DiscussMormonism.com

moksha wrote:Someone should commission Dr. Gregory Smith to do a hit piece a work of unparalleled academic excellence on how so-called "Dr. Gerald Bradford" set the defense of the LDS Church back hundreds of years and how it will take the concerted efforts of those who truly love the Church (lead by Dr. Daniel C. Peterson) to set the much-needed defense of the Church on the right track.

Is this just an attempted power play to get Church funding for the mopologists Mormon Interpreter?

I have a question wrote:Is this just an attempted power play to get Church funding for the mopologists Mormon Interpreter?

If we were to read the printed transcript of Elder Holland's exhortation to the Maxwell Institute with a sanctified pair of Mormon Interpreters, the answer would be as clear as a winter's day in Beijing.

I have a question wrote:Does Greg Smith hold the same view of financial accounting and transparency when it comes to the Church and The Brethren's (to use his terminology) contempt for rank and file members? If not, why not?

I thought of this too. For a Mormon to complain about lack of financial transparency in a charitable organization ranges from ironic to hypocritical.

But I suppose one could always say giving to the church is an act of faith that God compels and everyone else has to follow the rules.

MsJack wrote:

Greg Smith wrote:The MI’s current leadership should give an accounting of how much was spent, on what, what they destroyed, and make a commitment to transparency in their use of donated funds going forward. These are the people most wronged.

(Bradford’s contempt—I use the word advisedly—for rank and file Church members is the thing that disgusts me most about the whole sorry affair.)

Was the Maxwell Institute into the habit of publishing a detailed accounting of how it spent its funding prior to 2012? And this changed with Bradford?

No and no. I would add that recent donors need to get in line. I’m still waiting for a formal accounting of FARMS’/Maxwell Institute’s use of all funds donated to build the FARMS ziggurat/Book of Mormon Research Center. I vividly remember reading FARMS’ appeals in 1995 for donations to begin construction of a seven-million-dollar building in 1996 (e.g., see page 5 of the October 1995 issue of Insights here).

Dr. Peterson’s comment more than ten years ago that donations for the building “presumably went into the FARMS (now Maxwell Institute) endowment” was quite troubling and simply raised more questions.

Tom wrote:I’m still waiting for a formal accounting of FARMS’/Maxwell Institute’s use of all funds donated to build the FARMS ziggurat/Book of Mormon Research Center. I vividly remember reading FARMS’ appeals in 1995 for donations to begin construction of a seven-million-dollar building in 1996 (e.g., see page 5 of the October 1995 issue of Insights here).

Dr. Peterson’s comment more than ten years ago that donations for the building “presumably went into the FARMS (now Maxwell Institute) endowment” was quite troubling and simply raised more questions.

I love how it is called the "FARMS building fund," a phrase that is oddly reminiscent of language used for the moneys collected to build local chapels back in the day.

"You gave to your ward's building fund. Now give to our building fund."

The appropriation of ecclesiastical language is misleading.

MsJack wrote:Was the Maxwell Institute into the habit of publishing a detailed accounting of how it spent its funding prior to 2012? And this changed with Bradford?

Tom wrote:No and no. I would add that recent donors need to get in line. I’m still waiting for a formal accounting of FARMS’/Maxwell Institute’s use of all funds donated to build the FARMS ziggurat/Book of Mormon Research Center. I vividly remember reading FARMS’ appeals in 1995 for donations to begin construction of a seven-million-dollar building in 1996 (e.g., see page 5 of the October 1995 issue of Insights here).

Dr. Peterson’s comment more than ten years ago that donations for the building “presumably went into the FARMS (now Maxwell Institute) endowment” was quite troubling and simply raised more questions.

Thanks Tom. As a Protestant I fully support financial transparency from non-profits, but if the MI wasn't in the habit of doing this before, then I can't really sympathize with Greg Smith's demands that the new leadership do this now.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... ogist.html

"Some who’ve failed to benefit from apologetic arguments for Mormonism claim that the arguments are therefore worthless, or even worse. Of course, it’s difficult to know how well they understood the arguments — in my experience, many critics have plainly misunderstood the reasoning — or how much relevant material they’ve actually encountered in the first place."

I wonder what is the most compelling argument he has for the Book of Abraham. A Facebook friend studied middle Egyptian and was able to translate the writing in Fac 3. Bingo nothing to do with Abraham.But then the apologist throws in the sed festival and males dressing up like women.

"Are there still debates? Absolutely. Just as there are about the authorship of the Homeric poems and of Shakespeare’s plays. Do problems remain? Certainly. Do some questions still lack answers? Absolutely. We would love, for instance, to find an inscription identifying the ruins of Zarahemla. It would also be nice to know whether horses, in the modern sense, existed in the Americas in Nephite times, or whether perhaps the Nephites called some unfamiliar other animal a horse — as the Greeks did when they encountered Egypt’s hippopotamus. (“Hippopotamus” is Greek for “river horse”; in German, a hippopotamus is a “Nilpferd,” or “Nile horse.”)"

As Charlie Brown said "Good grief"

Peterson wrote:Some who’ve failed to benefit from apologetic arguments for Mormonism claim that the arguments are therefore worthless, or even worse. Of course, it’s difficult to know how well they understood the arguments — in my experience, many critics have plainly misunderstood the reasoning — or how much relevant material they’ve actually encountered in the first place.

Maxwell asked for quality, peer-reviewed scholarship. He didn't say to shift the blame for one's failure to produce legitimate work onto one's readers.

And what does "failed to benefit from" mean? That is irrelevant to the process of academic research, and seems more pointed toward a need to assuage someone's ego.

Continuing the basketball metaphor, this is the player who complains to the ref that every single call against him is wrong, and has a fit every time his ever-present flopping doesn't draw a call against his opponents. All that player gains is a reputation for ruining the game.

MsJack wrote:

Tom wrote:Was the Maxwell Institute into the habit of publishing a detailed accounting of how it spent its funding prior to 2012? And this changed with Bradford?

No and no. I would add that recent donors need to get in line. I’m still waiting for a formal accounting of FARMS’/Maxwell Institute’s use of all funds donated to build the FARMS ziggurat/Book of Mormon Research Center. I vividly remember reading FARMS’ appeals in 1995 for donations to begin construction of a seven-million-dollar building in 1996 (e.g., see page 5 of the October 1995 issue of Insights here).

Dr. Peterson’s comment more than ten years ago that donations for the building “presumably went into the FARMS (now Maxwell Institute) endowment” was quite troubling and simply raised more questions.

Thanks Tom. As a Protestant I fully support financial transparency from non-profits, but if the MI wasn't in the habit of doing this before, then I can't really sympathize with Greg Smith's demands that the new leadership do this now.[/quote]



By any chance have you looked at back years of FARMS irs 990 forms?
k

kairos wrote:By any chance have you looked at back years of FARMS irs 990 forms?k

Those forms have been discussed in some detail in the past. My recollection is that the 1997 and 1998 forms are the ones that are available at GuideStar: one of them reveals that Dr. Peterson was paid more than $20,000 to serve as "Chair of FARMS": a fact that he has tried again and again to spin and deny. But the reality is right there on the records, plain as day.