The LDS Church teaches a very different conception of God than is really normal in almost all religion in general; because ... by the end of his lifetime, Joseph Smith is existing in this [Scientific] Enlightenment time period. … But he still is hopeful that you can thoughtfully react to it but still be saying things that are scientifically valid. And so people [like Smith] in this time period, in this Enlightenment, have started to become what is philosophically called "radical materialists": where they believe that the only thing that matters is matter and everything else is really immaterial. So there is even a section in the LDS D&C where … Joseph Smith [says] spirit is matter. So all spirit is composed of matter. And so God is material, God is physical. God has a body, God is a limited being. So in some ways God is like a superman.
~ John Hamer, Mormon Stories #527
God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! …
… Here, then, is eternal life—to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you, namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you attain to the resurrection of the dead, and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings, and to sit in glory, as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power.
~ The King Follett Sermon by Joseph Smith, Jr.
Now let's compare the preachings of Nietzsche in his Thus Spake Zarathustra:
… You that are lonely today, you that withdraw, you shall one day be a people: out of you, who have chosen yourselves, shall arise a chosen people:- and out of them, the Superman
~ Part 1: 22. The Bestowing Virtue, Section 2
… And it is the great noontide, when man is in the middle of his course between animal and Superman, and celebrates his advance to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the advance to a new morning.
Then will the down-goer bless himself, for being an over-goer; and the sun of his knowledge will be at noontide.
"Dead are all Gods: now we want the Superman to live."—Let this be our final will at the great noontide!—
~ 22. The Bestowing Virtue, Section 3
Once did people say God, when they looked out upon distant seas; now, however, have I taught you to say, Superman.
God is a conjecture: but I do not wish your conjecturing to reach beyond your creating will.
Could ye create a God?—Then, I pray you, be silent about all gods! But ye could well create the Superman.
Not perhaps ye yourselves, my brethren! But into fathers and forefathers of the Superman could ye transform yourselves: and let that be your best creating!— God is a conjecture: but I should like your conjecturing restricted to the conceivable.
… The beauty of the Superman came to me as a shadow. Ah, my brothers! Of what account now are- the gods to me!-
~ Part 2: 24. In the Happy Isles
One writer comments:
... Professor Simmel, one of the critical writers on Nietzsche who has penetrated most deeply into his thought, puts it, "The superman is nothing but the crystallization of the thought that man can develop beyond the present stage of his existence—and hence should."[9] Zarathustra has scanned the great men of history, and the greatest of them are, like the smallest men, "all-too-human"; "there has never yet been a superman."[10] Individuals like Alcibiades, Cæsar, Frederick II, Leonardo da Vinci, Cæsar Borgia, Napoleon, Goethe, Bismarck are approximations to the type, but all come short somewhere—they were men of power, took great and fearful responsibilities, but were spoiled by some defect.[11] Zarathustra is spoken of by Nietzsche as an incorporation of the ideal,[12] but Zarathustra is an imaginary figure—and, as portrayed, he himself looked beyond.
~ Nietzsche the thinker by William Mackintire Salter
From these quotes above alone, we can see that the similarities are rather striking. Nietzsche was a radical materialist just like Joseph Smith. Smith rejected all of the Gods of the Creeds and religions that came before his conception of the Gods as exalted men and man's destiny was to become an exalted man himself. So too Nietzsche rejected all conceptions of Gods (in the Creeds and religions) and instead presents a naturalistic version of a God as the superman species/people. This is similar to Joseph Smith's own views that man is to spiritually evolve into a new divine species (as are the Gods).
The major difference is that Joseph Smith conceives of a Divine Realm where real naturalistic embodied Gods existed prior to earth and the world is currently ruled by three of these Gods; and that man's destiny is to spiritually evolve into the same kind of species as the Gods above.
So on one hand you have Nietzsche's naturalistic evolution of man into a Superman who has shed his Christian morality. On the other hand, with Smith you have the spiritual evolution of man into an Exaltedman who has combined Christian morality with Abrahamic Expansionism.
