Christyba75

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I agree. But why do you think that is? I absolutely agree that we can not become someone else, but why can't we be in proximity to him? We can visit the White House; could we not eventually visit heaven or at least knock on the door, or will God physically hide it from us? And how do we know this? Also agreed. But Godliness is a state of being that we can have right now and in which we can continually improve. Godliness is not the personage of God, but rather an attribute of him which we can emulate. Why? I'm very serious about this. Why? And what is meant by "religious truth" and how does it differ from "non-religious truth". I assume that you just meant "truth". D&C 93:34 says, "And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come." Another way of saying this is that truth is knowledge of reality. Unless we want to debate what "reality" is, we should agree that something is real if it can be not only agreed upon, but demonstrated. It doesn't mean that it has been demonstrated, but that it conceptually could be. We expect that EVERY knee shall bow and EVERY tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ. At that time, we will all be in agreement. But at this time, many are not. At this time, some say that if I wear a suicide vest and kill infidels, that I'll get 70 virgins, and then EVERYONE will know that Allah is God. As of now, that's not real, not demonstrable. It seems like there is no other way to search for truth other than a naturalistic scientific way. Isn't anything else just shared imagination? Help ye mine unbelief!

Wonderful! I can conceive of the same thing, (that's what "believe" means, right?) If humanity were allowed to exist long enough and expand beyond this planet, and if we're allowed to advance science, then could we eventually arrive at where God is (i.e. Kolob), or would he obstruct us? Maybe that's what the second coming is for, to short-circuit us and get us back to Heaven without us having to do the hard work of progressing as a species on our own -- sort of like a ladder in chutes and ladders. (There I go again using those metaphors that I disdain). I'm aware that I'm asking odd questions. I would never do so in church. There, I speak like everyone else. I hope it's safe to ask such bizarre questions here. I'm sincere in my quest. I'm just trying to find answers to all the weird little things that I thought as a child, that I ignored during my mission and early marriage, and am now back to questioning. I'm really trying to understand if God is real in the sense that he's tangible or if he's real like the feelings of the mind. I have always been taught that he is present in the universe (or outside it -- whatever that could possible mean), but that as LDS, more than other religions, we believe that God is an individual with a body. I like that concept, and I hope that it's correct. But to say that "I know that God exists because of an emotion" then makes us question what it means to "know" something. "Know" then takes on a very different meaning than to say that I know that if I drop a ball it will fall. That is known because of testing a hypothesis. We still don't know 100.000% that the ball will fall every time, but we're 99.9999999% sure that every time I drop a ball whose density is greater than the surrounding atmosphere on earth that it will accelerate toward the center of the planet, and we call that 99.9999999% confidence "knowledge". When we say that we "know" God lives, aren't we saying that we can conceive of it, it may make reasonable sense in our understanding of everything (even though we must admit that there are other possibilities), we want it to be correct, our emotions make us feel good about that concept, and maybe we've even seen a cloud formation in the shape of a sheep? (I've actually heard that in a Fast & Testimony meeting).

As of late, I find myself becoming more and more impatient with the oft used metaphors and analogies of the scriptures and gospel lingo. If God is real, then he's real, measurable, and definable. If he's beyond real then he's not completely knowable. I'm sure that someone will have some nice language to say that "God is mystery and we can grasp the wonderment of the eternities as we hearken to the spirit that is within the depths of our souls and pierce the mind of the grand creator, etc, etc . . . ". But I'm a human with a human mind that sees what I see and feels what I feel, which feelings are in my brain, not my cardiac muscle. If I am to continue to consider God as real, then I insist that he be real, even if he's beyond my current comprehension (because he's made with up-spin quarks and communicated via entangled neutrinos -- even in this case, he's made of real things that are in existence--not fairy dust and unicorn magic). Can God please be real? God, are you really there?

When one says that we are "literally" children of God, what does that literally mean? The only parent-child definition we know of is that in this world. Did we or a spiritual portion of me come out of a heavenly mother? If not, then how do you define child? Why are we his children? Just because the prophet says it? I like the Father concept, but how does it really apply to the relationship that I have with God?

Great question! Our god or god's god? (Aka Grandpa, to continue the family analogy).

God has a physical body, so it must occupy physical space. So if the universe is defined as that which contains everything, then God must be in the universe. The only way for God to be outside of the universe is for him to be not real, and since we claim him to be real, he must be in the universe. The reality of God and his physical body is a core doctrine of Mormon theology. I believe that this doctrine takes precedence over whether or not he created the entire universe or just our part of it.

Thank you. You said it best--I'm just speculating. That's all. Just looking for incompatibilities. I think the real concern and threat to many is that if my suggestions are not incompatible with Mormon doctrine, then this model is workable both for Mormons and atheists. If the LDS God and his functions can exist within the universe and within its laws, then there is no need to require an unknowable supernatural explanation. I don't see why we have to push God outside our universe. Catholicism makes him an unknowable god without body, parts, or passions who is in everything and everywhere. Mormon's make him more knowable. Why can't we then go one step further and consider him material and real?

Yes please. I guess I asked the same thing of people back when I was a full-time missionary. It's no wonder so many people slammed the door on us. Oh well. I guess I'll stop proselyting and keep my little fantasies to myself from now on. :)

I can't test these, other then to cast them before you and ask you to disprove what I'm suggesting.

I do see what you're saying. I guess I can accept that the gospel is not the explanation for everything in the universe and how it all functions, but is rather an overview of some important concepts on how to become a better person. So, can I still have my midichlorians or will the bishop make me toss them out?

The gospel doesn't explain why things are they way they are, the gospel just states that it is and maybe goes one layer deep, but beyond that we kind of hit the dead end of "that's just the way God made it." How can God hear all our prayers at the same time? How can the personage of the Holy Ghost be felt everywhere at the same time? Why does God require that I worship him in order to be rewarded by him? I'm that annoying little kid who keeps asking why in response to every answer and am never satisfied with "just because that's the way God wants it to be and we have to trust that." In my quest for answers, the scientific theory is a great model for finding them. I'd just like to keep trying that model for the answer to existence and see if I can harmonize it with my Mormon theology. I really don't want to have to pick one over the other. I love them both and want them to fit each other.

I run a medical lab, so no, I'm not a physicist, just a boring old PhD. I'm just a scientist in the sense that I prefer a natural and rational answer over a fanciful answer if possible. I'm not suggesting that I understand how entanglement theory or the Higgs boson fit into the concept of prayer and the still small voice, but should we be so opposed to considering that they do? As far as multi-dimensional theory, my hypothesis does not require it. I'm suggesting that our god is a god in this universe and of these laws.

It's absolute technobabble, but is it really any different that gospelbabble? I didn't mean that to sound disrespectful, but when viewed from a physical, natural, technical perspective, it then makes so many other things sound less important: 1950's standards of modesty, the temperature of one's caffeine, and ward-hopping at BYU. I am well aware that there's no way to get definitive support for my "theory", I'm just looking for significant incompatibilities with LDS teachings. So far, haven't found any that are convincing to me.

I do believe, as one of the early GAs said, that spirit is just a more refined version of matter. Maybe it's just a sheet of neutrinos or something like that. Or how about this? Maybe our "intelligence" was just a partition on a great bioneural harddrive that was each individually organized just enough to give us collective sentience, just enough for a portion of us to pick a corporeal existence and another portion of us to self-select for continuation in the ethereal state. We were being just in concept and architecture, much like how a CAD is of a real object, but without any real connection to each other; hence why we have no memory of this pre-mortal existence--the real reason that I don't remember it is because the mortal "I" didn't experience it. The consciousness that was is not the same consciousness that is. And when I die, I die. I really die forever. But my memories are transferred to the great harddrive in the sky (aka spirit prison or paradise) to await the wondrous creation of a new body which will house all my memories and then this new being will believe itself to be me! As far it it knows, it IS me. I will be her. (This begs the question, what is consciousness other than the sum of all one's memories). Admittedly, a person does not evolve, but he can progress given enough time. Mortality does not afford us much time, but finding a way to become immortal, an individual could progress to become a god. (Isn't that what we teach at church). Sci-Fi literature is filled with stories about this.

I hope that everyone understands that my primary intention isn't to be argumentative. I'm just suggesting an alternate viewpoint of the same reality. I invited others to poke holes in it while I run around trying to plug them if I can. Ultimately, I may have to stretch pretty far to make it work, and if I fail, it will all come crashing down on me. I appreciate the rebuttals. Maybe before we can debate whether or not God shares our DNA, we could discuss whether or not he and spiritual matter are at least made of the basic particles of nature: quarks, leptons, and bosons. I'm just suggesting that there may be a natural/scientific way to view what we traditionally view as spiritual/religious/mystical. I don't mean to say that we currently understand either viewpoint, just that it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

Why is it easy to believe that we are the literal offspring of God and that we are made in his image, but we can't believe that we are made of the same substance DNA as he is? Did nobody see the movie Prometheus?

For Socrates to live forever, using scientific principles, there would need to be a way to record and collect his memories/consciousness so that they could be passed into his new body. Somehow God does that. We don't know how, but he does it. We say that it's a miracle, but a sufficiently evolved being could do that too in theory. Do we not think that God is evolved? "Miracles are commonly regarded as occurrences in opposition to the laws of nature. Such a conception is plainly erroneous, for the laws of nature are inviolable. However, as human understanding of these laws is at best but imperfect, events strictly in accordance with natural law may appear contrary thereto. The entire constitution of nature is founded on system and order." [James E. Talmage, The Articles of Faith, 1966, p. 220] If God was once a man, did he not have children? Does God now not associate with those others? If we have a heavenly mother, do they not have heavenly siblings? Could they not all have advanced as a civilization together? Some being exalted by the knowledge, wisdom, and goodness they achieved within the structure of their society. And then after they had advanced their beings as far as they could, decided to fertilize planets with the seeds of life and then let us be their spirit/metaphorical children (because we come from the same DNA) and they watch us develop much in the way that they did. We know that we are not the first world created. Perhaps there were others sprinkled with the seeds of biology prior to ours, but we were the first one on which a Savior was trialed. Perhaps on others, life was left alone, but on ours they intervened a little more by offering us revelation and a savior who was half man, half God. So their work and reward is to bring to pass the imomrtality and eternal life of humans.

Never in the scriptures has death been avoided. Every body must die. Then a new body is given. I'm just saying that I don't see that the scriptures are disharmonious with the advanced race concept. Any civilization that is advanced enough will appear as a god.

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