Not at all!
I started this post to clear up misunderstandings, and I agree that this is fun and important, and I’m not out to offend anyone either.
Regarding a physical Father God:
So, while there are a handful of scriptures in the Bible that allude to The Father having a physical body, remember that we don’t only use the Bible to arrive at our doctrinal conclusions.
As a more detailed preface, we believe that The Father has a body that consists of a unified spiritual body and physical body, that The Son only had a spiritual body, and when he was born, gained his physical body. We generally refer to a spiritual body as a spirit, and a physical body as a body. When we speak of physical death, we refer to the separation of one’s spirit from one’s body.
So, with that in mind, we look at John 5:19-22 that seems to us to imply that not only are they separate, but that everything The Son does, The Father has already done.
Acts 17:29 seems to imply that we are made of at least similar material as The Father and The Son, as we are the offspring of God, which goes hand in hand with Genesis 1:27 where it says we are created in his image. That at the very least seems to imply that we look like him in some way.
So, we take all this to mean that Christ being resurrected into a perfect body, means that the Father like him has a perfect body both physical and spiritual (It seems counterintuitive that The Son would have something The Father didn’t), and that through Christ’s efforts, we will all one day be resurrected and have perfect bodies that will never die like Him and like The Father.
Regarding the Bible existing before the Nicene creed:
I probably should have been a little clearer, but basically, I meant that the books in The Bible (specifically the New Testament) were written by the people who interacted with Jesus during his life and ministry, or during the time shortly after (like Paul). This included epistles to Saints in various locations correcting their beliefs and actions and whatnot. These epistles were hundreds of years before the Nicene creed existed, and the concept of the Trinity was nailed down by the council that created it. The council came together not because everyone was already unified in how they believed in God, but because they didn’t agree and needed to get everyone on the same page.
So, I’m not saying that the early Christians necessarily disagreed with the Nicene Creed, but that before it existed, they believed in something. And this something they believed varied on its details from person to person, yet they were all still considered Christians because they believed in the life, teachings, and divinity of Christ.
I feel like this also addresses why I feel that believing in a different form that God takes than the Nicene creed, doesn’t make us so different. The Nicene creed isn’t the Bible. Christians existed before it, and Christians existed after it. It may define the “Traditional Christian” but it can’t define those who believe in Christ, but not the Nicene creed, the “Non-traditional Christians” if you will.
Regarding the rest of our books of scripture and their authenticity:
I have searched my entire life, for any disagreement between the Book of Mormon and the Bible, and have found nothing that can’t be explained. It has stood for hundreds of years, with countless people looking for discrepancies between the two and finding nothing of any merit. The best anyone’s been able to find is the verse in Revelation 22:18 which says, "For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book."
But even if John is referring to the Bible (which hadn't been compiled at the time John wrote this) and not just the book of Revelation he was writing at the time, this verse would clearly only apply if it were man adding to the book by himself and not God commanding it. And history doesn’t show the early leaders of our Church with plagues. ;)
Regarding historical evidence:
Well really, there isn’t much either for nor against The Book of Mormon. Seriously. There just isn’t as much physical data on the ancient inhabitants of America as there is for things around Jerusalem and the “old world.” Given that, I’ve always thought it an impressive point that no archeological data has been found that disproves the Book of Mormon, despite many of the archeological discoveries that have occurred since its publication.
Either way, it isn’t meant to be believed based on any historical evidence, and neither is the Bible. It’s meant to be read with the intent to discover if it is true, and if it’s true, to do something about it. The last chapter of the book, comes from Moroni, the son of Mormon (after whom the book is named because he compiled it together) where he invites the reader to ask God if the book is true. Giving the promise that if you read it, and pray about it, with the intent to act on the answer you receive, he will tell you it is. And for most of the members of our church, that’s exactly what they’ve done, and exactly the conclusion they’ve come to.
On how everything got here:
This one’s trickier, as obviously, nobody could ever know everything about God and the infinite things he does. Essentially, we believe that matter and intelligence are eternal like God. They’ve always existed, and will always exist, but obviously have no divinity in and of themselves. Matter is unorganized by nature, but that God organized it and created us spiritually from the matter and intelligence, and we are his children.
In my experience, many people hate this idea, and argue that matter and intelligence being eternal makes Him less of a God than the idea of creating matter from nothing. But it's a silly reason to hate this idea.
Consider the following:
Anyone can conceive of a being more powerful than any god from any religion.
E.g. Say you conceive of a god that creates everything everywhere from nothing.
All I would have to do is conceive of a god that created your god without him knowing.
You then might conceive of a god that created my god without him knowing.
And so on and on and on.
Thus, anyone can conceive of a being more powerful than any god from any religion.
If the idea still bothers you, keep in mind that we still believe He is all-powerful, or in other words, has all power that there is to have and that there is none more powerful. It also seems to solve the “problem of evil” and “the god paradoxes” (e.g. If God created everything, then he must have created evil which would make him evil for creating it, and could an all-powerful god create an object that he couldn’t move?)
It also makes the idea of God creating us from dust make a lot more sense (Genesis 2:7) Why bother with creating us from the dust? Why not just create us from nothing? Was the dust a mistake to create in the first place?
This certainly doesn’t mesh with the Nicene creed, but we do believe it meshes with the Bible.
On plural marriage:
I never said that it being difficult for a man to manage a plural marriage household made it wrong. Just undesirable.
Simply, we believe it is wrong unless God commands us as a temporary measure.
Kind of like killing. Killing is wrong. “Thou shalt not kill.” But there are numerous instances in scripture where God has commanded killing for the greater good.
One could effectively say that because of the Holy Wars, or because of the wars in the Bible, Christanity as a whole, condones killing. But obviously, it doesn’t under most circumstances. Just in very limited circumstances. (e.g. God’s command)
Likewise, many people like to argue that we condone plural marriage because we had it historically. We obviously do not condone plural marriage under most circumstances. Just in very limited circumstances. (e.g. God’s command)