Mormon Truth Claims

Thank God for Satan

~ Mormon Mouse ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to Alan Watts I’ve realized that God and Satan are secretly in cahoots with eah other. When you think about it, they spend an awful lot of time together, those two. Seems like they never stop following each other around. But if wherever God goes, Satan goes to, and if wherever Satan goes, God goes too, just who is following who? It seems no matter how hard you try, you just can’t find one without the other. Sure, it may seem like they’ve parted ways for awhile, when things get a lot better than they are worse, or a lot worse than they are better, but it never seems to last, does it? No matter how good things get, Satan always seems to show up eventually, rearing his little horns once again. And no matter how bad things get, God is always there with his arms outstretched, waiting for us to run into them, like one of those big hugging scenes near the end of a movie. Because, after all, how could God be the ultimate good guy, unless there was also an ultimate bad guy? And how could Satan be the ultimate bad guy unless there was also an ultimate good guy? You can’t have good without bad or bad without good. If everything is good then nothing is good, and if everything is bad then nothing is bad. If we can’t have God without Satan and we can’t have Satan without God, then we can safely conclude that they are inseparably connected, and that although they are very different, they are two opposing parts of the same whole. Two sides of the same coin, Two ends of the same stick. Get rid of one, and you get rid of the other.

One interesting doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that in 2 Nephi 2:11 in The Book of Mormon it states “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things” which is really a very wise thing to say, and is likely influenced by ancient Chinese wisdom. This concept is reconfirmed in the “modern reveleation” of Doctrine and Covenants 29:39, which reads:

“And it must needs be that the devil should tempt the children of men, or they could not be agents unto themselves; for if they never should have bitter they could not know the sweet.”

Although Joseph Smith’s scriptures rightly recognize the need for opposing forces in life, they have a superficial understanding of the implications of their own truth, for although they recognize Satan as essential to God’s plan, they also paint him as public enemy number one and set about trying to avoid him, overcome him, and get rid of him, with the end goal being the millienium, during which he will be bound for 1,000 years, only to bring him back for a final showdown, for which the winner has already been determined. Spoiler alert, it’s God and his good guys.

After the big, final battle to end all battles, Satan will be cast out forever, tossed into outer darkness if I remember right. But if God locks him up and throws away the key forever, then without Satan around eventually all of God’s brightness and rightness would overwhelm everything and all things would be indistinguishable from each other and everyone would get bored. They wouldn’t even be able to keep themselves busy and distracted by doing good deeds, because without Satan around there wouldn’t be any! Good deeeds cannot exist without bad deeds to compare them to.

Maybe Satan is a pretty bad guy, but how bad can he really be if without him God cannot be God and righteousness cannot exist? God must be shaking Satan’s spirit hand behind the scenes and thanking him for doing the dirty work that allows the clean. Maybe we should thank him too.

A Very Mormon Memory Game

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Dear Believers in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

In regards to The Plan of Salvation, what is the point of testing someone if you begin the test by erasing their memory?

I’ve often heard it said in The Church that Heavenly Father took our premortal memories because he wanted us to have to rely on our faith in order to be accurately tested and to qualify to return to live with him again. But if all our memories were erased and we were all born into a great variety of different circumstances beyond our control, where we were subject to a great variety of different influences that were beyond our control, many of us would never have an equal opportunity to learn about and develop this all-important faith that is the supposed reason for which we all lost all memory of our premortal life together in the first place. Were all premortal memories taken from all of us so that only some of us would have the blessing of using faith to pass our test?

I’ve also heard it said in The Church that in his great wisdom Heavenly Father removed our memories of premortal life because he knew that if we remembered what it was really like, we would all kill ourselves to get back to it. One problem with this theory is, wouldn’t we also remember how we all shouted for joy in The Grand Council when we learned of The Plan of Salvation? Wouldn’t we also remember how badly we wanted to come to Earth, and then realize we can’t kill ourselves, and so go on with our mortal probation?

And where did all those premortal memories go, by the way? If God removed them, where is he storing them now and when and how will we get them back? Will they be AirDropped back into our minds after we die? Sounds shocking. To have millions of memories of premortal experieces to which you have no prior connection suddenly show up in your head? Maybe if they slipped them in slowly over time the feeling of being posessed would be a little easier to deal with. On second thought, maybe it would just last longer.

And at what point do people who die get their premortal memories back? I would think it would be right away or at least sometime soon after they die, but what about the billions of people who still haven’t had their temple work done for them? If they get their premortal memories back before their temple work is done for them, isn’t that sort of an unfair advantage over everyone back on Earth who has to go without? On the other hand, if the dead get their premortal memories back at some point after their temple work is done for them, after their faith on the question of their temple work has been tested, what are they told in the meantime? Do they even know they’re dead while they’re waiting? Maybe they know they’re dead but they’re quarantined somewhere and only fed information on a need-to-know basis?

If I die tomorrow and I pass into the so called “Spirit World,” if and when my premortal memories come either flooding or trickling back into my mind, how will I know if they’re my authentic premortal memories if my premortal memory was erased? In other words, if you completely erase someone’s memory and then an entire lifetime later you give it back, how will they know it’s their memory when they get it back if they don’t remember anything about it? Especially when they’ve developed an entirely new and separate sense of identity and whole lifetime of memories in the interim.

Members of The Church are often taught that they attended a big meeting in Heaven before everyone was born, a “Grand Council,” and that’s when Jesus volunteered to be our Savior in The Plan of Salvation, and we all voted for him and got really excited about having our memories erased and being turned into single-celled organisms…wait, I mean, we all shouted for joy. Well, the sons of God did I guess, but it doesn’t say anything in Job 38:7 about the daughters of God.

Much is often made in The Church of this premortal Grand Council in Heaven, and there is usually some emphasis placed on the idea that we all freely chose and freely agreed to follow Jesus and The Plan of Salvation, and that many of us were even premortally ordained and trained for special jobs in The Church on Earth. This apprarently all happened before our memories were erased and we were turned into single-celled organisms.

“And we will prove them herewith,” as the scripture in Abraham 3:25 goes, “…to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them;”

But again, I ask you, what is the point of testing someone if you begin the test by erasing their memory? And besides, if you take all of a person’s memories, what is there left to test against? Without any of the premortal memories, only the mortal can be tested, but then why send premortals to be tested as mortals if you’re just going to test the mortal, indeed can only test the mortal?

What kind of all-knowing God holds mere mortals to a plan and agreement they don’t remember making, especially if he is the one who completely erased all of their memories and prevented them from remembering the plan and agreement in the first place?

Brothers and Sisters, my dear friends (as Edler Uchtdorf would say), we can know something is wrong when someone tries to control us by telling us that we already planned and agreed to obey them before we were born, but that we just don’t remember doing that because our memories were erased.

Why would anyone be required to voluntarily agree to have their memory erased before taking a test, especially with eternal consequences hanging in the balance?

Sincerely,

Mormon Mouse

The Book of Mormon Cutting Room Floor

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What parts of the translation of The Book of Mormon were left out of the story? Couldn’t Joseph Smith and Olivery Cowdery have simply burned their notes and drafts when they were done with them? Just because people said he didn’t use notes or references, doesn’t mean he didn’t use notes or references, as we know from the lengthy King James Bible quotes, including translation errors specific to the 1769 edition, an edition which Joseph Smith would have had access to.

It is often ignored that Joseph Smith himself never said he didn’t use any notes or references, that he never said much about it at all but that he did it through the power of God. That could mean an awful lot of different things.

If Joseph didn’t always, but only sometimes or often produced the text of The Book of Mormon in the way that witnesses described, then their descriptions of the process could still be truthful, and even they themselves might not realize how much they left out in their descriptions, or if they did realize it, not give it much thought at all. I think human nature is often to focus on what is most interesting or important to the individual telling or hearing a story, to the exclusion of other potentialy important information.

If I am someone who smiles and laughs alot at work, then those who meet and work with me might describe me to other people as someone who is always smiling and laughing, when in fact they also spend quite a bit of time with me when I’m not smiling and laughing, but it doesn’t impress them enough to mention it. Me smiling and laughing makes it into their mental movie of our experiences. Everything else about me gets edited out onto the cutting room floor.

You Must Love Me

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I think that a man who must command everyone to love him, and then punish them if they do not, is afraid that he is unlovable. Why should a God be any different?

And if the God who declares you must love him is afraid he is unlovable, then he is not all-knowing in the traditional sense, as what would be the point of commanding people to love you if you already know if they do or do not and if they will or not?

I would think that an all-knowing God would also know that people cannot make themselves love someone they don’t love any better than they can laugh at a joke they don’t find funny, or enjoy eating food that they find distasteful.

Or, what if it’s true and we all really must love God after all? What kind of God takes any pleasure in being loved by those who love him under his own command rather than of their own free will and pleasure? The Church loves to spend lots of time talking about free agency, and what a wonderful gift it is from our Heavenly Father, but much less time talking about what we are commanded to do with it freely.

As Alan Watts has pointed out, and I’m paraphrasing him here, we are caught in a kind of double-bind if we are required to do that which will only be acceptable if we do it voluntarily.

Three Truths for Mormons 091622

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1. There is no body inside your body.

Despite what we read in The Book of Mormon about the Brother of Jared’s experience with Jesus, there is no credible evidence beyond personal belief that you are a human-shaped, full-sized, spirit body inside of a human-shaped, full-sized temporal body, like a ghost dressed in a flesh and bone suit. It may feel that way sometimes, but it also feels like the Earth is standing still in space and we know that it’s not.

I think we can know beyond a reasonable doubt that there are no spirit bodies inside of our bodies because surgeons throughout modern medical history have cut open live human bodies in all kinds of ways with no consideration at all for the spirit body supposedly living in there, tinkered around inside, and then stiched them back up and brought them to a full recovery. No evidence of spirit body damage, no evidence of spirit body spillage or leakage, and really no room at all in there for a full-sized spirit body to be living. Is there a spirit body shaped hollow inside each of us? No. What’s inside a human body other than the insides of a human body? There is no space inside your body for another full-sized version of you. Where would it go? The human body is too full of its own insides to accomodate a second version of itself like some kind of Russian nesting doll.

And by the way, what happens to the spirit body limbs of amputees? If I had to get my arm amputated, would my spirit arm get amputated too and I’d get it back in the resurrection as well? Or would I need to somehow fold it like a chicken wing, nice and snug next to my temporal torso? If I had to get both arms amputed, maybe I’d be like a spirit body in a temporal body straitjacket.

A faithful believer might reason that the spirit body must somehow be fused with the temporal body in such a way as to be undetectable until death, but to that I would say, maybe so, but isn’t it undetectable after death as well? Although people have claimed to see spirit bodies of the departed, these bodies never seem to make it from the inner space of subjective reality to the outer space of objective reality long enough for any disinterested outsiders to confirm that they are really there. How long should something go undetected in our shared objective reality before we admit that it doesn’t exist in our shared objective reality?

And how can a spiritual form that is so weak or so hidden as to be undetectable by modern science, have sufficient size, shape, and power to control a temporal form as large and as solid (and detectable) as the human body? I don’t think that Joseph Smith knew about things like particle accelerators (such as The Large Hadron Collider) when he wrote Doctrine and Covenants 131:7-8.

Faithful believers might reason that although there may be no scientific proof that they have spirit bodies, they believe they have them nonetheless because they can feel it, they know what they feel, and so they are confident that someday they will be vindicated in their belief. Well, I don’t feel it (anymore), and I know what I feel, so I too am confident that someday I will be vindicated in my belief. I’m also confident that if you slowly sawed off my left leg without anesthesia, that before I passed out I would only feel the saw going through one left leg and not two, because there is no body inside my body. Any spirit body that is strong enough to move my temporal body around, should feel the saw in addition to its temporal body feeling it. And if I can’t feel each of them individually because the spirit body and the temporal body are one, then there is no difference between them, and if there is no difference between them then aren’t they the same thing?

2. You can’t control your feelings.

It may feel like you can sometimes, but, SURPRISE! The feeling of being in control of your feelings is just another feeling. And aren’t feelings the effects of what has already happened? And if the feeling of being in control of your feelings is just another feeling, then in order to control your feelings it seems that you would need to control the effects of what has alread happened with the effect of what has already happened, a sort of double impossiblity. In order to feel your feelings, including the feeling of being the feeler of those feelings, that which produces those feelings must first occur. And besides, knowing what we all know about human nature, don’t you think if people could control their feelings that they would spend a lot more time feeling good and a lot less time feeling bad? Aren’t feelings actually like the weather in many ways? Many may feel in control when they obtain and use an umbrella and keep smiling through the rain, but no one controls when the rain stops.

3. You can’t change yourself.

This one doesn’t feel right at first to many people, especially those who are more achievement oriented. But what do I mean by “yourself?” I mean that feeling that you have (and I believe it’s a subjective reality that is an objective illusion) of being the subject of your own experiences, located inside of “your” body. And if that self is what you feel yourself to be, then that is the you that can’t change yourself, because “you” in that sense of the word is an illusion, and by an illusion I mean just a feeling, and feelings only exist to their subjects subjectively, and do not exist out in objective reality. And although an illusion may be able to cause change to some degree, an illusion cannot change itself. I found the following statement in my notes from about a year ago, so I am quoting myself here:

“I am not the scientist in the experiment of my life,  rather “I” am the continually updating result of the ongoing experiment, a result which changes and which can be changed, but which cannot change itself.”

Three Truths for Mormons

~ Mormon Mouse ~ Leave a comment

Based on how I’m feeling at the moment, I would like to share with Mormons (and with members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Nelson…) three truths that I’ve learned since I began studying church history, doctrine, and culture, as well as science, philosophy, and religion:

  1. There is no good evidence that anyone or anything exists yet that places specific thoughts or feelings in your mind or body other than you. Everyone should educate themselves on the latest and best science on the human brain, because we all have one and we are all nothing without it, so shouldn’t we understand it and take care of it well? As far as we know at this time, your thoughts and feelings are yours and yours alone, and they are a function of your body (especially your brain), which is a function of your DNA and your environment. This means that Satan has no way to tempt you and God has no way to inspire you, other than by acting on their own in objective reality. The correct answer to the age-old Mormon question “How do I know if it’s my own thoughts or The Holy Ghost?” is that it’s all you and it’s always all you. Personally I think this means that either God and Satan do not exist or that they do not exist in the form traditionally taught by The Church.
  2. There is no good reason for the gold plates to be withheld from the world. I think the two most popular explanations I’ve come across for why the rest of the world beyond the eleven witnesses cannot see Joseph Smith’s gold plates are these: that God wanted to protect The Book of Mormon from the kind of translation errors and worldly interference that are found in The Bible, and that God wants to test our faith. Neither of these explanations works in any kind of objectively true way. Even if the plates had ended up safe in a museum (which God could surely bring about, couldn’t he?), Joseph Smith still would have had first crack at a full translation, and if his translation was correct it would ultimately win out in the kind of world and culture we’ve lived in since 1830, thereby supporting and confirming his true prophetic calling from God. Also, if the plates were confirmed as an authentic historical artifact and were available for anyone to inspect in a museum, faith and conversion would increase, but faith would still be required to believe and know that the supernatural and miraculous events described on the plates were objectively real and actually occured. Knowing that the text of The Bible is authentically ancient has never removed the burden of faith from the believer as far as I know, and neither would it with The Book of Mormon. In other words, knowing with scientific proof that the ancient inhabitants of MesoAmerica actually recorded on gold plates that they had supernatural and miraculous experiences is different from whether they actually had those experiences that they claimed to have – faith is required either way, so God has no good reason that I know of to withold the plates from the world. However well-intentioned, withholding evidence like this is a classic technique of the magician and con artist. If Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life,” then shouldn’t we agree and remember that the truth does not withhold evidence of itself? Never trust that you have all of the truth from someone who won’t let you look at all of the evidence.
  3. Although he is all-knowing, God never says or does anything in the scriptures to indicate that he has any special knowledge or insight into why his children do what they do. The only reason he ever seems to give for their misbehavior is that they’ve misbehaved, they’ve sinned, they’ve chosen wrong because they’ve rejected the good and embraced the evil. Modern science and human experience tells us that in reality there can be a great variety of reasons that people do what they do, reasons over which they have little or no control, and that identifying and trying to work with those reasons seems to help bring about a rate of positive change that surely is as good and likely much better than simply commanding people to repent.

If You Never Admit That You’re Wrong

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If you never admit that you’re wrong, then either you’re never wrong, or you’re wrong and you can’t admit it.

If you never apologize, then either you never do anything that deserves an apology, or you do things that deserve an apology but do not apologize for them.

If leaders should never be criticized, then either leaders do nothing worthy of criticism, or they do things worthy of criticism but should never be criticized for them.

If “The Church is true” no matter what, then either no part of the church is false or parts of the church are false and their falsity should be covered up, explained away, or ignored.

If an all-powerful, anthropomorphic God exists no matter what, then either no good evidence against the reality of this kind of God’s existence exists, or good evidence exists and should be covered up, explained away, or ignored.

If the Mormon priesthood and temple ban against blacks was right then either there is nothing very wrong with treating people worse because of the color of their skin if it’s God’s will, or the ban was very wrong and The Church can’t admit it.

If Joseph Smith’s polygamy was right, then either there’s nothing very wrong with cheating on your wife if it’s God’s will, or Joseph’s Smith’s polygamy was very wrong and The Church can’t admit it.

If Joseph Smith’s polyandry was right, then either there’s nothing very wrong with marrying someone else’s wife if it’s God’s will, or Joseph Smith’s polyandry was very wrong and The Church can’t admit it.

If The Book of Abraham is true no matter what, than either it was translated from Egyptian on papyrus as it claims to be, or it was not really translated from Egyptian on papyrus but this fact should be covered up, explained away, or ignored.

If The Book of Mormon is an objectively real, historical record as it claims to be, then either the plates were physically real and God, Moroni, and Joseph Smith refused to let more than a small number of friends and relatives know that for sure (objectively), or the plates were fake, or only spiritually (subjectively) real, and could only be seen “with the eye of faith,” as Martin Harris reportedly said, which is a phrase of Moroni’s from Ether 12:19 in The Book of Mormon.

If the priesthood will always govern The Church, and if women will never have the priesthood, then either women will be subject to men in some way forever, or women should have the priesthood and The Church refuses to give it to them.

If The Church now teaches that it’s okay to be gay but it’s not okay to act on it, then either The Church doesn’t really believe it’s okay to be gay and this is just a compromise, or on some level it knows it’s okay and is unwilling or unable to admit it. Telling people it’s okay to be what they are but it’s not okay to do what they do is the same as telling people it’s not okay to be what they are. Being and doing go together, like two sides of the same coin, and cannot be separated.

Dear President Nelson, 081722

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To: President Russell M. Nelson, prophet, seer, and revelator of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

From: Mormon Mouse

Re: Which Part is God’s Part?

Dear President Nelson,

In working through a so called “faith crisis” over the last eight years, I often found myself asking “which part is God’s part?” There seem to be so many different faith-promoting stories and teachings in The Church where all of the physical work and materials and everything is provided by mortals and the natural world and it is unclear what if anything was actually provided by God and the supernatural world, other than perhaps a subjective feeling or belief that something was provided. This seems to conflict with the scriptures, where God is depicted as regularly acting, intervening, and providing in the natural world.

Take baptisms for the dead, for example. If I remember right, The Church has this unique and special ordinance because of a single verse in The New Testament and the teachings and revelations of Joseph Smith.

But, how can God be all-powerful if he needs his children in The Church in the mortal world to do the work of salvation for his children in the immortal world over which he himself presumably would have direct and perfect control and stewardship? If God is not able to do his own work in his own world with his own resources, if he needs us and our natural world, and if we have free agency and can tell him no, then wouldn’t God be subservient to us and our natural world in some way? How does the creator of intelligent, free-agent children have all power if he needs their cooperation in order to do what he wants?

Priesthood blessings are another example. If a faithful sick person receives a blessing of healing from a righteous priesthood holder and then they receive medical treatment, and then they recover, which part is God’s part? And if you removed the faith, the priesthood blessing, and belief in God from that scenario, but you kept the sick person and the medical treatment, wouldn’t the sick person still recover?

I am not trying to be difficult or be like one of those Book of Mormon Antichrists or anything like that. I am sincerely interested in your thoughts on this matter and will give careful and polite consideration to any answers you might be kind enough to provide to the five questions in this letter.

Sincerely,

Mormon Mouse

Dear President Nelson,

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To: President Russell M. Nelson, prophet, seer, and revelator of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

From: Mormon Mouse

Re: Two Questions about Three Doctrines

Dear President Nelson,

Why would an all-knowing Heavenly Father send his children to Earth to be tested if he already knows all of the results of all of their tests?  

And if he already knows all of the results of all of their tests, in what way are they free to choose anything other than those choices that will lead to the results that he already knows will occur?

It seems to me that these two questions indicate a potentially serious conflict between The Church’s teachings about free agency, the omniscience of God, and the purpose of our mortal life on Earth.

I am sincerely interested in knowing what you think about these issues and I would give polite and thoughtful consideration to any answers you might provide in response.

Sincerely,

Mormon Mouse