I think I’ll throw this one out to the feeding frenzy and see what kind of bites I get.
When you get your information about what Mormons believe from anti-mormons, what you get is cartoonish caricatures of what we believe, and when we DO explain what we do believe, no one listens long enough here to GET it. And of course you don’t want to GET it because we might be right.
What is there to GET? You act like we were never Mormon. Some have not been, but there are many of us who were.
We GET it, that is why we left.
Then everybody has fun making fun of the caricatures, and you all get to think that you have “refuted” something, and you all dance around in war paint and whoop it up.
Let’s try to be reasonable one more time. I don’t know why I am such an optimist, but here goes.
There isn’t much else you can do with Mormon “theology” about a false god. It is all so illogical and convoluted and just plain WRONG.
If you want to believe that it has some cosmic importance, go right ahead. But we do not believe that it means anything.
Let’s just look at how Mormons view God.
We believe that there is one “God” who is infinite and eternal.
Mormonism has redefined what “infinite” and “eternal” mean. Which, definitions describe nothing that is neither infinite or eternal.
“God” is like a family of three persons who are perfectly united in purpose. Talk to one, you talk to all. They are one.
A family is comprised of separate individuals who are not one in being.
Each person who is part of the three is in some sense “God” as well. Jesus is God, and he is a member of the “Godhead”
When did Jesus become a God?
So you could easily caricature this belief as “polytheism”
“Mormons believe in 3 Gods ha ha”
Or easily caricature it as one God. It is no caricature on our part.
But that statement would be neither true nor accurate.
It is true and accurate.
Mormons also SPECULATE on things that never occurr to most people. What happened before the Big Bang? How could we know that? Science cannot prove anything about that. Time began at the big bang. So to discuss what happened “before” time makes no sense. It is an object of faith.
It is my personal belief, not doctrinal, that God in some sense caused the big bang.
That means that somehow, he existed before time.
But why did he cause the big bang? Why did he make the world?
These are all clearly faith based questions which no one can “prove” the answers to.
We don’t speculate about such things. It is doctrinal to us. A being, God, who is infinite and eternal logically exists outside of time.
One thing we know about God, that He has Revealed, is that He is the Creator of all things. This includes time and space.
Mormonism limits God. That limitation begins as soon as you state He is created.
One of the theories put forward is the quasi-doctrinal belief of Mormons that God himself was once as we are now. Before time, before creation, before anything that we can ever in principle know or understand. Perhaps it was in another universe, dimension or whatever-- we cannot in principle KNOW this in any scientific sense. We can know it by revelation, however.
Quasi-doctrinal? Come now. It is doctrine. Or WAS doctrine. When I was a Mormon this was neither a guess or speculation it was presented as Truth.
Catholicism doesn’t even ask the question “What was God doing floating around for eternity before he created us?”
And you complain of caricatures. What do you call that ^ What god is this that you believe in that is “floating around”?
We answer the questions Catholicism doesn’t even ask.
It is an irrelevant question.
But people who don’t understand now take this and say “Mormons are polytheists, who believe in life on other planets”
If that is your level of understanding of what I have explained, then so be it. It is a total caricature.
You have only explained your level of understanding. We can talk to any other Mormon and get a different explanation. Including those that completely believe and understand the Mormon doctrine of your god was once a man.
And if you think for a second that you understand the symbolism of the temple, think again.
Honestly, I just don’t care. I don’t need to understand a Freemason rite that has nothing to do with God.
So commence with your whitewashing.
eek