A Few Questions for My Mormon Friends

I often get Latter Day Saints missionaries coming to my door as I live not far from their apartment. I always welcome the opportunity to speak to them about our different religions. One of the questions they always ask is, "Do you have any questions we might be able to answer." I typically pose one, but I always have quite a few more I forget or don't have time to address. I thought I might take the time and put them down so that I do not forget them, and perhaps for public discussion.

1. Your gods are just a couple of the plethora that are out there. Were there gods before them?
   If Heavenly Father (HF) was once like us, it seems that he must have come from another god. Who is this god? Does he have a creator god? Who is the greatest of the gods? That’s the one I want to worship? Traditional, orthodox Christianity has said that
2. From whence did everything come?
   I’ve been told that your god(s) simply organized everything that was already in existence. But did the raw materials ever not exist, or is it eternal? It would seem that if it is eternal, then it is greater than all the gods (who have a beginning and development). Being greater it would be worthy of worship.
3. If HF was once like us and Jesus was once like us, then why does the Holy Spirit not have a body and going through the same progression as it seems that everyone else does?
4. How do you account for the “one and the many?”
   Throughout time men have tried to account for how the particulars of the world relate to the universals. For instance, there are many different chairs, but we still have an understanding of a universal “chair-ness” despite all the diversity. In other words, I can see two particular chairs that are completely different (say a Lazy boy and a office chair), yet I know both are chairs because they have the quality of “chair-ness” (despite being completely different). How do we account for the unity of the particulars?
   Plato was one of the first to attempt to answer this dilemma. He answered it by saying that there are two worlds, the world we live in and the world of ideals. He said we can know the “chair-ness” because in the other world there is an ideal chair that we all have an intuitive understanding of.
   Traditional, orthodox Christianity has no problem accounting for the “one and the many” because our God is one, yet many. The LDS faith doesn’t seem to be able to account for it because your gods are many, but there is no substantive unity in any of them (Please note that unity of substance is radically different than unity of purpose).
5. Do you believe that Jesus is a plurality of gods?
   I’ve been told that Jesus is the LORD in the Old Testament. I’ve also been told that the Hebrew word Elohim is plural, and therefore denotes the fact that there are many gods. But the preface to the 10 commandments says, “I am the LORD, your God (Elohim) who brought you out of the land of Egypt…” Does this mean that Jesus is multiple gods since he is the LORD who is also the plural Elohim?
6. How is the worship of HF and Jesus different and is it right to worship of HF at all?
   I’ve been told that you worship HF and Jesus, but your worship of Jesus is different than the worship you give to HF. How is it different? Also, how do you account for the fact that Jesus said that he was to be the exclusive god of your worship? (Again, the 10 commandments start by saying, “I am the LORD, your God…Have no other gods besides me.”
7. If there was a God who was bigger than yours, would you believe in it?
   Your god(s) are somewhere around 5-6 feet tall and is limited to one place at any given moment. They may have the ability to teleport from point A to point B and back in a split second, but they are still limited to those particular points at a particular moment.
   The Bible says that God “marked out the heavens with the breadth of his hand,” signifying that the universe is quite miniscule in comparison to the greatness of his being. Traditional, orthodox Christianity has claimed that the Triune God fills all space and cannot even be contained by it (“Even the highest heaven cannot contain you,” said Solomon). In other words, the Triune God of the Bible is so “big” that he cannot even be confined to space though he fills it all. (Do know that I use the word “big,” but the traditional, orthodox belief is that God is a Spirit and so cannot be spoken of in physical terms).