Can Angels Eat?

[Robert F. Smith]

14 hours ago, The Nehor said:

..........................

Asking what is allowed of the exalted misses the point. If you are exalted you can do what you choose, all decisions will be righteous because that is who you are at that point but restrictions and limitations outside of that? Why? We need strict rules in mortality because everything is so dangerous and tends towards sin but we will be past that. The primary motivation in decisions is what will make you and others happy. As Lewis said: “Joy is the serious business of heaven”.

And think of an exalted sense of taste.  What could be better than sitting down to a glorious banquet with friends and family?  In heaven or on earth.

Compare the Messianic Banquet of Salvation on the World Mountain in Isaiah 25:6-9  

Quote

And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.

And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations.

He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it.

And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

cf. Ezek 20:40, 34:14-16, Matt 8:11, Rev 19:9, I Enoch 62:14

 

Edited November 13, 2018 by Robert F. Smith

[mfbukowski]

49 minutes ago, Calm said:

Well, that explains how Littlefoot and his friends stay the same age after all this apparent time to us.

This is also a problem for the ex-nihilo crowd in establishing how God existed "before time" when after all He created time with everything else, as if creating time was an "event" IN time which of course is a contradiction.  It could not be an event in time because there WAS no time before the event!!

"Well it was the first event" some might object.  But then we are caught in a circle- what was there BEFORE the first event?  It just moves the question of what was before anything in to talking about events instead of things.

I think Ex Nihilo is self contradicting.

If you think it through even the stages of creation- if it happened in 6 days or 6 billion years, or even in six seconds or one- they all point to a "time before time"

Kant and others got it right- all this is a human construction because time exists only "in our minds" because this is the way we are constructed to think- not because it exists outside ourselves.  We literally do not have the ability to think "outside" of time just as we do not have the ability to think that there are chairs and tables existing independently of the ways our senses and brains organize what we call "reality" for us- because without these categories of perceptions we literally could not survive in this world of--  who knows what.

And so we look out, as I have said before, and see only our own perceptions mirrored back to us as if "through a glass darkly"  We think we see the world but what we perceive is our own perceptions of ..... whatever is beyond perception.

Some poster named Calmoriah once posted

Quote

"I see Religion as creating a language to speak of the divine and sacred. Since I see creating this language as a creative act, ... creating a certain view of heaven and earth, a living 'image' of God and Man and their story, past, present and future." - Calmoriah

So the view we create is not just in language and about God- it is of E V E R Y T H I N G.

But that is what Intelligence does- organize matter from matter unorganized, or there is no category we call "existence"

D&C 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.

 

Without intelligence as an organizing force, there is literally no-thing because we create perceptions into "things". 

What science tells us we "see" is light waves/particles (which? we don't know) hitting our retinas while we make them into cars and houses and ponies.

Without that organizing intelligence none of those things ARE "things" and they are certainly not in language.

These are not my thoughts- they are the thoughts of scripture and others like Kant and Rorty and fit perfectly with the quotes below in my siggy- which many people block.

Edited November 13, 2018 by mfbukowski

[The Nehor]

1 minute ago, mfbukowski said:

This is also a problem for the ex-nihilo crowd in establishing how God existed "before time" when after all He created time with everything else, as if creating time was an "event".

If you think it through even the stages of creation- if it happened in 6 days or 6 billion years, or even in six seconds or one- they all point to a "time before time"

Kant and others got it right- all this is a human construction because time exists only "in our minds" because this is the way we are constructed to think- not because it exists outside ourselves.  We literally do not have the ability to think "outside" of time just as we do not have the ability to think that there are chairs and tables existing independently of the ways our senses and brains organize what we call "reality" for us- because without these categories of perceptions we literally could not survive in this world of--  who knows what.

And so we look out, as I have said before, and see only our own perceptions mirrored back to us as if "through a glass darkly"  We think we see the world but what we perceive is our own perceptions of ..... whatever is beyond perception.

Some poster named Calmoriah once posted

So the view we create is not just in language and about God- it is of E V E R Y T H I N G.

But that is what Intelligence does- organize matter from matter unorganized, or there is no category we call "existence"

D&C 93

Without intelligence as an organizing force, there is literally no-thing because we create perceptions into "things". 

What science tells us we "see" is light waves/particles (which? we don't know) hitting our retinas while we make them into cars and houses and ponies.

Without that organizing intelligence none of those things ARE "things" and they are certainly not in language.

Woah......

[Calm]

45 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Some poster named Calmoriah once posted

More accurately "some poster once named Calmoriah".  Talk about tripping, that morphine post surgery did a number on me.  If only the hospital didn't have internet, I would still have my 'full name'.  Luckily I hang out here and not on shopping sites usually, at least I avoided impulse buying. (Notthat the mods wouldn't turn it back for me, but I feel the need to own my act no matter how out of it at the time I was).

PS:  just found out how to quote just a line from a post and still get a time stamp, nice.  Select the line and hit the "quote selection" option that appears.  I have noticed that lately, but never used it.

Edited November 13, 2018 by Calm

[Maidservant]

11 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

And also time has to be relative to the universe I would imagine.  Space-time.

Different space, different time I would think.

Remember the movie "Land Before Time"?  I had a discussion with the guy who made that movie - Don Bluth-  who is LDS - on the idea that time itself is a human construct due to our experiencing things that happen sequentially.  There are no words even to express the concept that do not have time built into them.   We have no clue what it would be like to experience an eternal present- which some believe is the way God experiences things

It might be said that dinosaurs existed "before time" in some sense- and I think that was the reason for the title of the movie

But of course even saying that is self-contradictory because then there was no "before" so nothing could be "before" time. 

Aint logic grand? 

 

Oh my gosh, are we going to talk about time now??? Weeeeeee . . . .

I don't dare . . . you don't know how much of a derail I could make this, ha ha.

Let's just say I haven't accepted the four+ dimension framework that has been in vogue for far too long.  Time isn't a 'thing' on its own.

However, there are relationships and realities that might be better explained in better ways, for which saying the word 'time' is both a shorthand and an obfuscation.  (She didn't just say 'obfuscation', did she? . . . She did, though she had to google the spelling.)

As far as eating and bodies--I don't even think of bodies the same way most people do.  To me, it's a set of energy . . . an image.  So if you take the potato casserole (energy image) and the green jello and put it inside the mouth/body (energy image) and mix it all together--you have . . . the synergistic sum of all the sets of energy/information.

Resurrection is not a magical thing (to me)--it's a state or condition of body (energy).  And even 'dead people', spirits, aren't . . . dead, that is.  D & C 131:7 "There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter."  Who says they don't eat, "spirit" sushi or whatever?

Can you pass me a bit of honeycomb?

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Maidservant said:

Oh my gosh, are we going to talk about time now??? Weeeeeee . . . .

I don't dare . . . you don't know how much of a derail I could make this, ha ha.

Let's just say I haven't accepted the four+ dimension framework that has been in vogue for far too long.  Time isn't a 'thing' on its own.

However, there are relationships and realities that might be better explained in better ways, for which saying the word 'time' is both a shorthand and an obfuscation.  (She didn't just say 'obfuscation', did she? . . . She did, though she had to google the spelling.)

As far as eating and bodies--I don't even think of bodies the same way most people do.  To me, it's a set of energy . . . an image.  So if you take the potato casserole (energy image) and the green jello and put it inside the mouth/body (energy image) and mix it all together--you have . . . the synergistic sum of all the sets of energy/information.

Resurrection is not a magical thing (to me)--it's a state or condition of body (energy).  And even 'dead people', spirits, aren't . . . dead, that is.  D & C 131:7 "There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter."  Who says they don't eat, "spirit" sushi or whatever?

Can you pass me a bit of honeycomb?

Works for me.

I like the word "plasma" as an analogy or some kind of "field" of yet to be described (not known of course but at least described, or at least enough to create a "theory" that fits with .... something)

The more we get into physics the farther we get away from "reality" as we know it and more into the way we see things.

Chairs aren't solid?  Then how come I can sit on them?   That is the level of understanding of too many people. 

My sweet great grandmother who was the wisest person on earth was born in Poland in the 1860's and though she could pick herbs and wild mushrooms in the forests of Western New York - best mushrooms I ever tasted in my life incidentally, and I remember them as a little kid in the early '50's- had a conversation with her grandson, my dad.

He told her that the chair she was sitting in was not really solid at all but was made of little things called "atoms" that were whirling particles that were made more of space than anything else

As the conversation progressed- her countenance got more and more disturbed until the point that she was convinced he had totally lost his mind- and she was genuinely alarmed.  It was explained better and she calmed down, but the moral of the story is that "reality" is not what most think it is

Quote

Stanford university physicist Leonard Susskind revels in discovering ideas that transform the status quo in physics. Forty years ago he co-founded string theory, which was initially derided but eventually became the leading candidate for a unified theory of nature. For years he disputed Stephen Hawking’s conjecture that black holes do not merely swallow objects but grind them up beyond recovery, in violation of quantum mechanics. Hawking eventually conceded. And he helped to develop the modern conception of parallel universes, based on what he dubbed the “landscape” of string theory. It spoiled physicists’ dream to explain the universe as the unique outcome of basic principles. Physicists seeking to understand the deepest levels of reality now work within a framework largely of Susskind’s making. But a funny thing has happened along the way. Susskind now wonders whether physicists can understand reality.

http://www.peterbyrne.info/documents/sad0711Byrn3p.pdf

And when you try to teach people this stuff- they think you are on acid.

Sad, doncha think? 

Quote

 

In the midst of all this remodeling, is there room for such a thing as an objective reality?

Every physicist must have some sense that there are objective things in the world and that it’s our job to go and find out what those objective things are. I don’t think you could do that without having a sense that there is an objective reality. The evidence for objectivity is that experiments are reproducible. If you kick a rock once, you’ll hurt your toe. If you kick a rock twice, you’ll hurt your toe twice. Do the same experiment over and over with a rock, and you’ll reproduce the same effect. That said, physicists almost never talk about reality. The problem is that what people tend to mean by ”reality” has more to do with biology and evolution and with our hardwiring and our neural architecture than it has to do with physics itself. We’re prisoners of our own neural architecture. We can visualize some things. We can’t visualize other things. Einstein’s abstract, four-dimensional geometry was hard to concretely visualize.  It became visualizable through mathematical relations. When relativity suddenly appeared, it must have seemed to many people: What happened to “real” time? What happened to “real” space? It just got mixed up into this funny thing, but there were rules. The point was there were clear and precise mathematical rules that had been abstracted out of it, and these survived, and the old notions of reality went away. So I say, let’s get rid of the word “reality.” Let’s have our whole discussion without the word “reality.” It gets in the way. It conjures up things that are rarely helpful. The word “reproducible” is a more useful word than “real.

 

 

Edited November 14, 2018 by mfbukowski

[The Nehor]

10 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

And when you try to teach people this stuff- they think you are on acid.

Sad, doncha think? 

 

You do know I was joking right?  

[mfbukowski]

22 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

You do know I was joking right?  

Meh- ok! Now I do!!

I have heard that so often and I am such a sensitive soul....... 

 

[mfbukowski]

21 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

And think of an exalted sense of taste.  What could be better than sitting down to a glorious banquet with friends and family?  In heaven or on earth.

Compare the Messianic Banquet of Salvation on the World Mountain in Isaiah 25:6-9  

 

In speaking about how "correspondence" between language and the real experience differs, William James speaks about the difference between the words "Steak Dinner" on a menu and the glorious sizzling, sense filling experience of aromas taste, sounds, and sensation of cutting into a finely prepared steak.

"Through a glass darkly, but then face to face"....

For me that analogy really put the nail in the coffin for the idea of "correspondence to reality"  

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

In speaking about how "correspondence" between language and the real experience differs, William James speaks about the difference between the words "Steak Dinner" on a menu and the glorious sizzling, sense filling experience of aromas taste, sounds, and sensation of cutting into a finely prepared steak.............................

And don't forget preparing that steak with onions and mushrooms.  The experience itself . . .

[Thinking]

On 11/13/2018 at 9:56 AM, mfbukowski said:

time itself is a human construct due to our experiencing things that happen sequentially.  There are no words even to express the concept that do not have time built into them.

How time is measured is a human construct, but things happen sequentially regardless of how we choose to measure the sequence. Whatever we choose to call time, its sequential nature allows for different objects to occupy the same space at different times.

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Thinking said:

How time is measured is a human construct, but things happen sequentially regardless of how we choose to measure the sequence. Whatever we choose to call time, its sequential nature allows for different objects to occupy the same space at different times.

Or so you think. 

Where is your objective evidence for this assertion? 

And how does one prove that logic describes reality and is not about how we define concepts like "time" and the word "sequential"?

(you can't- ask Bertrand Russel) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 14, 2018 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

It's worth noting that the Heberw word mal'?kh translated as angel need not mean a semi-divine being but also a human messenger. The inference in the translation is that these are angels not messengers but it's quite possible to read it in other ways.

[Thinking]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Or so you think. 

Yep. That's what I think.

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Where is your objective evidence for this assertion? 

55 years on this planet.

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

And how does one prove that logic describes reality and is not about how we define concepts like "time" and the word "sequential"?

I guess I could be part of some Matrix. If I am I hope Neo come to save the day.

 

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

(you can't  - ask Bertrand Russell) 

Well I can't really ask him, but I believe he said this, "Religion is left over from the infancy of our intelligence. It will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines."

 

Edited November 15, 2018 by Thinking

[mfbukowski]

13 minutes ago, Thinking said:

Yep. That's what I think.

55 years on this planet.

I guess I could be part of some Matrix. If I am I hope Neo come to save the day.

 

Well I can't really ask him, but I believe he said this, "Religion is left over from the infancy of our intelligence. It will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines."

 

Well thanks for verifying my earlier points  that most philosophically naive folks bring up the view that those who understand these points are "on acid" or believe we are in the "matrix"

Your quote is pure logical positivism  which is dead and actually self defeating.   Look it up yourself.

There is no evidence that propositions which are non-verifiable have no meaning.  We as a society  kill people legally or send them to  prison for violating laws which are based on non- verifiable statements like "murder is wrong". Where's the evidence?

Years on the planet is not "evidence

And I will put my own statement against your evidence- I have 70 years on this planet 55 of which  were spent studying this very issue.   You may not know about analytical and synthetic statements but logic itself is  arguably self-referential with no "evidence" that logic itself

Russell's  own statement above  has  no evidence and therefore by its own criteria it is meaningless.

Quote

By the late 1960s, logical positivism had become exhausted.[43] Interviewed in the late 1970s, A. J. Ayer supposed that "the most important" defect "was that nearly all of it was false".[44][45] After some laughter, he says that "it was true in spirit." Although logical positivism tends to be recalled as a pillar of scientism,[46] Carl Hempel was key in establishing the philosophy subdiscipline philosophy of science[14] where Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper brought in the era of postpositivism.[41] John Passmore found logical positivism to be "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes".[44]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

There is no evidence for math  itself!!

Quote

 

2.1 Mathematics

The problem of accounting for mathematical knowledge is arguably one of the oldest and hardest problems in Western philosophy. It is easy enough to understand: ordinarily we acquire knowledge about the world by our senses. If we are interested in, for example, whether it’s raining outside, how many birds are on the beach, whether fish sleep or stars collapse, we look and see, or turn to others who do. It is a widespread view that Western sciences owe their tremendous successes precisely to relying on just such “empirical” (experiential, experimental) methods. However, it is also a patent fact about all these sciences, and even our ordinary ways of counting birds, fish and stars, that they depend on mathematics; and mathematics does not seem to be known on the basis of experience. Mathematicians don’t do experiments in the way that chemists, biologists or other “natural scientists” do. They seem simply to think, at most with pencil and paper as an aid to memory. In any case, they don’t try to justify their claims by reference to experiments: “Twice two is four” is not justified by observing that pairs of pairs tend in all cases observed so far to be quadruples.

 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analytic-synthetic/#Mat

Math is simply  about  how our minds work and how our brains have evolved to make order out of our sense perceptions.

Yes it  works, but so does morals yet neither can be verified with "evidence"  for their underlying axioms.

[mfbukowski]

Perfectly predictable

Now we  have a mention  -  jokingly of  LSD  and the  matrix.

I must be a prophet to  know  those were coming.

Not my first rodeo.

I don't  know why it  is so hard to figure out that  what  humans  can know  is all in their heads.  Where else would it be? 

Experimental proof would be to  destroy the brain then ask them how much they know. 

But of  course  that is  not  politically correct.

Joking of course....

Edited November 15, 2018 by mfbukowski

[Nofear]

19 hours ago, Thinking said:

How time is measured is a human construct, but things happen sequentially regardless of how we choose to measure the sequence. Whatever we choose to call time, its sequential nature allows for different objects to occupy the same space at different times.

Unfortunately the physics for this assertion isn't quite settled. Don't get me wrong, I am a big proponent of causality. Still, reality continues to be a bit like gollum.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/causality-disappears-at-the-flick-of-a-switch

[Thinking]

3 hours ago, Nofear said:

Unfortunately the physics for this assertion isn't quite settled. Don't get me wrong, I am a big proponent of causality. Still, reality continues to be a bit like gollum.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/causality-disappears-at-the-flick-of-a-switch

That's a nice little experiment that was caused by changing the polarisation of the photons. In other words there was still a version of causality. The phenomenon wasn't observed until after the polarisation was changed. Let me know when causality is irrelevant. Until then, I will stop at stop signs, wash my clothes after I wear them, prepare my lessons before teach them...

[Vance]

On 11/12/2018 at 8:07 AM, Anijen said:

While doing my scripture reading this morning, I came across the passages in Genesis 18 and 19 about the angels visiting Abraham. Abraham brought them bread and in the next chapter invited them into his home and the angels feasted with him. This being before the resurrection of the Lord. I wondered what are the physical abilities of angels? I also thought of the story of the Brother of Jared where the Lord touched the 16 stones.

What are the abilities of angels before they were resurrected? Joseph Smith said (I'm paraphrasing here); they will not deceive you by taking your hand (since they have not a physical body,yet). Additionally, no one was resurrected before the Lord. We know that post-resurrection bodies have the ability to eat (but I don't know if it is necessary). We know this because the resurrected Lord asked for food when he was with the Apostles (see Luke 24).  The Lord also showed His Apostles his scars in his hands, feet, and side. 

Can resurrected bodies:

• Eat?
• Sleep, become tired?
• Show scars of our human life?

Can un-resurrected, but not yet born bodies do the same?

I think, that in case of the Lord, He showed His scars for proof of who he was, but He did not need to eat for proof. Just interested in your ideas, mostly about unresurrected humans such as angels. What are their capabilities? What are their limitations?

Thanks for the discussion. 

Angels are messengers period.  They may be pre-mortal spirits, mortal individuals, post mortal spirits, translated individuals, or resurrected individuals.  Those with physical bodies of flesh, can eat. 

I doubt that sleep or weariness are aspects of the resurrected state.  

I imagine some scars may remain, but I don't think that all scars are kept.  Disfiguring scars I would hope would not be kept.  Lost or damaged limbs surely are restored.

Edited November 25, 2018 by Vance

[Lucian Hodoboc]

On 11/12/2018 at 4:07 PM, Anijen said:

Additionally, no one was resurrected before the Lord.

Besides the resurrections that Jesus performed before His death (of Lazarus, the son of the widow from Nain etc.), didn't the dead man who was placed in Elisha's tomb get resurrected?

[Anijen]

18 hours ago, Lucian Hodoboc said:

Besides the resurrections that Jesus performed before His death (of Lazarus, the son of the widow from Nain etc.), didn't the dead man who was placed in Elisha's tomb get resurrected?

Although Jesus brought him back to life, Lazarus was not technically resurrected (because he would die again).  Jesus was the first be resurrected (never to die again). 

[strappinglad]

God is a mathematician .How do I know? Well, He ' divided ' light from darkness. He said to the first man " Adam up ! " He told Adam and Eve to ' multiply '.

My students had a hard time understanding why I would go on and on about how beautiful it was the way calculus was able to find areas and volumes of irregular shaped objects. Had I been allowed , I would have said it was " divine " .

[Lucian Hodoboc]

6 hours ago, Anijen said:

Although Jesus brought him back to life, Lazarus was not technically resurrected (because he would die again).  Jesus was the first be resurrected (never to die again). 

So, now we're just redefining words? Someone better inform Cambridge to change their dictionary definition. 😏

[mfbukowski]

37 minutes ago, Lucian Hodoboc said:

So, now we're just redefining words? Someone better inform Cambridge to change their dictionary definition. 😏

Dictionary writers are infallible in all fields, and actually run the universe.

Some think they are just hacks that couldn't get a real job that required creative thinking.

But they don't know their true identity as god-like beings, because they look just like regular people.

That's why people quote them at the beginning of every church talk. They are not quite angels but definitely above plain mortal men like us.

[USU78]

On 11/13/2018 at 1:18 PM, mfbukowski said:

This is also a problem for the ex-nihilo crowd in establishing how God existed "before time" when after all He created time with everything else, as if creating time was an "event" IN time which of course is a contradiction.  It could not be an event in time because there WAS no time before the event!!

"Well it was the first event" some might object.  But then we are caught in a circle- what was there BEFORE the first event?  It just moves the question of what was before anything in to talking about events instead of things.

I think Ex Nihilo is self contradicting.

If you think it through even the stages of creation- if it happened in 6 days or 6 billion years, or even in six seconds or one- they all point to a "time before time"

Kant and others got it right- all this is a human construction because time exists only "in our minds" because this is the way we are constructed to think- not because it exists outside ourselves.  We literally do not have the ability to think "outside" of time just as we do not have the ability to think that there are chairs and tables existing independently of the ways our senses and brains organize what we call "reality" for us- because without these categories of perceptions we literally could not survive in this world of--  who knows what.

And so we look out, as I have said before, and see only our own perceptions mirrored back to us as if "through a glass darkly"  We think we see the world but what we perceive is our own perceptions of ..... whatever is beyond perception.

Some poster named Calmoriah once posted

So the view we create is not just in language and about God- it is of E V E R Y T H I N G.

But that is what Intelligence does- organize matter from matter unorganized, or there is no category we call "existence"

D&C 93

Without intelligence as an organizing force, there is literally no-thing because we create perceptions into "things". 

What science tells us we "see" is light waves/particles (which? we don't know) hitting our retinas while we make them into cars and houses and ponies.

Without that organizing intelligence none of those things ARE "things" and they are certainly not in language.

These are not my thoughts- they are the thoughts of scripture and others like Kant and Rorty and fit perfectly with the quotes below in my siggy- which many people block.

Chief, you need to read Elder Gong's conference talk, stat.