Let me shift gears here. I know that one of the things you wanted to accomplish on the

podcast was to clarify your position on some of the, you know, beliefs that you have and the way

you view the church and the way you view your beliefs. So if I may, I'd like to walk through a

series of questions about your beliefs and talk about how they are today. Okay, shoot. And I should

just say that this is probably the biggest question that I get is where I stand on the church. A lot

a lot of the conservative Mormons are really questioning what my beliefs are and wondering how

I stay. But even more importantly, a lot of the liberal and excellent anti-Mormons are saying

how in the world, you know, you're an apologist and they're trying to understand why I stand

the church. And so probably the most important thing I wanted to do was to sort of clarify my

position on these things. So shoot. Let's start at the very basic. What are your feelings for God

in Jesus? I have to say that like like many people who go through the history crisis and the

doctrine crisis, Mormons very often when they go through that don't just struggle with their

testimony in Joseph Smith and the book of Mormon and the church. But for some reason those

dominoes fall really quickly and it's not, it's not at all a long time before you're questioning

Christ and God himself. So I have to admit that when my testimony fell, it fell hard and every single

aspect of my faith dissolved. And so I did have to stare into the abyss to consider whether or not

I even believed in God anymore. And I can say that I've reconstructed a faith and a belief in God.

But the best that I can say is two things. I believe that there's a meaning and a purpose in

this life and an organizing force. For me, the idea that all of this is random and coincidental

and a mistake within the universe is as absurd to me as the thought that there's some divine power

or influence or order. So I still am a person of faith and that organizing force or power within

the universe I call God. Whether that God has ten fingers and ten toes, whether he was once a man

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