Creation Story: OK, well, sort of. I grew up LDS/Mormon. When I was in 2nd grade, my teacher did little writings books for every holiday; Halloween, Christmas, Flag Day, etc. Each student in her class wrote stories, poems, recipes, anything we wanted as long as it was some form or writing to put in this book. Then, the teacher bound them and gave them to the parents. For Christmas, I decided to write about the Mormon Doctrine of the creation story. (Well, as far as I knew it at the time. I was 7/8 ish.) It was interesting enough for my teacher to ask questions and come to the Salt Lake City Latter Day Saint Christmas Broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at our local church. This was way before everyone had the BYU channel on Cable or could get these things for free on their computers.
My interpretation at the time of Mormon Doctrine of the creation goes something like this:
Before the Earth was created, God asked for a plan of how life on Earth would work. Lucifer (God's son and Jesus's brother) came up with a plan where no one had a choice. People would come to Earth and live in their physical bodies, and automatically come back to heaven when they died. Jesus presented a plan where, each spirit would go down to Earth and get their physical bodies. While on Earth, each spirit would be tested and put through trials in which they would have free agency or a choice of what to do in each trial. Then, after they were tested and chose, they could possibly return to Heaven based on how they lived their life, and progressed through their trials.
God decided that he liked Jesus's plan better, and chose to go with it. Lucifer got upset and decided to start asking spirits/people/intelligences to choose sides. Well, about a third decide to go with Lucifer and two thirds decide to go with Jesus and God. This creates a war in Heaven. God/Heavenly Father casts Lucifer and his followers out into outer darkness (Mormons believe in Outer Darkness instead of a Physical Hell.) because of the war.
Then, God got to work in creating the Earth. Mormon doctrine is basically as the creation is depicted in Genesis in the Bible.
In Mormon doctrine, spirits were considered intelligences that always existed even before they were spirits. Whether or not the huge battle happened between intelligences or the more formed spirits, I'm not sure.
Now, I still have a lot of questions about this belief system. I whole heartedly believed in this as a child, because it is what was taught to me. Now, this doctrine just creates confusion in me.
