aaron’s mom has joined the readership and is sharing her wisdom with us! i have arrived! this has got to fit into the definition of success somewhere. i know that aaron respects his mom a lot, and i respect aaron a lot, so i’m excited that a busy person like her can take the time to share her thoughts with the rest of us. thank you, joyce.

I have no concrete proof of Godís existence. I feel that with so many competing claims and with so much supposedly riding on the answer, the burden of proof lies on god. Instead, the religions I have encountered teach me that I need to accept his existence on faith. (They also create their own set of equally improvable other-worldly rewards and punishments associated with the faith.) The problem is, many different religions have this competing claim. Do I accept Elohim, Allah, Jesus, or Jehovah (all these names mean different things to different religions, but Jehovah seems to have many different incarnations) on faith? Why should I exclude the others?

Mormonism, the religion Iíve had the most experience with, teaches me that if I pray with faith and ask God concerning the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, he will reveal the truth to me, usually through a feeling or conviction that the writings are true. I wonít deny that Iíve felt this conviction before, after a lot of praying, reading and talking about the book of mormon. The problem is, Iíve met people from other faiths who have asked and sought out with the same sincerity and received the same affirmative answers concerning their own faiths. No one faith seems to have a monopoly on miracles, answers to prayer, and spiritual affirmation::