Well, I have to say that you certainly give a much more thorough explanation of your beliefs than the kids that knock on my door! It's not my intention to argue, but I do think it's your understanding of the nature of God that separates Mormons from Christianity. It's probably not something we'll agree on, but I don't think it's a small matter, either.

Yeah, the creeds were written to express what Christians believed in response to what most of them considered heresy. It's for this reason I appealed to them, not because I think the creeds are doctrine. They just establish what historic Christianity is. If you say that a Christian is someone who follows Christ, or His teachings, then there are atheists who qualify.

In Regards to the physical Father, I agree that there are instances in the Old Testament that require that God has a physical form, however, as someone who believes God is Father and Son those passages are usually interpreted to be the pre-incarnate Son. Many of the passages refer to "The Angel of the Lord" and sometimes both YHWH and the Angel are both present or they are refereed to interchangeably. Consider Genesis 22:10-12

10 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
11 And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.
12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.

Here the "Angel" calls to Abraham and then commends him for not withholding his son from "me."

We know from other passages the Angel is physical because He appears so people can see Him. He appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and if you read Exodus 3 carefully it appears as if there are two characters both being reffered to as YHWH, and they seem to merge into the same character.

There are many other places in which the "Angel of the Lord" of "Angel of YHWH" is pretty clearly God. Yet, why don't the authors just say God, or YHWY, or Elohim, etc?

As for being created in God's image, I think it's a misunderstanding of the ancient idea of Image to think it means we actually look like God physically. The term is the same as used for "Idol" and the idea is really an ancient one. The idol of a god wasn't supposed to actually look like the god, but it was a physical representation in that the god's presence was in some way more acute in the idol. When the ancient people prayed to the idol, they didn't think the statue was the god, they thought the statue was a conduit of sorts, a representative of the god. They even had ceremonies where they "breathed into the idol" the essence of the god. Sounds like Genesis 1 and 2 a little. In effect, God is saying that we are in His image in that we are His representatives here on Earth.

On that one, though, I'll admit Christian understanding of what it means to be in the "image of God" is all over the place.

Something else I find interesting about your answer, in regards to historical evidence: what kind of evidence could "disprove" Mormonism? That seems a little circular to me. I will say that it seems to me that all other ancient literate societies left behind evidence they existed. The reason why there's little known about ancient cultures in North America is because they weren't literate. If they weren't literate, how could they leave behind some gold tablets with a book on them? (as a side note, how huge would that tablet have had to be? Gold is super heavy, that's a lot!)

On where everything came from, you say you believe matter always was and will always be here... How do you square that with entropy? Everything is in decay. Scientists can even estimate a time limit on when the universe will die a heat death. Everything is moving away from everything else, which seems to indicate a beginning. (big bang)

I think your gods creating gods thought experiment is flawed as well. The only thing that answers the puzzle is a necessary being. There must be a maximally great, necessary being to cause the existence of everything. If He's maximally great then there is no higher power possible.

On another note, I don't think there's a "good and evil" paradox at all. God created beings with free will, free will beings created evil. It's only a paradox if you think God causes everything to happen, in which case you must do away with free will. I don't, but I'll grant that some Christians do.

As far as why God created us from the dust... Well that is really only a problem for literal 7 day creationists, which I'm not. I think God created everything, then created man. He made us from the "dust" or earth, because it is our domain. Frankly, though, I don't think it's necessary to take Genesis 1 and 2 literally at all. I think the ancients wouldn't have looked at things the same way as us and weren't looking for scientific explanations. They got a poetic explanation they could understand and that has captivated people's imaginations for thousands of years.

Lastly, I want to point out that there are some Christians, like myself, who don't think the Bible or God authorizes violence at all. There's many different ways to wrestle with the problem texts, but in the end as Christians we look to Jesus as the Exact representation of God's character. As such, we don't see anything in Jesus' teachings that authorize violence. It's actually against the commands of Jesus, to love one another. Even our enemies.

I think the idea that God would say something is evil usually, but "just this once I command it" is just flat out wrong, too. The bible says God changes not. He isn't going to decide something He thinks is evil is just okay, but only for a few people at a certain point in history.

Thanks for the conversation, sir. I've been enjoying it. Have a nice evening.