Calm Posted July 6, 2012 Posted July 6, 2012 No, no, no. The four elephants stand on the turtle. It's the disc of the earth (flat earth, remember?) that rests on the back of the elephants.This is from Terry Pratchett's DiscWorld series. And the turtle swims through space, and stands on nothing."Turtles all the way down" was the response of the elderly British lady to Bertrand Russell's challenge of what the turtle supporting the disc of the earth stood on, in Stephen Hawking's recounting of the tale (but lots of other astronomers and physicists are quoted as having been the scientist in the story).Exactly....the great A'tuin....but one could claim "turtles all the way down" is a very vague reference to all those baby turtles that get spawned due to the Big Bang....
thesometimesaint Posted July 6, 2012 Posted July 6, 2012 (edited) Stargazer:I don't believe in magic. I believe God used natural processes. Time, space, and gravity are largely all that was/is required.From an old Star Trek movie. Does God need a starship? Edited July 6, 2012 by thesometimesaint
Nofear Posted July 6, 2012 Posted July 6, 2012 If you follow Cleon Skousen, God's "science" is to command the elements, and they obey. He gives them mass (via the Higgs boson evidently) and commands them to obey the law of gravitation.Personally I'm not a fan of this variant of animism -- imbuing every single subatomic particle with a basic cognitive ability that it might "obey". It's logical extension leads to a Cartesian-like dualism that I discard in favor of a more materialistic interpretation of Mormonism.The celestial spheres are held in place by the laws of physics, but it is the laws of physics that God created in the first place.This statement is potentially problematic in the interpretation of Mormonism which asserts that Intelligences are self-existent (one that I favor) -- extending into the infinite past. If there exists more than one object there is of ontological necessity rules that govern those interactions (otherwise there can be no existence). We often call those the laws of physics. Whether these ontologically necessary rules of interaction include the self-same laws of physics we attempt to describe today is not known, though if one rejects Skousen-like dualism/animism then God can no more make rules/laws of physics than he can make the core components of matter.Still, this kind of materialistic interpretation is such a radical departure from the traditions of Catholicism and Protestantism that it is a hard pill for many to buy. Absent clarifying revelation our theology can accommodate these varying interpretations. 3
thesometimesaint Posted July 6, 2012 Posted July 6, 2012 Nofear:I don't know as it is essential that inanimate objects have any cognitive ability to obey. IE; When I turn the key to start my car in the morning. I'm confident it will start, but I still wait for it to obey.
Nofear Posted July 6, 2012 Posted July 6, 2012 thesometimesaint,Think about it some more then. It is one thing to have a deterministic reaction and quite another to "obey". Volition necessitates cognition.
thesometimesaint Posted July 6, 2012 Posted July 6, 2012 Nofear:I'm not that much of a determinist. At least not when we're dealing something more than simple chemical reactions. It is the oddities, or unexpected reactions that get my attention. Our Post It Notes, were a failure to make glue really sticky. However it was turned into an economic success.
Nofear Posted July 6, 2012 Posted July 6, 2012 Setting aside the silly Post It Notes analogy, I'm also not a strict determinist (believing in libertarian free will (not to be confused with political philosophy)). Nonetheless, the Standard Model is a deterministic theory* and so I look for my indeterminism from sources outside the Standard Model. Anyway, this line of discussion is a derailment and I have no particular interest in pursuing it here. If you want to believe in some kind of animistic interpretation of Mormonism, nobody's stopping you. It's not in accord with my aesthetic biases but it is a relatively common perspective.* In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics we have a probabilistic indeterminism but for pragmatic purposes of free will and volition it is tantamount to determinsm and so it is often easier to refer to it as such (plus, I'm inclined towards a Bohmian perspective where quantum mechanics is truly deterministic).
Deborah Posted July 6, 2012 Posted July 6, 2012 Whenever any such discoveries are made I get excited because it demonstrates once again how little we actually know and how magnificent the universe is and what a wonderful university of knowledge we have to look forward to in the hereafter. 2
thesometimesaint Posted July 6, 2012 Posted July 6, 2012 Nofear:I wouldn't go so far as animistic. But I agree it's a derail, and a whole lot is not known.
Kerry A. Shirts Posted July 7, 2012 Posted July 7, 2012 And not turtles, after all? Well, I mean.....as long as THEY are material too.....
ANACO Posted July 7, 2012 Posted July 7, 2012 Are you serious? It's clear He uses it all the time! The earth wasn't created by a pass of His hand, after all. Or do you think it was all magicked into existence?I will grant you that it is certainly within His capabilities, to magick things into existence (we don't believe in (Creatio ex nihilo" do we?), but it doesn't seem that this is how He operates as a general rule.HE didn't have to use his hands.Read Moses 2: "and it was done as I spake" appears several times.Nephi believed similarly: 1 Nephi 17:50 "and if I should say it, it would be done."Kind regards.
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