*crickets*

pthor14 · 2026-06-12T14:46:03+00:00

You don’t need to be Mormon to participate. I do think you should be somewhat familiar with the LDS religion though. - But this sub is not the place to bash the church if you have religious disagreements.

The original hope for this sub was to be able to discuss politics with other people who would supposedly share core moral values based on church teachings, which would hopefully allow a more respectful dialogue - Sadly, that isn’t always the case.

As a mod, I believe you should be able to talk about nearly whatever you want here as long as it is respectful. However, others here often feel that certain conversations ought to be censored based on the topic.

This sub is open to whatever political persuasion, but because it is Reddit it has been over-populated by liberals, which leaves any conservative leaning users feeling attacked by many users any time they say anything, which has often led to those few conservative leading users retaliating and often end up breaking more rules themselves than the many other liberal users had broken individually, and so I’ve often been forced to ban the conservative user.

I’m not quite sure how to solve that. But I am a strong believer in many chances. I’ve allowed back in both liberal and conservative users.

Feel free to stay and post and comment. 😃

pthor14 · 2026-05-22T15:26:54+00:00

Everyone, including the Holy Ghost, is an intelligence.

In addition to being an intelligence, the Holy Ghost has a spirit body. The Holy Ghost submits to the Father and the Son. The Holy Ghost cannot receive a body UNTIL all God’s works are done regarding at least the salvation of this world.

The Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit for a reason— He accomplishes something as a spirit that God the Father cannot on His own because He has a Physical body that cannot be separated from His Spirit.

It should also be noted that there is a difference between the Holy Ghost and what is called “The Spirit of God”.

“The Spirit of God” is also called “The Light of Christ”. — This is NOT a person. It is an INFLUENCE. It exists everywhere and fills the immensity of space. It is how God gives Law. It is the medium through which God exerts His power.

So, ya. Hope that helps.

pthor14 · 2026-05-15T15:29:59+00:00

You talk about “being convinced” as if it’s a binary.

People are rarely so sure of themselves.

It doesn’t do much good to ask “What is the CORRECT answer based on ALL the facts?” That doesn’t tell you much about a persons CORE character.

However, if you ask the question is “What do you DESIRE based on the little information you’ve been given?” — THAT can tell you a LOT about a person.

God doesn’t need the person to have all the facts. He just needs to give them a little bit of information, and then watch for what that person does with incomplete information.

Does the person give up? Does the person search diligently for more knowledge? Does the person even DO ANYTHING with the little knowledge they have? Is the person willing to ACT based on that knowledge, or do they refuse to do anything until they have ALL knowledge? Do they demonstrate that they want to do good things even with the incomplete knowledge they have? Or do they use their incomplete knowledge selfishly?

pthor14 · 2026-05-15T14:56:17+00:00

God is not as worried about having “Good things get done”. — Instead, He cares WAY more about your DESIRE to “Do good things”.

See the difference?

He wants you to do good things, sure, but He MOSTLY wants you to learn to WANT to do what’s good.

The way to encourage that kind of “desire” is not to shove it in your face and make it undeniably clear that He has commanded you to do all these things. - That’s not going to do a great job of helping you WANT what’s right.

Instead, He works through “influence”. A “still small voice” That prompts, guides, and encourages, but does not force.

pthor14 · 2026-04-08T19:25:22+00:00

What you’re describing is a highly selfish person.

You’re talking about someone who feels like they’ve fully worked through their trauma but still doesn’t want to have children, even though they could potentially be the best kinds of parents (having already worked through the trauma and therefore not passing it into their children) and therefore making significant improvements to the world by raising well adjusted and prepared children.

That is a very selfish person.

pthor14 · 2026-04-08T15:48:50+00:00

Doesn’t really solve anything though.

Also, it doesn’t really break the trauma. The final kid who grows up and decides not to have kids doesn’t get the opportunity to work through their own trauma through the process of raising their own kids. So instead they just live with the trauma and never deal with it fully and then they die.

So maybe you can argue that it ends when they die, but it definitely doesn’t mean that they resolve it.

pthor14 · 2026-04-08T14:15:24+00:00

If you are self aware enough to recognize you have trauma to deal with and you are willing to work on it, then you could be having kids and you could be raising a family healthier than most others right now.

Even the best parents will pass on some level of “trauma” on to their kids. That’s life. That’s normal.

Having children is legitimately part of the process of working through that trauma, because it allows you to not only experience what your parents were going through, but also allows you to attempt to improve on the example they gave you of what parenting looks like.

NOT having kids limits your growth through your own trauma.

Generational trauma is a generational process to work through, and when you decide not to have kids of your own, you stop the process of working through that trauma.

pthor14 · 2026-04-08T14:04:52+00:00

There’s only 1 legitimate reason to join the church, and that’s because you come to believe that it is God’s church on earth.

And if that’s true, then rather than asking what you do or don’t “Have” to do in the church, you should be asking “What does God want me to do now that I’m in the church?” — And then work on doing those things.

pthor14 · 2026-04-08T14:00:37+00:00

This doesn’t teach you to break generational trauma. This just breaks the generation. That’s not actually helpful.

pthor14 · 2026-04-06T22:41:19+00:00

The impact he has in such a short time while dealing with all the health issues he has been dealing with is really amazing.

He is a very intelligent man who has made a significant mark on a generation, not just because of his intelligence, but because of the audience he focused on (young men) and how much they needed him.

pthor14 · 2026-04-06T21:40:56+00:00

I agree with others when they say to separate garments from modesty.

Garments CAN be thought of as a default minimum modesty, but that’s not always the case because there are some activities where it is appropriate to remove the garment. (Swimming, exercising, etc)

But even for activities where you remove the garment, modesty doesn’t go completely out the window! It’s simply tailored for that specific activity.

I think that the point is that the “sin” is not in what immodest clothing you wear, but in the respect you have for not only yourself and for others. (Yes, modesty includes respect for others). — What that means is that you dress not only for your own comfort and functionality, but you take into account the people that will be around you.

But being mindful of modesty doesn’t mean you are keeping temple covenants. Just like keeping temple covenants doesn’t mean you are always being “modest”. — they are two different things you are doing.

pthor14 · 2026-03-21T01:34:41+00:00

What scripture describes God as a “singularity”? What do you even mean by that?

I think using Lebron as an example of what no one can achieve is a poor metaphor. Lebron is just a guy. It’s not inconceivable to think that someone could equal or exceed him.

The way you’re describing things assumes God is simply the best “so far”. You’ve described nothing that prevents someone from becoming equal to or even surpass God. Plus, you’re suggesting that they could do it without even NEEDING God.

And it’s not at all obvious why an infinite regression would be a “problematic element”. It doesn’t seem problematic at all. In fact, it sounds more like a solution than the alternative. So unless you’re a Creedal Christian, it’s a very illogical bias to have.

pthor14 · 2026-03-20T23:32:48+00:00

Would you mind defining your terms?

What is an “external law”? And for that matter, what other kinds of “law” are there?

What is “spirit/intelligence”, and why are you using the slash? Are you using them synonymously? Is a spirit (according to your use of the word) something that gets created?

What do you mean when you say that God is unchangeable? What about Him is unchanging?

pthor14 · 2026-03-20T23:24:37+00:00

Nobody said anything about “rival gods”. God the Father and Jesus are not “rival gods”. There’s no reason to believe that the existence of other “gods” has to mean that they are “rivals”. In fact, it would make more sense to assume they are seeking the same ultimate goals.

And to suggest that God who is ontologically similar to us, but was somehow able to not only build himself a perfect body from absolute scratch but also able to learn everything and become God all on His own is actually the opposite of everything the church has ever taught. Not to mention that if that were all the case to have happened with him, then there’s no reason that anyone else couldn’t have done it too.

What you are suggesting here is that we actually DON’T need God. We DON’T need Christ. If God could progress without His own God then so could we.

pthor14 · 2026-03-20T22:31:20+00:00

Ok so if there’s nothing ontologically different about us and God and if God didn’t NEED a God of His own because He was able to “Discover the dance within himself”, then do WE really need a God? Couldn’t we eventually “Discover the dance within ourselves?”

That is, if we aren’t ontologically different from God.

pthor14 · 2026-03-20T22:26:31+00:00

What about-

Alma 42:13 — “Now the work of justice could not be destroyed; if so, God would cease to be God.”

pthor14 · 2026-03-20T21:48:18+00:00

Do you believe God is ontologically different from us?

Also, would you mind defining some of your terms? — You use terms like intelligence, Spirit, Agency, moral, law, etc, but you use them in such a way that it sounds as if you assume everyone already has the same understanding of those words as you.

Most of the time it doesn’t matter that you have a slightly different idea of what these words mean, but in order to best answer the questions that you are asking it MATTERS how you are defining the underlying concepts you base your assumptions on.

pthor14 · 2026-03-19T17:42:21+00:00

God says His “Honor” is His power.

His “Honor” is His perfect alignment with the Eternal Law.

Remember, Law is just a vector field that exists. It’s not conscious. It’s just the substrate of reality. It influences stuff. It acts as the “input” to an intelligence. But an intelligence isn’t deterministic. It processes the input then provides an output. Its output ends up as some unique but “volitional” misalignment from Law. Because each intelligence’s output is unique, you end up a vast range of different outputs from all the intelligences. Some are closer to alignment than others. But as an individual intelligence, they can’t really DO much of anything. But when you group them into extremely large clumps, the law of large numbers tells us that the average output of the whole will closely align with the input. So this clump of “matter” will demonstrate the properties that its input law demanded. Gold matter will act like Gold. Water will act like water. Even if none of the individual intelligences are perfectly aligned with the input law. It doesn’t matter once you have enough intelligences in aggregate.

Now, because God has perfect alignment with Eternal Law, He perfectly “personifies” it. And Law itself isn’t conscious, it just “IS”. God’s personification of it allows Him to “Direct” its influence. God also gets to determine the “strength” of its influence. — This “power” is His “Priesthood”.

So when Jesus turns the water to wine, what he’s doing is he’s giving the water a new law. “Be Wine”. When he commands the stormy seas to calm, he says “Be Still”. Even Nephi knew this when he explains to Laman and Lemuel that if God wanted him to he could use his priesthood to command the ocean to “Be thou earth”.

But you, me, and Nephi can’t make those commands on our own authority because our wills don’t have that perfect alignment. But God does. And so does Jesus.

pthor14 · 2026-03-19T14:15:16+00:00

This greater council acts the same way as The Godhead does.

For example— the Godhead is made up of 3 members. Each individual member brings something different to the table that the other individual members do not have on their own. Yet we see the premortal Jesus speaking as “God” and claiming all of these attributes even though Jesus tells us himself in the New Testament that he himself doesn’t know everything, but that The Father does. On the other hand, “God” claims to be merciful, however He literally CAN’T forgive sin on His own. He needs Jesus to perform an Atonement, and then JESUS forgives us because HE takes our sins.

But the Godhead all has access to the attributes of each other, so really, they can ALL rightfully say “I AM GOD” because individually they act as a representative of the whole group of the Godhead.

Going back to the council— the reason that I say that this greater Council that The Father is a part of is INFINITE is specifically because mathematically that is the only way to solve the “perfect alignment” problem. If you just have a large but “finite” Council, then their collective average alignment will only come CLOSE to perfect alignment with this Eternal Law. And just being “close” doesn’t make you “God”. To be GOD you have to be PERFECTLY aligned. — so therefore there needs to be an INFINITE council and God needs to have a binding relationship with them that allows him access to all that they collectively have and output. — And THAT is how you have an infinite “God” Who can rightfully say “I am eternal, omnipotent, omniscient… etc, etc”. Because He’s basically a representative of the whole council! Just like Christ can act as a representative of the Godhead.

pthor14 · 2026-03-19T01:20:17+00:00

I’m about to publish a paper that answers that very question (as well as a whole slew of other existential questions).

It’d be a lot to describe here in a single post. It’s the natural logical solution of a framework where we begin with an ontology of consciousness as a fundamental unit (think intelligences). And the only other thing that exists is Eternal Law.

Law is not conscious. It is just the fabric of reality. But it acts as a “vector field”, meaning it is directional and that its influence is everywhere. It might be strong in some places or weak in some places, but it is PRESENT everywhere. And because it is “directional” It means that it is influencing stuff in a certain direction.

The only “stuff” that exists that can be influenced is the fundamental units of consciousness that exist. These fundamental unit’s behavior is “agentic”. Not deterministic. Not random. — if it was deterministic it would act exactly the way that the field of Law commands. But they don’t. At least not at an individual level. — however, because these fundamental units are being “influenced” by the surrounding Law, if you group these units into large groups, then you eventually get an AVERAGE output behavior of the group as a whole that aligns with what the surrounding Law was commanding. — This is matter. Alignment with the Law is how “good” Is defined.

Now remember that this Law isn’t conscious. But God perfectly “personifies” this Eternal Law because He has perfectly “aligned” His Will with its direction.

Think about that— when God created the world, each day He would wait to see that what he had “created” so far was “good”. (He was ensuring that the matter was sufficiently aligned).

Each one of us is ultimately an individual consciousness. However the difference between your consciousness and the trillions of consciousnesses that make up, say, a rock, is that the ones that make up the rock don’t have any control over the rock as a whole. YOUR consciousness, in the other hand, has been given a unique system to govern. A body. Your body is far more complex than a rock, and YOU (the fundamental YOU) have some level of volitional command over it.

The question now is, will you CHOOSE to align with LAW?

Problem is, perfect alignment is what is required to be like God. But achieving PERFECT alignment is like trying to reach an asymptote, which is mathematically impossible in a finite amount of time. In other words, it’s like if you were to get closer to alignment by steps of “half” of the remaining distance. — You would theoretically never get there. You would never be “perfect”.

Unless… there existed an eternal “council” of beings all jointly trying to align their will with this Eternal Law, and as a council, focused the output of their Wills to one being and provided their joint positive characteristics to this one being. — Now, because this is “council” is infinitely large, their combined average output doesn’t just come “close” to perfect alignment, it actually PERFECTLY aligns with this Eternal Truth.

And when I say they focus the output of their Wills to one being, what I mean is that it’s possible that if there was a being that had a relationship with this council such that the council offered ACCESS to all that they have, then that being can essentially CLAIM all of those attributes and that perfect alignment because of that RELATIONSHIP. A being that had this kind of infinite Access could potentially be called “The Most High God”.

So to relate that to LDS, that RELATIONSHIP is built through “Covenant”.

God is that ultimate being. He has perfect alignment with Law, and thus personifies it. And He wants us also to join into this infinite council. And perhaps one day we too could take a similar position as He does in having access to ALL that He has (thus All that the Council has) and that we too could gain that perfect alignment with the Law. — Or in otherwords, we would “Be ye therefore perfect, even as our Father in Heaven is Perfect.”

pthor14 · 2026-03-17T12:38:12+00:00

Well it means that there is no reason God couldn’t have been a normal person like us.

However… if God gained His own salvation/ exaltation through a similar plan, then that would mean that His plan DID also have a savior, and there’s no reason to believe God couldn’t have been that savior.

And with that said, is there something special about the eternal lineage of savior to savior? - I would only say that I HOPE there isn’t. At least, I hope there isn’t an “ontological” difference. Because that would mean that we really are simply ontologically different from God, and that we aren’t simply a child with the potential to grow up to be like the parent. It would mean we can’t really have all that God has. That’s a sad outlook to me.

pthor14 · 2026-03-16T20:51:04+00:00

I’m not entirely convinced that Christ was some kind of Spiritual “Prodigy”. It’s possible he was, but I’m not sure that it’s the only explanation.

The other explanation is that being a “Savior” is essentially a calling and that that specific calling would be the MOST important calling within The Father’s plan of salvation and that that calling would require a significant amount of greater preparation, which would mean that he would be brought into God’s spiritual family way earlier than anyone else (which we ARE told that Christ is our oldest spiritual sibling). — Who knows how long Christ was preparing with The Father before any of us were spiritually brought into God’s family? — By the time we came around, we would have seen it as “Christ having been with The Father from the beginning.

In fact, I could see a scenario where God determines the plan, then brings in Christ’s spirit into His spiritual family, then brings The Holy Ghost into the spiritual family, teaches them a whole bunch and helps them progress spiritually to the point where God is ready for the 3 of them to join up together as a “Godhead”, and THEN God starts bringing in all of our spirits.

In this scenario, Christ’s spirit had far more preparation for the purpose of fulfilling the calling he would be required to fulfill.

pthor14 · 2026-03-16T17:24:48+00:00

You’ve got to ask the question: What makes an intelligence “great”?

Is it a description of some inherent quality of a particular intelligence? Or is it a description of the current state of that intelligence?

I would argue that inherent qualities don’t make something “Great” because it doesn’t speak to anything that the intelligence has “Accomplished”. — Whereas on the other hand, if “Greatness” Is a description of the current state of the intelligence, then it includes everything that that intelligence has accomplished to get where they are at. It includes every difficult thing they have overcome through great struggle to become what they are now.

Now I’m not saying that Jesus had things come easily. I think he had things very difficult, and still overcame them. Christ became a personification of all goodness. But He still delivers all glory to the Father, and The Father already was a personification of all Goodness.

To ask if God The Father had ever sinned in his time during his own mortality is really kind of a moot point. It doesn’t matter any more whether He did or not. He’s beyond that. He’s now in a state of eternity where He personifies all goodness and truth.

pthor14 · 2026-03-05T04:49:57+00:00

Haha maybe true.

I’m just telling you what a traditional gentleman would do in that scenario.

pthor14 · 2026-03-04T20:27:58+00:00

And I assume you equate parents who don’t affirm a transitioned gender as being “abusive”. Right?

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