Hello Folks,

I've been learning a lot about the concept of "self" and the nature of being by reading Alan Watts' work. As I've related it to lds theology I've come to this conclusion and I believe it would be easy to help members look at there doctrine from this perspective:

How can a perfect being (god) create imperfect beings (us)? I guess you could argue that he created a perfect imperfect being. But if that's the case I can't imagining him condemning us for doing what he created us to do.
So what do we do with this dilemma? It eventually leads people to take two sides. Either we are always perfect even when we think we aren't or God isn't always perfect when we think he is.

Couple that with the King Follett discourse, "God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret." (Smith 3) The great secret is that you are as much of a godly being as you are right now as you would be in any royal courts above. You have to be. It's the only way that makes sense. If God has always been perfect and he was like us then how can we not be perfect?

Furthermore, in coorelation with the words of God in Genesis 3:5, "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." (KJV). There it is as plain as day but until now you've never seen it. Many of you still won't.

I have a longtime friend in Michigan who discovered Watts.
He's Mormon -- deeply dissatisfied and disappointed with
the Church and the Mormon lifestyle.

But he understands that Watts was a popularizer in his day.
He was purposely trying to make some elements of Eastern
Thought intelligible to westerners. That is not the same
thing as becoming personally involved in Zen, or exploring
Taoism.

I lived among the latter when I worked in China for several
years. We have Zen Buddhists here on the Big Island in
Hawaii. All of this may be fascinating to a Mormon who
has given up on theism altogether.

Just remember that participating in one of these societies
is not the same thing as being a daytripper tourist.

UD

That's neat. I'll remember that.

in any group or participation in any society.
One can learn from or study with a Zen teacher without becoming a "joiner". In fact, many Zen masters have gone to great lengths to get their "followers" to let go of them.

My favorite conundrum re: the Mormon God is this -
A) god is as man once was, as god is man may become.
B) god is eternal
C) we were created as spiritual children of god.

Therefore, god was once created as a spiritual child of his god.
If so, how can an "eternal" god have a beginning?

I've heard some really silly mental gymnastics about this one,everything from "It is god's WILL that is eternal" to "god lives outside of the space/time continuum, therefor he can be before he was."

Read "Zen Action, Zen Person" if you want to start into that dogma. "Zen Mind Beginner Mind" is another good one.

?? "god is as man once was" ??

(I think I meant what you knew)

thederz Wrote:

>
> How can a perfect being (god) create imperfect
> beings (us)? I guess you could argue that he
> created a perfect imperfect being.

Mormon doctrine is that God did *not* create us, essentially. We existed alongside God as "intelligences" and God and Mrs. God(s) birthed us as "spirits." Our essential imperfection is not God's but our own.

"Our essential imperfection is not God's but our own?" What? That makes even less sense. How does the process of going from "existing alongside God as 'intelligences'" and being birthed as 'spirits' introduce imperfections that are our own? Or, if those imperfections existed (as our own) while we existed alongside God, the big question then, is why? And why do we need birthing as spirits? If the imperfections were already there, why perpetuate them in a "spirit" form? Why not leave them as "intelligences" and do the perfecting process in that form? The system is really convoluted, stuffed full of meaningless words like "intelligences" and "spirits" that have to be put in quotation marks because they haven't got any "real" meaning. (My spell-check doesn't even recognize the plural of intelligence as even being a valid word). The question is why so many ridiculous rules and systems. Why can't an all-powerful God accomplish his ends directly?

God perpetuated these less than perfect intelligences to help them progress, but he could not force them to be perfect because it would be a violation of their agency. From what I remember, birth as a spirit is another step toward embodiment--incarnation--which eventually leads to a perfected resurrected body. Yeah, I know :-)

It might be worth mentioning Orson Pratt and Brigham Young had heated arguments about the nature of God. Young preferred the progressing God and Pratt the unchangeable one. Brigham won the argument by threatening to excommunicate Pratt, preferring the old tried and true method of winning theological arguments.

Disclaimer: This is from memory from over 30 years ago. My memory may be imperfect, and, of course, the church may have wiped theirs since.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/2013 09:47AM by robertb.

Your memory may be imperfect? Well, keep trying, maybe someday it will get a body! (And it's true, the Church's wiping function means you only need to remember anything for a few years at most).

Actually, I loved your putting "Yeah, I know," at the end of that first paragraph. When I was reading it before I hit that phrase, I was thinking, "Does he really think he's making any sense?!"

A word about the concept of free agency. It's nothing but a cop out to excuse the failings of God. Your explanation (and I'm saying "your" as a means of identification, I understand you don't claim the explanation), your explanation that God cannot force people to be perfect because that would violate their free agency is silly, circular reasoning. It comes from making up definitions that don't fit together and that don't fit the real world. Free agency is just a place-holder.

God is perfect. Man can progress to perfection. Looking around, we see many imperfect men. What gives? God, in his mercy, gave men free agency (or is bound by their free agency--which, of course raises the question, why?). Anyway, men can exercise free agency, which means they can choose not to progress to perfection. However, if they do choose not to progress to perfection, God will punish them for their transgressions. Therefore, it's all force. Good can't force them to be perfect--meaning he can't make them perfect--but he can punish them for exercising their free agency against his wishes. That's the very definition of force. Carrot and the stick, reward and punishment--as morality, it's very low. A very conventional, not transcendent view of God.

It's clear, in real-life, God makes lots of mistakes, like appointing leaders who steal money from their members or violate their children. It's excused by free agency. Not the free agency of the faithful, trusting member; but the free agency of the transgressor. But maybe it was really the person who chose the transgressor for the calling. Maybe he exercised his free agency against God's true choice--there's an infinite regress problem here caused by free agency's being a place-holder for blame. God can't be wrong, the Church can't be wrong, so, free agency!

In any event, the faithful member who exercised free agency to follow her leader as God wanted her to, gets rewarded with further testing. The violator, exercising his free agency, gets some kind of terrible punishment in the afterlife (hypothetically). You don't need a God to explain all this. This is simply ordinary life on earth, with a revenge fantasy for the oppressed, and the oppressors exploiting their hopes.

The system is: Man is imperfect. God is perfect. Man would like to be like God--that'd be a lot better than things as they stand. God has ultimate power. Power is to control through reward and punishment. God bestows rewards and inflicts punishment in the best interest of the imperfect beings who are his children, in order to help them grow.

The gap, obviously, is that unlike real children, who are expected to grow up and become adults IN THIS LIFETIME, the God described above, the Heavenly Father, is in a perpetually static relationship with his living children. They continue to be children, subject to heavenly coercion and force, until they die. Then something else happens.

Honestly, this is so weak. It does however, reflect the basic religious impulse: humans as free, equal and eternal. But in this case, equality and freedom are limited to heterosexual men (and maybe white, heterosexual men). The religion's doomed, in the 21st Century (without some fundamental overhaul).

Alan Watt's world view is irreconcilable with kolobian theology.

To make it work, you'd have to tell the mormons that each and every one of them, plus elohim and all the gods, plus lucifer and all the devils, plus every single thing in existence is simply "the one" dreaming everything into existence for the sole purpose of playing hide & seek with itself.

In Alan Watt's view, elohim would not qualify as "god." Instead, elohim would be just one piece of the puzzle. Elohim would be dreaming the dream of being an alien god from the star system kolob, not realizing that he is "the one."

Mormons would never concede that point. Mormons are, at the very deepest level, COMMITTED to ego to the point that their ENTIRE purpose in life is to ensure that their ego is perpetuated through all generations of time and throughout all eternity.

Alan Watts taught that eventually we will all wake up and realize it's all a dream, we're all one "god", and after realizing that for just long enough we would dream new dreams to keep eternity from boring us to death (although there is no such thing.)

kolobian Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> Mormons would never concede that point. Mormons
> are, at the very deepest level, COMMITTED to ego
> to the point that their ENTIRE purpose in life is
> to ensure that their ego is perpetuated through
> all generations of time and throughout all
> eternity.
>
> Alan Watts taught that eventually we will all wake
> up and realize it's all a dream, we're all one
> "god", and after realizing that for just long
> enough we would dream new dreams to keep eternity
> from boring us to death (although there is no such
> thing.)

That's interesting, I've never read Alan Watts. I understand that Mormons are committed to ego--the separation from God, yet they also seek unity with God. Reuniting with God (waking up and realizing we're all one God, or at least the one waking up is one with God) seems to be a universal religious impulse. So, while Mormons want to preserve their own, unique ego throughout eternity, the purpose of progression is gain entitlement to go where God is, and to become God, that is, reunite with God as a God. Not recognizing the fundamental inconsistency of this stance is one of the stressors of Mormonism: striving for something while at the same time keeping it at a distance. It makes a person eternally hungry and unfulfilled.

That's just it. Mormon theology has nothing to do with becoming "at one" with god. In fact, the end game of mormonism is to become an independent god with your own spheres of creation.

The only ties an exalted Joseph Smith will have with Elohim in the eternities is that Joseph will always be part of Elohim's downline. That's it. They won't talk, write, talk on the phone, or email. They won't facebook or twitter.

Nobody goes back to live with god in mormonism. They start their own universes instead.

Nobody becomes at one with god in mormonism. Which god would they become one with?!

So to say that mormons seek unity with god is a misrepresentation of mormon doctrine. They'll say things like that as propaganda to seem like a mainstream theistic religion, but that's all it is. A sales tactic to entice people to join their god-making pyramid scheme.

I agree with your assessment that the end goals of mormon theology are fundamentally inconsistent, but that's how pyramid schemes work. You have to sell sell sell and recruit recruit recruit, but you'll never be equal to your recruiter. All your efforts will only move your recruiter up the pyramid and you'll always be part of his downline.

It's pretty genius.

I get what you're saying about the distinction between uniting with god and being an independent god--one is a "oneness" concept, and the other is an existence independent of a unity with god or other gods, i.e., a continuation of ego.

However, the very goal of being a god is unity with god, despite that there are other gods. The gap that is seen by Mormons, the motivation, is the idea of godhood, perfection. Now, I'm imperfect, but I can progress to godhood. The inner conflict is the separation between the egoic self and the self that is god, the self that could be. Even if the unity is unity between myself and myself-as-god, not having a theology that rectifies this god vs. self conflict, can transcend it, is psychologically painful. Furthermore, if many gods cannot unify--through some means: text, email, mind-meld, whatever--then they're limited, they're not gods. Furthermore, without this unity there can be no concept of prayer.

For women to aspire only to be eternal queens-of-the-ants popping out spirit children in a harem devoted to one god-man is soul-killing. Women's daily life on earth is more gratifying than that. For men to aspire only to be functionaries in an eternal MLM plan is also terribly depressing. What's the upside of all the sacrifice?

<<What's the upside of all the sacrifice?>>

Funeral Potatos

There are other philosophical problems with the mormon concept of God as well. Since all mormon gods have received a body from their father, and all of them have lived on planets with humans, plants and animals, with laws of nature etc, how did these things originate in the mormon universe? Even if it is eternal, that does not account for where the design of these things came from. An analogy:

Suppose you see a reflection of a human being in a mirror, it is not your own reflection. By looking closer, you can see that it is actually reflected off another mirror, and that one another etc... You ask, what is the source of the image in the mirror? The mormon answer would be "the line of mirrors is infinite". Fine, but even if the line of mirrors is infinite, the image still needs a source.

So in mormonism, who or what came up with the bodies of humans and animals? Who or what came up with plants, planets, stars, quasars, laws of physics, etc? Perhaps these things evolved, in which case, the intermediary gods are not needed as an explanation for anything. If they did not evolve, but were designed instead, would not a deity that itself has no body, is not bound by time and space, did not live on a planet in order to become a god have to be the designer? In either case, the mormon concept of god has an explanatory value of zero.

Yes, Joseph Smith created an infinite regress of gods that doesn't solve anything.

The inevitable conclusion to mormon theology is that there is either a transcendent god that will always be higher than elohim-middle-management-level gods, or the universe is a naturally occuring system in which one sentient being eventually figured out a way to become a god without any help which begs the question "what do we need Elohim for?"