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Since then no part of our earth is left unoccupied, why is it to be supposed that the immensity of space is a naked void, lying in eternal waste? There is room for millions of worlds as large or larger than ours, and each of them millions of miles apart from each other...
From whence, From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on his protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world because, they say, one man and one woman ate an apple? And, on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in the boundless creation had an Eve, an apple, a serpent, and a redeemer? In this case, the person who is irreverently called the Son of God, and sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of death, with scarcely a momentary interval of life.

Age of Reason

Paine is obviously being ironic here, but the similarity to Joseph Smith's cosmology is striking. It should be remembered that (according to Lucy) Asael evidently gave his son Joseph Sr. a copy of Paine's book well before the Book of Mormon was translated. It was in the family, then, and the young prophet could very easily have read it. I find it interesting, also, how Mormon cosmology resolves this problem. If I understand correctly, every world is said to have "an Eve, an apple, a serpent," but when Christ died on our world he died for all of them. Is that accurate? (I'm working off memory here, so it may not be. But I'd think it would have to be, since at the resurrection Jesus got an exalted body.) Joseph Smith thereby avoids the problem of Jesus wandering endlessly from world to world dying over and over, but doesn't avoid the problem of "the strange and solitary conceit" that makes our world the first or the best of all our Father's worlds.

Paine also makes some fascinating remarks about fixed stars and the revolutionary motion of the various worlds. Paine argues that "all our knowledge of science is derived from the revolutions" of the various worlds, and muses that the more of the universe we contemplate, the smarter and happier we are. This is why God made a plurality of worlds rather than a single really big world: the revolutions of the worlds are the "school of science". While Joseph Smith obviously does not handle revolutions in exactly the same way, I think it's interesting that they-- along with the "fixed stars"-- are one of the key features he highlights in the Book of Abraham.

-Chris

Oh! My! Goodness! I have never considered the parallels between Paine's Age of Reason and the Joseph Smith version of LDS multiple worlds. Never!

I wonder if Joseph Smith recognized that Paine was a critic of Christianity and attacked the Old Testament and New Testament -- did this play at all into him decrying certain other mainstream denominations? I just don't know enough about Joseph Smith to know what influence Paine had on his thinking. But the cosmology parallels are striking! Man! That is good!

I know nothing about the Book of Abraham, but I do know about Paine, and he wrote this, in regards to science and God, "The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the creator of man is the creator of science, and it is through that medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face."

I just love that quote, no purpose for placing it here other than I like it :)-- which is no doubt why I find myself desperately attempting to follow science threads that I'm completely lost in.

Another parallel -- Paine wrote some of the work in prison and Joseph Smith died at a jail-- coincidence? Yes.

This link is a bit easier to read:
http://www.infidels.org/library/histori ... t1.html#15

I wish I knew more about Joseph Smith now! But, this just from my simple understanding of his declaring the Christian denominations of his day as frauds, I could see how Paine's work could have influenced him. I may be reading waaaay too much into this -- 'cause I'm just not as familiar as I should be with Joseph Smith.

The persons who first preached the christian system of faith, and in some measure combined with it the morality preached by Jesus Christ, might persuade themselves that it was better than the heathen mythology that then prevailed. From the first preachers the fraud went on to the second, and to the third, till the idea of its being a pious fraud became lost in the belief of its being true; and that belief became again encouraged by the interest of those who made a livelihood by preaching it.

Of course Paine had no use for prophets...

It's interesting that in the temple ceremony, Lucifer cops to doing the same thing that was done in other worlds. And yet, from what happens next, it appears that God's reaction to what he has done is different than what it was on other worlds. I wonder what was going on in Joseph's mind when he created this stuff. It's hard to envision how Lucifer could have caused the Adams and Eves on other worlds to fall as he had just done with Adam and Eve, and yet not had that result in enmity between the seed of the woman and Satan coming into play. That would imply that the Fall on other worlds somehow didn't involve a degeneration into a state of sin. At least, that's if "enmity" between Satan and humanity were related by sin and the temptation to sin.

Interesting.