"All spirit is matter" - Joseph Smith

[lax16]

Zaffiroborant,

I don’t know where you received the impression that I think “Catholics don’t believe in the Incarnation”. I think they do, but I don’t understand the details of how they think of it in detail as to what it means. Why should I try and understand what I perceive are inconsistencies among an entire set of beliefs?

I have more important things to do than try and reconcile those inconsistencies–rather, I see them and say to myself, “That’s fine for those who believe in that way–but I wouldn’t be on that same bridge.” And I certainly am aware that they have that same attitude about my beliefs–which is just fine, so long as the beliefs are talked about accurately and with raised questions, doubts–fine, just not scorn or that means they will have lost charity in the comment.

Parker - Catholics are accused of many things - but I have never heard anyone say Catholic teachings/beliefs are inconsistent.

Not to de-rail the thread, but which Catholic beliefs are inconsistent?

 

[Stephen168]

OK–then what Zaffiroborant said was that God can be worshiped anywhere, and did not put a stipulation about it–so the inconsistency is saying that He is closer in the church than somewhere else.

If you believe talking to your children in person or on the phone has the same level of intimacy, then you would see ‘inconsistency’ with people who believe it is more intimate in person.

Why should I try and understand what I perceive are inconsistencies among an entire set of beliefs?

I have more important things to do than try and reconcile those inconsistencies

That’s what I said Parker you can’t be bothered with trying to understand, it says a lot about you, how you perceive others and why you are here.

Yes, it does

 

[RebeccaJ]

RebeccaJ,

So I emphasize free will choice repeatedly in this forum, and note that Jesus deliberately acted in ways to keep free will choice available with no sense of “gotta believe this religion and this set of beliefs, because the ECF say such and such” about verses they had no idea what they meant, and you say I have not experienced freedom. Yeah, right.

ParkerD, that is not what I have said, or have ever said.

I suggest that not only do you have no idea what you’re talking about, but that it comes from your frame of reference that you don’t. I certainly am not offended by this kind of thinking, at all.

Jesus really did show by His actions that He was teaching people on the level they were prepared to receive. Thus He helped those “know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” who were prepared to receive the truths He had “hidden in a field.”

It simply goes over some heads. They would rather think He prepared a plan that forced everyone into compliance, using a verse that completely departed from all He had taught by saying “Peter is the rock.”

Anyone who conjectures that that kind of plan would be establishing “freedom” has no idea what they’re talking about as to the use of the word.

Ignorance is not freedom.

 

[belovucic]

Belov UCIC,

I’m glad you don’t, because neither do I in the way you described any of those items you mentioned. You have fashioned a caricature and called it something sacred, and might want to reconsider doing that sort of thing.

Peace to you, and have a good day.

This is why I don’t like Mormons. I don’t like (I don’t hate them, that’s the difference) them because they are too stubborn and inexhaustible (that is also why they knock at our door all over the time).
You have fashioned a caricature and called it something sacred, you said. Your Prophet made a faith which is a caricature of any faith.
I will say once more: it’s better and so beautiful to be Catholic and to believe in ONE God and to be a part of the Church which have founded JESUS CHRIST, not to believe in three gods, that everybody is or can become a god, God’s mistress (the most terrible), that God was a man once, Kolob etc. I would not be a part of church who founded a sinful HUMAN. It’s easiest to go to a forest and to claim that you have seen god(s) and to write the fairy tale about Jesus who visited in America. Great. I am going to write a book about Jesus’ vacations on Barbados. My Jesus is in hearts of all Christians of good will and in all Catholic churches all over the world. That’s the mystery of the Real Presence.

God may bless you and your souls and make you free from all heresies and fallacies which you have in the great quantity. The gates of RCC are opened to you.

 

[Jim_Dandy]

Jim Dandy, what is the basis for your belief that there is no “where” to spirits? Do you not believe that spirits are in Heaven, and that Jesus Christ bodily ascended to Heaven, implying that Heaven has some sort of “where”/physicality to it? Is not Christ’s body “somewhere”, and that where is supposed to be where the souls of the deceased that are saved currently are?

Christ in His resurrected body ascended into heaven. I’ve never seen a resurrected body, have you? Christ passed through walls, so His resurrected body can’t be material.

Again, spirits do not occupy space. “Where” means “in what location in space.” “Spirit prison” is a “where” word. “Where” is not a word that applies to spirits.

Heaven, hell, and purgatory are not “where” words. They are states of being.

Your god has a father and a grandfather and a great grandfather,and so on, and on . . . mere “exalted” humans. That is not the Christian God.

I have no objection to anything Mormons want to believe – I object to Mormonism being characterized as Christian.

Jim Dandy

 

[Inishfree]

Christ in His resurrected body ascended into heaven. I’ve never seen a resurrected body, have you? Christ passed through walls, so His resurrected body can’t be material.

Again, spirits do not occupy space. “Where” means “in what location in space.” “Spirit prison” is a “where” word. “Where” is not a word that applies to spirits.

Heaven, hell, and purgatory are not “where” words. They are states of being.

Your god has a father and a grandfather and a great grandfather,and so on, and on . . . mere “exalted” humans. That is not the Christian God.

I have no objection to anything Mormons want to believe – I object to Mormonism being characterized as Christian.

Jim Dandy

Jim.

I learned this when I was Protestant. About what you said in regards to the resurection of Jesus.

 

[Ahimsa]

I know all of this. Your post has missed my point. I have said that the real differences between Mormon materialism and normal, run-of-mill materialism are secondary features pertaining to the description of matter, but do not pertain to whether or not all existence is material. Where have your responded to this? The questions of the immortality of the soul and the susceptibility of matter to empirical observation are off-topic.

Smith’s redefinition of “material” or “matter” to include the “spirit” or “spiritual” doesn’t change the fact that matter and spirit are different in many ways; it *doesn’t *change the fact that descriptions of matter and spirit (as people normally conceived them) remain the same descriptions. But Smith’s redefinition is meant to show that matter and spirit are similar in one essential way, as well: both can be experienced and both can be seen – though spirit is normally seen and experienced by those morally purified.

And because matter and spirit can be experienced/seen, that makes both of them different from “intelligence”, a Mormon termed often used to describe that which cannot be objectively experienced or seen or measured.

The same holds here. You clearly think that the immortality of the soul has a lot of bearing at this point. Well, it does distinguish Mormonism [from] atheism; I have not contested that. But does it distinguish Mormonism from materialism? Consider these two propositions as alternative possible philosophies:
A) Matter is all that exists, and it is eternal.
B) Matter is all that exists, but it is not eternal. These are two different, mutually exclusive propositions, but they are both express materialist philosophies. The same holds for these:
A) All spirit is matter, and it is eternal.
B) All spirit is matter, and it is not eternal. By your account, proposition B counts as materialism, but not proposition A does not. Comparing this to the first set of propositions, do you see why I find this illogical?

I have no idea what you’re talking about here, because you haven’t defined “spirit”, “matter”, or “eternal”. But if I think I understand what you’re trying to get at, I would say that “A) All spirit is matter, and it is eternal” does count as materialism, as does “B)”.

 

[Ahimsa]

I did that for three years, and in all that time and ever since, you are the first person who has ever challenged me on whether Mormonism is materialist. They would pick apart my posts for any flaw they could find, yet no one ever called me out on that one.

That’s probably because, for Mormons, being a “materialist” does not exclude the belief in “spiritual” realities; nor does it exclude a pre- and after-life. Also, Mormons have a different definition of matter, anyway.

There’s a reason. Mormons are not only materialist, but throughout their history, they have specifically criticized traditional Christianity for “Immaterialism.” Take, as a respresentative, though not authoritative example, the following McConkieism from Mormon Doctrine:
*…
Reasoning along this line Orson Pratt wrote: “There are two classes of atheists in the world. One class denies the existence of God in the most positive language; the other denies his existence in duration or space. One says There is no God'; the other says God is not here or there, any more than he exists now and then.’ The infidel says God does not exist anywhere.' The immaterialist says He exists nowhere.’ The infidel says, There is no such substance as God.’ The immaterialist says There is such a substance as God, but it is without parts.' The atheist says There is no such substance as spirit.’ The immaterialist says `A spirit, though he lives and acts, occupies no room, and fills no space in the same way and in the same manner as matter, not even so much as does the minutest grain of sand.’ The atheist does not seek to hide his infidelity; but the immaterialist, whose declared belief amounts to the same thing as the atheist’s, endeavors to hide his infidelity under the shallow covering of a few words. The immaterialist is a religious atheist; he only differs from the other class of atheists by clothing an indivisible unextended nothing with the powers of a God. One class believes in no God; the other believes that Nothing is god and worships it as such.” (Cited, Articles of Faith, p. 465.)*If it seemed excessive of me to compare Monson with Dawkins, notice with what directness the same comparison is made here of us. The irony of course, it that McConkie’s reduction of immaterialism to atheism, depends on a premise he shares with most atheists: materialism. For the materialist, immateriality is the same as non-being, and so McConkie and Pratt simply jusge Christian thinking in that light.

Another person, that most everyone can agree was a materialist, who did the same thing was Thomas Jefferson. See how favorably he is quoted by an early Mormon radio personality Heber C. Iverson:
…Thomas Jefferson expressed himself in a letter to his distinguished friend, John Adams, in this wise, "When we speak of an immaterial existence, we speak of nothing; when we say that God, angels, and the human soul are immaterial, we say there is no God, no angels, no human soul." I cannot reason otherwise. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism or veiled atheism crept in, I do not know, but heresy it truly is. Christ taught none of it. True, he said, “God is a spirit!” but he had not yet defined what spirit is, nor hath he said that it is immaterial. And the Fathers of the first four centuries believed it to be material–fine, and ethereal, in very deed, but nevertheless material. The Prophet Joseph Smith declared that spirit is matter, that it is pure and elastic, fine and ethereal, but it is matter. Hence they found Christianity teaching an incomprehensible, immaterial, impossible God. Their belief in him is not founded upon the teaching of the past half century.If the implications of this argument are not plain enough, consider as well that the same quote from Jefferson is also cited favorably by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion (2nd ed., p. 63).

[The relevant part is in bold.] And, yet, Mormons believe in a spiritual pre-existence in the form of a spiritual body. One might ask, How does one reconcile the (apparent) Mormon rejection of “immaterial” beings, with the Mormon teaching of pre-existence of the soul?

The answer is quite simple: the word “immaterial” implies, for the average person (like Jefferson here), something that cannot be imagined. Most people have only experienced matter, and they can’t fathom how something non-“matter” could exist.

It is exactly at this point that Smith intercedes. Smith makes the point that what most think of as “immaterial” (and, thus, not capable of being experienced/seen) is, in fact, experience-able and see-able, if the moral purification is present. There was nothing preventing Jefferson from seeing angels and spirits, other than his lack of moral qualities.

Smith points out that since “spirit” can indeed be experienced, it makes little sense to call it “immaterial” (because of the connotations and denotations associated with that word). In fact, it would be less confusing if we just say that spirit is “matter” – not the everyday matter that we normally see, but matter that is see-able only to the morally purified.

 

[Ahimsa]

Don’t you know “how did all that is come about,” Ahimsa?



" Why not nothing?" why?

How did all that is, come about?

 

[zaffiroborant]

Z,

Then I will clarify. When I have presented a case of an inconsistency, all I am told is that it is because I don’t understand, or I am given a long dialogue about the Eucharist or about confession or about the Trinity, and the inconsistency remains–so it means I would be left to my own devices to try and figure out how the person on the other end reconciles the inconsistency, and instead of doing that I will agree with them that “I don’t understand.”

The inconsistencies are in the core beliefs, such as what I had tried to point out about “Spirit” and about praying in the church versus praying somewhere else which should mean that there is the same value, the same efficacy, in praying in that somewhere else as in praying in the church.

You haven’t clarified anything only reiterated that you can’t be bothered to try to understand someone else.

 

[jsaldar]

Spirit is definately not matter. What it is I don’t know and nobody will ever know in this lifetime.

 

[Ahimsa]

Spirit is definately not matter. What it is I don’t know and nobody will ever know in this lifetime.

How do you define “matter”?

 

[zaffiroborant]

RebeccaJ,

So I emphasize free will choice repeatedly in this forum, and note that Jesus deliberately acted in ways to keep free will choice available with no sense of “gotta believe this religion and this set of beliefs, because the ECF say such and such” about verses they had no idea what they meant, and you say I have not experienced freedom. Yeah, right.

A bit ironic coming from a person who from childhood spent 2 hours every Sunday being taught the LDS understanding of scripture. Who during high school had in addition to 2 hours on Sunday had 5 hours a week in seminary. Who as an a adult in addition to 2 hours on Sunday has home teachers visit regularly and 2 week ends a year of further instruction. Quite a few instruction manuals are on line for these various classes and they do a fine job of telling LDS what scripture means.

 

[zaffiroborant]

A bit ironic coming from a person who from childhood spent 2 hours every Sunday being taught the LDS understanding of scripture. Who during high school had in addition to 2 hours on Sunday had 5 hours a week in seminary. Who as an a adult in addition to 2 hours on Sunday has home teachers visit regularly and 2 week ends a year of further instruction. Quite a few instruction manuals are on line for these various classes and they do a fine job of telling LDS what scripture means.

In comparison Catholics generally have 1 hour a week during the school year for children up until middle or high school, and aside for those making their sacraments it is an option on a Saturday or week day evening. Other than that there are no classes set up for everyone to attend weekly. There are of course a variety of bible studies and other things but availability varies greatly from parish to parish and aside from the CCC The Catholic Church publishes no instruction manuals for these “classes”. This has been discussed frequently here and many lament this state of affairs you can find much about “poor catechesis” on these boards.

 

[roselily]

How did all that is, come about?

–
Ahimsa, you are wise and asked the right question.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=8062771#post8062771

“Buddhism fails to ask the most basic questions about our existence, such as: how did all that is come about? Why not nothing?”
but you are wise, have asked the question about our existence: ’ How did all that is, come about?’

:hug1:

 

[ParkerD]

Parker - Catholics are accused of many things - but I have never heard anyone say Catholic teachings/beliefs are inconsistent.

Not to de-rail the thread, but which Catholic beliefs are inconsistent?

Lax16,

I don’t like the word “accused” but rather it was a personal perspective and observation.

Here was my post (#49 or so) in answer to Soren1 that led to the comment about an inconsistency in the idea and practice of “worship” of God as Spirit:

I am glad to see that Catholics believe God can be worshiped everywhere, since I have often seen a comment that said someone needed to stop by their parish or cathedral to go in and pray, or was encouraging someone else to do that.

If Latter-day Saints believe God has a physical body but that His knowledge extends to knowing all things in the universe all at the same time, including knowing our thoughts and our feelings–as we do believe–then what it appears to me you are struggling with understanding is how that can be–how God could do that if He has a physical body.

Jesus did that when He had a physical body–He knew all things in the universe, and knew all thoughts and feelings. Are you saying God could not possibly do what Jesus showed that He could and did indeed do?

Why can’t God be worshiped in spirit (meaning our spirit is involved in the worship, and our body also–our mind, our feelings and emotions, our desire and commitment, our whole soul) and in truth (meaning that if we are doing true worship we will not be doing any sort of “faking” and will not be holding back from disclosing our innermost thoughts, feelings, emotions, “heart”–and also that the worshiper needs to have in mind a true relationship with God, where He is listening intimately and with full involvement and concentration, and yet have a physical body while being the Recipient of our worship?

God is all-loving power, energy, Light, Truth, Goodness, upholding all things by the word of His power and by the energy that emanates from His Person and extends throughout the universe. He can do that because He is Spirit with power, knowledge, and Truth emanating from His Person. This can happen from a Being with a physical body, as Jesus showed when He lived on the earth. (Surely you believe Jesus Christ had both a Spirit and a physical body.)

After that quote, it was reiterated to me that Catholics do believe in worship of God anywhere, any time (though of course not at the dump). But then someone turned around and said something to the effect that God is in the church building, so that is why He is worshiped in the church building. The Eucharist was also brought up as though a person is missing out on true worship if they don’t have that. So the inconsistencies with this situation are the difference between “anywhere, any time” and “at the church building where the Eucharist is and where God is”–yet the belief that God is a Spirit only would mean He is definitely not just in the church building, and the belief that Christ is resurrected and is in heaven would mean nor is He in the church building, nor does He need to be worshiped there, but rather “anywhere, any time”.

My desire would be that the feeling be absolutely certain and sure, that worship “anywhere, any time” for either the Father or the Son, who are One God, is correct and is not some secondary act of worship. Personal prayer, anywhere, any time, with one-to-one communication and words straight from the heart of the person praying alone, is a primary, glorious, uplifting act of true worship.

Another area of inconsistency was the conversation I had with SteveVH and Soren1 on the “LDS Beliefs about Jesus Christ” thread, where they seemed to imply by analogy that the Ten Commandments had “died” with the “old law”, in that Paul’s marriage analogy would mean that just as marriage ends at the death of a husband and the “new covenant law” said the wife could remarry, then that meant the “old law” (the Ten Commandments and the Two Great Commandments being part and parcel of the “old law”) had by analogy “died”.

The inconsistency is that of course Catholics believe in the Ten Commandments, and the Two Great Commandments, and those haven’t “died.” So the marriage analogy was not about whether or not there was such a belief as “eternal marriage”. Parts of the “old law” were still very much in effect.

 

[Stephen168]

After that quote, it was reiterated to me that Catholics do believe in worship of God anywhere, any time (though of course not at the dump). But then someone turned around and said something to the effect that God is in the church building, so that is why He is worshiped in the church building. The Eucharist was also brought up as though a person is missing out on true worship if they don’t have that. So the inconsistencies with this situation are the difference between “anywhere, any time” and “at the church building where the Eucharist is and where God is”-

If you believe talking to your children in person or on the phone has the same level of intimacy, then you would see ‘inconsistency’ with people who believe it is more intimate in person.

 

[Stephen168]

Another area of inconsistency was the conversation I had with SteveVH and Soren1 on the “LDS Beliefs about Jesus Christ” thread, where they seemed to imply by analogy that the Ten Commandments had “died” with the “old law”, in that Paul’s marriage analogy would mean that just as marriage ends at the death of a husband and the “new covenant law” said the wife could remarry, then that meant the “old law” (the Ten Commandments and the Two Great Commandments being part and parcel of the “old law”) had by analogy “died”.

The inconsistency is that of course Catholics believe in the Ten Commandments, and the Two Great Commandments, and those haven’t “died.” So the marriage analogy was not about whether or not there was such a belief as “eternal marriage”. Parts of the “old law” were still very much in effect.

What are the Two Great Commandments under the ‘old law?’

 

[ParkerD]

What are the Two Great Commandments under the ‘old law?’

Stephen,

See Matthew 22:35-40. See also Deuteronomy 6:5, and Leviticus 19:18 and 34. One may also see Luke 10:26-37 to learn more about “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

 

[Ahimsa]

Isn’t “immaterial matter” an oxymoron?

“Immaterial matter” is no more an oxymoron than “wave-particle duality”, the idea that sub-atomic particles exhibit characteristics of both a wave and a particle. “Immaterial matter” likewise is like matter in some ways, but unlike matter in others.