The Family Proclamation and the NHS

[smac97]

7 minutes ago, the narrator said:

Quote

We are children of Heavenly Parents.

What do you mean by that?

That our spirits are literally children of Heavenly Parents.

7 minutes ago, the narrator said:

Are we children by sexual intercourse (as described by early Utah leaders)? Adoption (as described in Abraham)? Creation (as described in Bible)?

I don't know.

7 minutes ago, the narrator said:

I assume you claim the first, but why?

You assume in error.  I do not know.  Such things have not been revealed to us.

7 minutes ago, the narrator said:

What does that even mean for God and his wife/wives to create billions of spirit babes through copulation? Are they birthed--one by one, or millions at a time like some fish giving live birth? Is genetics involved? What does it mean for a resurrected being to create spirits?

I do not know the answers to these questions.

7 minutes ago, the narrator said:

Why pick one of the many Mormon theories of premortal spirits over others?

I am relying on scriptural and prophetic guidance on these matters.

7 minutes ago, the narrator said:

Could God have created spirit babes by shooting laser beams from his eyes? Why not?

We do not have revealed light and knowledge on this. 

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

On 5/2/2024 at 10:10 AM, Analytics said:

Quote

I respectfully disagree.  I assume the "small group" you refer to here is people with a DSD.  I find it no more plausible that DSDs exist outside this mortal sphere than does any other type of disorder or affliction.  If a person is born without legs, that is a disorder that will not persist after death.  I think we will find that the same will be said of those with DSD.  This is all a matter of faith, of course.  However, I think my position comports well with the doctrines of the Church.  We'll see when we get to the other side.

For the record, I agree with you. Your position that spirits are either male or female does comport well with Mormon doctrine.

What I find curious though is your belief (and correct me if I’m wrong) that it is impossible for someone with DSD to know the actual sex of their spirit.

That is not really my position.  Per this article, "intersex individuals are not asexual, but have clear sex biomarkers that makes their sex epistemically uncertain."  See also here:

Quote

The nomenclature “intersex” acknowledges something between two sexes and not a third sex. The term is intersex and not “extrasex,” therefore acknowledging the binary nature of human sex. Biological sex rarely may be phenotypically unclear in a given individual, but this does not represent a third one.

Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright rejects the “sex is a spectrum” mantra with clear reasoning: “a spectrum implies a continuous distribution, and maybe even an amodal one (one in which no specific outcome is more likely than others). Biological sex in humans, however, is clear-cut over 99.98 percent of the time.” Dr. Wright continues, “any method exhibiting a predictive accuracy of over 99.98 percent would place it among the most precise methods in all the life sciences. We revise medical care practices and change world economic plans on far lower confidence than that.”

I have no particular insights as to a specific person with a DSD and what they "know" or do not know about "the actual sex of their spirit."  In rare instances, a person's biological sex may be phenotypically unclear (though the biological sex of a person with a DSD can, in almost all instances, be empirically demonstrated through medical evaluaiton/testing).  That person may join the Church and develop beliefs about "the actual sex of their spirit."  Those beliefs may or may not be correct, as there is no way to empirically ascertain or test such things.  In this mortal experience, such things can be addressed on a case-by-case basis by those in authority.  In the Hereafter, these things will be sorted out.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited July 5, 2025 by smac97

[the narrator]

9 minutes ago, smac97 said:

That our spirits are literally children of Heavenly Parents.

You can't say something "is literally" X and then say you don't know what it means to be X. To say something is "literal" is to say that it has a clear meaning.

Otherwise, I can just say that my chair is literally a sandwich made out of the center of a black hole.. 

[smac97]

57 minutes ago, the narrator said:

I am saying that the chair is biological because it is a living thing made out of matter.

A "chair" is "a living thing?"  How do you figure?

Moses 3:5 states: "And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew. For I, the Lord God, created all things, of which I have spoken, spiritually, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth."

I've never considered inanimate objects to be "living thing{s}."

Thanks,

-Smac

[ZealouslyStriving]

"The power to create mortal life is the most exalted power God has given his children..." - Pres. Dallin H. Oaks

* To me that the power of procreation is tied to Exaltation makes things clear in my mind. The things here on earth are a foreshadow of things there- it's just way better there.

It strikes me as ironic that a society obsessed with sex and sexual freedom finds the idea of sex in the afterlife somehow weird or disgusting.

[smac97]

1 minute ago, the narrator said:

Quote

That our spirits are literally children of Heavenly Parents.

You can't say something "is literally" X and then say you don't know what it means to be X.

I did not say I "don't know what it means to be X."

In a few hours I will use my car, which will "literally" transport me from my home to a restaurant for lunch with my son.  That does not mean I understand every jot and tittle of how the car operates, or how it was manufactured, etc.  

1 minute ago, the narrator said:

To say something is "literal" is to say that it has a clear meaning.

Yes.

My neighbors across the street recently welcomed their daughter into the world.  She was conceived via IVF.  I have only vague and broad notions regarding how the particulars of IVF function, but that does not prevent me from saying that their daughter is "literally" their child.

1 minute ago, the narrator said:

Otherwise, I can just say that my chair is literally a sandwich made out of the center of a black hole.. 

Okay.

Thanks,

-Smac

[ZealouslyStriving]

9 minutes ago, the narrator said:

Otherwise, I can just say that my chair is literally a sandwich made out of the center of a black hole.. 

Why not, we are all made out of the same celestial stuff, just organized differently. Your chair may have some dust in it that was once a sandwich - how would I know? 🤔 

[the narrator]

12 minutes ago, smac97 said:

A "chair" is "a living thing?"  How do you figure?

By its being a thing that is alive.

[smac97]

Just now, the narrator said:

Quote

A "chair" is "a living thing?"  How do you figure?

By its being a thing that is alive.

How do you differentiate alive from non-alive things?  

Do you have a point with all this?  Or are you just being facetious?

Thanks,

-Smac

[the narrator]

8 minutes ago, smac97 said:

In a few hours I will use my car, which will "literally" transport me from my home to a restaurant for lunch with my son.

You know what it means to means for a car to transport you. You don't know what it means to be a child of Heavenly Parents. You just know its a phrase that you can repeat.

10 minutes ago, smac97 said:

My neighbors across the street recently welcomed their daughter into the world.  She was conceived via IVF.  I have only vague and broad notions regarding how the particulars of IVF function, but that does not prevent me from saying that their daughter is "literally" their child.

You know enough about sperm and genetics to know what you mean by "their daughter is 'literally' their child." You don't know anything about what it means to be a child of heavenly parents.

[the narrator]

3 minutes ago, smac97 said:

How do you differentiate alive from non-alive things?  

 

Simple. By differentiating those things that are said by me to be alive, as opposed to those things that are not.

For example, my chair is literally alive. However, the pen on my desk is not.

4 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Do you have a point with all this?  

 

Yes, that you are speaking gibberish.

[Calm]

3 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

I must ask if we're assuming that the premortal spirit stays intact after contact with the mortal body. I really doubt this is the case, or even could be the case - our bodies clearly are not just meat puppets or meat Legos. To be honest I've come to think that the spirit body is dissolved upon incarnation as the intelligence it housed moves to the physical body. To believe otherwise is to believe that at all times an infant is surrounded by an astral form of an adult that he will only be identical to for a short period of his life.

So it's an open question to what degree the old spirit body is controlling on our experience in the tabernacle of flesh. 

I never really thought about this in detail before.

Do they still teach in Primary the body is like a glove and the spirit a hand?  I always imagined that implied somehow the spirit was compressed rather than it stayed the same size but somehow was ‘centered’ on the body…at least on the horizontal axis when standing, if centered on the vertical that would mean some of the spirit would be moving through the ground, floors, etc….you now have me visualizing a full grown spirit surrounding a curled up infant in a small crib, the spirit squirming around trying to get comfortable with their limbs hanging out over the sides, or imagine such in a stroller.  I think I will have to agree with you the spirit does not stay intact if only to preserve the dignity of the entire human species.   

[Calm]

4 hours ago, the narrator said:

What does "image and likeness" of immaterial spirits even mean?

My "image and likeness" is determined primarily by genetic material from my parents. I look the way I do--or, rather, I exist--because during one particular night of passion, one of 200-300 million sperm from my father happened to be the one that impregnated an egg from my mother. Had another one of those guys one the raise, a completely different person would have been conceived that night--and there is a roughly 50 percent chance that this person would have been female.

Not only that, but my general human form is 100-percent a result of my genetics, which itself is a result of over 3 billion years of evolution. It's the reason I have five fingers on each hand, hair on my back, internal organs, warm blood, a penis, etc. 

Since Joseph said spirit is refined matter, I don’t think “immaterial” is the appropriate term when speaking of LDS belief.  However, there has been no revelation defining what “refined” matter is.  How can matter be more “refined” than quarks and leptons, the smallest particles of matter humanity has been able to discover?  Even if there are smaller particles that then combine into larger ones, how is this more “refined”?  I suspect Joseph used “refined” because he still bought into the idea physical matter is gross and the spirit is not (thus supposedly a spirit can’t be addicted until linked with a physical body, etc) and wanted to be sure not to convey the idea there wasn’t anything special or exalted (not in a Mormon sense) about a spirit.  Iow, the use of “refined” was to imply a different type of matter rather than a purer form of physical matter.  

Think of dirty water vs purer/refined water.  Impurities have been removed.  If physical matter contains impurities, that would suggest quarks, etc are the impurities.  Remove them and the matter being discussed is not the same as physical matter.

Since we have no clue what material spirit is made out of, what is leftover after removing quarks and leptons, and have no way to measure or describe what is left, I agree the “image and likeness” of spirit matter is still undefinable.

Edited May 2, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

3 hours ago, the narrator said:

And please find me a biologist who studies invisible, unmeasurable, unseeable, unknowable spirits.

I would love to see a Human Biology textbook’s chapter on the biology of the spirit.  

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Nofear said:

as an exalted being I was only a physical body "half" of the universe would be basically hidden from me and likewise for a spirit body. It is only with both that the universe becomes completely accessible.

Maybe only a minute part of the universe is accessible to us either as a physical body or a spirit body since there is nothing doctrinal as far as I can see preventing there being further types of material beyond intelligence, spirit matter, and physical matter (meaning the matter that we can currently observe, measure, or describe) and us receiving additional ‘layers’ of matter to our souls as part of our progression.  Perhaps there is a time body that allows us to be present throughout time.  After that, I haven’t a clue what attributes these bodies might have.

[the narrator]

9 minutes ago, Calm said:

Since Joseph said spirit is refined matter, I don’t think “immaterial” is the appropriate term when speaking of LDS belief.

Agreed. This is basically the problem with the whole discussion, with claims about things being "matter," "living,"  "sexed," etc., but used with a completely other but nonetheless undefined manner. This is all fine when taken in a religious sense, wherein the primary point is the value and worth of the human individual, the importance of gender in our lives, etc. It turns into nonsense when people demand that they defining ontological reality and should be understood in the same way that those terms are used to describe the physical world.

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Nofear said:

Our physical bodies are "patterned" after it.

But what is the pattern?  A dress looks nothing like the two dimensional pattern that is used to make it.  A knitting pattern is a list of instructions of what to knit. (Or so I was taught in home ec).

Part of the assumption that the spirit is identical in form to a human physical body are visions of spirits (doctrinally in particular the Brother of Jared as the narrative comes across as if MM seeing Christ was unplanned and only his faith being so remarkable made it occur, so it had to be the real appearance of Christ’s spirit and Christ describes having created man after the body of his spirit….but why couldn’t it have been only what was accessible to MM in his visionary state and that processed by his very mortal brain?  Why assume he saw the complete picture or was aware of the complete structure of Christ’s spirit body?  We certainly are not even aware of the complete structure of the human body just by looking at it.

And in what sense was mankind created after the body of Christ’s spirit if our physical bodies are actually after the image of our own spirits?  Plus are we not after the image of Heavenly Father and Mother who have physical bodies perfectly linked with their spirit material component of their soul?

Quote

Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and man have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh.

 

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Teancum said:

I am skeptical. It has been almost twenty years since it came out.  

The Articles of Faith were written in 1842 and canonized in 1880.

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/remembering-articles-of-faith#:~:text=In 1851%2C the Articles of,Church's October 1880 general conference.

Personally I see the longer it is in active use, the more respected it will become and the greater the likelihood it will get canonized, similar to the statement of faith that the Articles of Faith are.  If it gets less used overtime, then it will be unlikely to be canonized imo.

Edited May 2, 2024 by Calm

[OGHoosier]

3 hours ago, Nofear said:

For me the answer that makes the most sense is that that the God's are maximally capable (omniscient and omnipotent are words that try to convey some of that). But physical matter has a very poor interaction cross section with spirit matter. If, as an exalted being I was only a physical body "half" of the universe would be basically hidden from me and likewise for a spirit body. It is only with both that the universe becomes completely accessible.

I'd say that the core germ of each of us is an intelligence which is truly immaterial - it can't be tied to any specific particle but is instead more like a localized law that manifests in discrete packets of material. A chip or aspect of the True Light (here I borrow a concept from Samuel Morris Brown's Dialogue essay "Mormons Probably Aren't Materialists"). This intelligence can manifest in a body made of spirit matter (whatever it is), physical, or some variety of fusion. The influence does not flow in just one direction, however, and so being layered on with a body leaves imprints in the intelligence. So we have a spirit body to train us in observing spiritual things, then we trade it for a physical body but carry with us "muscle memory" for perceiving spiritual things down here. When life is over and we no longer need distance from God, we get a new celestial body that is a fusion model that enables maximal access to the sensory domains of the universe. 

[Nofear]

29 minutes ago, Calm said:

Maybe only a minute part of the universe is accessible to us either as a physical body or a spirit body since there is nothing doctrinal as far as I can see preventing there being further types of material beyond intelligence, spirit matter, and physical matter (meaning the matter that we can currently observe, measure, or describe) and us receiving additional ‘layers’ of matter to our souls as part of our progression.  Perhaps there is a time body that allows us to be present throughout time.  After that, I haven’t a clue what attributes these bodies might have.

A thought that has occurred to me as well. There is so much that we don't know including vast amounts of things we don't know that we don't know.

[Nofear]

5 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

I'd say that the core germ of each of us is an intelligence which is truly immaterial - it can't be tied to any specific particle but is instead more like a localized law that manifests in discrete packets of material. A chip or aspect of the True Light (here I borrow a concept from Samuel Morris Brown's Dialogue essay "Mormons Probably Aren't Materialists"). This intelligence can manifest in a body made of spirit matter (whatever it is), physical, or some variety of fusion. The influence does not flow in just one direction, however, and so being layered on with a body leaves imprints in the intelligence. So we have a spirit body to train us in observing spiritual things, then we trade it for a physical body but carry with us "muscle memory" for perceiving spiritual things down here. When life is over and we no longer need distance from God, we get a new celestial body that is a fusion model that enables maximal access to the sensory domains of the universe. 

Curiously, the thought that "intelligence" is something fundamentally distinct from spirit matter is not all that pervasive of a thought in our theology. I think it must be so and so I have more of a tri-partite theology where we have physical, spirit, and intelligent matter. But, can this fundamental self-existent stuff we call intelligence be rightfully called "matter". Meh. I try not to get bogged down into linguistic traps that limit the possibility of what may be. So, I can very much identify and agree with the idea that "intelligence" is something different than either physical or spirit matter. My speculations go a different way than yours do but it's nice to hear your thoughts on the matter anyway. Different perspectives are nice to hear.

[the narrator]

17 minutes ago, Calm said:

.but why couldn’t it have been only what was accessible to MM in his visionary state and that processed by his very mortal brain?

That makes a whole lot more sense than MM's retinas responding to light refracting off of the refined matter of Jesus's spirit body.

[the narrator]

1 minute ago, Nofear said:

Curiously, the thought that "intelligence" is something fundamentally distinct from spirit matter is not all that pervasive of a thought in our theology.

I think it's pretty clear that for Joseph "intelligence" and "spirit" were interchangeable when it comes to the individual human spirit. This is what is found in Abraham, where spirits/intelligences are uncreated and essentially adopted by the most intelligent among them.

[Calm]

37 minutes ago, the narrator said:

It turns into nonsense when people demand that they defining ontological reality and should be understood in the same way that those terms are used to describe the physical world.

This, this, this…

Pulling a term/word out of one category and plopping it down into another where it is undefined is wonderful poetry, but poetry is a reflection of reality, not a pure description of it. 

[Calm]

11 minutes ago, Nofear said:

My speculations go a different way than yours do but it's nice to hear your thoughts on the matter anyway. Different perspectives are nice to hear.

This part of the discussion is more refined fun.  

More speculations, please!

Edited May 2, 2024 by Calm