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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.

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…

OK. It's "correction" time on my assumptions. Please correct my following assumptions, since you indicate they are in error (open invite to set me straight):

My assumptions are based on the following:

Assumption (a) The Heavenly Father of the LDS has a body of flesh & bones as he was born of physical parentage;

(b) Either his parents were gods (of which there is a line of authority) [See Mormon Doctrine, p. 516: "This doctrine that there is a mother in heaven was affirmed in plainess by the First Presidency of the Church...when...they said..'that all men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother'"]...Note: since many LDS use "image" of Genesis to assign divinity to humanity, I suppose we can infer that when an LDS apostle talks about "similitude" re: Heavenly Father to his parentage, that they, too, were divine.

See also: This is based upon the following LDS prophet assertion by Joseph Fielding Smith: "God is an exalted man...our Father in Heaven at one time passed through a life and death and is an exalted man...The Prophet [Joseph Smith] taught that our Father had a Father and so on...promises are made to us that we may become like him" (Doctrines of Salvation, vol.1, p.10-12).

OR the god Heavenly Father was/is subject to was of a previous generation of men or gods (in which a line of authority also existed).

(c)The fact that we know there's a "family" of gods out there is that Joseph Smith freely talked about a "divine council" of gods...referenced it in D&C 121 + the LDS Book of Abraham talks about gods counseling "among themselves" (chptr 5)

With such a "council of gods" we know that councils and forming worlds (as is the discussion of the book of Abraham) are done with order (vs. random or chaos). Therefore, order implies authority. Design implies Designer. Some Designer had either final or original authority--even if you say it was "collectively" done.

So, simply put, an orginal god or a council of gods authorized the progression of others to join them as either a "greater council" or gods, or to progress from man to god. [Either way, it was "authorized"]

So, please set me staight. I am simply and utterly confused how a church that puts so much absolute emphasis on priesthood authority can somehow look up at the heavenlies, and say that "lines" of authority don't exist beyond our god(s), even tho we know he wasn't the original one.