JOEL - I am sorry that we have shocked and hurt you. I
promise it wasn't intentional :-) I guess this all
depends on your deffinition of who God is,
and what the word omnipotent means to you in relation
to what God can do.
There are of course some things logic tells us that
God cannot do. He cannot sin; He cannot not exist; He
cannot make a round square; He cannot forget
anything; He cannot create a rock that is too heavy
for Him to lift; He cannot hate all His children; etc.
Should the ability to create something out of nothing
be included in this list? I don't know. But I do know
that there are no scriptures in the Bible that
specifically state that God has ever created anything
out of nothing.
Here's a little history on this. The concept of creation ex nihilo was not accepted as doctrine until after 200 AD. Shortly before this, an approach to creation ex nihilo was initiated by Theophilus of Antioch and was expanded upon by Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons to proclaim that God created earth and the cosmos out of nothing. This doctrine spread quickly throughout the Christian church and on until the present day.
One of the meanings of the Hebrew verb 'baurau', translated as "create" in the Old Testament, is "to organize, form, or fashion"; the same way a carpenter might organize together some already existing pieces of wood to make a table. In the Old Testament the same Hebrew word used in Genesis for create('baurau'), is used in the following scripture:
"I am the LORD, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King." (Isa 43:15)
Obviously God did not create Israel out of nothing. He organized it out of a league of tribes bound together by a covenant with Him (Josh. 24)
Here's something that might make sense to you. Evil
has always existed. God did not create evil. For Him
to have done this would be completely contradictory to
His omnibenevolent character. Evil is an eternal
principle that was never created. In like manner we
believe that it is an eternal law of heaven and the
universe that the principle elements of all matter
that exists now have always existed in some form or
another and can neither be created nor destroyed (an
accepted law of physics called "conservation of
mass"), and that God works with this eternal law when
it comes to creating things (D&C 93:33, Teachings of
the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 351).
Why should God need to create something out of nothing
when He already has plenty of material to work with
that has existed for eternity?
Finnally, just to set things straight, we do not "teach" that God is incapable of creating something out of nothing; perhaps He can. We only teach that He has never done it that way because of eternal laws that He choses to follow.
SARAH - If the elements are eternal and can't be created won't they eventually run out? Considering that the gods are "organizing " spirit children etc endlessly.
JOEL - Actually there are no more spirit children being
organized for this universe. That was all done before
the worlds were created. Please see this page.
But when you think of how big the universe is and all
the planets and stars out there, there are plenty of
elements that can be recycled and reused for other things.
There will of course be other universes created and
populated by children of other gods who will use the
elements of those universes. But this is mostly
speculation; we really don't understand how it all
works yet. Perhaps there's an infinate supply of
elements.
SARAH - Interesting...so if God isn't having any more sprirt
chldren what are the definitions of "eternal lives"
and "continuation of the seeds".
Also something different between catholism and
mormonism is the notion of eternity vs. eternities.
JOEL - To Latter-day Saints the phrase "eternal life" refers not only to everlasting life but also and more particularly to the quality of life God lives. Eternal life is available to all people who have lived on earth who accept this gift by their obedience to God's laws and ordinances. "Eternal lives" is just the plural form; refering to exaltation of many people or to the spirit children of those who have achieved exaltation.
"Continuation of the seeds" is refering to the eternal
increase one can have after one achieves exaltation
and godhood and starts having spirit children which
populate the planets of a new universe thus continuing
the seed of the parents into eternity.
For us there is of course only one eternity. The
plural form "Eternities" can represent the infinate
number of new universes that are created and populated by
new gods. Each succeeding universe represents an
eternity.
This is all getting into doctrines that we don't know
much about yet, nor could we begin to understand how
it all works. We really try to concern ourselves more
with the here and now for right now.
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