Mormonism is popping up in the oddest places:

http://www.economist.com/node/21564180

Snippet:

Above all, though, it was Hobbes’s scientific materialism that rendered him an anathema. Like Descartes, and other devotees of the “new philosophy” pioneered by Galileo, Hobbes regarded nature as a machine. But he took this idea further than anyone else and maintained that absolutely everything is physical. There are no immaterial spirits: man’s immortality begins with the resurrection of his body. And God himself is a physical being. This is what made Hobbes an “atheist” to practically everyone except himself. For most of history an “atheist” was a man who worshipped the wrong God, not no God at all; a physical God, as imagined by Hobbes, was not really God.

Hobbes’s idea is one of the rarest heresies in the history of Christianity. Some have claimed that Tertullian, one of the Latin Fathers of the Church, believed it. But the idea was abhorrent to all denominations until the 19th century, when the new American religion of Mormonism adopted it. Like Hobbes, Mormons maintain that the Bible means what it says in the passages that describe man as made in God’s image. If Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate in next month’s American presidential election, believes the scriptures of his own religion, he accepts that God the Father “has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s”—the very belief which caused Hobbes to be vilified for centuries. (This may turn out to be the least of Mr Romney’s problems.)

Hey human:)

Seems like everybody is watching conference, which I guess surprises me. It would take a LOT of money for me to watch that dull soul-sucking drivel again.

Interesting article, I didn't know Hobbes had a corporeal view of god. I've always found him and his philosophy rather repulsive, so don't know it as well as others. I prefer Montaigne who seems to have maintained a sense of humanity in his philosophical thoughts in the face of trying times, unlike Hobbes. Have you read How to Live, the recent bio about him? Loved it.

I just finished The Creation of Inequality, loved it. I'll be rereading Hierarchy in the Forest this week, and I've got Boehm's new book, Moral Origins, coming from the library. I saw this article referenced at warincontext.org, interesting that it was originally posted to Slate, that libertarian domain.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolution/2012/10/groups_and_gossip_drove_the_evolution_of_human_nature.single.html

I'm eating breakfast and feeling crappy, this cold and fever are miserable.

I envy your apparent ability to read quickly, I really do. I'm a tediously slow reader because I tend to dramatize the voice(s) on the page in my head, pronouncing every syllable aloud (in my head). If I come across something in the book that contradicts the kind of voice and the images I've been using, I might just go back and reread with the updated sounds and images. Needless to say, I read experientially rather than for information; therefore, I value how things are said much more than what is said.

Re Hobbes: not an expert, but I think he's being sly rather than declaring an actual belief in a corporeal God. He was fiercely iconoclastic, which is why I like him.

Montaigne is a prince. My thousand plus, grey-hardbound Everyman copy is well used, well marked and unfortunately spine-scuffed beyond recognition. I've thumbed through the bio but opted against it. Like Proust, Montaigne's book is himself: I take his note *To The Reader* very much to heart.

And hey, don't be shy about starting threads about Boehm's book. The nature and origin of morality is very much on topic and of a keen interest to many RfMers. I can't always reply but I'm most likely reading.

Cheers, and hope your health has returned...(although laying in bed slightly feverish drinking tea and reading, say, Montaigne is part of the good life, I should think).

Human

A thought stopper I've heard from TBMs relates to this. When I tell them I don't believe in the supernatural, they counter that they don't either! "Everything God does is totally within natural laws. It's just that we don't yet understand the higher ones. Everything in the CK is made of matter, nothing magic about it! It's just more refined matter."

Odd, eh?

Mormons, unlike any Christian denomination that I know of, can honestly claim to be just as hard-core Materialists as Science's Rational Materialists.

The "rational" part is, of course, another matter.

Actually, I think the materialism of Mormonism is its greatest theological strength. First, as you suggest, it is a quasi-scientific view that was ahead of its time, allowing for the predominance of natural law over even God. Second, the "as man is god once was" notion, suggests evolutionary principles that also were ahead of their time. So we have evolution of man (and life itself?) in the context of hierarchical material world.

Also, the identification of spirit as "refined matter" suggests a kind of modern reductionism akin to modern particle physics where the distinctions between "matter," "energy," "particles," and "fields" becomes quite ellusive. Again, I think here Mormonism is possibly theologically ahead of its time.

Note, however, that the above positive points do not represent a consistent view in Mormonism, and was the subject of controversy from the beginning. Unlike Hobbes, Mormonism also subscribes to a dualistic doctrine of "spirit" and body ("The spirit and body are the soul of Man") without coming to terms with the relationship between the two. It often seems from Mormon literature that materialism and "spiritism" as applied to man are conveniences to be invoked depending upon the context of the issue at hand. This has resulted in theistic confusion as Mormonism has tried to reconcile traditional views of God with its own materialism. In short, along with the limitations of God imposed by materialism, Mormonism wants omniscience, omnipotence, divine creation, and at times trinitarian theology, betraying its materialist roots. More recently, rejecting evolution and distancing itself from the "as man is" doctrine, in favor of more traditional theology, undermines the materialist bent of the JS first vision theology.

The ultimate source of Mormonism's theistic materialism can be perhaps traced to several writers, possibly including Hobbes. It is not clear to me where JS got this; certainly not from Sidney Rigdon, who would have found this abhorant, and who argued against it. In fact, this very point undermines those who seem to inflate SR's role in early Mormonism in order to account for the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon doesn't contain the materialistic theism of Mormonism from just a few years after its publication. I don't think you can discount Sidney Rigdon's possible role in its production by saying that JS later adopted views that opposed SR's.

I'm not sure what to think of the idea that Mormonism is theologically ahead of its time (how is Theology progressive?), but I agree wholeheartedly that theologically Mormonism is extremely interesting.

The problem, of course, is that LDSinc has run away from everything that is theologically interesting! And what's worse, has embraced their most boring book (BofM) and have run far far away from their most interesting books (PofGP, D&C).

The Adam/God doctrine was very interesting, not the least of which because of its kabbalistic associations. The same with the King Follett Discourse.

Even the idea of "families are forever" is interesting when you carve away the sugar and spice. Lurianic kabbala holds the idea of *gilgul*, that around a common "spark" a family of souls is rooted. These kinds of associations interested me even as a TBM. Of course, they weren't necessary for my salvation, so...



As a TBM I actually bucked very hard against Mormon Materialism, and tried to somehow make sense of it using the kabbalah idea of Adam Kadmon. What kept me Mormon for longer than my doubts was hoping that a) there was a higher teaching held secret by the 12 that understood a physical god as metaphorical, and b) somewhere behind Joseph Smith's writings about "mind" "intelligence" "spirit" "soul" "body" "divinity" was something solid, coherent and profound.

Nope.

Above is a response to Bemis. My posts haven't been threading properly, lately.

Like many ideas that modern peope mistake for novelties, materialism actually has an ancient precedent.

It was known as atomism back then and was advocated by the Epicureans as well as others.

I would also argue that mormonism is basically materialist in name only--at the end of the day, they are basically dualists.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/09/2012 08:33PM by archytas.

Mormon theology has never been ahead of its time, of its time yes, changed over time, yes and stolen, borrowed uncredited and cobbled together from other people's idea, yes.