Hehe. We can call that the Clean Cut couplet. I think I’ll stick with the Lorenzo Snow couplet.

I’m also persuaded by the the KFD interpretation stated by J.:
“God the Father was once motal, like Christ (not like us)…We have nothing that states that God has ever been anything else than God.” Indeed, all our scriptures state that God is eternal, and Joseph wasn’t refuting the scriptures, but rather than God never had a mortal experience.

As for the Lorenzo Snow couplet, I think it needs to be understood better by putting a different slant on it: “As man now is, Christ once was. As Christ now is, man may become”.

I think that is how we are to understand it with God the Father too.

In a sermon on dancing (among other things) he states that the souls of those who pursue the opposite course of eternal life will be destroyed.

Young: “Do you understand that you will cease to be, that you come to a full end, by pursuing the opposite course [of eternal lives]?”

This destruction of the soul is “not annihilation, as we use the English term, there is no such principle as this, but dissolution or decomposition.”

Click here for an online, pdf version of the JoD, Vol 1.

Keep checking through the posts here. You will see that I have explained what most of my assumptions to the questions you asked are and why I believe them.

What does eternal mean? What does “from all eternity to all eternity” mean? Are there more than one eternity? What does “God” mean? Are there different types of God? What kind of God can we become? The same kind as Christ and our Father?

And why does there have to be a beginning? A “first” God? What is time? Is it the same everywhere?

What is “eternal progression”? How does it work?

What is spirit? What is intelligence?

Seems like without a better understanding of some of this stuff, it is hard to really decide between MMP and other understandings.

Maybe there are many types of God. Maybe it takes MMP to get from one kind of existence to a higher one, from being one type of God to another. Why would that be?

If we are eternal in the sense of always having existed in some form, where have we been forever? In this universe? In another universe? Mortal? Immortal? Intelligence? Spirit?

There are just so many questions here, and the answers so far seem to be to limited, though MMP seems to be able to account for more of the evidence provided by JS and the early LDS leaders–eg. intelligences always existed and are progressing, Lorenzo Snow couplet, etc.

I have very little understanding of philosophy, but I love discussing philosophy with those who know more about it than I do. Perhaps someone who understands various philosophies better than I could enlighten me on this observation:

If a boat (let’s call it the Columbia) is still the Columbia even when all the planks have been replaced, and if the BYU football team is still the BYU football team even when the players/coaches/equipment have been replaced, then what is the Columbia? How do you define it? What is the BYU football team?

One could say that what the Columbia really is is a design for a boat, and the wood has given that design form. The Columbia is really an idea in a shipbuilder’s mind. The BYU football team is an intangible entity that was conceived by an athletics board at the university, and it was given form by recruiting players, etc.

So my question: Is there a philosophy (in Mormon thought, or anywhere really) that looks at these designs, these ideas, and calls them “spirits?”

I’m not saying this is what I believe, but would this be compatible with what has been currently revealed, or are there any scriptures or sources ruling out this possiblity?