Tobin wrote:Drifting wrote:...
LOL Where do you think God exists? This world is destined to be part of the Celestial Kingdom eventually, but God is in the Celestial Kingdom now. The plan of salvation is so we can return to be with God. Where is God? The Celestial Kingdom. I really think all of this is sooo basic and terribly funny that you guys don't know this stuff. As I've said, some people on here have a dim understanding of Mormonism.
Nope. You're now equivocating between "heaven" (wherever God physically dwells) and "the Celestial Kingdom" (the final destiny of everyone who has been saved after the final judgment). Saying that "the Celestial Kingdom" is "wherever the technologically advanced space alien Tobin believes in who is not a theistic God but so exactly like a theistic God that there would be no discernible difference from our perspective" completely misses the point of what the Celestial Kingdom is supposed to be.
The whole point is the Earth falling into a Terrestrial state when Adam and Eve fell (remember the temple endowment, where you learned that the LDS Church is false?). Then the Earth was baptized when Noah's flood covered the planet, and eventually the Earth will be baptized by fire (like when a person receives the Holy Ghost), redeemed and turned into the Celestial Kingdom. LDS cosmology posits that this planet will pass through the phases of redemption and salvation that are analogous to a person. In LDS terminology, "the Celestial Kingdom" is a specific place. It is the planet Earth when it gets sanctified.
D&C 1306 The angels do not reside on a planet like this earth;
7 But they reside in the presence of God, on a globe like a sea of glass and fire, where all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future, and are continually before the Lord.
8 The place where God resides is a great Urim and Thummim.
9 This earth, in its sanctified and immortal state, will be made like unto crystal and will be a Urim and Thummim to the inhabitants who dwell thereon, whereby all things pertaining to an inferior kingdom, or all kingdoms of a lower order, will be manifest to those who dwell on it; and this earth will be Christ’s.Parley P. Pratt, JOD 16:323-24Now, do you not see that there is a similarity in regard to God's dealings with the earth and with the inhabitants who dwell upon its face? The earth has to undergo a change as well as our bodies. As our bodies may be burned at the stake and the ashes blown to the four winds of heaven, so will the earth be burned and pass away; and in the same manner as our bodies are renewed out of the elements which once entered into their composition, or at least a sufficient quantity thereof to make a new body, so will the earth have to be renewed again and resurrected, redeemed and made immortal from the elements of which it was formerly composed, so that those immortal beings who are brought forth from the grave will have an immortal earth to dwell upon. There is a type of this thing also in regard to our first parents. When this earth issued from the hands of the Almighty it was intended for an eternal duration; in other words, it was an immortal earth or creation, all things being pronounced very good. But man brought a curse upon the earth, he brought death into the world, he brought a curse upon the waters and upon all the materials of our globe, and hence, as man has to be sanctified and to pass through the several ordeals necessary for that purpose, so does the earth; and when man has got through with these ordeals and becomes immortal, so will his abiding place become immortal, and he will inherit it for ever and ever. In that talk (page 317), Parley P. Pratt also says this:
According to this new revelation, there is a certain great world, called Kolob, placed near one of the celestial kingdoms, whose diurnal rotation takes place once in a thousand of our years; and that celestial time was measured by those celestial beings, by the rotations of Kolob, hence one day with the Lord was a thousand of our years.But you are not saying that where the advanced-space-alien-who-is-not-a-theistic-God-but-has-all-the-attributes-of-theism-for-all-meaningful-purposes is "one of the celestial kingdoms," but "The" Celestial Kingdom, because in your Mormon fanfic, you have children who die going to live with God for a while, and then somehow being tested like Abraham either through reincarnation or some Mormon analogue of Purgatory, and that's the Tobinist interpretation of D&C 130. I could not care less if you substitute Joseph Smith's riffing off Swedenborg and clumsy theodicy to explain why God lets babies die with your own Mormon fanfic. But your Mormon fanfic is contrary to what the LDS Church teaches. The LDS Church does not teach that the spirits of dead babies are going to hang around in God's immediate presence in "a" celestial kingdom, then get reincarnated and/or tested, and then possibly saved in the eschatological sense. The LDS Church teaches that the spirits of babies who die will go to spirit paradise, which is not in God's immediate presence. The spirit world is on this earth, but we can't usually perceive it. Then these dead babies/children will eventually be resurrected, and because they never sinned, they automatically go to "The" Celestial Kingdom: the end state of everyone who is saved from physical and spiritual death.
When you keep saying people on this board have a dim understanding of Mormonism, what you really mean is they have a dim understanding of the Mormon fanfic that you have invented and is nowhere taught in the LDS Church. You keep saying that the LDS Church has it all wrong, but that could only be the case if the LDS Church does in fact teach what keeps being shown to you in this thread. You can't have it both ways that "the LDS Church is wrong" but everyone has a "dim understanding of Mormonism."
Your running commentary about "spouting nonsense" is based on the premise that you are somehow really insightful to have spotted a plot hole in the faith-promoting narrative: that children are automatically saved even though they did not exercise any free agency in this life. Because, you know, it's not as if people who no longer believe in this mythology also did not notice that there are plot holes in it. But you're not accounting for the pre-mortal existence, where we are supposed to have had the capacity to make choices that affect what happens to us in this life. But then that just changes where the plot hole is. If we could prove ourselves in the pre-mortal existence so that we had already earned salvation (like spirits who die as children presumably did), then the idea that we had to go through all the trials of mortal life to merit salvation and/or learn from experience is self-refuting. So whether you go with children being saved without free agency, or children having used up their free agency before they were born so they already passed the test, there's a serious plot hole in the LDS theodicy to justify God allowing children to die.
The logical conclusion is that plot holes like this exist because Joseph Smith and his claimed successors were making it up. The punting-on-first-down conclusion is, "Well, we just don't know." The illogical conclusion---the one you have chosen---is "No, it has to be to be true, so I need to make up a meta-myth to fill in the plot holes." So here's the net result of your wonderful Tobinist meta-myth, as presented
passim on this board:
1. There are philosophical problems with traditional theism.
2. So I will posit a god who is so exactly like the God of traditional theism that is makes no difference and provides no explanatory power.
3. Tobin god revealed things to Joseph Smith, like the Book of Mormon.
4. The Book of Mormon narrative happened in Mesoamerica, even though I have nothing on which to base that assertion.
5. Joseph Smith was a nincompoop who got things wrong and made things up, so there is no particular reason to rely on what he claims to have received from God.
6. But I will proceed as if Joseph Smith, the confused nincompoop, was right about the Three Degrees of Glory.
7. Men are fallible and get confused and are not Tobin god's sock puppets and don't understand things.
8. Present company excepted, of course, because Tobin god
really told me all this stuff.
9. If we have to use free agency to be saved, as Joseph Smith, the confused nincompoop, taught, then it doesn't make sense that children are automatically saved.
10. So I will infer from some quote mines from LDS leaders who explicitly taught that children are automatically saved said that children are not really automatically saved.
11. The specific conditions applicable to early Mormons in Missouri mean that everyone has to be tested like Abraham, possibly meaning that at some point we are all going to get a son that Tobin god will ask us to kill.
12. Children who die before the age of accountability go to the earth in its sanctified, eternal state (which doesn't exist yet) to be with Tobin god and preserved like animals at a national park. Eventually, they will be sent to a Mormon version of Purgatory to prove themselves, which makes Tobin god sending them to Earth just to die and start over completely pointless. Or maybe they will be reincarnated, which makes Tobin god sending them to earth just to die and start over completely pointless.
13. Tobin god could have allowed these children to live in mortality long enough to prove themselves, but he didn't, in order to carry out his pointless do-over that was unnecessary if Tobin god really has power over life and death and is really benevolent. Or, alternatively, Tobin god does not have the power to prevent this, which means there is no reason to believe he has the power to give us eternal life, either.
14. Tobin god lives in the Celestial Kingdom, and the spirits of dead people live in the Celestial Kingdom, and the spirits of people who have never been born live in the Celestial Kingdom, and people who are saved and resurrected live in the Celestial Kingdom, and we can't become gods like Tobin god, so there is really no point to Tobin god sending us away to come back to the same place and the same state we started in.
15. Anyone who never once heard all this in Sunday school, conference, the Standard Works, or a single thing ever promulgated by the LDS Church has a dim understanding of Mormonism.
16. The LDS Church and its leaders are getting everything wrong, but Tobin god wants us to affiliate with this apostate church, and anyone who leaves it will have to answer to Tobin god.
17. The Book of Abraham was a mistake, but it's true, but Joseph Smith didn't know what he was doing and made it up, but it's inspired, but the papyri have nothing to do with it, but the facsimiles are true, but the facsimiles are from the papyri, which have nothing to do with the Book of Abraham.
18. In the name of the advanced space alien who is the next closest possible thing to a theistic God but is just barely not a theistic God, amen.
Don't forget that in many areas of religion you and Tobin would disagree.