"There are currently seven billion people alive today and the Population Reference Bureau estimates that about 107 billion people have ever lived."

Who knows how many more will be born, but if you add to this amount the 1/3 in the pre-existence that left with Lucifer, that brings the total in the spirit world to at least 160 billion spirit children for "Heavenly Father." I would expect some of his anatomical parts to be very sore and heaven knows how sick his wives are of bearing his offspring--but that's another story.

Does he know each of our names? Does he know where your car keys are? Does he really care if you touched yourself? Does he know if your particular funeral potatoes and Jello need to be blessed to nourish and strengthen your bodies? Does he actually give a rat's ass about you, Child Number 157,238,472,621? Is he going to make sure you and only you as a Mormon are going to be with your loved ones and nobody else is?

Gives new meaning to the song "I am a Child of God," doesn't it?

Don't you feel special now?

I guess that is why it's so important to Mormons to be God's chosen special ones. With those statistics you can see why it's so important to know the secret handshakes.

Those secret handshakes will help jog the mormon god's all powerful memory for his "special" children.

Imagine our heavenly mothers trying to cook sunday dinner for the after church gathering!!!


And are there still new kids being bred? Or did they first have all the kids they were going to have, you know.. kept going until the family 'felt' complete before the whole world-creation thing started?

If they waited for the family to be complete first.. the oldest batch sure had to wait a long time... no wonder some folks nowadays think there are old souls and younger souls..

And let's not forget he is currently in the process of making more, cuz it's his eternal work dontcha know.

"Elohim always liked you best..."

"Elohim loves all his children equally."


I think the numbers prove that ghawds don't sleep. But do they ever nap?

so in the CK you get to be with your family and your family members get to be with their families ad infinitum ...


Nobody sees a problem with this ?

"Hi everybody. Please meet my cousin Enoch--seven billion times removed."

Luckily, thanks to our new temple names, we won't have to remember the 100 billion names of all our extended families. See, God was watching out for us!

Friends United in the Celestial Kingdom, Meeting Elohim. FUCK ME for short.

Not to mention post resurrection. Life on earth will look like a modern day chicken farm.

Chicken farm. Exactly. A hundred and ten billion people on the planet with resurrected bodies. Eww. I plan on investing heavily in whatever Celestial companies are going to be in the deodorant business.

And Jesus had the "powerball" ticket to get to be the "only begotten" (I guess that is a good thing?). except the whole nailed to a tree thing.

Even atheists commonly do this for the 'god they don't believe in.' It's a rather naive and self-centered position that the universe in all its dimensions should follow the logic of one life form crawling on the face of one planet: "my" life form.

Richard Foxe Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Even atheists commonly do this for the 'god they
> don't believe in.' It's a rather naive and
> self-centered position that the universe in all
> its dimensions should follow the logic of one life
> form crawling on the face of one planet: "my" life
> form.

Read your bible. The 'god' you do believe in is portrayed as a petty, ignorant, jealous, egotistical human.
It's not we atheists that are doing the anthropomorphizing -- it's the believers. We atheists simply point and laugh.

It's a rather naive and self-centered position that the universe should have a being at its core that especially loves humans and is portrayed with the worst of human traits. But that's what believers believe. 'Cause their book says so.

ificouldhietokolob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>"The 'god' you do believe in"

How would you know what 'god' I believe in? Your following description of the OT god-concept seems to indicate that such an image IS the god of all believers.

A key problem of anthropomorphism is the notion that 'god' is, like humans, a figure within time and space (which are products of the human mind, along with subject/object consciousness). Can you imagine a Being who is not characterized by these? (Can you imagine a level of your own being which is not characterized by these?) It is easy to be an atheist in relation to some absurd anthropomorphic reduction, but try setting those frames aside.

Uh. We're talking about man made gods here who have been given human characteristics by their creators. Pointing out that there could be another type of God is completely beside the point of the brilliant OPs observations. :)


And stating, "even atheists do this for the God they don't believe in . . ." just makes no sense, doesn't relate, and seems like finding any opportunity at all no matter how desperate to poke at atheists.

Richard Foxe Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How would you know what 'god' I believe in? Your
> following description of the OT god-concept seems
> to indicate that such an image IS the god of all
> believers.

It's the laid-down-in-scripture 'god' of Judaism and christianity. You've indicated you're a christian. Are you saying you don't believe in the bible? Or have you simply made up your own 'god' idea, even though your own idea contradicts the one portrayed in your scriptures?

> Can you
> imagine a Being who is not characterized by these?

Sure, I might be able to imagine such a thing. I'm not able to *believe* in such a thing, though, given there's no evidence of any kind such a thing exists...

> (Can you imagine a level of your own being which
> is not characterized by these?) It is easy to be
> an atheist in relation to some absurd
> anthropomorphic reduction, but try setting those
> frames aside.

It's never "easy" to be an atheist, both because of cultural pressure and human tendencies. It IS reasonable to be one, though -- no matter what kind of 'god' is postulated. Because no 'god' postulation has any supporting evidence of any kind, and hence there's no reason to 'believe' in it.

I don't believe in anthropomorphic claimed god-things for the same reason I don't believe in deist (vague, poorly-defined, 'outside of time and space') claimed god-things. 'Cause there's no evidence for any of 'em. And because arguments from ignorance and incredulity are rather silly.

When I say I'm an atheist, I don't have a specific god to disbelieve.

I know Don. I started to make list of all the gods I lack belief in but when I got up to about a couple hundred I gave up since I found out there are upwards of 2,500 that have ever been worshipped.


If I have to disbelieve in every God anyone comes up with in order to maintain my status as a "card carrying atheist" haha, then I need something more specific to disbelieve than "god could be anything," as some posit.

with super powers doesn't wash.

Bingo! Thank you.

Just like Fuds said, seems like one big chicken farm although I'm wondering if turkey farm might be more appropriate?