Elohim, and presumably the next generation of gods, are bound by an eternal law of Free Agency. If a god were to reveal himself to the general population, this would violate our right to choose belief vs non-belief. “Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge.” (I don’t recall whether that verse is in LDS scripture or the Bible. I think it’s NT.) A critical element of Elohim’s plan is the “veil” of forgetfullness that prevents us from remembering our interactions with God(s) in our pre-mortal life. Maybe when you’re a god you can tweak the details of the veil and of how you reveal yourself to mortals, but if you violate their Free Agency then they will not be able to progress.
Ah. Again, thanks.
Not omnipotent, then.
Nope, not quite omnipotent. Gods don’t have to follow a lot of rules, but the Law of Agency is inviolable. God can’t just make his spirit children into happy well-adjusted Gods; he has to put us through a trial with free will. And there’s a LOT of collateral damage - already 1/3 of all his spirit children have been damned to the lowest possible level of Hell (called “Outer Darkness” which is an eternal ennui) for failing to honor their “first estate” of choosing Elohim’s free-will plan over Satan’s proposed plan of universal exaltation.
Yes, all of this somehow seemed to make sense to me once.
So who in this panthon of gods made the Law of Agency?
Harry Truman.
The Mormon belief is:
“As man is, God once was
As God is, Man may become”
The details get murky, but the only logical conclusion is that there were cycles of god going all the way back.
Elohim used to be a mortal man, walking around in the world his god created, and his god used to be a mortal man, etc., etc.,
The LDS church really frowns on people thinking too much about these type of things, so this is never discussed.
So the LDS Church actually doesn’t believe in a First Cause?
Do the Gods have free will?
This would be kind of…interesting. That would invalidate the Christian rule that God = good, since in theory you could get a god that makes mistakes. Or is lazy and careless. Or is envious about another god’s planet. At best, all you could say is about God is that he’s doing the best he can, all things considered. All the over-the-top worshipdom would feed his ego mightily, but it wouldn’t be deserved.
But if the gods don’t have free will, it seems me to they’d be rather boring to the uber-boss that employs them.
Eh. I suspect the idea is more as perfect gods we would perfectly understand why free agency must not be violated. A god could violate if they so chose but the act of attaining godhood would demonstrate that they would not desire to do so, if that makes sense.
No official doctrine on this, but nothing within the popularly believed tenets. The above quoted couplet is about all “we know.” What happens prior is pure speculation, and I think you can see what happens when Mormons see speculation happening.
Again, nothing official and speculation is discouraged. However, I was taught that God can changes his mind, and places in the Old Testament where it says he repented, it literally means that he did.
That sounds about right. Part of becoming a god is becoming perfect. Sermon on the Mount: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” To Mormons, this goal is attainable.
And when a God is petty or jealous or genocidal, these only seem like imperfections to us because we have a limited understanding.
And is the source of a lot of feelings of guilt and inadequacy.
So, uh, I was reading Revelation today to find a specific quote for something, and stumbled across something that maybe very slightly supports the “becoming a god in heaven” thing.
Now why is that part important?
Note also that the serpent says that Adam and Eve will become gods if they eat from the trees, but most would dismiss anything he says as lying so I won’t bring it up.
So essentially, God hates the Nicolaitans (from what I understand, their creed was more or less that works don’t matter and you get into heaven through belief alone – which is almost shockingly close to a Mormon/Fundamentalist Christian dichotomy) and says that if you “conquer” them (we can interpret that as conversion or anything else if we want to be generous), you can eat from the Tree of Life and basically become exactly like God, knowing good and evil and living forever. If we want to get technical and say that may not make you EXACTLY like God, we can [del]make up with no basis[/del] [del]fanwank[/del] posit that the Tree of Life has other unknown benefits that make up the difference.
No, I don’t BELIEVE anything, and I don’t know if Mormons use this as justification. But I found it, and figured it would be interesting to post. Also, I can’t escape that part inside of me that treats the Bible like LOTR and compels me to engage in fanwankery over textual minutiae. (Though knowing this board it’ll be three seconds before somebody who knows the original language tells me that those passages didn’t originally mean what they do in English).
Herp de derp, I just meant Eve. I’m so used to referring to them as a unit that I reflexively typed both their names.
The only thing I have read is that the meek shall be given the earth. Not mormons christians jewish and the list goes on and on… I wish I were meek. The Mormon bible does not say that .
Have you read any of the responses in this thread yet? If so, have you learned anything about Mormonism?
I guess I’ll just address one thing you’ve touched on there. The “Mormon Bible” is the Bible accepted by Protestant Christians.
If more people read the bible they would see that . God does not care what group or church you go to. He said the meek will rule.
Well, yes, and there’s also that pesky rule that anyone who curses their father or mother must be put to death. Religious dogma doesn’t exactly have a great track record about literalism.
ETA: Not to mention Revelation at the very least throws the “meek will inherit” dogma into doubt.
Yeah, but that’s not ALL He said. The Sermon on the Mount itself includes various type of people Jesus promises Heaven & Earth to.