{"id":125,"date":"2005-08-17T23:31:15","date_gmt":"2005-08-18T06:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/2005\/08\/are-we-eternal-or-is-it-just-our-parts-that-are-eternal\/125\/"},"modified":"2020-01-09T06:51:55","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T13:51:55","slug":"eternal-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/2005\/08\/eternal-parts\/125\/","title":{"rendered":"Are We Eternal or is it Just Our Parts That Are Eternal?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rusty’s recent post<\/a> got me a’thinkin. And that means trouble my friends, that means trouble<\/em>. <\/p>\n

He linked to a talk<\/a> by good ol’ Cleon Skousen in which brother Skousen speculates extensively on the nature of particles of intelligence and then applies his speculation to the nature of the atonement. You can check that out for yourself. But I want to talk about the nature of our spirits. Just what part of me<\/em> has always been in existence?<\/p>\n

There are a couple of ways I could think of looking at this. One is that our spirits in their current form are eternal. That we have always existed (as the individuals we are now) and always will exist in the same way that God has always existed. Lots of Mormons (smart ones too) believe this is the case. They point to various scriptures and statements by Joseph for backup.<\/p>\n

Another way to look at the nature of our spirits is to consider them to be made up of lots of little particles of intelligence. That is, rather than being single “intelligences” cut out of whole cloth, as it were; perhaps our spirits are made up of tiny intelligence particles working together in a community. Perhaps “you” are really the synthesis of all of these little intelligences that have joined the community over the eons and what arises from that combination of intelligence particles is far greater than the some of the parts — it’s you. <\/p>\n

If this latter model is correct then perhaps we are something like snowballs of intelligence rolling through eternity. (Oh yeah, I can only imagine the speculation-alert meters pegging right now…) Perhaps we are either pick up more intelligence (or maybe it is light and truth?) or shedding existing intelligence\/light\/truth constantly. God is the most intelligent of them all, so maybe that is because he has always had the most light and truth of all.<\/p>\n

I can see gobs of benefits to looking at things in this latter model. It would help the Universe and eternities make a lot more sense to me if it were the case. (Perhaps I’ll explain why in later posts if I don’t get blasted out of the water for this one.)<\/p>\n

There are several scripture that could be used to back this up (loosely), but I’ll just leave that for later discussions. First I’ll test the waters with this intro post. What do you think? Must it be that our spirits are eternal in their current form or does my model of spirits being like snowballs of light and truth work?
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