"And That's My Final word..."

[Guest]

Yesterday on MAD, Dr. Hamblin wrote a long post explaining how his payment for apologetics has worked over the years, clearly, he was upset. He ended his post by saying, and these were his very last words,

Good grief, the whole idea is idiotic. And that's my final word on the topic.

Today, Dr. Hamblin posted again on the same thread, with a supplement to yesterday's material, mind you, this is after he had assured us he was finished. Ironically, his very first anger-filled sentence reads,

These people are morons and liars, incapable of understanding plain English.

But I can understand plain English, and the plain English from yesterday's post says that he's finished talking about this subject. Yet today, he continues the discussion: who is it in fact who is the liar, then?

And there are some substantial revisions today regarding his payment structure. Note yesterday, he claimed,

I may have received a few hundred dollars in honorarium..

This was for a few articles he'd written over the years. And to emphasize the fair pricing point, he added,

(By the way, receiving a $100 honorarium for publishing an article is not uncommon in academia).

And today, a few hundred becomes,

This couple hundred dollars is not per article, it is the total, for everything.

Both yesterday's posts and today's posts are filled with one important illogical line of thinking. To get a handle on it, let me share some of my own money-making experiences. I have a day job. I have some consulting work here and there, some of these projects pay much more than others. I've also tried one or two failed money-making ventures. For instance, a few years back I wrote an eBook. I made a few hundred dollars on it, but the costs of advertising not to mention the ridiculous time I put into it more than washed. But it does not follow that, by virtue of opportunity cost, for every money-making venture I failed at plus, every lesser paying consulting project I took on, that my motives must have been altruistic. For one, any business venture entails risk, and the success or failure does not equate to the degree of greed or altruism respectively. Further, just because one spends time on a project that pays less than another project, does not mean one is giving up the pay of the higher paying project because that project may not be available. By Dr. Hamblins logic, I do my day job entirely out of altruistic motives because if you consider the consulting work I've done at the very highest pay rate I've ever made, my per-hour rate at my day job pales in comparison. BUT, obviously, my opportunities to work at that level are extremely limited.

Look how Dr. Hamblin argues:

This compares to a single lecture on a non-Mormon topic for which I received $1000 in honorarium from a non-LDS university.

So what? One time in his life he got paid 1000$ for a lecture, if he could do that everyday, he'd quit apologetics and his job at BYU and just consult at this non-LDS university of his.

I have made thousands of dollars in royalty for my non-LDS books.

So what? This does not imply that he had the opportunity to write three more marketable books in the time he wrote his apologetics. Just because I receive more per hour at one client, doesn't mean I will never consult for another. Because the top-dollar deals aren't available 24x7 for my taking.

I have, in fact, lost thousands of dollars in potential income that I could have made had I written non-LDS related books. That is the simple truth of the matter.

No, it's at worst, an untruth. At best, a distortion that can only be believed by someone who can't read basic English, or understand basic economics.

[_Boaz & Lidia]

Ever seen a cat when it is backed into a corner?

It lashes out.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Some of you folks seem simply desperate on this issue.

It's flatly untrue that we're in it for the money. The money's piddling, on the very rare occasions when there's any at all.

And it's not that our hopes to make tens of thousands simply failed to materialize. There's no prospect of such sums. There never has been.

[_dartagnan]

I'm with Dan on this one.

[_Gadianton]

Dr. Peterson,

I like you, and I have avoided personal commentary on you I think, almost entirely. I am not analyzing you here, I am analyzing Dr. Hamblin. And on my power-point post, I am not claiming anything toward you personally, this isn't personal with you, my friend, it's just business.

And by the way, my claims regarding Dr. Hamblin are as follows:

- he's received a wad of cash for apologetics, which is true.

He is the one who created his own strawman and then tries to argue against it. Nowhere have I argued he's in it all for the money. Here, I argue that his attempts at burning a strawman of his own creation simply fail.

I think I've been fairly charitable, considering he's called me a liar, a moron, and someone who can't understand basic english.

[_Daniel Peterson]

he's received a wad of cash for apologetics, which is true.

A couple of hundred bucks, approximately, over the course of roughly twenty years? That's "a wad of cash"? Roughly ten dollars a year?

(That is, incidentally, just about what I would have guessed for him. And, incidentally, it didn't come from the Church.)

[_Boaz & Lidia]

Daniel,

Why do you even care?

As in the past, I am again puzzled over why you even care what us contermos think of you and your MA&D fan club.

Is there something here that you really do not want to get out?

[_Gadianton]

Dr. Peterson,

I'm skeptical that it was only a couple hundred bucks. In his original post he wrote, "A few hundred". Most of the time in English, which I understand, I believe a "few" means more than two. It could mean two, but it's better in that case to say a "couple". He's written a few articles in 20 years, he's been paid a few hundred in 20 years. That's about on target, as he argues, with academic pay.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I'm skeptical that it was only a couple hundred bucks.

I'm not. That's about what I would have guessed in his case.

He's written a few articles in 20 years, he's been paid a few hundred in 20 years.

Here's a complete list of his articles for FARMS:

http://farms.BYU.edu/viewauthor.php?authorID=27

The two "Transcripts" were published elsewhere, and there's no pay for them.

There are two articles for the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, which pays nothing.

There are, by my count, fifteen (15) articles for the FARMS Review, which pays nothing beyond a review copy of the book and a free copy of the Review when it appears.

Foreign-language translations pay nothing, so those three pieces don't count.

Among the book chapters, I know that the warfare articles were published before FARMS paid any author royalties at all. In fact, the only one of those chapters that I'm reasonably confident paid a small fee (against expected book royalties from sales through the University of Chicago Press) was "And I Saw the Stars -- The Book of Abraham and Ancient Geocentric Astronomy," which I believe paid something like $50-100. (John Gee and I were his co-authors on that one. I think we got $50 each. Something like that, anyway.)

Truthfully, I'm having a hard time coming up with a total of two hundred dollars for Bill's articles and chapters.

[_Sethbag]

I'm with Dan on this one.

I am too. I just don't see the evidence that Hamblin and DCP, and the others at BYU, are doing apologetics for the money. They may get some money in the course of doing apologetics, but they're not "doing it for the money", as it were.

I don't think the constant harping and nitpicking words and whatnot trying to catch them in some egregious lie about money is helping anything at all. It certainly doesn't help anyone more clearly or easily see how the church was a manmade institution from day 1, and is not literally true.

I think critics would be well-advised to let this thing drop.