Item Detail
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27245
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0
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0
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English
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Stepping up to the challenge :
concerning God's materiality -
Provo, UT
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Brigham Young University
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49
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Honors Thesis
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This thesis examines Stephen Parrish's arguments against God's materiality in his contribution to The New Mormon Challenge. As others have done to assess philosophical work, I will break his arguments down into the strongest premise-conclusion form that I can. I will then test their strength with ciritcal questions such as, Do the conclusions properly follow from the premise? and Is his language strength appropriate for the conclusion drawn? Exposure to these types of questions will reveal the cogency of his respective arguments.
In Part 1, I examine Parrish's reasoning in concluding that the Mormon God is an ontologically contingent being; I show that his arguments can apply properly to God only if we assume: a) that God's mind/intelligence is essentially material, and b) that our scientific model for describing visible matter applies to all matter. Either assumption is potentially problematic. In Part 2, I demonstrate that Parrish's notion of self-existence is self-defeating; the distinctions established between something's "nature" and its "definition" seem to cause self-existence to collapse altogether. I further argue that while analytical arguments may demand that we draw some conclusions conceptually, they hold very little weight factually. In Part 3, I turn my attention to Parrish's assertion that the notion of an infinite regress of gods is "fraught with difficulties," showing that the arguments supporting his statement contain errors. I conclude that the Mormon doctrine of divine embodiment demands more respect than Parrish suggests: Mormon doctrine in fact provides powerful answers of its own to important philosophical questions.