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To: DelphiUser
Does your father have authority over your kids unless you give it to him?

As Jesus told a certain civil leader, "You wouldn't have authority over you unless it was given to you from above."

Likewise, no father has any inherent authority. It is derived from our Father above.

For the Christian who says there was no God before Heavenly Father (Isaiah 43), that is satisfactory.

For the Mormon who believes that Heavenly Father received his authority from a previous God, it's a problem.

So I simply quote Jesus' line of argument and apply it according to the principle of regression--tracing authority to its original source: "You, earthly father, would have no authority unless it was given to you from above." "You, Heavenly Father of this earth, would have no authority unless it was given to you from above." "You, Father-god of Heavenly Father of this earth, would have no authority unless it was given to you from above." "You, Grand-god of Heavenly Father of this earth, would have no authority unless it was given to you from above."

Now with an ultimate God somewhere, in computer language the above would go on forever. Mathematically, it's called infinite regression. You cannot proceed infinitely on authority that receeds into impersonal infinity.

2,215 posted on 05/11/2007 1:40:16 PM PDT by Colofornian
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To: Colofornian
I said:Does your father have authority over your kids unless you give it to him?

You said:As Jesus told a certain civil leader, "You wouldn't have authority over you unless it was given to you from above." Likewise, no father has any inherent authority. It is derived from our Father above.

Tell that to your father, go on, ask him if he has his line of authority after breaking a rule, come on, then tell me how that works for you.

For the Christian who says there was no God before Heavenly Father (Isaiah 43), that is satisfactory. If they have your attitude, that is not true, they will want proof that there is no one else they can talk to… For the Mormon who believes that Heavenly Father received his authority from a previous God, it's a problem.

IF we believed that, then it might be a problem, but since we don’t, it isn’t.

I thought we had agreed not to tell people what they believe…

So I simply quote Jesus' line of argument and apply it according to the principle of regression--tracing authority to its original source: "You, earthly father, would have no authority unless it was given to you from above." "You, Heavenly Father of this earth, would have no authority unless it was given to you from above." "You, Father-god of Heavenly Father of this earth, would have no authority unless it was given to you from above." "You, Grand-god of Heavenly Father of this earth, would have no authority unless it was given to you from above." Now with an ultimate God somewhere, in computer language the above would go on forever. Mathematically, it's called infinite regression. You cannot proceed infinitely on authority that receeds into impersonal infinity.

God is capable of infinite regression, we are not. To continue the computer analogy (beyond reasonable bounds) your Stack space and mine are not big enough to handle that offset and our processors are way to slow, so the master computer giving us our instructions has not assigned us that problem to solve. He only assigns us problems we are capable of solving, but some processors just don’t seem to be happy accepting programs and corrupt their programs looking for “More” than has been revealed, or programmed into them.

IMHO This is beginning to be a real ugly analogy.
2,222 posted on 05/11/2007 2:10:21 PM PDT by DelphiUser ("You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think")
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