Does LDS Doctrine Actually Reject "Creation Ex Nihilo?"

[clarkgoble]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

God died on earth?  God's concept of death was known among dinosaurs?  Did God reveal it to them or did he only reveal Genesis to humans?  What other beings did you have in mind who read Genesis?   Is Genesis the actual words as spoken by God or did he reveal it to humans?

God presumably lived and by your normal use of human to fit Rorty's form of idealism, existed prior to the fall. That's all I'm really saying. That within a Mormon conceptual scheme you can't point to a pre-human period.

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Would you regard Talmage as a qualified anthropologist by today's standards?  Why should anyone accept his view of pre-Adamites?

What's anthropology got to do with it? I'm not sure I'd trust most anthropologists about anything, other than the more empirical DNA types. As to Talmage, I think he was just dealing with the conflict between abundant evidence for civilized humans prior to 7000 BC. The evidence going back at least 100,000 years is pretty strong. I think Talmage was just trying to deal with that evidence.

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That there were humanoids who did not have speech as we know it today, I think is indisputable.

Typically language is seen as evolving around 100,000 years ago. I've not kept up with the Pinker/Chomsky debate about it's origins, although that's still well before 7000 BC.

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"The Book of Mormon is a document about history" is a statement of faith- there is insufficient historical evidence for a non-Mormon to believe it as historical.  Why is that? Because it is a faith based statement.  Qualified historians will differ on its truth or falsity depending on whether or not they are Mormon.

Well I'd likely quibble with how you're using the word faith again. But it's not worth that big a tangent.

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And this mirrors the immanence / transcendence issue. A transcendent God is unaffected by others while an immanent God would be affected by others

I tend to see it as orthogonal to the question of immanence (again depending upon how we use the terms) There are strong forms of platonism that have God affected by humans and vice versa. The more theurgical forms of platonism, such as Iamblichus are a great example. The Kabbalism of the 12th century Spain is basically a platonism that likewise has a very affected God who is simultaneously transcendent and immanent.

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This whole mode of thinking derives from Platonic Idealism ultimately

Well I think it's more complex than that. But the type of platonism Augustine and many of his Christian contemporaries wanted definitely wasn't terribly immanent. This then led to huge problems dealing with the two natures in Christ that I think plagued Christianity for the next 1600 years.

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

God presumably lived and by your normal use of human to fit Rorty's form of idealism, existed prior to the fall. That's all I'm really saying. That within a Mormon conceptual scheme you can't point to a pre-human period.

You just did.  I have no idea what you mean.  If God is Human AND God had a father then obviously Mormons think there was Human death before the fall.  I cannot see how that can be escaped.  I think God learned from his Father just as Jesus learned from his and presumably that includes communication in language if Jesus is the Word.

Animals do not speak as we do, so before there were speaking humans here on earth there was no word for "death" on this world.  No death before humans.  Clear as a bell.  So there must be more context than "no death before the fall" because obviously there WAS death before the fall if God's father was "dead" - or Eloheim himself- at some point during his prior progression.

Let me ask you this: How can we KNOW that signs exist independent of human intelligence?

That is really the issue here.  Before there was the human word "death" what was that non-existent sign pointing to??

And how can we know that??

Were signs floating around in pre-existence waiting to be instantiated or something?

It's so clear to me that things/ideas/concepts are what HUMANS create them to be in language.  Before that they are un-named. What exactly is an un-named name?  It's like asking if Columbus "really" discovered "America" or some other name for it.  What else could it have been called if not America which were pre-existent sign alternatives for that word??

Where are the signs for the next 25 species that have not yet been discovered??  Do those signs exist?

I suppose the animals they eat are certainly aware they exist- but are they really?  Does that make any sense whatsoever?

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What's anthropology got to do with it? I'm not sure I'd trust most anthropologists about anything, other than the more empirical DNA types. As to Talmage, I think he was just dealing with the conflict between abundant evidence for civilized humans prior to 7000 BC. The evidence going back at least 100,000 years is pretty strong. I think Talmage was just trying to deal with that evidence.

I would like to see an anthropologist issue a paper on the fact that Lucy was a "pre-Adamite".  In fact all pre-Homo Sapiens were in fact pre-Adamites- and that is a great anthropological discovery.  At that point I would agree that Talmage was was a modern anthropologist.   Those "more empirical DNA types" are what I am talking about.

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Typically language is seen as evolving around 100,000 years ago. I've not kept up with the Pinker/Chomsky debate about it's origins, although that's still well before 7000 BC.

 

Did I say that it happened around or after 7000 BC?  What relevance does that have unless you take Genesis literally?

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Well I'd likely quibble with how you're using the word faith again. But it's not worth that big a tangent.

 

Well I suppose that's what all this is so I don't t see that big a difference, it's what we do

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I tend to see it as orthogonal to the question of immanence (again depending upon how we use the terms) There are strong forms of platonism that have God affected by humans and vice versa. The more theurgical forms of platonism, such as Iamblichus are a great example. The Kabbalism of the 12th century Spain is basically a platonism that likewise has a very affected God who is simultaneously transcendent and immanent.

 

Does that add to the discussion?

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Well I think it's more complex than that. But the type of platonism Augustine and many of his Christian contemporaries wanted definitely wasn't terribly immanent. This then led to huge problems dealing with the two natures in Christ that I think plagued Christianity for the next 1600 years.

Yep that's what I meant.

I guess I get impatient at night.  I should not post I suppose.

Edited May 16, 2017 by mfbukowski

[Nofear]

Don't want to derail the philosophy discussion and what not, but I just want to emphasize a point of common misconception among the lay population.

• The Big Bang Theory does not technically go back to t = 0 -- it only requires we started at some incredibly hot, dense state in the past

One of multiple sources I could give that more honestly/frankly state the limitations of what the Big Bang Theory actually states/requires. https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-how-big-was-the-universe-when-it-was-first-born-483fd2da9add

While I don't have time to elaborate, many Mormons and some scientists like to invoke "multiverse" as a solution to a lot of things. But, in my opinion, theologically multiverse proposals really only push back all the problems that vanilla Big Bang has. And it adds a bunch of other problems as well. For the record, there is zero evidence scientifically for multiverse theories (but cosmologists like to think about them 'cause fun) and I can't see any theological advantage either. I think there is a much better way to reconcile our theological understanding and scientific observations. But that, another time.

[clarkgoble]

50 minutes ago, Nofear said:

While I don't have time to elaborate, many Mormons and some scientists like to invoke "multiverse" as a solution to a lot of things. But, in my opinion, theologically multiverse proposals really only push back all the problems that vanilla Big Bang has. And it adds a bunch of other problems as well. For the record, there is zero evidence scientifically for multiverse theories (but cosmologists like to think about them 'cause fun) and I can't see any theological advantage either. I think there is a much better way to reconcile our theological understanding and scientific observations. But that, another time.

The theological advantage is that there's no room at the big bang for resurrected bodies. That's why Evangelicals like to bring it up to oppose Mormon theology. While there is not yet any empirical evidence for the multiverse, that's not really an argument against it offering a way out from the problem of the big bang. Especially when most physicists accept a multiverse. There are compelling reasons from QM for there to be a multiverse which is why it pre-dates string theory.

The main problem with the multiverse is that no multiverse model that I'm aware of allows significant information flow between universes. But again, if one is just appealing to it as a theological out that's not a problem. It's just a way of suggesting the big bang shouldn't be taken as an universal theory since there's no evidence it's an universal theory.

 

[clarkgoble]

8 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Did I say that it happened around or after 7000 BC?  What relevance does that have unless you take Genesis literally?

Given you were critiquing Talmage and his notion of pre-adamites assumes a 7000 BC fall, I assumed when you were critiquing him you were critiquing his actual view. If you're not then most of my comments don't apply. I agree there's no need for pre-Adamites if we push the fall and Adam back to around 100,000 - 150,000 years ago with a 2001: A Space Odyssey type transformation of pre-humans.

Edited May 16, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Nofear]

29 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

The theological advantage is that there's no room at the big bang for resurrected bodies.

I quite disagree. Can you justify this assertion?

[clarkgoble]

A resurrected body is the same shape as ours. At the end of geometric expansion 10^-36 the size of the universe was around 17 cm. That seems irreconcilable. There's also the problem of Mormon theology (at least the kinds that keep the traditional reading of the KFD) require an infinity of material and infinite time.

Now if you reject that theology and see all creation past/present/future as extremely limited then that's less of a problem. But that's pretty major theology to reject.

 

Edited May 16, 2017 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

45 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Given you were critiquing Talmage and his notion of pre-adamites assumes a 7000 BC fall, I assumed when you were critiquing him you were critiquing his actual view. If you're not then most of my comments don't apply. I agree there's no need for pre-Adamites if we push the fall and Adam back to around 100,000 - 150,000 years ago with a 2001: A Space Odyssey type transformation of pre-humans.

I apologize for the tone of my prior post

I regard Adam and Eve as allegorical as it used to be taught in the temple.  You may not be old enough to realize that.  Nevertheless I can imagine that there were two individuals whom God chose to start the first family to which he revealed himself.  I take the fall to be our own personal (and perhaps those particular individual's) fall from innocence. Those individuals could be seen as the "first flesh of the covenant".  In that sense Adam and Eve could be seen as we see them as literal dispensation heads who actually existed who were the first to whom God revealed a kind of proto-Jewish religion including knowledge that the savior would come, giving them the law of sacrifice, etc.  We count their family line as the "first flesh like our flesh" religiously and theoretically could be an actual family line.

I regard no part of Genesis et al to be literal

I find the idea that we would look at a date for Adam and Eve quite disconcerting since to me they are primarily symbols for all of us- characters to whom we are to liken ourselves to, again as described in the temple, though if an actual family they might indeed have existed around 7,000 BCE.  But even if they actually existed that date would be totally arbitrary as I see it.  One might define any family who started a religion as "The First of Our Kind"

As we know there are many tribes throughout humanity whose words for their own tribe translate to "Humans" or some such word indicating that there are no real "humans" but their tribe and everyone else is something else

I think this psychology is probably at the root of the derivation of the idea that A&E were the parents of humanity, if indeed they were literal people.

[Nofear]

That requires an interpretation of our theology that requires organized* bodies extending into the infinite past. Common enough interpretation among us latter-day saints, but, not a necessary one in my opinion. It has the disadvantage of disagreeing with models of the universe that actually reconcile with our observations. I personally prefer interpretations of my science and theology that does violence to neither (while accepting the idea that interpretations in both areas aren't infallible).

* The uncreate nature of matter does not necissitate organized existence. Indeed, philosophically the idea of organized matter extending into the infinite past does violence to my sense of reason and simplicity.

Edited May 16, 2017 by Nofear
@clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

10 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I tend to see it as orthogonal to the question of immanence (again depending upon how we use the terms) There are strong forms of platonism that have God affected by humans and vice versa. The more theurgical forms of platonism, such as Iamblichus are a great example. The Kabbalism of the 12th century Spain is basically a platonism that likewise has a very affected God who is simultaneously transcendent and immanent.

I did not say this but my point was that I would disagree with the logic of those who think that God can be both immanent and transcendent, since to me these categories are defined by their opposition.  To me it is like saying that "The fence is simultaneously black and white."

They may put forth their theories of how that is possible but I would generically disagree with anyone who thought that.  

And again my point was that the whole notion that "transcendent is better than immanent" came from Plato, regardless of a recitation of every historical nuance.

The denigration of the body for example, thinking that flesh is in itself inferior to spirit or that the practical reason is somehow "lower" than pure reason derives from that notion of the superiority of the transcendent- and that goes back to Plato and Pythagoras I suppose really.

[Nofear]

2 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

The denigration of the body for example, thinking that flesh is in itself inferior to spirit or that the practical reason is somehow "lower" than pure reason derives from that notion of the superiority of the transcendent- and that goes back to Plato and Pythagoras I suppose really.

Indeed it seems our D&C scripture on spirit being matter is a recollection of a comment/correction Joseph Smith gave to a preacher who it seems to have been preaching on the idea that matter is bad or lesser than spirit. Joseph's counter was basically, "That idea doesn't really work because spirit *is* matter (just more pure and fine)."

I see a lot of potential agreement between you and Joseph. ☺

[mfbukowski]

41 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

A resurrected body is the same shape as ours. At the end of geometric expansion 10^-36 the size of the universe was around 17 cm. That seems irreconcilable. There's also the problem of Mormon theology (at least the kinds that keep the traditional reading of the KFD) require an infinity of material and infinite time.

Now if you reject that theology and see all creation past/present/future as extremely limited then that's less of a problem. But that's pretty major theology to reject.

 

I find this reminiscent of Aquinas discussion of whether or not multiple spirits could occupy the same space, or as some have characterized it, how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

 

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Article 1. Whether an angel is in a place?

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1052.htm

Objection 1. It would seem that an angel is not in a place. For Boethius says (De Hebdom.): "The common opinion of the learned is that things incorporeal are not in a place." And again, Aristotle observes (Phys. iv, text 48,57) that "it is not everything existing which is in a place, but only a movable body." But an angel is not a body, as was shown above (Article 50). Therefore an angel is not in a place.

Objection 2. Further, place is a "quantity having position." But everything which is in a place has some position. Now to have a position cannot benefit an angel, since his substance is devoid of quantity, the proper difference of which is to have a position. Therefore an angel is not in a place.

Objection 3. Further, to be in a place is to be measured and to be contained by such place, as is evident from the Philosopher (Phys. iv, text 14,119). But an angel can neither be measured nor contained by a place, because the container is more formal than the contained; as air with regard to water (Phys. iv, text 35,49). Therefore an angel is not in a place.

On the contrary, It is said in the Collect [Prayer at Compline, Dominican Breviary]: "Let Thy holy angels who dwell herein, keep us in peace."

I answer that, It is befitting an angel to be in a place; yet an angel and a body are said to be in a place in quite a different sense. A body is said to be in a place in such a way that it is applied to such place according to the contact of dimensive quantity; but there is no such quantity in the angels, for theirs is a virtual one. Consequently an angel is said to be in a corporeal place by application of the angelic power in any manner whatever to any place.

Accordingly there is no need for saying that an angel can be deemed commensurate with a place, or that he occupies a space in the continuous; for this is proper to a located body which is endowed with dimensive quantity. In similar fashion it is not necessary on this account for the angel to be contained by a place; because an incorporeal substance virtually contains the thing with which it comes into contact, and is not contained by it: for the soul is in the body as containing it, not as contained by it. In the same way an angel is said to be in a place which is corporeal, not as the thing contained, but as somehow containing it.

And hereby we have the answers to the objections.

 

So there is your answer.

Their substance is devoid of quantity.

Case closed.

 

Edited May 16, 2017 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

5 minutes ago, Nofear said:

Indeed it seems our D&C scripture on spirit being matter is a recollection of a comment/correction Joseph Smith gave to a preacher who it seems to have been preaching on the idea that matter is bad or lesser than spirit. Joseph's counter was basically, "That idea doesn't really work because spirit *is* matter (just more pure and fine)."

I see a lot of potential agreement between you and Joseph. ☺

Well thanks, I hope so.  That's why I am here.  

I was thinking this way before I found the church and Joseph and finding the church blew me away!

Edited May 16, 2017 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

Given you were critiquing Talmage and his notion of pre-adamites assumes a 7000 BC fall, I assumed when you were critiquing him you were critiquing his actual view. If you're not then most of my comments don't apply. I agree there's no need for pre-Adamites if we push the fall and Adam back to around 100,000 - 150,000 years ago with a 2001: A Space Odyssey type transformation of pre-humans.

On the space odyssey transformation if you wanted to postulate that, all it would take is one "mutation" caused by God ("special creation of Adam and Eve") to perhaps the speech center of the brain to cause a "transformation" in that family.

Since that would give that family superior ability to communicate and reproduce, they would have the survival advantage.  Add in a few revelations from God and you have a new race of people with a new religion

Works for me if you want to be scientific about it.

I don't particularly, but if you do......  

And that could have been rather quiet, on any timeline the rest of your theory requires....

[clarkgoble]

3 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I did not say this but my point was that I would disagree with the logic of those who think that God can be both immanent and transcendent, since to me these categories are defined by their opposition.  To me it is like saying that "The fence is simultaneously black and white."

I think it's more akin to being partially on both sides of the fence. Our side and the other side.

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The denigration of the body for example, thinking that flesh is in itself inferior to spirit or that the practical reason is somehow "lower" than pure reason derives from that notion of the superiority of the transcendent- and that goes back to Plato and Pythagoras I suppose really.

However not all platonists held that negative view.

[clarkgoble]

3 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I find this reminiscent of Aquinas discussion of whether or not multiple spirits could occupy the same space, or as some have characterized it, how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

Well since the angels Aquinas was speculating about were immaterial it seems a rather different question. If resurrected bodies are material -- and thus extended in space -- then worrying about the size of the universe seems quite a reasonable thing to be concerned about.

Edited May 16, 2017 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

Well since the angels Aquinas was speculating about were immaterial it seems a rather different question. If resurrected bodies are material -- and thus extended in space -- then worrying about the size of the universe seems quite a reasonable thing to be concerned about.

Only if one thinks religion is about science and religious discourse is scientific discourse.  Do you think the earth is only 6000 years old?  It seems you took that position in earlier posts.

By the way what about the question about signs and death before the fall?  Did the concept for "death" exist before there were languages?

Do signs for things exist before the thing exists?   Like signs for names of species yet undiscovered?

The bottom line question is whether signs are independent of human thought or not.  Do signs exist independently of humans?

Edited May 16, 2017 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

50 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Only if one thinks religion is about science and religious discourse is scientific discourse.  Do you think the earth is only 6000 years old?  It seems you took that position in earlier posts.

No I accept all the normal physics and geology. But also I think the fall was being cast out of a terrestrial world to this telestial world already in progress.

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By the way what about the question about signs and death before the fall?  Did the concept for "death" exist before there were languages?

Depends upon what you mean by concept. I think some animals have rudimentary understanding of such notions.

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Do signs for things exist before the thing exists?   Like signs for names of species yet undiscovered?

Well my point was more that there were people prior to people on earth and so it existed with them. Prior to a sign being actualized they exist as a potential sign.

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The bottom line question is whether signs are independent of human thought or not.  Do signs exist independently of humans?

Many signs exist independent of humans. Signs are more broad than language. A dog wagging it's tail in a normative fashion is producing a sign and conveying knowledge. Typically those philosophers and scientists most interested in natural signs are applying them at a chemical level. So by that use DNA is a type of sign.

[pogi]

5 hours ago, Nofear said:

That requires an interpretation of our theology that requires organized* bodies extending into the infinite past. Common enough interpretation among us latter-day saints, but, not a necessary one in my opinion. It has the disadvantage of disagreeing with models of the universe that actually reconcile with our observations

Even if you don't accept the Lorenzo Snow couplet and teaching that God was once a mortal man on another Earth, you still have to accept that the Eternal God of flesh and bones created our universe.  Doesn't that strongly suggest a multiverse?  I don't see how Mormon teachings of a God of flesh can survive without a multiverse. 

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

No I accept all the normal physics and geology. But also I think the fall was being cast out of a terrestrial world to this telestial world already in progress.

Depends upon what you mean by concept. I think some animals have rudimentary understanding of such notions.

Well my point was more that there were people prior to people on earth and so it existed with them. Prior to a sign being actualized they exist as a potential sign.

Many signs exist independent of humans. Signs are more broad than language. A dog wagging it's tail in a normative fashion is producing a sign and conveying knowledge. Typically those philosophers and scientists most interested in natural signs are applying them at a chemical level. So by that use DNA is a type of sign.

So DNA was  sign before people made up sign theory?

Who knew that?

How do potential signs exist?

What are their properties? 

How can statements about potential sign be justified? 

Edited May 16, 2017 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

5 hours ago, Nofear said:

Indeed it seems our D&C scripture on spirit being matter is a recollection of a comment/correction Joseph Smith gave to a preacher who it seems to have been preaching on the idea that matter is bad or lesser than spirit. Joseph's counter was basically, "That idea doesn't really work because spirit *is* matter (just more pure and fine)."

The idea that spirits were matter was a popular folk view. If you think of the stereotype of ghosts they basically are the same as gases that occasionally solidify more -- think steam that forms water droplets so you can see it. During the renaissance several prominent philosophers like Telesio were pushing a material conception of spirits. A lot of that ended up in the so-called hermetic culture Joseph was exposed to. More interesting is that the phrasing Joseph used is remarkably similar to commentaries that discuss Tertullian's views. Tertullian was a materialist and his ontology was Stoic rather than platonic the way many early Church Fathers like Augustine's were. These commentaries say that matter was co-eternal with God. So it's quite plausible that these formed the kernel out of which Joseph's ideas sprung. (Although confirming them is the more important part - not the study he used to ask God) 

Interestingly within Stoicism fine matter is a kind of fire or spirit that permeates the universe and is the divine in the universe. You have exactly the same idea in Orson Pratt's later writings. Like the Stoics Pratt associates this with the aether. I've not been able to find proof Pratt was reading the Stoics (although he did read the Scottish Realists) but man his thought is so similar it's hard to think he didn't.

 

 

 

 

 

[clarkgoble]

10 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

So DNA was  sign before people made up sign theory?

Yes

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Who knew that?

That DNA has a sign like function? That was in the mid 1950's.

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How do potential signs exist?

As potentials.

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What are their properties? 

Not sure what you mean. They're signs. They stand for something, the object, and produce an interpretant. There are different kinds of signs but that's their nature.

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How can statements about potential sign be justified? 

You mean what is the argument that there are possibilities? We see law-like behaviors that are general but allow different potential consequences. Say the wave equation in quantum mechanics. 

[RevTestament]

3 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Only if one thinks religion is about science and religious discourse is scientific discourse.  Do you think the earth is only 6000 years old?  It seems you took that position in earlier posts.

By the way what about the question about signs and death before the fall?  Did the concept for "death" exist before there were languages?

Do signs for things exist before the thing exists?   Like signs for names of species yet undiscovered?

The bottom line question is whether signs are independent of human thought or not.  Do signs exist independently of humans?

There was no death before the Law or the Word. As Paul said the law came and I died.  Things were not created spiritually before A & E.

[Nofear]

1 hour ago, pogi said:

Even if you don't accept the Lorenzo Snow couplet and teaching that God was once a mortal man on another Earth, you still have to accept that the Eternal God of flesh and bones created our universe.  Doesn't that strongly suggest a multiverse?  I don't see how Mormon teachings of a God of flesh can survive without a multiverse. 

1) I do accept Lorenzo Snow's couplet. But that just means our Heavenly Parents weren't the first. It does not demand turtles all the way down.

2) Once one accepts the idea that God only created a finite number of worlds (see Moses 1:35  where at the very least the number of concurrent worlds is finite), the idea that God created our entire, probably infinite, universe falls flat. The only wiggle room one has is the uncertainty i)n the "probably infinite" part. But much as I read Genesis to be a description of the organization of our solar system, I have no problem with believing references to "universe" by ancient (and modern) prophets really means a subset of the entirety of existence.

Anyway, the primary point is that interpretations of scripture allow for other interpretations. And by allow, I can see how interpretations like yours come about, kinda.

 

48 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

The idea that spirits were matter was a popular folk view. If you think of the stereotype of ghosts they basically are the same as gases that occasionally solidify more -- think steam that forms water droplets so you can see it. During the renaissance several prominent philosophers like Telesio were pushing a material conception of spirits. A lot of that ended up in the so-called hermetic culture Joseph was exposed to. More interesting is that the phrasing Joseph used is remarkably similar to commentaries that discuss Tertullian's views. Tertullian was a materialist and his ontology was Stoic rather than platonic the way many early Church Fathers like Augustine's were. These commentaries say that matter was co-eternal with God. So it's quite plausible that these formed the kernel out of which Joseph's ideas sprung. (Although confirming them is the more important part - not the study he used to ask God) 

Interestingly within Stoicism fine matter is a kind of fire or spirit that permeates the universe and is the divine in the universe. You have exactly the same idea in Orson Pratt's later writings. Like the Stoics Pratt associates this with the aether. I've not been able to find proof Pratt was reading the Stoics (although he did read the Scottish Realists) but man his thought is so similar it's hard to think he didn't.

Interesting. /thumbsupemoticon.

[RevTestament]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

The idea that spirits were matter was a popular folk view.

E=mc2