Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Becoming Gods/Use of sources/Spirits conceived through sexual union

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A FAIR Analysis of: Becoming Gods: A Closer Look at 21st-Century Mormonism A work by author: Richard Abanes Use of sources, Elder McConkie says Spirits conceived through sexual union?

Do Latter-day Saints believe in "celestial sex"?

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Spirits conceived through sexual union

Becoming Gods, page 154

• Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother "through some kind of sexual union" clothed each of us with a spirit body.

Source

• Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 2nd edition, (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966), 750. GospeLink (requires subscrip.)

The Problem

Nothing in Elder McConkie's entries on p. 750 says anything about spirit creation via "some kind of sexual union."

Relevant passages include:

Entry Spirit Birth: "1. In the literal sense, the expression spirit birth has reference to the birth of the spirit in pre-existence. Spirits are actually born as the offspring of a Heavenly Father, a glorified and exalted Man. They will be born in a future eternity to future exalted beings for whom the family unit continues."

Entry Spirit Bodies: "Our spirit bodies had their beginning in pre-existence when we were born as the spirit children of God our Father. Through that birth process spirit element was organized into intelligent entities. The bodies so created have all the parts of mortal bodies."

Entry Spirit Children:"1. All men in pre-existence were the spirit children of God our Father, an exalted, glorified, and perfected Man. "The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's" (D. & C. 130:22); the offspring born to him in that primeval sphere had bodies of spirit element....In a future eternity, spirit children will be born to exalted, perfected glorified couples for whom the family unit continues. The very glory of exalted beings is to have "a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever."

Elder McConkie emphasizes that spirit children are the literal offspring of God, but the means of their creation is not specified. The Heavenly Mother is not even mentioned.

Summary conclusion

The author wishes to sensationalize LDS belief, and makes claims nowhere made by his source.

Further reading

A FAIR Analysis of Critical Works

• American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows— (Index of claims)
• An Insider's View of Mormon Origins — (Index of claims—Use of sources)
• Archaeology and the Book of Mormon
• Ashamed of Joseph: Mormon Foundations Crumble
• Becoming Gods: A Closer Look at 21st-Century Mormonism/Inside Today's Mormonism — (Index of claims—Use of sources)
• Behind the Mask of Mormonism
• Specific works/Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows
• Specific works/By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus
• Counterfeit Gospel of Mormonism
• Covering Up the Black Hole in the Book of Mormon
  • Answering Mormon Scholars, Vol. 1
  • Answering Mormon Scholars, Vol. 2
• Decker's Complete Handbook on Mormonism
• Early Mormonism and the Magic World View — (Index of claims—Use of sources)
• Specific works/Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Mormonism
• Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History
• From Captain Kidd's Treasure Ghost to the Angel Moroni: Changing Dramatis Personae in Early Mormonism
• In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith — (Index of Claims)
• Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon
• Inventing Mormonism: Tradition and the Historical Record
• Is the Mormon My Brother?
• Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet
• Joseph Smith and the Origins of The Book of Mormon (2nd edition)—(Index of claims)
• Joseph Smith's New York Reputation Reexamined
• The Kingdom of the Cults (Revised) — (Index of claims)
• Leaving the Saints
• Letters to a Mormon Elder
• Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church — (Index of claims)
• Mormon America: The Power and the Promise — (Index of claims)
• The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power — (Index of claims)
• The Mormon Mirage: Seeing Through the Illusion of Mainstream Mormonism
• Mormonism 101—Index of claims
• Mormonism (Kurt Van Gorden)
• Mormonism: Shadow or Reality? — (Index of claims)
• The Mysteries of Godliness—A History of Mormon Temple Worship
• Nauvoo Polygamy — (Index of claims—Use of sources—Prejudicial language—Presentism—Mind reading—Censorship—Romance—Assumptions—Magick)
• New Approaches to the Book of Mormon
• New Mormon Challenge
• No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith — (Index of claims)
• One Nation Under Gods — (Index of claims—Use of Sources—Prejudicial language—Absurd claims—Presentism—Mind reading—Rewording—Omissions—Sarcasm)
• The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844
• Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example — (Index of claims)
• Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess
• The Changing World of Mormonism — (Index of claims)
• Trouble Enough: Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon
• Under the Banner of Heaven — (Index of claims)
• Word of God: Essays on Mormon Scripture