From my original post:
"The problem is that in the admin panel the stripe payment module is saying this in red "Stripe secure payments Catalog SSL appears to be missing. Live payments are not possible""

Got this problem figured out. It was a setting in my zencart site. I had not changed the code in the configure.php file in the admin/includes folder to "true" for ssl secure catalog. Found the information here http://www.picaflor-azul.com/blog/?p=997 but sure you can also find it on the zencart site by perching about making your website secure. Now to run some test and see if everything works with the stripe module! I will be sure to re-post if it does end up replacing my current Authorize .net payment processor. Thanks!
Paxton