Mister Scratch wrote:Well, that's not what you guys told the IRS.
I don't know what our professional accountant told the IRS in 1999, and I wouldn't trust your reading of anything more nuanced than a telephone book (if even that). Perhaps I'll look at these documents sometime. But I simply wasn't ever paid anything remotely like $20K for serving as chairman of the board. Period.
Mister Scratch wrote:The same year you pulled in 6K, you were also given a "research grant" of $2,200. That same year, Prof. Hamblin was paid $200, Prof. Gee was given $100, and Prof. Midgley was given $200. Brian Hauglid was given $1,000.
On the model of colleges, departments, and other entities at BYU and other universities, research grants are given out to support . . . well, research. They're used to hire an assistant or to buy paper, or to pay for travel to research collections, or to buy teaching time, or whatever. There's nothing sinister or unusual in this.
Mister Scratch wrote:Clearly, some people are profiting from apologetics.
By which you mean (shudder!) that some people are being paid for the work they do.
It won't make any difference to you, probably, but others might find it useful to be reminded that much of the work of FARMS in 1999 was, as the work of the Maxwell Institute today still is, office- and administrative and accounting work. And shipping and editing and reception and the like. And that we had a team doing multispectral imaging in Jordan, and a team in Lebanon and then in Italy digitizing manuscripts. And that we were editing and publishing medieval Islamic texts in dual-language formats. And that this had to be managed. And that, in 1999, we were spending hours and hours each week negotiating the agreement by which FARMS was incorporated into the University. None of this was apologetic in nature. It was just hard work, and often boring and frustrating. That some people were paid for doing it is not a crime.
Mister Scratch wrote:I'm sure that there are all sorts of people who would love to make the kind of money that these FARMS boys are raking in.
I'm sure that there are many people who would love to have the kinds of salaries that academics make, in North America as well as in Bangladesh. But very few people with comparable educations in the United States would settle for those salaries.
If your new tack is to suggest that we've been wallowing in money from doing apologetics, you're simply wrong.
Mister Scratch wrote:Well, there's your exchange with James White. And there is this article by Prof. Midgley:
Please be a bit more specific. And please bear in mind that Professor Midgley and I are separate individuals.
And please note, too, that I don't regard professional crusaders against a religion as the equivalent of people publishing the Book of Breathings, doing textual histories of the Book of Mormon, and the like.
Mister Scratch wrote:Mister Scratch wrote:Well, I bet that 99.99% don't have multimillion dollar budgets like FARMS's.
And I'll bet that none of them produce searchable electronic databases of the Dead Sea Scrolls, publish dual-language texts of medieval Arabic philosophy and science, digitize Syriac documents in the Vatican Library, sponsor conferences on Qumran studies in North America and Israel, and perform multispectral imaging at Herculaneum and in Petra and at Bonampak.
I'm sure if they had millions to throw around that they'd be doing more stuff akin to the things you've listed.
You seriously think that Mormonism Research Ministry and Alpha and Omega Ministries and the Nauvoo Christian Visitor Center and such organizations have even the slightest interest in spearheading any projects even remotely like those I've listed above? Seriously???
Mister Scratch wrote:You once said that you never received "one dime" for apologetics.
I've typically said that not a single dime of my salary comes from doing apologetics, and that my salary would be precisely the same -- if anything, it might be just slightly higher -- if I didn't. And that's true. I've never denied receiving a royalty of $50 or $100 here or there, from one year to the next.
I've never believed that editing is the same as doing apologetics, though -- let alone that administrative work is apologetics. I didn't mind a bit that I was given some extra compensation for the hours and hours and hours that I spent working on the merger agreement for FARMS with BYU, which came on top of my editing and teaching duties and which almost destroyed my personal research and writing for several years. But I never received anything remotely like $20K as an annual board chairmanship fee. That simply didn't happen, though it would have been wonderful if it had.