Pres. Oaks: "...a Heavenly Mother or Mothers"

[Benjamin McGuire]

5 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

https://nij.ojp.gov/nij-hosted-online-training-courses/dna-prosecutors-practice-notebook-inventory/special-case-circumstances/other-uses-dna-evidence/dna-used-identify-perpetrators-racial-or-ethnic-background

Sadly, this doesn't actually respond to my comments. And I can always respond with something like this:

Quote

Thus, the idea of ‘race’ as a genetic category was presumably put to rest. The continued acceptance of ‘race’ as an appropriate biological category would have to be predicated on data indicating there are genes distinct to one ‘race’ that are transcribed in one ‘race’, but not another and human genetic variation is not continuous. This is distinct from small differences in allele frequencies due to mutations in a given family’s genetic lineage as will be discussed later in this manuscript.

In other words, we continue to use race as a taxonomy (and there isn't an easy way to stop this because of the way that it is coded into law in the U.S.) however, there is no real genetic basis for such a claim. Race, as used in this way, is used anonymously with ethnicity. 

 

[The Nehor]

6 hours ago, Senator said:

Why does this need to be thought of in polygamous terms?  

My mother is directly responsible for my existence, my grandmother directly/indirectly, great-grandmother the same, and so on and so on.   I look backwards in time to a vast, linked chain of women I  call mother.

 

Then the father bit would also be plural because it would apply equally.

[Senator]

58 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Then the father bit would also be plural because it would apply equally.

Absolutely

 

[Tacenda]

12 hours ago, teddyaware said:

The possibility of there being several Heavenly Mothers could help explain why there are various races within the human family. If the terrestrial bodies of both Adam and Eve were the carriers of the dominant and recessive genes of one Heavenly Father and several Heavenly Mothers, from a long genetic history, all this would combine to comprise a diverse genetic makeup within each of their reproductive systems. This could help account for why there is so much interesting genetic diversity within the human race.

Or it's as simple as having step moms because of divorces or a widowed male that remarries. 

Edited July 17, 2025 by Tacenda

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, Tacenda said:

Or it's as simple as having step moms because of divorces or a widowed male that remarries. 

So they divorce and remarry in exalted glory? Guess Jesus didn’t get the memo. 😜

[Robert F. Smith]

16 hours ago, teddyaware said:

The possibility of there being several Heavenly Mothers could help explain why there are various races within the human family. If the terrestrial bodies of both Adam and Eve were the carriers of the dominant and recessive genes of one Heavenly Father and several Heavenly Mothers, from a long genetic history, all this would combine to comprise a diverse genetic makeup within each of their reproductive systems. This could help account for why there is so much interesting genetic diversity within the human race.

Genetic diversity (as in melanin and pigmentation of skin) is a normal function of earth-bound biological evolution -- survival of the fittest -- and has nothing to do with our true eternal nature as one family of humankind.

[The Nehor]

17 hours ago, teddyaware said:

The possibility of there being several Heavenly Mothers could help explain why there are various races within the human family. If the terrestrial bodies of both Adam and Eve were the carriers of the dominant and recessive genes of one Heavenly Father and several Heavenly Mothers, from a long genetic history, all this would combine to comprise a diverse genetic makeup within each of their reproductive systems. This could help account for why there is so much interesting genetic diversity within the human race.

That is not how genetics or ethnic groups work.

[CV75]

On 7/16/2025 at 3:10 AM, ZealouslyStriving said:

In President Oaks' recent fireside/devotional (whatever they're called now) he mentions us being from "a Heavenly Mother or Mothers":

** Pres. Oaks is very deliberate is his talks. In a way I kind of feel vindicated in my idea, that I have expressed here before, that perhaps there are several Heavenly Mothers. When was the last time a modern Church leader expressed even a hint of Heavenly Father having multiple wives? Something is changing.

 

I'm glad that he is very deliberate (from the transcript): "[I] know that we are children of heavenly parents. So we know that we have a heavenly mother or mothers. But for reasons the Lord has not revealed, we do not know much about our heavenly mother."

Is he deliberate in not commenting on the Lord's reasons for our not knowing much about heavenly mothers after bringing it up?

[CV75]

On 7/16/2025 at 10:35 AM, teddyaware said:

The possibility of there being several Heavenly Mothers could help explain why there are various races within the human family. If the terrestrial bodies of both Adam and Eve were the carriers of the dominant and recessive genes of one Heavenly Father and several Heavenly Mothers, from a long genetic history, all this would combine to comprise a diverse genetic makeup within each of their reproductive systems. This could help account for why there is so much interesting genetic diversity within the human race.

Please provide a schematic on how this works. Thank you, much appreciated!

[teddyaware]

10 hours ago, CV75 said:

Please provide a schematic on how this works. Thank you, much appreciated!

There is no specific schematic needed beyond observing the mind bogglingly complicated and convoluted nature of this earth’s human genetic history, and then linearly projecting it backward in time to a previous existence of human beings who also had a mind bogglingly complicated and convoluted genetic history. As far as human genetics are concerned, what’s happening presently on this earth very likely also occurred on the previous earth from which this earth stems, both during that previous earth’s mortal phase and after its celestial glorification. Simply put, this earth’s genetic history very likely stems out from of the genetic reproductive activity of the previous earth. And if there were various races on that earth it only stands to reason that there would be various races on this earth due to the fact that this earth’s procreative genetic activity is a directly connected continuation of the previous earth’s procreative processes.

Edited July 18, 2025 by teddyaware

[The Nehor]

3 hours ago, teddyaware said:

There is no specific schematic needed beyond observing the mind bogglingly complicated and convoluted nature of this earth’s human genetic history, and then linearly projecting it backward in time to a previous existence of human beings who also had a mind bogglingly complicated and convoluted genetic history. As far as human genetics are concerned, what’s happening presently on this earth very likely also occurred on the previous earth from which this earth stems, both during that previous earth’s mortal phase and after its celestial glorification. Simply put, this earth’s genetic history very likely stems out from of the genetic reproductive activity of the previous earth. And if there were various races on that earth it only stands to reason that there would be various races on this earth due to the fact that this earth’s procreative genetic activity is a directly connected continuation of the previous earth’s procreative processes.

That is now how genetics works. At all.

You can’t pack one human with every ethnic group’s DNA. You also can’t expect one person to have children and have all the ethnic groups from their ancestry just pop out eventually.

[CV75]

8 hours ago, teddyaware said:

There is no specific schematic needed beyond observing the mind bogglingly complicated and convoluted nature of this earth’s human genetic history, and then linearly projecting it backward in time to a previous existence of human beings who also had a mind bogglingly complicated and convoluted genetic history. As far as human genetics are concerned, what’s happening presently on this earth very likely also occurred on the previous earth from which this earth stems, both during that previous earth’s mortal phase and after its celestial glorification. Simply put, this earth’s genetic history very likely stems out from of the genetic reproductive activity of the previous earth. And if there were various races on that earth it only stands to reason that there would be various races on this earth due to the fact that this earth’s procreative genetic activity is a directly connected continuation of the previous earth’s procreative processes.

Thank you, but don't tell me what i need unless you intend to suppress the conversation. I require a schematic as part of giving this respectful consideration. Given that social and genetic constructs are the same thing, and the work(s) on this earth continues previous ones, what is the eternal significance of race, since you suggested that the possibility of multiple Heavenly Mothers could help explain it? In this world, what is the significance of race for you in your religious observance?

Some follow-up questions: How did you functionally observe this mind bogglingly complicated and convoluted phenomenon on the genetic/pedigree levels? I know we're talking about matters of simple faith and assertion where science has very limited appeal, but it would help the dialogue to articulate these ideas graphically. What do you mean by "diverse genetic makeup within each of their reproductive systems," and whose systems are you talking about? You suggest that Heavenly Father and Mother(s) were the physical parents of Adam and Eve's terrestrial bodies. How did this translate into telestial human genetic diversity after the Fall, and what is the eternal purpose for that?

 

[teddyaware]

1 hour ago, CV75 said:

Thank you, but don't tell me what i need unless you intend to suppress the conversation. I require a schematic as part of giving this respectful consideration. Given that social and genetic constructs are the same thing, and the work(s) on this earth continues previous ones, what is the eternal significance of race, since you suggested that the possibility of multiple Heavenly Mothers could help explain it? In this world, what is the significance of race for you in your religious observance?

Some follow-up questions: How did you functionally observe this mind bogglingly complicated and convoluted phenomenon on the genetic/pedigree levels? I know we're talking about matters of simple faith and assertion where science has very limited appeal, but it would help the dialogue to articulate these ideas graphically. What do you mean by "diverse genetic makeup within each of their reproductive systems," and whose systems are you talking about? You suggest that Heavenly Father and Mother(s) were the physical parents of Adam and Eve's terrestrial bodies. How did this translate into telestial human genetic diversity after the Fall, and what is the eternal purpose for that?

 

Let me make this very simple: If God the Father has several wives, each of then having her own unique genetic, racial and ethnic background, then this would almost certainly mean that there is racial and ethnic diversity in heaven among the spirit children of God, in the same manner that there’s genetic, racial and ethnic diversity here on earth — the temporal being in the likeness of the spiritual. Now the final hurdle to surmount on the way to extending that same heavenly genetic diversity to this world would be for God to miraculously manipulate the chromosomal composition of the sperm of Adam and the ovum of Eve in order for them to generate offspring with the same genetic diversity that exists in heaven — the temporal being in the likeness of the spiritual, and the spiritual being in the likeness of the temporal. 

Edited July 18, 2025 by teddyaware

[CV75]

13 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

Let me make this very simple: If God the Father has several wives, each of then having her own unique genetic, racial and ethnic background, then this would almost certainly mean that there is racial and ethnic diversity in heaven among the spirit children of God, in the same manner that there’s genetic, racial and ethnic diversity here on earth — the temporal being in the likeness of the spiritual. Now the final hurdle to surmount on the way to extending that same heavenly genetic diversity to this world would be for God to miraculously manipulate the chromosomal composition of the sperm of Adam and the ovum of Eve in order for them to generate offspring with the same genetic diversity that exists in heaven — the temporal being in the likeness of the spiritual, and the spiritual being in the likeness of the temporal. 

Yes, I understand the simplicity of your idea but you are not backing it up with the science you assert supports it. And you’ve skipped my other questions, and failed to engage with a schematic, so while I think you know what you believe, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about at all. At best!

[ZealouslyStriving]

21 minutes ago, CV75 said:

Yes, I understand the simplicity of your idea but you are not backing it up with the science you assert supports it. And you’ve skipped my other questions, and failed to engage with a schematic, so while I think you know what you believe, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about at all. At best!

He's just tossing ideas around, not making a claim.

Do you believe their is no "racial" diversity in the eternal worlds? We are all just one color, all having the same physical structure and appearance?

[Benjamin McGuire]

20 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

Let me make this very simple: If God the Father has several wives, each of then having her own unique genetic, racial and ethnic background, then this would almost certainly mean that there is racial and ethnic diversity in heaven among the spirit children of God, in the same manner that there’s genetic, racial and ethnic diversity here on earth — the temporal being in the likeness of the spiritual. Now the final hurdle to surmount on the way to extending that same heavenly genetic diversity to this world would be for God to miraculously manipulate the chromosomal composition of the sperm of Adam and the ovum of Eve in order for them to generate offspring with the same genetic diversity that exists in heaven — the temporal being in the likeness of the spiritual, and the spiritual being in the likeness of the temporal. 

Right, so we now move racism back into the pre-existence. If you are of African descent here in mortality, it's because you were a spirit child of that heavenly mother over there. 

Apparently, I failed earlier to point out the real hurdle to this. If you have a finite number of parents (in this case a finite number of Mothers in Heaven), then there could only be a finite number of discrete genetic/racial/ethnic backgrounds in the pre-existence (I'll go along with the, in my opinion, bizarre suggestion that a spirit anything has a genetic makeup). From the get go, this finite number of genetic/racial/ethnic backgrounds in the pre-existence fails to represent the effectively non-finite number of genetic/racial/ethnic backgrounds that exist in mortality. The reason why this is the case is that in mortality, people don't limit their relationships to the specific genetic/racial/ethnic background that they are born with. So you have Person A (associated with Heavenly Mother X) and Person B (associated with Heavenly Mother Y), and they have a child C, which combines the genetic/ethnic/racial background of both X and Y - a situation which could not have occurred in the pre-existence (even if spirits somehow had genes).

Perhaps we should simply stop with this first, instead of confusing the issue with the recognition that the current understanding of Human genetics is that roughly 2% of our genetic/racial/ethnic background came from Neanderthals ... 

[ZealouslyStriving]

Just now, Benjamin McGuire said:

Right, so we now move racism back into the pre-existence. If you are of African descent here in mortality, it's because you were a spirit child of that heavenly mother over there.

How does the idea that there is similar diversity in the eternal worlds, like here, lead to charges of racism???

Seems you are perhaps the one with underlying prejudices.

[Benjamin McGuire]

3 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Do you believe their is no "racial" diversity in the eternal worlds? We are all just one color, all having the same physical structure and appearance?

It's much easier to believe that we will have control over our own appearances - that one's appearance in the eternities is not limited by some sort of genetic code that we inherited as spirit children, and that somehow was successfully translated into our mortal genetic code, and that this will in turn define whatever spirit children we may have ourselves. You may have to forgive my hyper-skepticism here.

More to the point, I think that such ideas are far more harmful when we start to discuss the past racial discourse - including the idea that one shouldn't procreate outside of their own racial/ethnic background, that some ethnic/racial backgrounds are cursed (and that even the smallest amount of genetic material also makes you cursed), and so on - these can all be brought right back into acceptance through ideas like the ones being discussed here. So it makes me wonder what the motivation is for such wild and (from my perspective) unreasonable speculation.

[Benjamin McGuire]

6 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

How does the idea that there is similar diversity in the eternal worlds, like here, lead to charges of racism???

Seems you are perhaps the one with underlying prejudices.

I think it's pretty straight forward. The whole thing with blacks and the priesthood went rapidly to blacks were banned from the priesthood because of things they did in the pre-existence. This goes even further. If blacks represent a genetic/ethnic/racial background, and they existed as a collective body in the pre-existence (because they had a distinctive heavenly mother), then this idea can be used to identify a whole range of racial prejudices here.

Just as important is the not quite so obvious problem. What is God the Father's genetic/racial/ethnic background? Perhaps God was black, though, and all of the non-black persons are simply reflecting the dominant genetic makeup of God's heavenly wives ... 

Against all of that is the reality that race isn't a genetic construct. It is a social construct. Whenever we engage in distinguishing people by race, we are engaging in racism. It is that simple.

[ZealouslyStriving]

17 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

including the idea that one shouldn't procreate outside of their own racial/ethnic background, that some ethnic/racial backgrounds are cursed

You do realize that @teddyaware pondering is exactly the opposite of the above, as he is positing that Heavenly Father's wives, our Heavenly Mothers, hail from a variety of "racial" backgrounds- right?

Edited July 18, 2025 by ZealouslyStriving

[Benjamin McGuire]

Just now, ZealouslyStriving said:

You do realize that @Kenngo1969 pondering is exactly the opposite of the above, as he is positing that Heavenly Father's wives, our Heavenly Mothers, hail from a variety of "racial" backgrounds- right?

I didn't see any of his comments in this topic - perhaps you could quote what you are referring to?

[ZealouslyStriving]

8 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I didn't see any of his comments in this topic - perhaps you could quote what you are referring to?

My bad... @teddyaware let me fix that.

 

[JAHS]

On 7/16/2025 at 12:10 AM, ZealouslyStriving said:

In President Oaks' recent fireside/devotional (whatever they're called now) he mentions us being from "a Heavenly Mother or Mothers":

** Pres. Oaks is very deliberate is his talks. In a way I kind of feel vindicated in my idea, that I have expressed here before, that perhaps there are several Heavenly Mothers. When was the last time a modern Church leader expressed even a hint of Heavenly Father having multiple wives? Something is changing.

 

The fact that he said "Heavenly mother (or mothers)", to me means he doesn't really know, but only confirming that the idea has been suggested. If a man can be sealed to more than one woman; it suggests the possibility that it could be a true doctrine. We don't know the exact role women will have when producing spiritual offspring. 

[ZealouslyStriving]

6 minutes ago, JAHS said:

The fact that he said "Heavenly mother (or mothers)", to me means he doesn't really know, but only confirming that the idea has been suggested. If a man can be sealed to more than one woman; it suggests the possibility that it could be a true doctrine. We don't know the exact role women will have when producing spiritual offspring. 

It's awesome for old-schoolers because if fellow Saints look at us like we have 2 heads for suggesting such a thing, we can now point to Pres. Oaks leaving open the possibility.

Edited July 18, 2025 by ZealouslyStriving

[Calm]

1 hour ago, teddyaware said:

If God the Father has several wives, each of then having her own unique genetic, racial and ethnic background

And what would the purpose be for this and how did it come to pass?

And what is this ethnic background as it exists in eternity?  Are there cultural differences between these ethnicities?  As in each ethnicity celebrates the birth of a spirit child differently?

Are there the material differences?  If so, what purpose do these material differences serve?

Is one racial group taller than others?  Does one racial group have different hair color than others?  Different skin color than others?

If God the father is of one ethnicity and his wife another, what ethnicity do their children belong to?

In this world if people of different ethnicities marry, after several generations the ethnicities do not become better defined, but more blended.  The great great grand children tend to carry a mix of physical characteristics from their ancestors (for example, while my outer appearance seems to follow more my maternal grandfather’s makeup, based on how my body reacts/health, I appear to internally have a stronger physical resemblance to my paternal grandfather, where my sister externally takes after our paternal grandmother and internally maybe our maternal grandmother to some degree, but also very different from her, so quite a mix).  Why would it be different in the eternities?  Are the eternal ethnicities/races required to only marry others of the same race?  If not, if what ethnicity does a child belong to, that of their father or mother and how is this determined?  Assuming spiritual DNA functions identical to physical DNA, what characteristics do spiritual genes determine?  Personality?  Spiritual strength?  Just cosmetic and if cosmetic, what would be the eternal significance of being locked into one appearance we did not choose for eternity? 
 

Have more questions, but need to stop for now…