Rorty And Mormonism

[mfbukowski]

There are a few here, I think who might be interested in this topic and others who lurk who might want to comment. Admittedly, this thread will not be for everyone, but it examines the whole idea of the central problems in any Neoplatonic theology and why Mormonism cannot be based on Neoplatonism. And yes, it is long and requires some background but here goes anyway. I posted this a while back on my blog site but I wanted to put it here also.

Someone recently replied to one of my comments saying something about "Rorty and Wittgenstein, whoever they are". I wanted to make sure that those posting here know who they are, I guess, and why they are important.

Notes on Rorty's Idea of The Contingency of Language as Seen Through Mormon Eyes.

Rorty's view of the contingency of language as presented in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity is at first glance problematic for most theists, since Rorty equates belief in God with the belief in a Cartesian reality beyond our direct experience. And there is a further problem for Neoplatonic theists I think, implied by Rorty's position, which relates to the creation of man ex nihilo, with the whole notion of human freedom.

If God created us ex nihilo there is no portion of "us" which is beyond God's "programming" and so we are not free, additionally, in the Platonic universe all we can know about reality is shadowy illusions or reflections of reality- not reality itself. So for Rorty, the issue of contingency of language and the contingency of the self are related- first, language is contingent and self-referential, because words are not things, nor do they "represent" things because there is no way we can get "beyond" our experience of things to what is some how "out there" beyond our perceptions and appearances. Secondly, what follows is that we ourselves are nothing beyond bundles of "vocabularies" put together by chance and circumstances beyond our control; we are adrift as contingent selves in a contingent world beyond our control. The only control we can have is if we realize these facts and become a "strong poet"- one who knows that she herself is contingent but yet through through that knowledge, ironically (hence she becomes an "ironist" ) thereby gains the ability to choose her own vocabularies and define herself in her own terms- in essence creating herself in her own image, through her own metaphors.

Further, the lack of understanding of the contingency of language has given rise in the history of philosophy, to the whole discipline called "epistemology" which is what I often post about on this site: - when I say that the only reality we can know is "appearance" and if there is anything beyond it, we cannot know about it.

As a Pragmatist, Rorty believes that the only "reality" we can know is what we can experience, and so his belief is that Pragmatism has solved the problem that religion and Platonism has created- but where does this leave theistic Pragmatists? If we hold a Pragmatic theory of truth- can we be theists? Would theism be viable in any form to one who thinks as Rorty does? We know of course that William James, one of the founders of Pragmatism had no problems with theism- but how does that relate to Rorty's view?

Rorty argues convincingly against both the idea of a transcendent God and a transcendent reality in this passage from Contingency Irony and Solidarity: (pages 20 and 21)

These sorts of arguments by philosophers of language and of science

should be seen against the background of the work of intellectual historians:

historians who, like Hans Blumenberg, have tried to trace the similarities and dissimilarities between the Age of Faith and the Age of Reason. These historians have made the point I mentioned earlier: The very idea that the world or the self has an intrinsic nature - one which the physicist or the poet may have glimpsed - is a remnant of the idea

that the world is a divine creation, the work of someone who had something in mind, who Himself spoke some language in which He described His own project. Only if we have some such picture in mind, some picture of the universe as either itself a person or as created by a person, can we make sense of the idea that the world has an "intrinsic nature."

For the cash value of that phrase is just that some vocabularies are better

representations of the world than others, as opposed to being better tools for dealing with the world for one or another purpose.

To drop the idea of languages as representations, and to be thoroughly

Wittgensteinian in our approach to language, would be to de-divinize the

world. Only if we do that can we fully accept the argument I offered

earlier - the argument that since truth is a property of sentences, since

sentences are dependent for their existence upon vocabularies, and since

vocabularies are made by human beings, so are truths. For as long as we

think that "the world" names something we ought to respect as well as

cope with, something personlike in that it has a preferred description of

itself, we shall insist that any philosophical account of truth save the

"intuition" that truth is "out there." This institution amounts to the

vague sense that it would be hybris on our part to abandon the traditional

language of "respect for fact" and "objectivity" - that it would be risky,

and blasphemous, not to see the scientist (or the philosopher, or the

poet, or somebody) as having a priestly function, as putting us in touch

with a realm which transcends the human.

Implied in what Rorty is saying is that if God is the Neoplatonic God, we could never experience Him, nor could we ever experience "reality" for both reality and God are beyond what we can as humans experience.

All we experience is some sort of shadowy representation of a "reality" far beyond our abilities to perceive or understand, which we can see only through "appearances" and which language somehow ineffably "represents", but of course we can never step out of our world of appearances to check to see if the alleged representation actually "corresponds" to the reality beyond.

But Rorty would say this is not the case. We do in fact experience reality- what reality IS is human experience- and therefore the supposed reality in which God lives, that ineffable transcendent reality is the illusion and therefore God is dead. He is not and cannot be a factor in human life, because the world in which he lives is unapproachable to humanity no longer makes sense to humans. He has become irrelevant to us. In fact, if such a God and/or such a reality ever could exist, we could not know about it because all we can know is what humans can know.

So is Rorty's argument a good one?

If God created us ex nihilo, and is transcendent, then Rorty's argument is, I think, a telling one - then there could be no transcendent God and no transcendent reality beyond what we can know and experience.

This is what Rorty, an atheist, is arguing.

On the other hand, if God is immanent, which he would have to be to be and our Father in any real sense, Rorty can be correct about epistemology, AND we, theists and especially Mormons, can be right about God- we can know both God and reality through human experience. If God, is immanent, he can be seen as our Father and we can, as humans, know him in some sense, and interact with him, and we can experience his influence in our lives.

But Rorty did not understand that an immanent God was even a possibility.

In Neoplatonism there is no part of us which is uniquely "us"- there is no unique portion of the self which has existed forever independently and co-eternal with God, because God created us out of nothing, and thereby programmed our natures. Human nature is what it is like to be human, and this was totally created by God.

This has deep ramifications which go far beyond this discussion, but one of them is that in a consistent Neoplatonic view of the world, we can never experience God or his influence because he dwells in a transcendent world far beyond our ability to experience as mere mortals in this shadowy world of illusion. Traditional Christianity has tried to resolve these issues virtually since it's beginning, but unsuccessfully. You cannot have a Father God interacting with his children who is yet somehow Transcendent and beyond and Other than us in nature. One need only to read Plato's allegory of the cave for a vivid image of what this world is in that conception. The bottom line is that we could not, and do not experience "reality"- just a shadowy image of a reality which lies permanently beyond our grasp. And we could never experience any kind of Theophany- that would be out of the question. So it would be totally impossible for Joseph, or Stephen in the New Testament for that matter, to have seen God.

In consistent Platonism, Joseph Smith could not have seen God, nor can God speak to our spirits. God cannot be directly experienced by humans. A consistent Neoplatonic, transcendent God based view is just incompatible with the idea of a loving father who interacts with his children, hears and answers prayers or wants the best for us.

God cannot be both transcendent and a loving Father.

For God to be a loving father, he must be immanent. This is the revolutionary insight of Mormonism.

This turns Rorty's argument against God on its head. In fact Rorty is correct that a transcendent God could not interact with humanity- but Rorty never considered the possibility that God could be immanent! In other words, Rorty had no conception of a God anything like the Mormon God who is in fact a glorified and idealized, perfected human being who can be our "friend" and with whom we have what Rorty would call "solidarity"- with whom we could share a community.

Doctrine and Covenants 93:45

45 Verily, I say unto my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., or in other words, I will call you friends, for you are my friends, and ye shall have an inheritance with me—

This is not the God of the Neoplatonists, this is an entirely different conception of God- he is our loving Father who can be our "friend", and with whom we are together in the community of humanity, yet of course he is a perfected and idealized human, perhaps infinitely above us, yet in the final analysis, one of us. We are theomorphic men, and he is an anthropomorphic God.

This community of oneness is also described in the Bible itself.

John 17

20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;

21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:

23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

24 Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.

In a Mormon context this community is, I believe, exemplified both in the idea of exaltation- that we can become like God himself, and in the notion of the Patriarchal Order, the notion that the goal of mankind should be being sealed together into one huge family of Man, with the Man of Holiness, our Father, at its head.

Seeing God as Mormons do, squares Rorty's Pragmatic and Constructivist epistemological views perfectly with the Mormon view of God. We are one community tied together in cultures which are formed ultimately by languages and all we can speak about is, obviously what our language allows us to speak about. There can be no "reality" beyond what we can experience both subjectively (incorporating there the idea of what Wittgenstein would see as "unspeakable") and objectively, in our shared world of language, and those experiences include experiencing God personally and subjectively, which experiences can be defined as "unspeakable". Those which can be shared, are shared linguistically, those which cannot "be put into words" cannot be shared.

But what of Rorty's notion of extending the contingency of language to the contingency of the self?

Here I think there are some problems.

I think that what Rorty misses is a kernel of "self" which indeed is beyond language- even his notion of the "ironist" implies I think, that indeed there is some such kernel which selects the vocabularies by which she chooses to define herself. The very notion that I can select my own vocabulary to define myself still implies that there is an "I" who is doing the selecting.

So has the Cogito we thought we threw away sneaked in through the bathroom window?

I think not.

I think Rorty took it as far as he could, and I think that his notion of a community in "solidarity" still rings true.

I think the solution to this quandary is that our community has always existed, it has just evolved and changed and progressed. It has always been interacting and evolving.

Asking where it began is like asking where mankind itself began. Did mankind start with the first primeval life form in some pool somewhere? Did language start with great apes or with some first creature which could be defined as "human"? I think the self is both contingent and non-contingent at the same time, from different perspectives. So ultimately our Nietzschean perspectivism still reigns supreme.

All of life presumes an organism interacting with its environment. Asking which is contingent of those two and which is not, is asking to resolve two different points of view at the same time- and indeed that entire presumption is itself an anti-perspectivist stance.

So again, we are limited by our linguistic contexts.

The answers to these questions, as are the answers to all questions, cloaked in metaphor and what we sometimes call "theory". Regardless of what you call those answers, they are shared linguistic descriptions formed in a human mind, be it God's Human Mind or someone else's human mind. And as will all of such questions, some must remain forever unanswered.

But for my money, the best explanation I have found so far is the Mormon explanation which ensures us that indeed we are part of a community and always have been, perhaps even as what Mormons call "intelligences" even before we were God's children

God is immanent and our Father.

God organized us from intelligences, that kernel of "organism" which interacts with "environment" which intelligences were "co-eternal" with him (meaning he was "always" our leader) and we accepted his leadership voluntarily "When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy" (Job 38:7)

So we are both contingent and non-contingent, free and determined, all depending on how you look at it.

As always, it comes down finally to one's linguistic perspective.

Edited February 7, 2013 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

There was some response on another thread which I will copy over here

I have been off of work since November and am going back on Monday. I don't think I want to start a new thread.

An observation from the blog:

If I agreed with everything that Rorty wrote, it is all in the context of his not even thinking about a "God" who lacks transcendency. If the same philosophers who supposedly disprove a transcendent God had spent the last 500 years considering the claims of an "immanent LDS God", people of faith in that God would be rejecting similar "disproofs" from the same philosophers. Faithless philosophy will not spare your God anymore than it has spared my God. You guys have never had unbelieving academia even think about how to overthrow faith in your God. While they cannot accuse a non-transcendent God of being responsible for evil, and therefore bad, philosophy will find a way to point out that God needs to be more than just good. I wonder if Mormons are truly ready to shed all vestiges of a transcendent God.

A question from the blog:

How can Rorty or anyone else know that a God who has the potency to create everything out of nothing, lacks the ingenuity to "program" a being in His own image that has the free will to turn either to the right or to the left, to the good or to the bad? He doesn't know what a transcendent God can do. I cannot assume with Rorty that this is impossible with God. Computer programmers are working on making a machine that can defy this logic. If with a little imagination we are finding the way to how humans might program free will, how presumptious must we be to adopt a dogmatic position to deny that a transcendent God can do it?

http://www.forbes.co...udea-pearl.html

Rorty does not actually get into that- I was simply using that as perhaps a poor analogy for a "clockwork universe" view of determinism- or really the whole notion of an unmoved mover.

If God was simply the first cause and let the universe go- THAT would be a true transcendent God. The problem with being transcendent and perfect is that such a being cannot "get his hands dirty" by dealing with imperfect little accidental contingent creatures as humans.

That is the central conflict of traditional Christianity- how we evil creatures can ever be justified to be in God's presence- hence the atonement. But that whole problem is, in my opinion not resolvable the way traditional Christianity handles it. The problem is resolving the two natures of Christ- God and Man- and how that can be resolved.

What I am saying is that is a dichotomy which cannot BE resolved in the Neoplatonic description ( I say that to emphasize that it IS a description- it's just words!) If God has a godly nature, he cannot have a human nature. They are in conflict. You cannot be both transcendent and immanent at the same time any more than you can be both good and evil at the same time. Just can't do it!

For Mormons there is no such problem because God and man share a similar "nature"- we are humans and have bodies. God really is literally our Father spiritually speaking.

The Aristotelian God just started it all and then essentially remained the Platonic Form of the Good which is eternal and beyond human understanding and interaction- that is what is meant by transcendence. But Aristotle did not see God as our Father- he was a pagan Greek.

So really the problem is just the words. How do you make a being perfect AND have a fallen human nature all at the same time?

It is a mystery- Ok no problem. But when you try to resolve it logically, it doesn't resolve because logic requires syllogisms and words. Andd I agree that God is beyond words.

But if he is beyond words, don't try to put Him into words. That's why Mormon explanations (words just as much as yours are) are much simpler.

We just see him as our Father from word one. Nothing complicated, and easily understandable.

[Ahab]

Too many words.

Whatever happened to sound bites?

Give me a question to answer.

Please.

[3DOP]

bukowski, apparently replying to my questions about free will for a transcendent God said:

Rorty does not actually get into that- I was simply using that as perhaps a poor analogy for a "clockwork universe" view of determinism- or really the whole notion of an unmoved mover.

3DOP

Your blog article said that Rorty implies that a transcendent God cannot program free will.

And there is a further problem for Neoplatonic theists I think, implied by Rorty's position, which relates to the creation of man ex nihilo, with the whole notion of human freedom.

If God created us ex nihilo there is no portion of "us" which is beyond God's "programming" and so we are not free...

It seems to me like this is a fundamental philosophical claim that shouldn't be passed over. I am not claiming anything about Catholic theology at this point. I want to invite you and especially your fellow LDS to answer the questions against this claim that I posed in the other thread. My position on this, which I would hold as an LDS, does NOT mean that the Catholic view is correct. It just can't be dismissed because of absurdity. I am in no way affirming that LDS should believe God is transcendent. I will edit my questions slightly for clarity and to relieve Rorty of developing his implications:

Question 1) How can bukowski or anyone else know that a God who has the potency to create everything out of nothing, lacks the ingenuity to "program" a creature in His own image that has the free will to turn either to the right or to the left, to the good or to the bad? Why would we so limit what a theoretical transcendent God can do?

Question 2) Computer programmers are working on making a machine that can defy the logic Rorty "implies". If with a little imagination we are finding the way to how humans might program free will, would it not be presumptious to adopt a dogmatic position to deny that a transcendent God can do it?

The ability to reflect back on one's actions and envision alternative scenarios is the basis of free will, introspective learning, personal responsibility and social adaptation. Equipping machines with such abilities is therefore necessary for achieving cooperative behavior among robots and humans.

http://www.forbes.co...udea-pearl.html

3DOP

Edited February 8, 2013 by 3DOP

[Maidservant]

I do think that the knowledge you have at your disposal is beyond me. And the knowledge that *I* do have, is still beyond me to express in words which means I haven't processed it yet to get to a shareable position.

But I will attempt a few things to say.

There is no "space" where there is no Being. All is Being. There is no emptiness. There are boundaries of these Beings (US), but those boundaries serve just as much as a joining as they do a dividing (and both the joining and the dividing is joyful, ecstatic even--to become a child [dividing] and to again become a lover [joining]). Birth and marriage. Birth and embrace. (There can be some 'overlap' of Being such as I consider myself me, but I am also constituted of cells of which they are themselves without my conscious direction.)

Beings create. Beings are uncreated, but objects are ALWAYS created. ALWAYS. Something created also can BE because it becomes the body of the Being. When I create something I pour my essence into it and it is added to my identity and my being.

So if we encounter anything--it is a Being or it is that which a Being created.

It IS. We ARE. I AM.

We don't need an explanation.

We don't need a story.

Remove all the stories and still--I AM.

Or further: I AM. HERE. NOW.

But necessary or not, speak we do. Tell the story, we do.

What IS, is infinitely malleable (creatable). This can be dangerous, like a fire raging. Creation can be destructive too. Brahma and Shiva.

You don't hand this to small creatures.

So we begin to become not so small--to have the fires in our hands and know what to do with it. THIS TAKES EONS AND THIS MORTALITY IS NEITHER THE BEGINNING NOR THE END OF IT.

And in order to EXIST FOREVER AS OURSELVES AND KNOW OURSELVES WE MUST SEE OURSELVES IN THE EYES OF ANOTHER BEING FOR ETERNITY. They must tell our story and call us into existence again and again. They must NAME us, and call our NAME.

We can't know ourselves as the basis for a stable creation. We have to be known by another. They have to AGREE that we exist--forever. This is the meaning of marriage. HE knows YOU; and SHE knows YOU. And you agree between the two of you that you will exist eternally; you eternally consent to each other through every translation of Being. You know you cannot dissolve because HE (or SHE) creates you over and over again. You can be known by more than one other (known by many more), but there should be at least one you can rely on on an unbreakable basis (covenant).

God is all. God is the inhale and exhale of what IS. God is crucified and God is risen.

There is no creation out of nothing, but there is creation out of what has always been there.

In terms of mortality, truth is a property of a being--the properties of being human/child of God and of being alive. WE ARE. We try to distill that on to stone tables with more or less miserable results (but necessary for a time). We learn, finally, to inscribe that on the fleshy tables. We learn how to keep each other alive and how not to devour each other. It's called unity/GOD--everyone lives, everyone grows, everyone eats, everyone has joy, everyone creates, everyone is themselves, but they have learned how to do it without the expense of destroying another. It's not the easiest thing to learn, in fact it is THE lesson (they call it love here), and so we have to do it in a practicum, they call that earth/morality.

I'll stop there. That's too much as it is.

[Maidservant]

"Nebula laughs. 'Tell us again about how our world was created, my father.'

" 'Ah, for that story, I would rather hear it flow from the lips of the Woman StormDeborah.' [stormDeborah begins:]

" 'The world our people live in now was born from the world before it. That world was also born from its parent--and so on. We know of no beginning and no end to the creation of worlds. The first world we have knowledge of is the Engraving World. It is not a world that can be understood by time, space, smell, sight or emotives. We comprehend the first world by the forms it governs in the remainder of the worlds. We say that this world writes, or engraves, and that the second world unfolds from this story, this law. . . . The second world is an image of the first world. We call it the Burning World. The bodies of the second world are robed in time and temperature and direction and acceleration and attraction and distance. The singularity and wholeness of the first world has become the myriad of the second . . . The third world is the Weaving World. As in sewing, when you might take five threads of separate colors and needle a design into a canvast--the art that results is vital, a thing born, even while still having only the five colors--so are the forms and fruits of the third world infinite and bearing meanings, as do words. Words are woven from sounds and letters, but words are not sounds and letters. Words are vessels. [ . . . similarly] the vessels of the third world are woven from the bodies of the second and bear the image of the first world . . .' "

[Questing Beast]

Words are clumsy brushes with which to "paint". Everything about words is defined by the five empirical senses of the physical/mortal body. "God" made the world we move in to be this way. Also we have constant contact with "God", this is the metaphysical part, the infinite part. So "God" is both immanent and transcendent. The immanent relationship is one on one. The transcendent relationship is what "God In Total" knows, which is impossible for us to know without being taken into the whole "mind of God", which would effectively end our sovereign individuality. As we are individuals, and never connect to each other beyond the five senses, and only feel a connection to the transcendent because of our constant contact with "God", it seems evident that this dual existence that "God" enjoys is meant to be this way. "God" as transcendent, and "God" as immanent, as one of us, as each one of us....

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

Yes to bukowski and Maidservant! Fantastic. (I'd quibble with the idea of a "patriarchal" Order, but we've been down that road before. *grin*) I really wish we'd scrape away all the Neoplatonic nonsense which has coopted "religion", which is really just about whatever "binds" people together. It's extremely telling that none of the attributes which have come to supposedly define "Godness" -- creatio ex nihilo, Absolute, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Consubstantial, Unlimited, Inerrant, Ineffable, Incorporeal, Intangible, Immaterial, Impassible, Immutable, Timeless, Transcendent, Trinity, Supernatural, Monotheism, etc. -- actually show up anywhere in scripture except through retroactive attempts to graft them in.

[3DOP]

Yes to bukowski and Maidservant! Fantastic. (I'd quibble with the idea of a "patriarchal" Order, but we've been down that road before. *grin*) I really wish we'd scrape away all the Neoplatonic nonsense which has coopted "religion", which is really just about whatever "binds" people together. It's extremely telling that none of the attributes which have come to supposedly define "Godness" -- creatio ex nihilo, Absolute, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Consubstantial, Unlimited, Inerrant, Ineffable, Incorporeal, Intangible, Immaterial, Impassible, Immutable, Timeless, Transcendent, Trinity, Supernatural, Monotheism, etc. -- actually show up anywhere in scripture except through retroactive attempts to graft them in.

Hi Jeremy,

In a thread about philosophy we have to restrict our words to those that are found in the Bible?

Okay, so what about bukowski? Why can he use the non-biblical word, immanent, to describe something about God he believes?

Philosophy and theology are the same as other disciplines. There always develops a technical language with small words that summarize big ideas. The technical vocabulary isn't a trick, its for brevity. We could write everything out in longer sentences and not use the technical language. I really don't think it would be more productive.

Does anyone else have an opinion on that? I'll go with what people want.

[Vance]

Question 1) How can bukowski or anyone else know that a God who has the potency to create everything out of nothing, lacks the ingenuity to "program" a creature in His own image that has the free will to turn either to the right or to the left, to the good or to the bad? Why would we so limit what a theoretical transcendent God can do?

Human logic dictates that if God created us from nothing, then everything we are, he created. We are not and can not be anything beyond what He created. For a God to be beyond that is for Him to be beyond anything we can know or experience. Making Him unreachable and unknowable to us. He would be transcendent and therefore not immanent.

Question 2) Computer programmers are working on making a machine that can defy the logic Rorty "implies". If with a little imagination we are finding the way to how humans might program free will, would it not be presumptious to adopt a dogmatic position to deny that a transcendent God can do it?

Yes, and many others are working on and have worked on (for centuries) a perpetual motion machine. Such machines have, so far, proven to be beyond anything we can know. The fact that man (who has free will) can fantasize about the existence of such machines says nothing about their possible reality. The fact that people are working on something provides no factual support for its reality or possible reality.

Just my two cents.

[Vance]

Why can he use the non-biblical word, immanent, to describe something about God he believes?

Good question.

Immanent, transcendent, tri-union, trinity, immaterial, homoiousia are out.

And, Father, son, and "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" are in.

edited to add,

And "now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. "

Edited February 8, 2013 by Vance

[The Grimace]

Question 1) How can bukowski or anyone else know that a God who has the potency to create everything out of nothing, lacks the ingenuity to "program" a creature in His own image that has the free will to turn either to the right or to the left, to the good or to the bad? Why would we so limit what a theoretical transcendent God can do?

I thought the same thing, too. Bukowski asserts that a transcendent God is capable of creating an entire universe, but fails to explain how that same God lacks power to create free-will. Seems to be no reason to impose this limit.

[The Grimace]

But if he is beyond words, don't try to put Him into words. That's why Mormon explanations (words just as much as yours are) are much simpler.

We just see him as our Father from word one. Nothing complicated, and easily understandable.

Mormons see God as more than just 'Father'. They see him as 'physical being'. They see him as 'living inside the universe'. They see him as 'omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent'.

How are these views of God 'simpler'?

[cdowis]

Let us suppose that Deity created all the individuals on two football teams -- let's call them Evil and Good. Now they are playing football with the same rules, training, equipment, etc The same external factors.

Which side will win?

The side that Deity designates, because he created both teams and everything about those teams were created by the same deity. An illustration on how free will does not make sense in an ex nihilo world -- the outcome is pre-determined. Perhaps there is a difference in the external factors, but the players have no control over those factors.

Edited February 8, 2013 by cdowis

[The Grimace]

Let us suppose that Deity created all the individuals on two football teams -- let's call them Evil and Good. Now they are playing football with the same rules, training, equipment, etc The same external factors.

Which side will win?

The side that Deity designates, because he created both teams and everything about those teams were created by the same deity. An illustration on how free will does not make sense in an ex nihilo world -- the outcome is pre-determined. Perhaps there is a difference in the external factors, but the players have no control over those factors.

Huh? Can you explain how the Mormon God created the teams differently?

[volgadon]

http://louisjacobs.org/articles/view.php?id=62 some interesting thoughts on free will.

[cdowis]

Huh? Can you explain how the Mormon God created the teams differently?

There is no "Mormon God". When you stand at the final judgement, you will not ask him if he is a mormon.

In any case, we have had our individual identity for eternity. Our character is shaped by the decisions we have made, both in the pre-existence and in mortal life. The Lord only gave us our "outside" factors, our spirit bodies, for example. The "inside" (our intelligence) has always been with us, and shaped by our actions and decisions.

.

Edited February 8, 2013 by cdowis

[pmccombs1]

This has deep ramifications which go far beyond this discussion, but one of them is that in a consistent Neoplatonic view of the world, we can never experience God or his influence because he dwells in a transcendent world far beyond our ability to experience as mere mortals in this shadowy world of illusion. Traditional Christianity has tried to resolve these issues virtually since it's beginning, but unsuccessfully.

What do you make of John Millbank and Radical Orthodoxy? What of the notions of analogy and participation? Apparently, we cannot speak of God, yet we do. Apparently we cannot experience God, yet we do. "We are permitted to do this," writes Simon Oliver, "because of a principle which Aquinas accepts from Neoplatonism: effects resemble their causes." If it is not a perfect experience, yet it is an analogical one. If it is not a perfect speech, yet it is an analogical one. It is true experience and true speech, even if limited. Our experience of God cannot be complete, as our speech cannot be complete; but they can be real and they resemble their cause.

Oliver continues with the metaphysics of participation: "creation ex nihilo does not refer to some kind of primordial temporal instant where God simply willed everything into being and stood aside. At every moment, creation is ex nihilo." Man is never entirely free; he cannot will himself through walls. He must act within the context that his material existence makes possible--an existence which is a continuing grace of God in which he participates.

Your view appears to be "the uni­vocity of being and an understanding of knowledge as representation." This is rejected by Radical Orthodoxy, because "whereas we might think that placing God and creation under a single univocal concept called 'being' might make God less 'other' or less 'distant', the opposite occurs. An infinite quantitative 'sea of sameness' (that is, univocal being) is established between God and creation. The consequence of this shift in the doctrine of God is that God becomes a distant object who can only be the focus of a superstitious faith which is separate from reason."

Hence the modern secularism, atheism, and nihilism. I have not presented the arguments to do them justice, but what do think of this?

Edited February 8, 2013 by pmccombs1

[The Grimace]

There is no "Mormon God". When you stand at the final judgement, you will not ask him if he is a mormon.

In any case, we have had our individual identity for eternity. Our character is shaped by the decisions we have made, both in the pre-existence and in mortal life. The Lord only gave us our "outside" factors, our spirit bodies, for example. The "inside" (our intelligence) has always been with us, and shaped by our actions and decisions.

.

I'm using 'Mormon God' in this thread to differentiate from the transcendent God also referenced on this thread.

Given your description, is it possible for the Evil Team to win the football game, in the (Mormon) God's created universe?

[Vance]

Mormons see God as more than just 'Father'. They see him as 'physical being'.

????

A distinction without a difference, me thinks.

They see him as 'living inside the universe'. They see him as 'omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent'.

?????

I think you can scratch the "omnipresent" from your list.

How are these views of God 'simpler'?

Isn't obvious?

[The Grimace]

????

A distinction without a difference, me thinks.

No. The original claim was that LDS think of God as Father, which makes thinking of God simple. However, just like your human father has certain attributes that help you think of him as human, (Mormon) God has attributes that help us think of him as our Godly Father, and these attributes make things more complex than claimed. One of those attributes that are very important in Mormon doctrine is the notion that God has a physical body. Bukowski rejects a transcendent God; I assume that means he accepts the notion that (Mormon) God lives inside the same universe that we live in.

I think you can scratch the "omnipresent" from your list.

According to the LDS canon, God is omnipresent.

Isn't obvious?

Not at all. It is obvious that the notion of a transcendent God is different than a physical God. Simpler? That thesis needs expansion.

[cdowis]

I'm using 'Mormon God' in this thread to differentiate from the transcendent God also referenced on this thread.

Given your description, is it possible for the Evil Team to win the football game, in the (Mormon) God's created universe?

OK, I should have known that. It is sometimes used to mock the church and you certainly did not have that intention.

As to your question == No, simply because it does not have the priesthood, viz the power of creation, the glory of God. Moses could easily distinguish Satan from a heavenly being.

FWIW, Satan's so-called plan that he presented in the counsil would not have worked. It was a fake plan with the concept of exaltation without free agency. It violates eternal law. Without free will there can be no exaltation.

[mfbukowski]

Quick response- I hope to come back to this as soon as time permits!

Or further: I AM. HERE. NOW.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Here_Now_%28book%29

You definitely brought back some great memories!

[The Grimace]

OK, I should have known that. It is sometimes used to mock the church and you certainly did not have that intention.

As to your question == No, simply because it does not have the priesthood, viz the power of creation, the glory of God. Moses could easily distinguish Satan from a heavenly being.

FWIW, Satan's so-called plan that he presented in the counsil would not have worked. It was a fake plan with the concept of exaltation without free agency. It violates eternal law. Without free will there can be no exaltation.

Well, if the Evil Team has no chance of winning, doesn't that mean the outcome is pre-determined?

[mfbukowski]

Too many words.

Whatever happened to sound bites?

Give me a question to answer.

Please.

The implication here of course is that you have answers to dispense and no questions to ask.