? How? For a Deity based, reward and punishment paradigm to work, god must be able to take a snapshot of a soul and declare....this soul has this percentage of original qualities that define it. It is therefore irredeemable.

In order for a soul to be held accountable, it must be ultimately, personally responsible for creating it's own core personality characteristics. How?

[TAO]

In order for a soul to be held accountable, it must be ultimately, personally responsible for creating it's own core personality characteristics. How?

I'd have to disagree, I think =/. We don't need to have created all of our own personality. We merely need to take responsibility for what we do with what we have. That is what we need to do for agency to be fulfilled, I think.

[tana]

I'd have to disagree, I think =/. We don't need to have created all of our own personality. We merely need to take responsibility for what we do with what we have. That is what we need to do for agency to be fulfilled, I think.

But how could we have created any of our own traits? This seems to allude to some point in time happening, where traits are quanta to be dealt out randomly. If I somehow wake up one moment and find myself possessing a whole bunch of laziness, where will I find the work ethic trait to overcome, if I don't possess it in the first place? How can one add to the core? Wouldn't this then indicate that things could be taken away.....completely, to where nothing remains?

Another Question, with this scenario how can god be anything but a peer?

Edited March 11, 2012 by tana

[mfbukowski]

Jeremy, over the years I have advocated on here for a oneness theme. A shared consciousness. Because through thought experiment I find it impossible to locate what exactly constitutes a separate to itself entity. How does one locate and define the genesis of an "uncreated intelligence"? A collection of thoughts gained and acquired through experiences cannot define an entity. This would make the entity the sum of it's parts, and make it linear. Thoughts, threads of logic must be be separate from the core awareness that comprehends them. There must be an unchanging core that has no personality characteristics. "Travel is fatal to prejudice,bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." - Mark Twain. Meaning, Thoughts, behavior can change through experiences, but if one defines the entity by it's knowledge, where is the starting point? Do we all get a certain quota of thoughts to start out? How? For a Deity based, reward and punishment paradigm to work, god must be able to take a snapshot of a soul and declare....this soul has this percentage of original qualities that define it. It is therefore irredeemable.

In order for a soul to be held accountable, it must be ultimately, personally responsible for creating it's own core personality characteristics. How?

In my opinion the non-contingent part of the self is the portion which does makes decisions and chooses its own way of seeing the word- precisely what each person reading this thread, and every other thread and every scripture and all we take in- does.

Each of us is evaluating all we read see and think and THAT entity which does that is the "non-contingent" self.

At the bottom of it all is the survival instinct. I have seen alzheimer's patients who didnt know their names or who their families were, but yet there was a "self" inside them that struggled to survive.

I would argue that the way we experience this "self" - the chooser and survivor inside of us- is the way we experience our own spirits. In my opinion, that is our "core".

It is the part of us which creates what makes sense to us- which allows us to see science as "rational", or which sees religious experience as "rational" or chooses between the two or sees both as rational. I am speaking of the experience itself of doing these things- not the chemicals or what portion of the brain which does this. We are speaking here of how we see ourselves- not how others might see our brain operations- we are speaking of the subjective self here.

The part of you that asked that question is it's own answer!

Edited March 11, 2012 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

I'd have to disagree, I think =/. We don't need to have created all of our own personality. We merely need to take responsibility for what we do with what we have. That is what we need to do for agency to be fulfilled, I think.

I agree that we don't create our personalities- that comes with us when we are born. And I also agree that it is the choice of what we do with it which makes our decisions moral or not.

People are not held legally responsible for mental shortcomings precisely because we do NOT choose these personality traits. We ARE morally responsible for what we are able to choose in spite of our shortcomings not because of them.

[TAO]

But how could we have created any of our own traits? This seems to allude to some point in time happening, where traits are quanta to be dealt out randomly. If I somehow wake up one moment and find myself possessing a whole bunch of laziness, where will I find the work ethic trait to overcome, if I don't possess it in the first place? How can one add to the core? Wouldn't this then indicate that things could be taken away.....completely, to where nothing remains?

Another Question, with this scenario how can god be anything but a peer?

That's the thing - a trait is really just a classification. It doesn't actually exist. Everything is interrelated.

If we were too lazy to succeed - in other words, if it was impossible for us to succeed, I don't think God would have sent us to Earth to die. The reason he has sent us here is so we can progress, and grow, and become what we are intended to become. In order for that to happen, I think there must be at least a possibility based on choice, for us to proceed to the next level. I'm not going to claim it's all even - but, I think everybody has the capability they need.

Hmmm.... I don't understand your question about God and peers... sorry =/.

[altersteve]

But on this particular issue the Church has made it painstakingly clear that the Genesis reference to the image of God was not allegory. It was not metaphor. It was not symbolic. It was quite literal. Therefore, what you said above is true. It is impossible to reconcile this with science.

No, it's not.

We are created in the image of God. We are. Not our ancestors. Our "pre-Adamite" ancestors were not spirit children of God in the same way that we are. God used evolution to create the human body, and there had to be a person into whom God placed the first of His spirit children to come to earth (let's call him "Adam"). That's not that hard to understand.

Of course, this is just one possible way to look at it, and it's not necessarily the view I have, but it's not as black and white as you're trying to make it seem.

[CV75]

Anyway, the space time fabric is not made of substance. What is it?

It may not be substance to our point of view, but I think anything we label "material" or "immaterial" is all the same stuff, “for there is no space in the which there is no kingdom; and there is no kingdom in which there is no space, either a greater or a lesser kingdom (D&C 88:37).”