MILLIONS spent by LDS Inc on new MMM book

[_Daniel Peterson]

Daniel... you know as long as FARMS/MI is part of BYU, you're funded by the church.

As long as we raise the greater part of our operating budget ourselves and as long as the Church doesn't give us a nickel and and as long as only a portion of our financing comes from BYU, only some of the financing of which comes from the Church, I will point out that saying we're "funded by the Church" is, at best, a gross oversimplification. And as long as a substantial portion of our budget goes to non-apologetic undertakings, I'll point that out, too.

And everything you do... from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the FROB.... can be traced back to your funding from the widow's mite, because that's what ultimately pays the bills.

I can promise you that neither our Dead Sea Scrolls work nor the FARMS Review are funded by any "widow's mite" nor by any widow. I happen to know the people who fund them, and there are no widows among those people.

As for the bias charge... there can never be an unbiased project funded by the church whose purpose is to defend the church.

There can never be an unbiased project of any kind, no matter who funds it.

Assuming an unbiased book would be foolish

It would indeed.

I'm just hoping for the occasional crust of bread thrown to the starving critics.

Let them eat cake.

[_Yong Xi]

And if it can't be proven that it didn't happen, then it probably did.

Kind of like Joseph Smith translating Gold Plates with magic stones.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Ok, you've piqued my curiosity.

Evidently not enough for you to bother looking at my Editor's Introduction to FARMS Review 18/2 (2006), entitled "The Witchcraft Paradigm: On Claims to 'Second Sight' by People Who Say It Doesn't Exist," where my point is clearly explained:

http://farms.BYU.edu/publications/revie ... m=2&id=621

Which appears to be why you're misunderstanding my point.

Which of the MI's publications that have investigated different aspects of Mormonism's truth claims have concluded that "Mormonism is not true?"

This is irrelevant to my point, but you could certainly place Paul Owen and Carl Mosser's FARMS Review essay in that category, and probably also Michael Heiser's.

Or have concluded that a particular truth claim may not be true, or is problematic?

Oh gosh. I couldn't begin to count them.

There's really no substitute for reading.

[_Daniel Peterson]

And if it can't be proven that it didn't happen, then it probably did.

Kind of like Joseph Smith translating Gold Plates with magic stones.

That's a very, very weak argument.

Is it original with you?

[_Ray A]

I think Gene Sessions comments are worth considering in this debate.

But I'll also mention to you that the Glenn Leonard, Richard Turley and Ron Walker book is as I understand it finished. Some of you may have better information on that? Glenn Leonard, the Church Museum Director; Ron Walker from BYU; and Richard Turley, the Director of the Archives of the Church--they have had full access to everything the Church has including the Jenson papers, including the Morris affidavits and so on that neither Bagley nor Brooks were allowed to see and Denton didn't even come to Salt Lake to ask if she could see...And those materials, by their promise in public, will be available for the public to peruse when their book has been published will actually mean (inaudible) and I've had the privilege of seeing much of that manuscript and I'm enormously impressed with what those men are doing. I think it's going to be an honest, painfully accurate depiction of what happened there and the cascading series of bad decisions and events that led to this horrible atrocity committed by Mormons with the help of the Paiutes.

I've never thought of Sessions as an "apologist", but I will stand corrected if necessary. He is the author of Mormon Thunder.

[_Yong Xi]

That's a very, very weak argument.

Is it original with you?

No, it is something I heard on KBYU television.

[_Boaz & Lidia]

No, it is something I heard on KBYU television.

..........P W N E D

ROFLMAO!

ACTUALLY, most of the translation was done using something called a seer stone. The seer stone is obviously something like the Urim and Thummim. It seems to be a stone that was found in the vicinity, and I can't say exactly how it would have worked. It may have been a kind of a concentrating device or a device to facilitate concentration

.

[_Jason Bourne]

For the same reason that it bothers me that FARMS/MI's apologetics is paid for with tithing (and I don't care how small that percentage is... .5% is too much, in my opinion). It's impossible for the book (or FARMS/MI) to give an accurate unbiased viewpoint, when and because the church pays for it. No one, or only a fool or Don Quixote types, bites the hand that puts food on their table or pays their rent and retirement. We have Grant Palmer as the example of what happens when someone actually prints what he thinks, when what he thinks, no matter how well documented, contradicts the Brethren. Who would want to bring that hammer down on their own head?

Nobody is unbiased. You are not, I am not, Dr Peterson is not. The LDS Church is not. Grant Palmer is not. I think it is foolish to expect anyone would be.

I'm not averse to the church defending itself by whatever means it feels is necessary. I just don't think that is a good use of the widow's mite.

What funds would/should the church use then? Essentially all its money comes from tithing or some other offering or from investments that made from such funds in the past.

Tithing has very specific things it's supposed to fund; I think this is not one of those things.

I have never seen a list of what tithing is supposed to be uses for. Can you produce one?

[_Blixa]

I have the citation somewhere here, but I'm too beat to look tonight. My tired head tells me it must have been around 1999 when the new monument ground was dug, turning up the bones and putting everything back in the headlines again.

I think I may already be getting close to it, but I'll keep searching.

If you really like Brooks, I recommend Levi Peterson's biography. Its very good. Her book of memoirs is worth a read as well.

Thanks for the tips. Brooks stands out, for me, as the kind of historian that could bring the Church some credibility today. The awful hagiographies of people like Francis Gibbons are just apostasy-igniters.

I found the citation and in the light of morning remembered a few more things about the story. I'll post them later with some commentary.

[_Mister Scratch]

Daniel... you know as long as FARMS/MI is part of BYU, you're funded by the church.

As long as we raise the greater part of our operating budget ourselves and as long as the Church doesn't give us a nickel and and as long as only a portion of our financing comes from BYU, only some of the financing of which comes from the Church, I will point out that saying we're "funded by the Church" is, at best, a gross oversimplification.

A "gross oversimplification"? Your usual response to inquiries about apologetic funding has been "the Church doesn't pay for it." But isn't *that* a "gross oversimplification"? Or is it an equivocation? I'll vote the latter, since we now know that the Church furnishes you guys with a professional fundraiser, and that your operating budget runs into the millions of dollars. Further, you guys collect a lot of money from wealthy Latter-day Saints, which means, in a sense that "the Church" and its various social networks are used to fund apologetics.

I agree with Harmony that there is something unsavory about it.

And everything you do... from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the FROB.... can be traced back to your funding from the widow's mite, because that's what ultimately pays the bills.

I can promise you that neither our Dead Sea Scrolls work nor the FARMS Review are funded by any "widow's mite" nor by any widow. I happen to know the people who fund them, and there are no widows among those people.

Oh, really? Then who is it that funds the FROB?