First, the fact that there is a demonstrable "Universal Belief" in spirituality. When anthropologists and comparative historians look at civilizations that had zero contact with one another—ancient Mesoamerica, imperial China, the indigenous tribes of North America, the early Mediterranean, and South Pacific islanders—they find the exact same core beliefs emerging:
A Creator or God who is all powerful and accessible through prayer and supplication. We in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints call Him our Heavenly Father and believe that He is our literal Spirit Father.
The Primordial Beginning or what we call "Pre-existence": The conviction that our story did not start at physical birth, but in a realm before earth.
The Divine Mediator: The belief that mortality is flawed, and a divine figure, savior, or hero must descend or bridge the gulf to reconcile humanity with God.
The Prophetic Conduit: The expectation that the Creator speaks to mortals through chosen, authorized messengers rather than leaving us to guess.
The Divided Afterlife: The understanding that eternity is structured, featuring progression, trials, and varying degrees of light or glory rather than a simple void or arbitrary fate.
Why is the human instinct to worship universal? Walk into any museum on earth, and you’ll find evidence that humanity has never been satisfied with the idea that this life is all there is. We naturally look for a Creator, long for a Redeemer, and intuitively feel that our souls existed long before our bodies did. Philosophers call these "cultural archetypes." But what if they aren't just psychological coping mechanisms? What if these global echoes are actually scattered pieces of a single, divine blueprint? Let's call it "Spiritual DNA". An intuition that we all share.
There seem to be two logical explanations for this phenomenon. The secular/non-spiritual explanation is: Human brains simply evolved to invent the exact same complex theological machinery—pre-mortal memory, a mediator, living prophets, and structured heavens—independently, over and over again, purely as a psychological coping mechanism. That, basically, humans feel a need for some meaning or reason for life and life's events and they look to a supernatural source.
The hypothesis I present here is that Humanity shares a genuine spiritual memory. We carried the foundational knowledge of our heavenly origin and divine destiny with us as we scattered across the earth. Over millennia, as civilizations isolated, those core truths were preserved in fragments, adapted through local cultures, and obscured by time—yet the core blueprint never fully vanished.
If humanity spent an eternity in a pre-mortal existence learning a foundational Plan of Salvation under a Heavenly Father, and if those spirits were subsequently scattered across time and geography, what should the historical record look like? It should look exactly like what we observe: scattered, culturally adapted fragments of a single original blueprint.
Questions I often hear from skeptics are also pretty uniform. World Creation..."myth(?)", dinosaurs, physical proof and the real kicker..."If God is so loving, why then is there so much pain and suffering in the world?"
The creation issue is actually pretty easy. We, all of us, have existed for an untold amount of time. We are Eternal. God, our Heavenly Father has, by definition, been around even longer. He knows and is the author of the physical laws on which our earth is based. The Grand Master of physics, if you will. Science is busy trying to understand how our world works. Experimental Physics is a very real science, simply because we don't KNOW how everything works. God does. We can't build our own worlds...yet. But He knows how because He's done it a lot.
Six days? What is a day to you or me? What is a day to our dog or cat? What is a day to a truly Eternal Being? I'm thinking 24 hours is not a universal answer to these questions. This in mind; dinosaurs? What one of those unimaginable days included those creatures? How were the creatures of the earth created? Could it have been through a process of evolution?
I contend that the concept of an all knowing and all powerful Creator, a pre-existence, a plan of learning and growing through experience, a Mediator for justice and an after mortality existence, consisting of further learning and growing through various degrees of "Glory" is not inconsistent with secular science and discoveries.
In fact, the concept of the pre-existence and a spirit world can fit in well with current scientific and philosophical theories about multiple "universes".
That said, I also wish to address relatively recent anthropological and archeological studies which indicate that the original "religious" teachings of the ancient Church were actually more in line with the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Before the destruction of Solomon's temple and the conquering of the Jews by the Babylonians, the doctrines of Per-existence, a council in Heaven, a plan, a Creator who was separate from the Mediator and the concept of our existence as eternal beings...all things which were ridiculed in the early days of The Church and things which are antithetical to the Nicean and later "creeds"; were what was understood and taught as standard doctrine.
I try to have an analytical, logical and common sense basis for my own personal opinions and life choices. Based purely on that, I would be inclined to believe the doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The idea that we are eternal beings, who had progressed as spirit children of a Heavenly Father, to the point that we could no longer learn without physical, mortal experience, makes perfect sense to me. It provides a relatively simple explanation to three valid philosophical questions: Where did I come from? Why am I here? What happens when I die? And, one other very good question. Why, if there is a loving God, do bad things happen to good people?
Where did we come from? We are all literal children of a Heavenly Father. We have lived for an untold time as spirit children, learning all about how to exist with each other and progressing in knowledge and understanding. At some point, we had accumulated enough spiritual knowledge and so needed to become mortal, in order to learn and experience physical and mortal things.
Why are we here? We are here to learn what the sun feels like on our shoulders, what it's like to be cold or hot. What bacon tastes like. What it's like to love and laugh. Conversely, in order to appreciate such things, we also need to know what it's like to love someone who doesn't love us back or to lose a love. We need to experience the cold in order to appreciate the warm. We needed to feel pain in order to appreciate health. Sometimes this seems cruel, considering cancer or other illness, car wrecks, death of the young, child abuse, abuse of any kind...well, you get the point. Bad things happen. Sometimes to the innocent, sometimes to very righteous and kind people. This mortal existence is simply another step in our learning and experience, as we progress towards the knowledge that our Father in Heaven already possesses.
As it stands, we have our Free Agency. For you Star Trek fans, this is the Prime Directive of Heaven. God can not interfere with our freedom to choose. Sometimes, this means that someone's choices cause pain or suffering to another person. Although our Father doesn't want to see that happen, He doesn't interfere with our choices, good or bad.
In order for us to really learn, we had to have the memories of our pre-existence blocked. A knowledge of the complete truth would have caused a serious issue. It would have given us no lee way in our choices. A perfect knowledge of the laws and ordinances on which we had always lived would make any deviation from those more rebellion than mistake. Even a Great Mediator would be hard put to argue our case in that situation.
I contend that the concept of an all knowing and all powerful Creator, a pre-existence, a plan of learning and growing through experience, a Mediator for justice and an after mortality existence, consisting of further learning and growing through various degrees of "Glory" is not inconsistent with secular science and discoveries.
In fact, the concept of the pre-existence and a spirit world can fit in well with current scientific and philosophical theories about multiple "universes".
That said, I also wish to address relatively recent anthropological and archeological studies which indicate that the original "religious" teachings of the ancient Church were actually more in line with the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Before the destruction of Solomon's temple and the conquering of the Jews by the Babylonians, the doctrines of Per-existence, a council in Heaven, a plan, a Creator who was separate from the Mediator and the concept of our existence as eternal beings...all things which were ridiculed in the early days of The Church and things which are antithetical to the Nicean and later "creeds"; were what was understood and taught as standard doctrine.
I try to have an analytical, logical and common sense basis for my own personal opinions and life choices. Based purely on that, I would be inclined to believe the doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The idea that we are eternal beings, who had progressed as spirit children of a Heavenly Father, to the point that we could no longer learn without physical, mortal experience, makes perfect sense to me. It provides a relatively simple explanation to three valid philosophical questions: Where did I come from? Why am I here? What happens when I die? And, one other very good question. Why, if there is a loving God, do bad things happen to good people?
Where did we come from? We are all literal children of a Heavenly Father. We have lived for an untold time as spirit children, learning all about how to exist with each other and progressing in knowledge and understanding. At some point, we had accumulated enough spiritual knowledge and so needed to become mortal, in order to learn and experience physical and mortal things.
Why are we here? We are here to learn what the sun feels like on our shoulders, what it's like to be cold or hot. What bacon tastes like. What it's like to love and laugh. Conversely, in order to appreciate such things, we also need to know what it's like to love someone who doesn't love us back or to lose a love. We need to experience the cold in order to appreciate the warm. We needed to feel pain in order to appreciate health. Sometimes this seems cruel, considering cancer or other illness, car wrecks, death of the young, child abuse, abuse of any kind...well, you get the point. Bad things happen. Sometimes to the innocent, sometimes to very righteous and kind people. This mortal existence is simply another step in our learning and experience, as we progress towards the knowledge that our Father in Heaven already possesses.
As it stands, we have our Free Agency. For you Star Trek fans, this is the Prime Directive of Heaven. God can not interfere with our freedom to choose. Sometimes, this means that someone's choices cause pain or suffering to another person. Although our Father doesn't want to see that happen, He doesn't interfere with our choices, good or bad.
In order for us to really learn, we had to have the memories of our pre-existence blocked. A knowledge of the complete truth would have caused a serious issue. It would have given us no lee way in our choices. A perfect knowledge of the laws and ordinances on which we had always lived would make any deviation from those more rebellion than mistake. Even a Great Mediator would be hard put to argue our case in that situation.
What happens when we die? We go back to the spirit world from whence we came. We go back to our eternal spirit bodies. Some of us to rest, some to continue to teach and all to continue to learn...while we wait, now, for the reuniting of our spirit with our bodies. The resurrection.
For those who don't believe in spiritual things or eternal life or anything like this, I ask, what is your idea of the answers to those basic questions? And add to that, how do you explain the underlying belief or quest for exactly the answers I've provided here, in nearly every group of people anywhere on the earth? How did we all come to those basic conclusions together when we are so separated physically, racially and geographically?
For those who still think that God is some amorphous fiery blob of protoplasm who exists in the cosmos somewhere and we are kind of His ant farm...sorry. Those Creedal beliefs just don't pass the examination of logic and common sense.
Any fan of "The Big Bang Theory" series will understand my analogy here...it's easier for me to explain these concepts to Sheldon than to his mother.
I'll conclude here with the following. My logical and analytical examination of not only the Church in which I was raised but of many other Christian and even non-Christian religions; and an effort to understand the secular, more agnostic or even atheistic views, has brought me to the conclusion that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints doctrine is the only one which would bring Commander Data (Sorry. Another Star Trek reference) to the baptismal font.
But, that common sense evaluation isn't what takes me to the Temple as often as I can, nor does it explain my avoidance of coffee. I've gained understanding from outside myself which can only be attributed to promptings, inspirations or even revelations from a spiritual source. Feelings for which my vocabulary is inadequate to explain.
There is a God. He lives. His son, Jesus Christ, lives. And the love They have for all of us is indescribable with a mortal language. I've felt it. It's joy and love and peace and happiness and so much else that I've never been able to describe the feeling, even to myself. Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God. He did and saw all the things he explained to us. The Bible is the word of God. The Book of Mormon is also the word of God. There is a living Prophet on the earth today and he leads the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, under the direction of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
The doctrines taught by The Church are the true and correct Restored doctrines of Jesus Christ.
These are things I know. Not because I reasoned it out, although that was my beginning. I know these things because the Holy Ghost has shown me the truth.
I leave you this information in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ...amen.
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