Mormon Atheism

It would need clearer definition. The foundation of any religion is a belief in God, so if you remove that foundation, it makes it hard to build a philosophy on the rest of the scaffolding. I could see someone who has entirely lost their faith in God, and therefore Christ, and the Church, yet still attending for social or family reasons, but they would be no different than an atheist subset of New Order Mormons….so I feel that part of the religious landscape is already occupied.

I would say that I reject the standard definition of god, which, being derived from the platonic ideal, and in current LDS theology tries to be both ideal (omni-*) and material (section 131). This fused concept of an omni-whatever with a god who was once man and is now unchangeably god, who is the same from everlasting to everlasting is distinctly illogical and impossibly inconsistent.

If this illogical definition is god, then I am an atheist. Absolutely. I reject the existence of such a being.

I do know for myself that there is a power greater than myself, for I have witnessed that power many times in my life. By this power, I know I AM.

As a member of the CoJCoLDS, I accept in faith that this higher power is god: from the Father I accept that he has given me a divine nature, from the son he has led the Way and I know I AM, and from the Holy Ghost I sense the spirit of truth. In all honesty, I do not know if these exist in exactly the form as taught, but I accept such on faith. I neither believe nor reject any specific definition of god.

What am I?

It’s true that few would understand why I came to church if I didn’t believe in God and people would probably be afraid of anything I said.

This thread has me thinking about Christian Atheism and why Mormon Atheism seems like an oxymoron. Christian Atheism can work because Jesus’ ethical teachings have ethical value in the real world and are valuable even if there is no God and no afterlife. But many of the teachings of the Mormon behavior code have little value if there is no God and no afterlife because most of the uniquely Mormon behavioral teachings are based on a promised reward from God for obedience or are given on the basis that “God said so.” Take the Word of Wisdom. I can see some ethical value in abstaining from alcohol and tobacco, but I don’t think anyone would consider consumption of tea and coffee to be unethical. Tea and coffee are forbidden by the WoW because God said so, at least according to our theology, and one obeys because one wants the promised rewards, not because drinking tea and coffee is unethical. The law of chastity is similar- the prohibition of adultery is certainly grounded in good ethics, but I don’t think any health professional outside the Church would condemn many of the other activities that the Church teaches are impure on the basis that these activities are unethical. Since Mormon theology attaches a blessing from God to most acts of obedience, it doesn’t make any sense to talk about adherence to these behaviors without a God to administer the promised rewards.

So I guess that if Mormon Atheism works for me, that’s great, but I don’t expect it to catch on.

this notion may be too linear to be accepted, but could you see the idea of “god” being some kind of office or status or position? would that satisfy the idea of a gods that has both progressed AND being unchangeable? no doubt this idea, like all my others, are ones discussed in earlier posts i have yet to read. but a reference to god may be a reference to a state of being, not the individual hims or herself or itself?

and as for the atheism thing, were i to look at my co-members in sacrament meeting and wonder (which i am doing a lot of late), i wonder… what portion are actually exactly that–mormon atheists or just doing the cultural thing–and just don’t know or couldn’t accept or are not self-aware enough to realize they are? i know there were many things i simply accepted and never gave thought or prayer to, until more recently.

I think atheists, including those in mormonism, do not accept the Standard Definition of God, but haven’t gone to the point of defining what god might be in this way as you propose. I had toyed with the idea of “god as calling” many years ago, and it works to a point: but we’re still into a hierarchal situation where someone is at the top of the tree as god of gods…

maybe. who knows.

But when we read John, in the beginning there was logos, and logos was made flesh and dwelt among us. In John 10, Jesus is challenging the jews on why they insist on stoning him. I mean, he just said something quite remarkable:

I and my Father are one.

Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.

Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?

The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.

This was extraordinarily offensive: Jesus equated himself with god. “Shema Ysrael, YWHW Eloheinu YHWH ECHAD”. Jesus would have invoked a similar concept to the Shema — that he was ECHAD with the Father, a replacement word for YHWH. ECHAD is one, but more than that, it implies perfect unity among many; yet the Jews had re-interpreted ELOHIM to be singular even if it is grammatically plural, therefore there could be no being ECHAD/One with God. This rabbinical interpretation was false, as Jesus was about to point out:

Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?

If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;

Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?

This verse and the meaning of it was one of the most spiritual experiences of my mission. An explicit definition by Christ that he is the Son of God. But moreso, he says that there was a more extreme statement of being god in Psalms 82, speaking to the Judges in Israel:

God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods.

How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah.

Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.

Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.

They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.

I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.

As god judges among the gods, so also should the earthly judges judge righteously — they are ‘gods’ to the poor, needy, fatherless, and the afflicted. It’s an explicit definition that those who do the work of gods are gods.

And if there were any question, Jesus equates himself as ECHAD with God and says that we too are to be ECHAD with him, with each other, and with god’s power. This all is in John 17. Not that we would become gods of our own little worlds, but that through our unity through the holy spirit, we could become one with god in serving and loving our fellow beings.

We look way too far away for who god is. We look for god to bail us out of our problems, and yes, he will, and he will in the form of others who are listening to the spirit, being aware of needs, and serving each other. God is not the other, outside of humanity. The innovation of the Restored Gospel was to understand, somehow, that god was really one of us. or maybe better said, one with us. Once we let go of the magical, impossible god of our Christian understanding, and come to the realization of I AM: a being that is one with the power of the universe, with the Way, is no more or less god in that very moment and state of being one. This, to me, is the atonement — to be at one with god, here, now. To be in the middle of our eternal lives — to seek not for something yet to come, but to seek to bless those around us in ways so needed.

I don’t care if I get called atheist, agnostic, whatever. it doesn’t matter: i have seen the act of god happen when someone out of the blue does an act of kindness; I have felt the premonition to do something in a moment, to help another person, and I have no Idea why I did it. It’s glorious. It’s humbling. it’s momentary, but it’s eternal and sublime.

I’ve talk to some people who consider themselves Culturally Mormon but see themselves as Agnostic. Mormon Agnostic.

The more I read and listen to the atheist point of view the more I realize they have the intellectual high ground in their argument. They do not require mind bending approaches to make their world work.

I find myself coming to the same conclusion. For me, the intellectual honesty of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins gives us a view of the world that is simple, clear, requires few assumptions, and leaves very few questions unanswered. By contrast, theist apologists create a complex and mysterious world where many assumptions must be made and many questions remain unanswered. It seems to me that Occam’s Razor is on the side of atheism. I spend a lot of time these days staring into the abyss, pondering the possibility of my consciousness ending at the death of my brain. I hate this scenario, but there is no evidence that either heaven or hell exists. My study and experience seems to be converging on the horrifying conclusion that the universe was created by the laws of physics (as a spatially flat universe like ours could be) and that we were created by the laws of nature (subsets of the laws of physics) and when we die, our consciousness ends, because our consciousness exists solely in our brain. I fear that human beings really aren’t anything more that just “stuff,” and humans invented religion because we feared the extinction of our consciousness, so we created a way to persuade ourselves that we do live forever, even though we don’t. We know that the atoms in our bodies were made in stars, and when the stars died catastrophically, they seeded the void with the carbon and oxygen that would become our flesh and bones. In 5 billion years the sun will swell up as it begins to die, and the earth and all the atoms that were once in our bodies will be swallowed up by the sun, then ejected out into space to become part of another solar system and possibly another earth. As a professor of mine said, “From the stars we came, and to the stars we will return, now and for all eternity.” The scenario is poetic, beautiful, and unspeakably horrifying.

By my post was on Mormon Atheism, so I’ll stick to that.

The biggest fallacy out in the world is because someone is atheist that make them immoral.

Yet, the atheists that I have met are the nicest people and truly humanitarian. People can have morality and ethics even if they don’t believe in God.