God Exists, and He’s Mormon

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

The Mormon-Galactica connection is well established — and intentional. The Mormon-Watchmen connection? Not so much:

Creation: According to Hopkins, the Mormon God is a creator in the same sense that I am the creator of this article or that Van Gogh is the creator of Starry Night. God may be an organizer, a planner, an architect, a genius, but he does not create things from nothing (“ex nihilo”). Likewise, Dr. Manhattan can manipulate matter on a grand scale, but he is only reorganizing what is already there.

Omniscience: Hopkins argues that there is “a vast difference between classical theism and Mormonism on the subject of how God knows the future” because “classical theism views God…as being outside of time and space. From this vantage, he can supposedly see any point in time he chooses.” Dr. Manhattan shares this in common with the God of Mormonism: Even though he can perceive time more fully than most humans, he is part of time. Manhattan calls himself a puppet who can see the strings, but he is much more than that.

Omnipresence: The Mormon God is not subject to the same limits that humans are but he is not everywhere at once. That’s also a pretty good description of Dr. Manhattan.

Change: Hopkins calls the idea held by “classical theists” that God is unchanging “demonstrably unbiblical” and definitely un-Mormon. Mormonism posits an ever-evolving God, not at all unlike Dr. Manhattan.

Corporeality: With the exception of the Incarnation, traditional Christianity insists that God is “spirit” only. Mormonism disagrees. Hopkins insists that if man is made in the image of God, then God must have a corporeal form. So far as I can tell, there’s nothing in the book of Mormon about God having blue skin and a symbol of hydrogen burned onto his forehead, but you never know.

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