A Thought Experiment: Is Mormonism Ultimately Non-Theistic?

[_Darth J]

Since thought experiments are used in legitimate science, and since it is a common exercise for internet Mormons and apologists to disregard LDS doctrine with what amount to thought experiments, let's try a thought experiment using LDS teachings instead of trying to get around them as so many "defenders" of the faith do.

As a preliminary note, we have to remember that the King Follett Sermon, a.k.a. the King Follett Discourse, is official church doctrine.

Gordon B. Hinckley
September 1994 Ensign

In March of the year he died—1844—the Prophet had amplified this doctrine in a monumental address which he delivered in the grove which was just below the temple site. The text of that address has become an important doctrinal document in the theology of the Church. It is known as the King Follett Sermon.

Lesson 32: “To Seal the Testimony”, Doctrine and Covenants and Church History Gospel Doctrine Teacher’s Manual, 183

What truths about the Godhead were restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith? (See D&C 130:22–23; Joseph Smith—History 1:17; and the following quotation.)

In a sermon given at the funeral of Elder King Follett on 7 April 1844, the Prophet Joseph Smith taught:

“God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make himself visible,—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with him, as one man talks and communes with another” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith [1976], 345).

If you need to review the King Follett Sermon for this thought experiment, it was published in the Ensign here and here.

The idea that there is no ultimate, omnipotent creator god does not preclude a belief system from being a religion. There are literally billions of people, including some Christians, who follow religions that do not believe in a supreme God.

Now, the concept of exaltation, as taught by the Prophet Joseph Smith and other church leaders, is that the way to become a god is by experiencing mortality living on a planet, obedience to righteous principles during that life, resurrection after physical death, and a savior atoning for your sins. This is exactly what the LDS Church teaches is the meaning of life. The need for a savior to vicariously free us from spiritual and physical death is an integral part of the plan of salvation, as taught inter alia by Brigham Young and quoted on that bastion of official LDS doctrine, the FAIR wiki:

"He was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." Is it so on any other earth? On every earth. How many earths are there? I observed this morning that you may take the particles of matter composing this earth, and if they could be enumerated they would only be a beginning to the number of the creations of God; and they are continually coming into existence, and undergoing changes and passing through the same experience that we are passing through...."(italics added)

If every god who exists and ever has existed attained that status by going through mortal life and through the atonement of a savior overcoming physical and spiritual death, then how did the first god come to be? He would have had to have lived on a planet, gone through mortal life, and been resurrected, because this is the process by which gods come to be. But who created the planet he lived on? Who gave him a physical body in which his spirit could live that mortal life? And since a savior is absolutely necessary, how could the first god have had a savior, since only a god (like Jesus Christ) can carry out an atonement?

10 For it is expedient that there should be a great and last sacrifice; yea, not a sacrifice of man, neither of beast, neither of any manner of fowl; for it shall not be a human sacrifice; but it must be an infinite and eternal sacrifice.
11 Now there is not any man that can sacrifice his own blood which will atone for the sins of another. Now, if a man murdereth, behold will our law, which is just, take the life of his brother? I say unto you, Nay.
12 But the law requireth the life of him who hath murdered; therefore there can be nothing which is short of an infinite atonement which will suffice for the sins of the world.
13 Therefore, it is expedient that there should be a great and last sacrifice, and then shall there be, or it is expedient there should be, a stop to the shedding of blood; then shall the law of Moses be fulfilled; yea, it shall be all fulfilled, every jot and tittle, and none shall have passed away.
14 And behold, this is the whole meaning of the law, every whit pointing to that great and last sacrifice; and that great and last sacrifice will be the Son of God, yea, infinite and eternal.

Alma 34:10-14

This is why I invite one and all to try this thought experiment. The only way I can see out of this paradox is that the first man who became a god had no God over him and had no savior unless he was his own savior (because the savior has to be a god to work out an infinite and eternal atonement). The second part of what I said is also a paradox, however, because this man would already have to be a god to become a god (by being his own savior). So in some way, it seems that the first god somehow progressed from being a man to being a god with no god superior to him, and no savior to intervene. It would be like the complete realization of some Nietzschean superman.

Jainism holds that while there are many gods, there is no supreme being creator God as most theists would tend to think of God. Similarly, while Mormonism is henotheistic in that it teaches that there are many gods besides the three Gods that are explicitly worshipped in Mormonism (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost), is there really any ultimate supreme being over the multiverse in Mormonism? It does not appear so, as this thought experiment may illustrate. And if that is the case, isn't Mormonism, like Jainism, "polytheist, monotheist, nontheist and atheist all at the same time"? (Mormons would be henotheistic, not polytheistic, however.)

[_Darth J]

By the way, if you want to know what FAIR apologists think about my thought experiment, their answer is generally tu quoque.

Back to School by David Waltz

It is certainly true that Mormonism does not explain "how the first intelligence was able to elevate himself to the position of deity," but neither can McKeever and Johnson explain why God 12 to 15 billion years ago chose to create this universe. Why not earlier? What was God doing before He created this universe? And again, is God eternally creator? Are McKeever and Johnson "unbiblical" because they cannot answer these questions? If a question is not answered, do we then have a violation of logic?

In their next section "Not Omnipotent," McKeever and Johnson cite LDS authors who reject the classical view of omnipotence. They then write:

While many leaders have taught that their God Elohim is omnipotent (all-powerful), several factors belie this thought. Since Mormonism has reintroduced polytheism to the modern world, the question is, Who among the many gods is the "most powerful"?

If Mormons are polytheists, then so are the early Church Fathers. As I have shown above, Augustine was the first Christian theologian to explicitly reject plurality within the Godhead. McKeever and Johnson, either through ignorance or deception, are not willing to admit that in Mormon theology God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost share the same attributes-they are certainly more one than they are plural, which is exactly what the early Church Fathers taught.

[_Mad Viking]

The first god did not go through the process of mortality the same way the subsequent gods did. Before the first god was such, all intelligence existed in a celestial soup. Over much non-time, these intelligences formed into celestial amino acids. Eventually these celestial amino acids evol... errr I mean transfigured into the first celestial being. Viola! The first god.... God.

[_MrStakhanovite]

I don't think Mormons can actually sustain the concept of 'theism' and nor do I think they should. Let me explain:

Theism is a philosophical term, not a theological one. It doesn't just mean God, but a formulation of God that adheres to the ideas of omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, being eternal and being involved in human affairs.

MfBukowski rejects Platonic ideas about God and I think he has a point. The God defended today by Philosophers is not the God of the Bible, he's some sort of abstract Neo-platonic thing that sits outside the universe. Mormons are not bound by this formulation of God and so I think it's unfair to chain them to it, and wildly stupid when they chain themselves to it.

The problem is, Mormons care so much about what other people think, they throw their hat into the Theism circle without really understanding it. Modern explanations of God by Non-Orthodox Jews simply do not meet the criteria of Theism, and how could it after the Holocaust? No one really calls Harold Kushner out for not meeting all the criteria of Theism.

[_MrStakhanovite]

ETA: I was poking around FAIR and they are setting up people for failure.

It should be noted too that the problem of an infinite past is also an issue for any believer in God. Anyone who believes that God has existed forever, and created the universe ex nihilo out of nothing must also confront similar difficulties about infinite past, infinite regression, and the like. An improper or unsophisticated approach to infinities could also make the idea of a God that existed "forever" seem illogical. Critics are often quick to see their own stance as "reasonable," while believing that the Latter-day Saint view is incoherent.

It's like they have zero idea about contemporary philosophy. Any Christian thinker who reads up on the philo of religion would take this apart easy, hell even William Lane Craig packages an answer in his books.

[_lazygal]

MfBukowski rejects Platonic ideas about God and I think he has a point. The God defended today by Philosophers is not the God of the Bible, he's some sort of abstract Neo-platonic thing that sits outside the universe.

Can you explain how the two are different? (I'm confused -- I don't see a difference between the philosophical idea of God and the God of the Bible. So there must be some part of this I don't know.)

[_lazygal]

In response to the OP:

Ideas like this always leads me to fractals and the incomprehensible nature of infinity. There is no beginning and there is no end. That is why you will never get to a god who didn't have a god before him. No matter how many times you zoom out on the God fractal, there is always more pattern to behold.

Is that a cop out?

[_asbestosman]

This is why I invite one and all to try this thought experiment. The only way I can see out of this paradox is that the first man who became a god had no God over him and had no savior unless he was his own savior (because the savior has to be a god to work out an infinite and eternal atonement). The second part of what I said is also a paradox, however, because this man would already have to be a god to become a god (by being his own savior). So in some way, it seems that the first god somehow progressed from being a man to being a god with no god superior to him, and no savior to intervene. It would be like the complete realization of some Nietzschean superman.

How about if there was no first God.

What's the smallest positive rational number?

Infinite regress may not be very pretty from a philosophical point of view, but I don't see any logical prohibition of it as such.

Actually, I've wondered if the chain of gods might be infinite in length but connected back to itself like a torus. The torus would also fit nicely with the idea of a ring which Joseph Smith mentioned in the King Follett discourse. Consider the set of rational points bounded by 0 <= x,y < 1. In other words the unit square but with 1 connected back to 0 on each side--a torus.

If the set of rational points isn't appealing because there's no specifiable preceeding / folowing point, consider instead the set of points of the form 1/n where n is a positive integer.

[_sock puppet]

Maybe Mormons need the Big Bang and evolution theories after all. The first god was created by the Big Bang and evolved into the first god.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Can you explain how the two are different?

Sure.

Most Philosophers of Religion I've read, defend Theism from an array of sophisticated attacks from other Philosophers, so they offer up sophisticated arguments, the result of these sophisticated arguments is a God so far removed from humanity, it ceases to be what most people think God is. It's a very abstract and complicated set of propositions that can either be affirmed of denied, but doesn't represent well the very human God we meet in the scriptures, much less a God with a physical body.