Mormon Stories Podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon the listener's support.

To keep this program alive, please consider a donation today at MormonStories.org.

Let's turn to what I wanted to be sort of the way that we end up.

And I hope you're comfortable with this. I did warn you about it and you did say you're comfortable doing it.

And I don't want to overstate the importance of, you know, the next section of this interview, but I really do believe it's quite important.

Somehow, we're lacking credible, visible role models who are able to successfully reconcile, thought the intellect, science, and faith in the 21st century.

Maybe in your world, you know, these people are growing out of the trees.

But in the online world, a lot of times there's this perception that you're either an apologist, you know, a shill for the church who makes inadequate arguments and defense of the church.

You know, and usually you're on the payroll of the church and so you really have no option but to apologize for the church with bad argument.

And then you've got confused people in the middle who are relatively uninformed and then you've got informed people who basically have stopped believing.

But the role models in the online Mormon community for credible, well-informed believers, I'd say those voices are relatively silent or infrequent.

That doesn't mean they don't exist. It just means that I don't see a lot of them.

And so, you know, I've had people write me and say, please interview David Bailey or people like him and help him explain to us how he continues believing as a scientist and as someone who's probably as well as informed as anybody about many of the problems with church history and with science and with, you know, Mormonism.

So, do you mind if I sort of take you through some of the high points of Mormon doctrine of theology and maybe in some of the stickier messier parts and you share with people how you approach and reconcile some of these tougher issues? Is that okay?

I'm not sure I can have good answers for all of them, but sure, why not? Let's go ahead.

Well, sometimes just being willing to say, I don't have a good answer for that, but I still believe can be a very powerful affirming example for people.

So, I don't think that would be a problem if you don't have a great answer. The only thing that's a problem usually is a bad answer from what I found, you know.

So, let's just start at the beginning. I've heard someone describe their notion of God in various ways.

There's the big G God, as I've heard it described, which is a God that's all powerful, omniscient, all knowing, and intimately involved in even the smallest,

most of my new details of human life. You know, a spirit doesn't fall without God knowing it. You know, God sends the hurricane because in his supreme wisdom,

he knows the balance of justice and mercy, and maybe he wants to punish some people, or maybe just he needs a certain amount of misery to be inflicted on Earth for whatever reason,

and that's all in his infinite wisdom, his ways are higher than our ways. So, that's sort of the big G God.

...