posted
Here's a hypothetical scenario. Let's say God turns out to be female. Would you still have to obey her? Is eternal salvation worth it if you have to spend eternity being bossed around by a woman?
Posts: 431 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I don't think I'd be able to cope with discovering that the creator of the universe actually had the ability to produce tiny little people in her quasi-metaphorical tummy. I prefer that my creators create people the old-fashioned way: out of nothing or, barring that, dust. Barring that, pieces of other people will do in a pinch.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
What would you do if god turned out to be plural? How would you go about choosing a god to follow? Or would you be willing to follow all of them?
Posts: 1591 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Here's a hypothetical scenario. Let's say God turns out to be a male, but prefers other male deities, you know. sexually?
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
Crom tells me he grows angry at all this hypothowhatsing. There's only one worthy question: the riddle of steel.
Posts: 47 | Registered: Apr 2011
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posted
(More seriously, in the OT, the second mention of God's presence, literally translated as "the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters", is the word used to describe a mother hen hovering over her chicks. And then there's the line "The lord God created Man in his image, male and female he created them" Likewise, any OT mention of God's spirit (as opposed to his masculine person) is in the feminine, the "Shekinah Glory." This is carried over into the NT and Christian theology, with the Holy Spirit, the Promised Comforter, traditionally being thought of as God's feminine, mothering side. This would imply that God, while (hopefully) lacking a physical penis or ovaries, possesses both distinct masculine and feminine features and personalities)
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
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"omnipotent [om-nip-uh-tuhnt] om·nip·o·tent [om-nip-uh-tuhnt] adjective 1.almighty or infinite in power"
So, for better or worse, richer or poorer, manly or ladylike, God is a pretty tough hombre/mujer. (S)he can pretty much do/have/BE whatever he/she feels like him/her wants to do, without even an inkling of possibility of resistance or reprisal from me. I hear that omnipotence is a darn hard obstacle to overcome in a brawl/war/heated argument/minor disagreement over the proper placement of tp on the roll. So, dude or chick, God can pretty much always count on my support, whether he/she be wearing a tunic or gown when I get to the pearly gates.
All I ask when I get there is that there be four things: Forgiveness, Answers, My family, and sandwiches.
Posts: 2532 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
The idea of a disembodied yet gendered being is ridiculous. Without the appearance and anatomy of bodies - genitals, varying ratios of hormones, cultural marks such as long hair, or the ability to inseminate and give birth, what the hell is gender supposed to be?
Well, the standard answer is "cultural construct." Except a hypothetically existing god is not a cultural construct.
God would neither have "gender" as a culturally constructed identity or "sex" as a particular body.
So what gives? Oh, right, any given culture's idea of god is always a reflection of the traits they consider best within themselves. Back in the day, the best traits were coded male so god was overwhelmingly male (with hints of what passes as feminine, as dogbreath points out). Nowadays, we valorize the breakdown of specific gender identities, so suddenly god is much more fluid, gender wise.
Posts: 1515 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
We also believe in a Mother deified in Heaven along with the Father, so this question isn't particularly hypothetical for us. *grin*
Take our hymn "Invocation, or the Eternal Father and Mother" by Eliza R. Snow, fer instance.
I had learned to call thee Father, Through thy Spirit from on high; But until the key of knowledge Was restored, I knew not why. In the heavens are parents single? No; the thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason, truth eternal Tells me I've a mother there.
When I leave this frail existence, When I lay this mortal by, Father, Mother, may I meet you In your royal courts on high? Then, at length, when I've completed All you sent me forth to do, With your mutual approbation Let me come and dwell with you.
Posts: 1595 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Is the LDS God a homo sapien sapien? Or rather, a supernaturally altered homo sapien sapien?
Actually, I'm curious. Does LDS God's body have all the same characteristics ours do? Does he excrete? Have nocturnal emissions? Halitosis?
Posts: 1515 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Foust: Is the LDS God a homo sapien sapien? Or rather, a supernaturally altered homo sapien sapien?
Actually, I'm curious. Does LDS God's body have all the same characteristics ours do? Does he excrete? Have nocturnal emissions? Halitosis?
God's body does not share all the exact same characteristics. It's more useful to think of human beings as a sort of primitive version of what God is. Those who have seen him indicate he has a body more or less like us on the outside. Whether that means internally we are the same is not known. Whether Gods need to eat or sleep, we don't know. We know God rested after creating the earth, and that Jesus ate fish post resurrection. That doesn't really prove that God must do those things. He may have rested after creating the earth so as to establish a pattern for us of resting. Jesus might have eaten the fish purely to convince the apostles he had a physical body, and that he wasn't a ghost.
So far God has only seen fit to let us know that we are created in his image, but we are not identical. Sorta like Michelangelo's David is an uncanny image of a man, but the statue is not a man.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Edit: To be clear, this was a reply to Foust.
We have no idea, since we have no records of Him doing those things in front of us. *grin* Wouldn't bother me if He was like us in those ways; what matters is whether or not He is Good, not whether or not He gets morning breath. Presumably there is a biology of some sort going on - one of our sacred books, the Doctrine and Covenants, says that:
130:1 "When the Savior shall appear we shall see him as he is. We shall see that he is a man like ourselves. And that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy."
So Gods are "human", but in bodies capable of being "eternal". Gives me hope for medicine and other scientific advancements, lemme tellya.
(The point is that in the LDS understanding, God is not species-unique - the ontological gap between God and humans that Post-Augustinian Neoplatonic Christianity posits is much diminished, and male and female humans are equally capable of physically-embodied divinity themselves, if they choose to make themselves as unselfishly Good as the others who have gone before.)
posted
Zotto, when you say "eternal," do you mean that God and other beings like him will exist after the end of our universe, either through heat death or a big crunch?
Posts: 1515 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Assuming that our projections are accurate and those events will become more than theoretical, then yes. How in the world this will be possible given the current understanding of physics, is, of course, a rather interesting question! *laugh*
Edit: I don't mean for this to come off as proselytization, which is against board rules. But for skeptical anthropological interest, if nothing else, I'll note some cool bits about LDS cosmology:
In our Book of Abraham, pre-mortal human "Intelligence" is an uncreated and indestructible spark - kinda like Card's aiuas - which, because it is uncreated, is the source of our moral culpability and agency. God the Father dwells "in the midst" of these uncreated beings, and is the wisest of them. He ratifies a Plan offered for His adopted family: rather than creation ex nihilo, the Gods descend to organize pre-existing matter. Like a garden, the "creation" is seen as an intentional planting.
"We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell." (3:24) "And they went down at the beginning, and they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth." (4:1) "And the Gods said: Let us prepare the earth to bring forth grass; the herb yielding seed; the fruit tree yielding fruit." (4:11) "And the Gods said: Behold, we will give them every herb bearing seed that shall come upon the face of all the earth, and every tree which shall have fruit upon it." (4:29)
So it's a colonization effort; a process of organization, preparation, and seeding. With this in mind, I'd speculate that, heck, maybe we'll find somewhere that won't get sucked into a supermassive blackhole. Or whatever. Something sci-fi like that, anyway.
posted
What a pathetic God he/she would be if they were merely an enhanced human.
Far far far more likely God is an essence. The collective of all spiritual essence in existance, again, much like Card's Outside.
If God is this magical all powerful all knowing infinite being, it would seem kind of limiting to have a physical body. A physical body is finite; how can one be both finite and infinite at the same time. I mean beyond simply saying "he's God, he can be what he wants'?
To hyper-personify God, greatly diminishes IT.
As this whole God idea goes, I think it has more holes than a Swiss Cheeze.
But then, that's just my opinion.
Posts: 803 | Registered: May 2006
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quote:Far far far more likely God is an essence. The collective of all spiritual essence in existance, again, much like Card's Outside.
You introduce the words "omnipotent" into the equation and "more likely" is just kind of a laughable concept.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
I would have no problem meeting God and finding out that She was female. I think it far more likely, from my understanding of scripture, that God isn't single and that Gods exist in family units.
Do I believe that exclusively or teach it? No. But it's an idea that seems to go well with everything I've learned. Do I know any of the particulars about Godbodies? Do I know exactly how things pan out after we die? No. But I'm not too worried about that. So far, living the lifestyle that God has taught - being good to people, being unselfish, forgiving others, taking care of my body both physically and psychologically by avoiding harmful things, has done more good in my life than anything else I've studied or tried. So I think the proof is in the pudding, and I have no problem reserving a full understanding of eternal realities until I've reached that point.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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