A lot of Christians, Muslims, and other people of faith probably think it’s blasphemy to even ask such a question. Yet I suspect most Mormons have thought about this at least a little bit at one time or another. 😉
Tom Foss of Dubito Ergo Sum has come up with a meme of things he would do differently if he were God, such as allowing snow in the Summer, letting people choose their own afterlife, redesigning the human body, etc.
I’d like to ask a couple of related question of my “cultural Mormon” audience:
1. Do you ever think about what kind of world/universe you’d like to create (or did you think about this back when you were a believer)?
2. Do you (or did you) think there were any limitations on what kind of universe you could make? (eg. do you have to have a “Plan of Salvation”? Do you have any leeway in modifying some laws of physics? Would Tom’s ideas be impossible for future Gods according to LDS doctrine?)
profxm as god:
Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t.”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (book one of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series), p. 50
(Sorry, not exactly an answer to your question, but perhaps my favorite Douglas Adams quote of all time and an accurate representation of the god I would be… Well, sort of.)
‘IF I were God’:
a) I’d know that if I designated ‘chosen people’, others would be imposters. Therefore to avoid the appearance of favoritism, I wouldn’t have ‘designated drivers’; it would be, to some degree, a free-for-all.
b) No spechul deals; everyone pays Full Retail.
Well, I have to say, I mostly imagined this in terms of the super powers I would have, and not so much about what the worlds I created would look like and how I might interact with them.
I would definitely have dinosaurs – yes, I think it is sad they all died off – of course I realize they had to die off to make room for mammals and us, but really, they were quite magnificent – and it is such a shame all we have are a few calcified bones and oil. Do you think a T. Rex could be made to lie down with a lamb? Seems unlikely somehow.
Also I think I would put women in charge – I think men have had their turn.
I would be a horrible god; Nothing would ever get done.
If I ever got around to creating a place where beings with limited intelligence could live, I would leave them there and not give them any hints as to my existence. Then I would sit back and watch what evolves.
I think I’d let the kids advance to space travel before the Second Coming. As a Mormon kid, I always thought that it stunk that God was supposedly going to pull the plug on the whole thing before we even got to have X-Wing fighters and lightsabers.
What Kind of God Would You Be?
Vengeful
I actually thought about creating worlds a lot when I was younger (7-18 years old).
I’d only bring the nonviolent, gentle creatures to my worlds. Nature here on Earth is unnecessarily cruel. Just look at how insects kill and implant eggs into their prey for a few examples. Heck, look at what some do to their mates.
That’s not even getting into the horrible diseases, conditions, and defects that humans can experience. Pain’s sometimes necessary, but some of it seems a bit over the top.
I also had ideas for the human body’s design. As a female, I didn’t think it was fair that we got most of the worst parts of the reproductive experience (imo). And the whole menstrual cycle is just plain evil. It’s not that I wished pain on the males; I just had ideas for how to make it easier on the females.
I wouldn’t create bodies with brains that started to lose function in old age, slowly destroying the person from the inside out. How can you call that a necessary part of life’s test?
There were also a lot of cool features I’d add to the body, but that was just idle imagining that had no real purpose except to make my hypothetical spirit children happy.
Of course there would still be challenges. I wasn’t ignorant of the idea that we need to experience negative things in order to gain certain understanding.
The whole idea of there being gods with different ideas of parenting makes me giggle. If gods are perfect, there would be no changes from generation to generation– no generation gaps. 😛