I've been gone from the church for three years now. And I haven't followed this site for quite a while. But I recently listened to an old podcast by Grant Palmer about Joseph Smith's changing nature of God. That got me stirred up again about how I was indoctrinated all my life. Three Gods: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. That's what is still percolating in my mind. The Trinity of other Christian churches seems as goofy as the Mormon thing. When I resigned I basically threw God out with the holy water. Since then I've questioned everything and science has always been my ally. I have come up with a few questions about God(s) that I'd like answered in as objective a manner as possible:

Where did the notion of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost originate? It seems like an odd arrangement.

Why does Mormonism call God the Father Elohim? Isn't that the plural form of God?

Why is there a need for a savior?

What did I do to need saving?

Did Joseph Smith really receive the ordinance elevating him to Godhood as Grant Palmer suggested? POTUS would be trivial by comparison.

The trinity, one God, three gods, sorta, not really debate just makes me believe thst religions only survive by being complete gibberish.

If it makes no sense then you can argue about it forever, and it survives.

Religion is just a waste of brain power.

Well, you see in the past there were lots of gods and those gods were kind of mean and petty and that kind of pissed people off. So everyone got together and decided that gods still got to be mean and petty, but they were also always right. One dude was like, hey, if the gods are always right how do you explain the gods doing stuff that is contrary to each other. So then they were all like, well there can only be one god who is right, the rest aren't gods. But this other guy was like, I like my god better than your god. And everyone was like, hey, you're right. So then they decided that all the gods were just one guy, just manifested differently. Everyone was like, well that doesn't make much sense, but it does make us feel better.

So eureka, all gods are one and one god is all gods and that one god who is all gods is always right. And stfu if you don't understand it took us forever to come up with this comprise.

God may be the 3-in-1, but Jesus is the WD40 of life.

the 3 in 1 god is a throw back to more archaic pagan religion and, in the opinion of some, was purposely used as a way to ensure more people with a pagan upbringing would convert to the new 'christian' religion. In ancient greece or egypt, for example, citizens were used to their gods having 3 forms. Female gods were maidens, mothers and crones, male gods were youths, warriors and sages. The roman empire had assimilated the grecian view into their own.

The earliest western european christian converts did not believe that jesus was 'god incarnate' or 'god in human form': their belief, that jesus was born a human and 'merely' realised his innate divinity, was called a heresy and was systematically expunged from the accredited, orthodox version of accepted catholic (ie universal) 'christianity'.

Some scholars go as far as to accuse the romans of making up the whole thing to control the narrative of the growing legend of a wise judean teacher/rebel to promote the status quo and prevent another slave rebellion. If this new 'christ' promised reward in the next life for those of low status - precisely because of their acceptance of their low status of service to others - it would be easier to control the populace which was growing exponentially and threatening the roman republic and the 'pax romana' (roman peace).

Some scholars say that daoism was created in china by confucious some centuries earlier for the same reasons; to give low status members of society the belief that their deeds and respect for the staus quo were just as noble and necessary for the survival of the society as that of the emperor and the ruling classes, including the civil servants and the rich merchants.

Apart from your mormon questions which need only the response of 'he made it all up', your other questions on the matter of needing a saviour and whatever did you do personally (nothing) to need one, take a different tone from my answer to your 3in1 question and assume a creator with a plan that needs explaining. This is a view I like to consider, but it is separate from discussing threefold or tripartate gods and goddesses.

How dare you detract from my nuanced commentary above.

my apologies :)

The Mother, The Father, and The Son. Probably our Trinity could be Four somehow, too. Aima Elohim, Elohim, and the Tzauir.
The Holy Ghost is simply the Effluence of The Mother- the past Aeon of about 2160 years, that of Pisces, was an extremely patriarchal one. The current, Aquarius, I believe some call The Family aeon- not that the often romantic Family ideal is going to be so very strong, in the mundane sense, I think.
A Popular Christianity was formulated, which says that Jesus died for you personally; he took all of your sins upon himself and paid the price for them, "on the cross" ; he was stoned to death, but someone had a vivid, compelling dream or vision afterwards, of Jesus lifted up high on a cross... as written anciently in The Book Of The Saviour Dionysos!

Tom Padley Wrote:
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>... Why does Mormonism call God the Father Elohim?
> Isn't that the plural form of God?

Elohim is the plural form of El, Eloi, etc, all of which are Hebrew words for "God" - probably borrowed from their neighboring (pagan) tribes. It probably came to be plural in form much like the "royal we" of many languages, as a sign of respect. It is usually translated in English Bibles as "God". "YHWH" (transliterated as "Jehovah" in English) was the actual name of God in Hebrew.

Joseph Smith used the fact that the word is plural to support his teaching of the multiplicity of gods.

It is interesting that there are quotations from Joseph Smith where he specifically said that Elohim and Jehovah are the same, not separate beings.

Wait wait, stop for a minute please, where did you find this watch? I lost one 34 years ago and I've been praying for help to find it. Was it a Casio? Metal stretchy band? Jesus, I bet it's mine.

I like the watch analogy. God can't make a watch, never has. So, even if real, God has no dominion over applied technology. Pretty weak for a god.

I've never understood any of the gods theories so I just say they are all unnecessary.

It there was an all powerful God then there is nothing he can't do. So he could make a doughnut so big he could not eat it all but if he is all powerful then he could eat it all. But if he could eat all of the doughnut then he isn't powerful enough to make a doughnut so big he couldn't eat it all.