mnkbdky

I thought I might start a discussion about the possibility of the Mormon concept of God. So, here it goes:

In their book The Mormon Concept of God, Francis Beckwith and Stephen Parrish put forth an argument against the existence of the Mormon God. The argument runs similar to this:

(1) The existence of the LDS God requires an infinite series of causal events
(2) Anything that requires an infinite series of causal events to exist cannot come to exist
(3) Therefore, the LDS God cannot come to exist (From 1 & 2)
(4) Anything that cannot come to exist does not exist
(5) Therefore, the LDS God does not exist (From 3 & 4)

This argument is a deductive argument. Thus, if the premises are true, then, so is the conclusion. The question then is "Are the premises true?"

The truth of (1) -- The existence of the LDS God requires an infinite series of causal events

The first premise appears to be true. As proof, Beckwith and Parrish cite several quotes from various Mormon authorities. For example, Joseph Smith once stated, This at least seems to suggest, since on this earth we all have parents, that the Father also had parents and, thus, came to exist. As further evidence, they cite Joseph Fielding Smith, the 10th President of the "Utah" LDS church, who once stated, and Heber Chase Kimball, one of the original twelve apostle of the LDS church, who stated, From these statements one may reasonably assume that the existence of the Father of this world depended on the existence of an infinite series of Fathers before him.

It appears then that (1) is true, that is, the LDS God does require an infinite series of causal events to come to exist.

The truth of (2) Skipped -- Anything that requires an infinite series of causal events to exist cannot come to exist.

As we will see, this is the crucial premise to the argument. But for now, for the sake of argument, let us assume that it is true.

The truth of (3) -- Therefore, the LDS God cannot come to exist.

This premise, is merely the conclusion of (1) and (2). Thus, if (2) is true then (3) is necessarily true. It is a logical entailment.

The truth of (4) -- Anything that cannot come to exist does not exist.

The truth of this premise just seems self-evident. If it is impossible that something exist, then, it does not exist. For example, it is logically impossible that a married bachelor exist. In other words, a married bachelor cannot exist. Thus, a married bachelor does not exist. Similarily, then, if it is impossible that X come to exist, then, X does not exist. There does not seem to be much that is more obviously true than (4).

The truth of (5) -- Therefore, the LDS God does not exist.

This premise is just the conclusion of (3) and (4). If they are true, then, (5) necessarily follows. It is a logical entailment. But as we saw, the truth of (3) depends on the truth of (2). Thus, we need to assess whether (2) is true or not.

The truth of (2) Addressed-- Anything that requires an infinite series of causal event to exist cannot come to exist.

Usually those who believe (2) to be true rely on a principle that J. L. Mackie has dubbed "al-Farabi's Principle," which states
But why should we think that this principle is true?

Thomas Aquinas has a particularly famous argument for accepting al-Farabi's principle. He argues,

Essentially, what Aquinas is saying here is that if you "remove" the first cause you will have no intermediate cause(s) and, thus, no last effect. For example, suppose you have three dominos, D1, D2, and D3. In order for D3 to fall D2 must fall and in order for D2 fall D1 must fall. Thus, D3's falling ultimately depends on D1's falling. That is, the falling of the last domino depends on the first. If you "remove" the first domino from the picture then none the intermediate dominos will fall and, thus, neither will the last domino. In other words, if you "remove" D1 from the picture D2 will not fall and, thus, neither will D3.

But this, claims Aquinas, is exactly what happens when one posits an infinite series of cause, the first cause is "removed." That is, in an infinite series of causes there just is no first cause. Thus, as Aquinas sees it, there will be no intermediate cause(s) and, thus, no last effect. Aquinas, then, believes that this demonstrates the truth of (2). If it does, then, since as we saw, the rest of the premises are logically entailed, the LDS God cannot exist. But, does the above demonstrate the truth of (2)? I am not sure it does.

J. L. Mackie believes that Aquinas' argument is unsound. He states,

What Mackie seems to mean here is that just because there is no FIRST cause in an infinite causal series, it does not follow that there are no causes whatsoever. Perhaps, one might reason analogously that since there is no first number in an infinite series of numbers that there are no numbers whatsoever. But this is clearly not true. It seems that Mackie is saying that those who would argue so have made a category mistake. The mistake is that infinity applies to the set as a whole, not to the things contained within the set. Yes, in an infinite series there is no first, but that does not mean there are not earlier items. For example, in an infinite set of dominos you may pick any domino within that set and there will be both earlier dominos and later dominos. Thus, just because there is no "infiniteenth" cause, does not mean that there are no earlier or later causes within the infinite set of causes. It seems then that there could be an infinite series of causes.

For the sake of argument, however, assume that an infinite series of causes is impossible. On may reasonably ask: "If an infinite series of causal events is impossible, then, what is the highest number possible of causal events?" At what point does the number of causal events become impossible? Is it 1,000,000,000,000? Is it less? Why? Is it more? Why? It seems that I can imagine there being an infinite amount of causes. That is, I can conceptually enter into a time machine and enter the date of 15,000,000,000 BCE and witness the Big Bang, which is a causal event. Now, let's just say that only one causal event happens each years, if that is the case the we have 15 billion causal events. So it appears that at least 15 billion causal events are possible. But we know that there are thousands upon thousands of causal events each year, thus, the number of possible causal event must be well over 15 billion. But where does it end? It does not seem that there is an end to how many causal events are possible. That is, we could always imagine one more causal event. But if that is the case, then it seems we can conceive of there being an infinite series of causal events.

Now if what has been said above is true, then, it seems that it is possible that there be an infinite series of causal event. And if it is possible, then, (2) is false. Hence, so are (3) and (5). Thus, the argument against the LDS God fails.

What do you think? Can there be an infinite series of causal events? If not, why? And what is the limit?

Regards,
MNKBDKY
:thumbs:

mnkbdky

Still no comments here, though.

Regards,
MNKBDKY :thumbs:

AdamWho

Philosophy aside, the Mormon is a ridiculous made up religion.

However, Mormons make great employees, hardworking and very obedient!

John Powell

POWELL:
It appears so.

POWELL:
I believe the conclusion is true despite the argument. I'm a former believer in Mormonism. Now, I'm a strong atheist.

POWELL:
Perhaps the claim is true, but not for the reasons given. Mormons believe that we were all eternal, uncreated intelligences before we progressed with the help of God to become things like spirits and such. Thus God, before He was God was something else. God has always existed as something, as have we, but not always as God. To Mormons, "God" is a role, a position. If God were to screw up (for example, lie) then He'd still exist, but He'd no longer be God to us. We'd rely on someone else, probably Jesus.

POWELL:
The argument is NOT "anything that cannot exist does not exist" which would be indisputable, but "anything that cannot COME to exist does not exist." The question I would want to ask Beckwith and Parrish is whether it's possible for their God "to come" to exist (I'm assuming they're Christians). If no then they should not be promoting that premise.

POWELL:
True.

POWELL:
Don't ignore the subtlety of "come to exist."

POWELL:
I skipped this part. If I need to address it, I will.

POWELL:
I would think that eternity would consist of such things. So, if Beckwith and Parrish believe in eternity they should believe in such things. However, their problem seems to be with an infinity of prior causal events leading up to something that exists now or in the past. They could be right about that being a problem if Mormons believed such a thing. Mormon doctrine is unclear. Jesus had a Father yes. The Father had a Father, I think that's Mormon doctrine. However, beyond that perhaps should be considered speculation.

As a believer, I speculated (I thought I was being inspired by God) that the first God evolved from an intelligence to a spirit on His own. What happened much before that nobody really knows since not even the first God remembers but they have what they think basically happened.

John Powell

Herb26

Premise number 4 makes matter impossible to exist. Matter certainly seems to exist anyway.

mnkbdky

I also believe the conclusion to be true, although not because of the argument.

Let me expand a bit on what Powell says above. In Mormon theology, everything that exists is a material entity. Mormonism is just a materialistic religion. As it states in the Doctrine and Covenants 131:7-8: "There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter."

Furthermore, both types of matter, spiritual and physical, are uncreated. That is, both spiritual and physical matter is metaphysically necessary. Creation on a Mormon view, then, is not creation ex nihilo, but rather creation ex materia. Creation is thus an organization of pre-existent matter. As it states in The Book of Abraham 3: 24 and 4:1, "We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell" and "the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth." Mormons then use the term creation much in the same sense that we might say Michael Angelo "created" the statue of David.

So it is true that in one sense the Mormon God did not come to exist, at least in the sense that the stuff he is constituted of has always existed. However, in another sense, the Mormon God did come to exist. The metaphysically necessary matter of which he was composed did not always existence in the way it does now. It was organized in such away by another. Thus, the Mormon God "came into existence" much in the same way as the statue of David. The granite may have always existed, but certainly it would be false to say that the statue always existed because of that. Certainly there was a time T that the statue of David did not exist and then a time T+1 that the statue did exist. Similarly, there was a time T that the Mormon God did not exist and then a time T+1 did, even though the material he is constituted of always existed. So, the statement The Mormon God "came into existence" is true.

This is an interesting interpretation of premise (4). Perhaps, this was just a bit of sloppy writing on my part. I should be kept in mind, however, that the argument presented is not the exact argument Beckwith and Parrish give. Remember, I said the argument is similar. Rather, the argument is my summation of what they said. So any sloppiness should not be attributed to them, but rather to me.

With that said, I agree that if (4) were true, then, since most theists believe that God did not "come into" existence, there God could not exist. Furthermore, as Herb26 notices in another post, many people today believe that matter or energy can neither be created nor destroy and, thus, did not "come into" existence, but rather has always existed. So again, if (4) were true, then, it would be impossible for matter or energy to exist. But it clearly does. The same may be said for numbers or logic, etc. It appears then that (4), on this interpretation, is false.

Thus, it seems the language of the argument must be cleaned up a bit. Let's try this:

(1) The existence of the LDS God requires an infinite series of causal events
(2) Nothing that requires an infinite series of causal events for its existence can exist
(3) Therefore, the LDS God cannot exist (From 1 & 2)
(4) Anything that cannot exist does not exist
(5) Therefore, the LDS God does not exist (From 3 & 4)

Perhaps, this is enough to avoid the problems discussed above.


Beckwith and Parrish, I presume, do not believe in an infinite regress of time either. Rather, they believe that time had a first moment. Time began at some distant point in the finite past. Beckwith and Parrish have a problem with all infinite regress, not just causal regresses. In representing their argument I chose only to represent causal regresses.

This does not seem to match with what the past authorities of the “Utah�? LDS church have said. It seems that they believed that every Father had a Father. In the first post I quoted Joseph Fielding Smith, the 10th President and Prophet of the "Utah" LDS church, who once stated,

I also quoted Heber Chase Kimball, one of the original twelve apostle of the LDS church, who stated,

The “and so on�? clauses in both statements seems to indicated that this process goes on forever. That is, the “and so on�? seems to me to say that our Father and god had a Father and god and his Father and god had a Father and god and his Father and god had a Father and god and . . .�?

Thanks for the comments, Powell. You too Herb26.

Regards,
MNKBDKY :thumbs:

John Powell

POWELL:
Yes. Anything like that in the Doctrine and Covenants is Mormon Doctrine.

POWELL:
That's not so clear. What is uncreated in Mormon theology is intelligence. An intelligence can "become a spirit" or "gain a spirit body" and a spirit can gain a physical body. In my theory, I came up with the idea that all that existed ultimately were things like intelligence, space, time, and an organizing principle in which intelligence naturally attracted other intelligence. I imagined that spirit matter and physical matter were altered kinds of intelligence.

POWELL:
I don't see that.

POWELL:
Yes.

POWELL:
Yes. Anything like that in the Pearl of Great Price is Mormon Doctrine.

POWELL:
Yes to the last sentence. If we accept that it is Mormon theology that the Father of Jesus had a Father then presumably the Father of Jesus became the spirit child of this earlier God. His spirit body was created by that God (and by that earlier God's female counterpart). However, in my theory (which is NOT Mormon doctrine, but I thought was a useful attempt to merge scientific ideas with Mormon theology), the first God by luck or trial and error figured out how to alter Himself to become spirit. That long arduous process of going from intelligence to spirit has since been streamlined.

POWELL:
Not "The Mormon God came into existence," but yes "The Mormon God grew in intelligence" and yes "The Mormon God came to be a spirit" and yes "The Mormon God came to be God."

POWELL:
That's better as far as premise 2. However, I still dispute the first premise. It seems to me to be based on a good faith misunderstanding of the words of Mormon prophets.

First off, every theological thing that a Mormon prophet claims is not necessarily accepted as Mormon doctrine. The Adam-God teaching of Brigham Young is such an example. Nevertheless, as a believer, I accepted as essentially true the kinds of things you referenced about the sequence of prior Gods.

If I were to say "your parents had parents who had parents and so on" would you take that to mean that there is an INFINITE regress of parents? No. In like manner, as a Mormon believer I interpreted that kind of language by Mormon prophets to allow for something analogous to abiogenesis occuring in the origin of the Gods. I assumed that they didn't say more because they didn't know more or we didn't really need to know more. Presumably, we would learn it in the next life if we didn't figure it out in this life.

POWELL:
What they believe could very well be true. However, our minds intuitively think of time and space as being infinite. For example, to think of the big bang we intuitively imagine time passing and then, later, the universe begins to expand into 3-D space.

POWELL:
Yet, assuming they're Christians, I guess they'll accept an omnibeing as having existed in some sense logically prior to the beginning of time.

It's like they prefer believing that Superman has existed since the big bang without a geneaology rather than accepting that life began on Krypton by abiogenesis and then changed via evolution with Superman being the son of Kryptonian parents.

POWELL:
I know. The Mormon church used to emphasize more how it differed from Christianity. The tendency today is towards greater similarity with mainstream Christianity.

I'm unclear as to what would be considered Mormon Doctrine on this matter. I'm not certain, but pretty confident that the claim "Heavenly Father had a father" would be Mormon doctrine. Beyond that it gets more uncertain.

POWELL:
That's one way to see it. However, consider again whether such language concerning physical parents would be interpreted in the same way, as going on FOREVER. I would expect in such a description, a Christian or Mormon would say "until you get to the first parents who were Adam and Eve." As a believer trying to figure this God geneaology thing out, I would say "until you get to the first God."

POWELL:
I think you'll find most modern Mormon apologists saying "we don't know" rather than defending such notions. They might even refuse to defend the idea that Jesus had spiritual grandparents.

John Powell

mnkbdky

And thank goodness for that otherwise the Mormon would have to believe that people lived on the moon and sun as BY also apparently thought.

Actually, yes I would. However, that is probably because as a philosopher (if I may be so bold) I take statements like that more seriously than others do. I will admit that perhaps somebody who is not trying to be precise with their language may speak in such a way.

Perhaps, but logically prior does not entail temporally prior. Indeed, they would respond that strictly speaking there was no time before creation.

It is true that many Mormons these days are uncomfortable with the thought that God was not always God and, thus, are interpreting the above passages differently. For instance, Blake T. Ostler and others interpret such passages as indicating that every Father-god became incarnate just as Jesus did. Thus, they may claim that there never was a time when our God, or any God for that fact, was not God. That is, our God did not evolve or progress into a God. Rather, he has always been God, but divested himself of the divine omni-properties and became finite to share in our present condition. Thus, by saying The Father had a Father and so ononly means that the Father's Father some how begat a child with a human mother and this allowed the Father to become a finite being. For an interesting book on this subject see Blake T. Ostler's Exploring Mormon Thought: The Attributes of God.

Of course, Beckwith and Parrish, as well as myself, are not unaware of the different theologies that exist within the "Utah" Mormon Church. Thus, this argument should only be seen as an argument against a certain type of LDS theology, namely, one that hold that our God was not always God, but rather came to be a God and the reason for his very existence, in the form that it is currently in, depends on an infinite number of organizing Gods before him.

But, of course, it does not seem that the argument works. At least that is the way it seems today. I often vacillate between thinking infinite causal regress are possible and think that they are impossible. Perhaps, next week I will think that Beckwith and Parrish are correct. The philosophy of infinity boggles my brain, keeps me up at night and makes me pull my teeth out (hair is too easy and not very painful).

Once again, thanks for the comments.

Regards,
MNKBDKY

John Powell[/QUOTE]
:thumbs:

trendkill

As soon as I read the argument, I could tell that this was going to be mostly about first cause issues. The Mormon God may not be the First Cause, and if not, then if you believe such arguments are correct then you'll question Mormonism. I agree that Mormonism can be considered a materialistic religion, in the sense that it's incompatible with idealism and with a lot of the historical arguments for God's existence.

However, it may have a few advantages theologically over other religions, it seems to me. For instance, it has less trouble with the Problem of Evil. God not being the First Cause and intelligence having existed eternally could conceivably get Him off the hook completely for the existence of evil.

John Powell

POWELL:
I hear you both. It sounds reasonable.

John Powell