changed Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 Is God a being of chaos, or of order? I used to think He espoused order - followed patterns, predictable, unchanging, steadfast.... but I think there is an element of chaos in it too. Progression and growth requires change - breaking bad patterns, experimentation to find better ways of doing things, not monotonous tedium of repeating the same actions over and over and over again. There is a bit of chaos in free will, and in eternal progression isn't there? That is what chaos is - breaking patterns, creating new behaviors... There is good chaos and bad chaos, progression and entropy - the intent of good chaos would be progression and growth. What is everyone's thoughts on chaos?
mfbukowski Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 1 minute ago, changed said: Is God a being of chaos, or of order? I used to think He espoused order - followed patterns, predictable, unchanging, steadfast.... but I think there is an element of chaos in it too. Progression and growth requires change - breaking bad patterns, experimentation to find better ways of doing things, not monotonous tedium of repeating the same actions over and over and over again. There is a bit of chaos in free will, and in eternal progression isn't there? That is what chaos is - breaking patterns, creating new behaviors... There is good chaos and bad chaos, progression and entropy - the intent of good chaos would be progression and growth. What is everyone's thoughts on chaos? Seems to be a good moderator as far as I know. 1
changed Posted October 24, 2016 Author Posted October 24, 2016 5 minutes ago, mfbukowski said: Seems to be a good moderator as far as I know. Euthyphro's dilemma - did God create good, or is He just a moderator? Law and order - God did not write the laws, perhaps He is as trapped as we are - a moderator who has a few tips and tricks involving free will and a little chaos? 2
strappinglad Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 I think I learned somewhere that mathematicians have discovered that even in chaos there is a pattern . The creation story suggests that God brings order out of chaos. Did He first create the Chaos? I am told that the reference to the waters of the deep is a metaphor for chaos.
Robert F. Smith Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 43 minutes ago, changed said: Euthyphro's dilemma - did God create good, or is He just a moderator? Law and order - God did not write the laws, perhaps He is as trapped as we are - a moderator who has a few tips and tricks involving free will and a little chaos? Bukowski was cleverly referring to a moderator on the Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board named "Chaos." However, in running with it as a serious comment, you brought out another possible way in which to look at God. Deserves a rep point.
Robert F. Smith Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 1 hour ago, changed said: Is God a being of chaos, or of order? I used to think He espoused order - followed patterns, predictable, unchanging, steadfast.... but I think there is an element of chaos in it too. Progression and growth requires change - breaking bad patterns, experimentation to find better ways of doing things, not monotonous tedium of repeating the same actions over and over and over again. There is a bit of chaos in free will, and in eternal progression isn't there? That is what chaos is - breaking patterns, creating new behaviors... There is good chaos and bad chaos, progression and entropy - the intent of good chaos would be progression and growth. What is everyone's thoughts on chaos? If God is anything He is an organizer of spirits and of worlds. He brings order out of chaos. The author of disorder and chaos is Satan. Yet nature and the universe are everywhere characterized by mathematical and geometrical order -- at the gross, molecular, and atomic levels. There is nothing boring about the infinite variety of nature and the universe, and God's palette is so variegated and interesting that we would never see an end to eternal progression and change -- without ever impinging on free agency. Through it all, God suffuses everything with overwhelming love and selflessness. His main objective and joy is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of mankind. 4
Meadowchik Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 (edited) Instead of the paradigm that splits it into two, how about for a moment we call it all "Possibility. " Edited October 24, 2016 by Meadowchik 2
stemelbow Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 8 hours ago, changed said: Is God a being of chaos, or of order? I used to think He espoused order - followed patterns, predictable, unchanging, steadfast.... but I think there is an element of chaos in it too. Progression and growth requires change - breaking bad patterns, experimentation to find better ways of doing things, not monotonous tedium of repeating the same actions over and over and over again. There is a bit of chaos in free will, and in eternal progression isn't there? That is what chaos is - breaking patterns, creating new behaviors... There is good chaos and bad chaos, progression and entropy - the intent of good chaos would be progression and growth. What is everyone's thoughts on chaos? most of the time it feels like He sits back and lets things just happen. We like to say He knows what's going to result in it all, but I don't know how He knows. I thought he sat back and did very little if anything because He has to allow free will. Isn't there some chaos in letting unknowing creatures do whatever they feel is necessary?
Atheist Mormon Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 8 hours ago, changed said: Is God a being of chaos, or of order? I used to think He espoused order - followed patterns, predictable, unchanging, steadfast.... but I think there is an element of chaos in it too. Progression and growth requires change - breaking bad patterns, experimentation to find better ways of doing things, not monotonous tedium of repeating the same actions over and over and over again. There is a bit of chaos in free will, and in eternal progression isn't there? That is what chaos is - breaking patterns, creating new behaviors... There is good chaos and bad chaos, progression and entropy - the intent of good chaos would be progression and growth. What is everyone's thoughts on chaos? It's a bad thing for sure, If I am creating a Planet with such promising species who might acquire space travel someday, why would I want to throw so many monkey wrenches into their survival gear? Why would I want to make their lives miserable...I don't get it, living over sixty years I never enjoyed hardships, granted I threw myself into few ones, which were very painful. I'd rather avoid chaos, which is impossible it wasn't a planned creation, like universal law speed of light.
stemelbow Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 14 minutes ago, Atheist Mormon said: It's a bad thing for sure, If I am creating a Planet with such promising species who might acquire space travel someday, why would I want to throw so many monkey wrenches into their survival gear? Why would I want to make their lives miserable...I don't get it, living over sixty years I never enjoyed hardships, granted I threw myself into few ones, which were very painful. I'd rather avoid chaos, which is impossible it wasn't a planned creation, like universal law speed of light. How would you know what you would do if you knew what God knows? Sometimes I wish it were as simple as saying, "well that's not how I'd do it, or that doesn't work based on what we know...so I can simply drop any pretense in believing God possibilities".
Jeanne Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 There is a pattern in chaos..(IMO). This church has a prophet. The prophet is representative of one who speaks for God..and is in communication with the God. And yet, in the "order" of things and said prophecies, there are regular members and apologists who are saying to justify huge questions or changes in doctrine, "maybe this happened. or that happened". There are so many maybe's...and changes to make good without any word from a prophet. All this with saying they have "absolute knowledge" that th Book of Mormon is true and that what we don't know..will be explained later. There is confusion sadly in the word trust..faith..and facts. I included facts because I believe in this day, those facts are in our reality upfront and facing us everyday. Chaos is like throwing things ups in the air to see where they land. Maybe...maybe..they will land where you still believe or maybe..all those maybes will break a shelf that needs REAL response from prophets. \ Record keeping is order. Organized levels of church...is order. But the doctrine, because it is so full of those maybes...is confusion. Some things that were...are not anymore.What one has built his life on..by previous prophets ..is no longer there. So why not take those maybes..and to keep the shelf from falling, rely on your own sense of order and peace of mind? Maybe...just maybe... we can replace a chaos with the sure knowledge of prayer, our conscience, and the true words of Jesus Christ.
Atheist Mormon Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 1 hour ago, stemelbow said: How would you know what you would do if you knew what God knows? Sometimes I wish it were as simple as saying, "well that's not how I'd do it, or that doesn't work based on what we know...so I can simply drop any pretense in believing God possibilities". Let me put it this way; not only an over60yr old guy would know better, even a kindergarten kid would not plan calamities like this. im sure youve seen the little posters they create.....their dreams does not include Tsunami's taking babies away or very bad Lucifer......
cdowis Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 The natural order of matter is chaos. Where there is space, God organizes chaotic matter into order, otherwise known as "creation". Both matter itself and natural laws are eternal and not created. 2
Darren10 Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 (edited) 13 hours ago, changed said: Is God a being of chaos, or of order? I used to think He espoused order - followed patterns, predictable, unchanging, steadfast.... but I think there is an element of chaos in it too. Progression and growth requires change - breaking bad patterns, experimentation to find better ways of doing things, not monotonous tedium of repeating the same actions over and over and over again. There is a bit of chaos in free will, and in eternal progression isn't there? That is what chaos is - breaking patterns, creating new behaviors... There is good chaos and bad chaos, progression and entropy - the intent of good chaos would be progression and growth. What is everyone's thoughts on chaos? I think God is above all things. That includes beings and law. Law has no body, God does. Law has no compassion, God does. God is exalted, law is not. Yes, God does progress but exactly how and even why I do not think we know. He progresses but time is irrelevant to God therefore all that is God has experienced and therefore there is no "more perfect" or "better" way for God to do things. How He does things should trigger in ourselves, 'what can we learn from how God does things," as I am one who opines that God does all things for a purpose. Edited October 24, 2016 by Darren10
JLHPROF Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 13 hours ago, changed said: Is God a being of chaos, or of order? I used to think He espoused order - followed patterns, predictable, unchanging, steadfast.... but I think there is an element of chaos in it too. Progression and growth requires change - breaking bad patterns, experimentation to find better ways of doing things, not monotonous tedium of repeating the same actions over and over and over again. There is a bit of chaos in free will, and in eternal progression isn't there? That is what chaos is - breaking patterns, creating new behaviors... There is good chaos and bad chaos, progression and entropy - the intent of good chaos would be progression and growth. What is everyone's thoughts on chaos? I don't see any reason why progression necessitates chaos. Change yes. Chaotic change, not really. Personally I believe God is progressing (and so are all of us) and that includes changing. But I see that progression as a result of obedience to law, and then more law, and then higher law. As you describe chaos it's breaking patterns and creating new behaviors. I don't see the former as necessary unless you are referring to breaking our bad patterns in mortality. We are doing just as has been done on other worlds and so is God. That pattern will not be broken, and yet it still creates the new behaviors required.
california boy Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 6 hours ago, stemelbow said: most of the time it feels like He sits back and lets things just happen. We like to say He knows what's going to result in it all, but I don't know how He knows. I thought he sat back and did very little if anything because He has to allow free will. Isn't there some chaos in letting unknowing creatures do whatever they feel is necessary? It is not just an issue of free will. It is a plan of complete ignorance for 99.9% of God's children. And the other .1% seem to be guessing an awful lot as well. God is so detached from any communication with man that everyone is just left with "feelings". As a result, there is no real idea what God has actually said, what men have said in the name of God and what men have said to push their own agenda or belief. It is pretty hard to judge man when there isn't any clear criteria that anyone can actually trust came from God. Free will implies that you know something is right and then you make a choice to either follow what is right or disobey. But that is not what the game rules are on this earth at least. So Mormons have added this disclaimer that everything will be made clear and fair in the next life.
JLHPROF Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 22 minutes ago, california boy said: So Mormons have added this disclaimer that everything will be made clear and fair in the next life. Not fair as in equal. Fair as in just (according to law).
changed Posted October 24, 2016 Author Posted October 24, 2016 (edited) But isn't obeying the law Satan's plan? No free will, nothing left to chance, everyone forced to march in step to natural dictates? Dead things follow laws - drop a rock and it perfectly follows the law of gravity etc. "things that act, and things that are acted upon" ... things that are acted upon follow laws. God is a creator - to create is to break free of everything that used to be - create new patterns - create new laws - at the onset creation would look like chaos because it is making something new. Show a scientist an entity that does not follow established laws, that acts in a new way, and they would call it chaos. That is all chaos is, something that does not follow old established laws. Edited October 24, 2016 by changed
AKS Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 5 hours ago, Atheist Mormon said: Let me put it this way; not only an over60yr old guy would know better, even a kindergarten kid would not plan calamities like this. im sure youve seen the little posters they create.....their dreams does not include Tsunami's taking babies away or very bad Lucifer...... I'm finding that I'm becoming more and more nihilistic the older I get.
mfbukowski Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 15 hours ago, changed said: Euthyphro's dilemma - did God create good, or is He just a moderator? Law and order - God did not write the laws, perhaps He is as trapped as we are - a moderator who has a few tips and tricks involving free will and a little chaos? God organizes matter unorganized through his intelligence, just as we do, just on a bigger scale. We take frontier chaos, sagebrush and scraggly trees and turn it into cities. That's what the pioneers did. We take the chaos of light waves/particles and atoms and turn it into "reality" as we know it. I had this experience once: I saw a strange triangle near the ocean, amid houses and buildings looking out at the city. I had never seen that before in that city! I approached it and after driving closer and closer I could synthesize the images in my mind. seeing it from more than one perspective into an actual "pyramid" It wasn't a billboard, it was not a flat structure, it was not some weird trick of light- but actually a structure on the campus of a university which housed a basketball stadium. It was a new building and I had not been on that highway for a while and I had no clue what the perception my eyes were receiving was. Kant speaks of this in the idea of the "synthetic apriori" in which he speaks of how it takes many perceptions or experiences for us to create order out of our perceptions so that we know what they are. To perceive an object is not merely to have an experience or a set of experiences. To perceive an object there must be a combination of different experiences organized by our minds into an objective "unity". At first all I saw was a strange triangle- I had no idea what it was. By moving to different perspectives, my mind was gradually able to put these various experiences of "matter unorganized" into an understandable reality. When I saw the triangle edge-on, I knew it was three dimensional, and I started to realize it could be a pyramid. If I had seen it first from above, looking straight down, I would have seen a square, not a triangle- that would have been another perspective I did not experience this time. But what was a pyramid doing in Long Beach California??? My perception of a "pyramid" is not merely the sum of my experiences of the triangular shape, but my synthesizing these different experiences as one experience of a "pyramid" Because single experiences alone can never give us the full perception of what we make into an "object" there can be no perception of objects unless there is a synthesis of the several separate experiences. Moreover because we never perceive simply or have experiences simply, but always perceive or experience "something" and because perceiving or experiencing something depends on synthesis, there can be no unsynthesized experiences. That is what Kant says and why it is important in understanding the gospel and how we get from "matter unorganized" to something "organized" and therefore "created" How does this relate to the scriptures? There is a rather cryptic statement in DC 93: Quote 29 Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be. 30 All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence. So what does intelligence have to do with existence? Intelligence organizes existence from matter unorganized. Without "intelligence" there would be no pyramid in Long Beach- in fact there would be no Long Beach! The city and the culture which created it, were created by intelligence organizing "the wilderness" into houses, churches, schools, businesses and yes- even into pyramids. God's intelligence gave us the "wilderness" from which we little godlets organized Long Beach. We intelligences were in the beginning with God. We were not created or made, neither can be. The truths we create- sentences about what we have organized through perception or even in our hearts, and hands and effort,- are independent to act for themselves. Machines and buildings "act for themselves" in the sense of being "out there" to do what we have organized them to do. Buildings "act" to keep us out of the rain, etc. Cars "act" to get us from one place to another. But cars are not buildings- they have different purposes. Cars move to "act" and buildings stay put to "act". Each has their functions- IN THEIR OWN SPHERES. My perceptions on a personal level operated in the same way. The chaos of light waves entering my eye were organized into a "triangle" on the horizon. My intelligence such as it is, asked "What the heck is that??" I moved closer and got more perceptions. It was not flat, it had corners- it looked like a "pyramid". But why was that there? Closer examination from more perceptions allowed my intelligence to synthesize all those various experiences into, eventually, a "stadium on a campus, the roof of which is shaped like a pyramid" And that is how chaos became a pyramid in Long Beach 3
Atheist Mormon Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 12 minutes ago, AKS said: I'm finding that I'm becoming more and more nihilistic the older I get. You are not alone, when you shed the protecting mantle of fantasy of afterlife it's not easy to accept this is it.
mfbukowski Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 15 hours ago, changed said: Euthyphro's dilemma - did God create good, or is He just a moderator? Law and order - God did not write the laws, perhaps He is as trapped as we are - a moderator who has a few tips and tricks involving free will and a little chaos? William James thinks of God as a "chessmaster" with infinite intelligence. Imagine playing chess with the best chess player who ever lived- but now give that human infinite intelligence. You are a novice. You know how to move the pieces- that's all. The chessmaster will know every possible move you will make every single time you move- not out of the ability to see the future or anything supernatural- just through his pure intelligence of how the game works. If he is kind, he might even be able to teach you the game by deliberately making "wrong" moves like you might for a child learning a new game so that the child gets the experience of "winning" and a taste of the thrill of the game. You night even let the child win some games even though you could have trounced him in a couple of moves. You are doing what is best for the child to teach her. Sometimes you have to try her skill so that she grows and learns. Sometimes you have to win the game so she learns how to experience defeat. You are never "trapped" and you are never limiting her agency in any way- it's just that through your superior intelligence and experience in the game, even while she is making all her own decisions, you anticipate every move, and even if she surprises you, you can change your strategy. But as her experience goes, perhaps it becomes time for her to go out in the world and play her own game and reap her own rewards, and take her own consequences. If you plan for her is suddenly interrupted by another player, you have to decide to intervene or not intervene - yet you are still just watching through your own intelligence. Perhaps an intervention IS called for- we would call that a "miracle". Or perhaps she will learn more by losing the game- even sometimes if it is a hard defeat. That is how I see it now, as a model for how God works in these situations. 2
Atheist Mormon Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 12 minutes ago, mfbukowski said: God organizes matter unorganized through his intelligence, just as we do, just on a bigger scale. I've witnessed such intelligence in Isac Asimov, Star Trek episodes and hundreds of other Science Fiction Writers fertile imagination. Otherwise Space with 2-3 Trillion Galaxies is empty place. There's no reason for any god creating this wast universe just for Earthlings to observe and enjoy. I'm not claiming there aren't other intelligences in the space but for now we cannot even find a tiny fossil organism in the Mars.
waveslider Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 16 hours ago, changed said: There is a bit of chaos in free will, and in eternal progression isn't there? I don't think it comes out as chaos when God knows each and everyone of us so perfectly well, better than we know ourselves, that He already knows exactly what we will choose before hand, in any given situation. There is no surprising God, or taking him unaware. In my opinion God placed us in each individual situation, and time, for His purposes, to create opportunities for more good to be done by man, to help bring God's glory and purpose; to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man, and to allow Justice, and mercy, to be perfectly served when all is said and done on this temporal Earth. Just my two cents worth anyway.
waveslider Posted October 24, 2016 Posted October 24, 2016 2 hours ago, california boy said: God is so detached from any communication with man that everyone is just left with "feelings". As a result, there is no real idea what God has actually said, what men have said in the name of God and what men have said to push their own agenda or belief. This has not been true in my own personal experience with God. I have had distinct communication with God. 1
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