Daniel Peterson Insults and Attacks Dr. Scratch and DrW

[_DrW]

Dr. Shades,

You have managed to come up with a better cover story for DCP than DCP was able to come up with for himself.

I certainly don't buy it, but it is a great story nonetheless.

I guess it boils down to the plausibility of whether, and/or what %, of apologetics was done "on the clock" . . . which is most likely debatable and almost certainly unknowable.

Oh, I think it is knowable, alright.

FARMS / NAMIRS is an apologetic organization. ("No more uncontested slam dunks", and all that.)

Checking out the Browsing By Authors page at http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/authors/, one finds that DCP is listed as having been an author on 161 articles from FARMS / NAMIRS.

Are we to believe that DCP authored 161 articles for FARMS / NAMIRS "off the clock"?

[_sock puppet]

I've just had an attorney who represents individuals and corporations in U.S. Tax Court, tell me unequivocably, that "buying out" would have to be noted on the tax document.

Isn't that precisely what was, indeed, noted on the tax document, in a dollar amount? And it was only IRS rules that forced them to depict DCP himself as the beneficiary?

Not quite. There is nothing to indicate that the $ was paid to BYU and run through its payroll to the FARMS officers, etc. rather than paid directly by FARMS through a payroll of its own to its officers.

[_sock puppet]

So, after 16 pages of thread, it can be concluded that...what? A vast majority here feel that Dan lied.

OK, so now what?

Here is a statement Dan sent me that he requested I publish here.

They are right to see it as scandalous, because I've denied having received any portion of my salary for doing apologetics and because, to their enormous delight, they think that they've caught me in a lie.

I was always careful to say, not that I had never received any money at all for apologetics, but that none of my salary came from apologetics -- and this was and is precisely right. Whether I had ever written an apologetic line or not had no impact whatever on my salary, which came from other things. Still, I couldn't say that I had never been paid at all, since, in fact, I once, to my surprise, received $150 from the Ensign for an apologetic article that I had written, and since there may have been one or two other cases. (I vaguely recall receiving a $50 bookstore certificate for a talk to some group or other many years ago.) So I didn't say that. But what I did say was absolutely true, and remains absolutely true.

There's nothing shameful in receiving a salary for doing apologetics, but, as a matter of fact, I didn't. As I've said since Scratch first leveled this accusation fully five years ago. I didn't lie. I told the truth.

I edited the FARMS Review long before I came over from Asian and Near Eastern Languages to join the Maxwell Institute, and, in the last few years of my involvement with that much maligned journal, I was paid a relatively small per-issue fee for editing it -- that is, for soliciting and editing articles and for seeing them through peer review to publication. The FARMS Review was only partially apologetic in nature and, anyway, I was never paid a dime for writing anything for it. Whether I wrote something in it or not, I received the same fee for editing it. That I was paid a supplemental fee to edit the Review reflects the fact that my work on the Review was above and beyond my normal employment.

I only came over to the Maxwell Institute when I was asked to head up the Center for the Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts (CPART), which was and is within the Institute and which, during my tenure there, digitized documents such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Herculaneum papyri, and certain Syriac texts from the Vatican Apostolic Library, and to be able to devote more time to the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative (METI).

Neither at that nor at any other time, though, did my salary increase by $20,000. On the contrary, it continued the same slow upward trend, based on length of employment and on favorable performance reviews from the chairman of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages, that my professorial colleagues experienced during the same period. (It has continued the same upward trend, without so much as a hiccup, since the purge of June 2012.)

I did receive a small director's fee, akin to the supplemental fee paid to department chairs and deans at BYU, for my service as director of CPART and METI, because, once again, directing them was work on top of the normal demands of university employment. (It required, among other things, extensive travel, but also a great deal of time dealing with contract negotiations, bookbinders, printers, book designers, copy editors, source checkers, and the like.) But none of these fees, whether singly or altogether, ever came anywhere near $20,000.

Whether "Jason Bourne" correctly worked out the accounting arrangements or not, I honestly don't know. (I'm told that he's a professional accountant.) The mere thought of tax documents is enough to send me into a coma. What I do know, though, is quite sufficient: I never, ever, received a $20,000 salary increase for apologetics, nor even for the non-apologetic work that I did with the Maxwell Institute. Nor anything even close.

What in the world are those people on your board doing, pawing through tax documents and my finances and speculating about my employment duties and contracts and branding me a liar? What on earth leads them to consider this appropriate or acceptable?

I deeply resent the way my integrity is being publicly assaulted on your board. It's unjust, it's potentially damaging, and I don't deserve it. It should stop. It's been going on for year after year after year -- roughly seven or eight now, by my count -- and I'm heartily tired of it. It should definitely stop.

-dcp

So, carry on for another 16 pages.

To help propel this thread into the next 16 pages...the 1998 Form 990 of FARMS also lists DCP as having received a $1000 honorarium.

[Guest]

I love the outrage for having his life examined under a microscope, from the same individual who was kingpin of those who went after Everybody Wang Chung, John Dehlin, and who have apparently dug through the financial records of critics.

Pot meet kettle.. ..

[_Doctor Scratch]

Also, can we document how much of Dan's work at FARMS was apologetic in nature, or are we just going off the assumption that any and all work there is unilaterally apologetic in nature?

I think maklelan makes a good point here, one I sheepishly admit I'd overlooked until now.

DCP's compensation by FARMS probably encompasses his duties for ISPART and METI, and we know those aren't apologetic in nature. So it's entirely possible that any apologetic pursuits were done "off the clock" and none of the FARMS money was spent on that.

ERGO, assuming Jason Bourne is correct (and I see no reason to think he's not), perhaps DCP really wasn't paid for apologetics after all, regardless of the dollar amount that FARMS's tax return shows.

Does anyone disagree?

There's no documentation showing that the compensation for serving as Chair of FARMS was actually for ISPART / CPART / METI. Further, DCP mentions in his letter to Liz that one of the things he was working on was the Dead Sea Scrolls project. Well, there is a separate line-item in the forms showing a "grant" given to that project for $16,000. Did he get a slice of that, too?

The claim that serving as Chair of FARMS is somehow "not apologetics" is just plain stupid. It's like saying that the coach of a football team isn't doing sports, because he's not actually out there on the field, or that the CEO of WalMart isn't actually doing business because he's not down there in the stores ringing up purchases.

[_Everybody Wang Chung]

I deeply resent the way my integrity is being publicly assaulted. It's unjust, it's potentially damaging, and I don't deserve it. It should stop. It's been going on for year after year after year -- roughly seven or eight now, by my count -- and I'm heartily tired of it. It should definitely stop.

Interesting. This is almost exactly how I feel about Mopologetics. DCP and his gang of thugs have been attacking, smearing and attempting to ruin reputations and lives for decades.

So much talent wasted on destructive Mopologetics. It's a real cautionary tale.

[Guest]

I have reached a point in my own relationship with the subject at hand that I am well sick of this combing through the details of people's lives. It hit me when a certain denizen of this board cobbled together a bunch of BS about Don Bradley and tried to make him look like a lying heel. It was at that point that I had decided that enough is enough.

I regret that it took me so long to figure things out.

At the same time, I doubt I will ever view the FARMS crew's odd careers as they view them. And, frankly, the more they have talked about how they view themselves, the more confusing it has become to me. But then, when we look at the LDS Church, which is run like a big corporation, owns the largest cattle ranch in North America, builds a multi-billion-dollar shopping mall in downtown SLC, and receives huge "charitable" donations from men who make their fortunes in MLM schemes, I have to be satisfied that I will probably never quite get how the apologists see themselves, because I can't square the LDS Church's apparent PR and theological image with what I see on the surface.

It all just doesn't add up.

It is not that I think the LDS Church is lying about being a church; it's just that the word church means something quite distinctive when we are talking about the LDS Church. Similarly, a person can work for BYU, but not work for the LDS Church. A person can list multiple apologetic pieces on a CV, but not be paid by BYU to be an apologist. The apologists can have a meltdown when the apologetics that were central to FARMS' mission are ended by Gerald Bradford, but doing administrative work for FARMS is not doing apologetics. It is, rather, doing lots of administrative work that facilitates, supports, and furthers the aims of apologetics, without doing apologetics per se.

I am 100% convinced that Daniel Peterson is being forthright when he says what he says, and yet I can't help but be mystified by watching it all unfold, because clearly, in some odd way that I can't quite put my finger on, Dr. Peterson experiences the world in a manner that I and most of my associates do not. This is not the result of a moral or intellectual lapse of any kind, on either his part or mine, but a disconnect exists.

That is why, as much as I am tired of seeing the details of people's lives discussed on this board, I can't help but sympathize with the following statement:

The claim that serving as Chair of FARMS is somehow "not apologetics" is just plain stupid. It's like saying that the coach of a football team isn't doing sports, because he's not actually out there on the field, or that the CEO of WalMart isn't actually doing business because he's not down there in the stores ringing up purchases.

That rings totally true to me, as impolitely expressed as it is.

[_SteelHead]

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky"
~Bill Clinton

"None of my salary came from apologetics."
~Author Unkown

Splitting semantic hairs.

[_Shulem]

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky"
~Bill Clinton

"None of my salary came from apologetics."
~Author Unkown

Splitting semantic hairs.

It depends on what your definition of is is.

Paul O

[_Kevin Graham]

Dan once said regarding this matter: "...my salary was unchanged. I taught fewer classes but did more editing. My department hired me to teach classes, so it was only fair that its contribution to my salary be decreased with the decrease in course instruction. The Institute wanted me to edit texts, so it was only fair that it contribute a proportionate share of my salary. This was worked out between the Institute and my department."

So, from what Dan has said, he continued to draw the same salary, but the work he was doing changed in that he had two employers. What kind of work did he do for FARMS? Well, his past remarks make it sound like all he did was edit texts that had nothing to do with apologetics. At the same time he has said, "I have never, ever, not once, said that I've never received any money at all for anything I've ever done in apologetics."

But he also said (emphasis mine), "Not a penny of my salary rewards me for writing a single word of apologetics; my salary would be unchanged if I never wrote a single line of apologetic materials."

And also this: "I receive no salary whatsoever from dealing with critics of Mormonism."

But why qualify the statement with "salary" when none of his critics mentioned that word, unless it was intended to be ambiguous and misleading in the context of his previous remarks? Obviously Dan thinks he can explain the discrepancies here with the word "salary."

Either way, it is simply not true that his salary didn't include payment for apologetics, unless we take for granted that his role with FARMS had absolutely nothing to do with apologetics.

In light of his recent letter to Gerald Bradford, it turns out that his work with FARMS had virtually everything to do with apologetics. After all, it was Dan who said his firing from Maxwell was "a betrayal of the promises we made to our leading donors, who explicitly asked us to do apologetics and, in some substantial recent cases, gave us major donations based on our assurance that we would continue to do so." His letter went on and on explaining how donated money is tied to an apologetic endeavor.

So this last statement is simply not true.

By his own admission, the work he was paid to do by BYU was reduced substantially so that he could do work for FARMS. Instead of reducing his salary by $20,000 and then getting a $20,000 check from FARMS, the arrangement was that he'd just keep his normal salary and then FARMS would cut a check to BYU. The only difference is here administrative.

Having said that, I couldn't give a rat's ass if Dan got paid to do apologetics. But I think a lot of this so-called controversy was started by Dan, and it was by design. Dan is smart enough to know how his remarks would be understood and he knew that people wouldn't make the kinds of distinctions he does between "salary" and "payment." But like I said, Dan is still wrong. His salary did include payment for apologetic work, and he has denied this at least twice. Maybe not $20,000 worth of apologetic work, but enough to put the lie to his claim that "not a penny" of his salary pays him to do apologetics. That's just bogus.

But if anyone is really guilty of milking the teet while doing apologetics, it would have to be John Gee.