Calm

Does that knowledge show up among the locals later on when they are older? How many others besides Turner reported hundreds were convinced by Joseph and viewed him as one of the greatest reasoners etc? Others who were there and not just repeating Turner’s or another’s claim? (Not a challenge, serious question)

That makes more sense given the offices in the Church seem to me to be primarily administrative labels allowing ease of tracking and assignment, but I am an observer more or less in this case and haven’t had much instruction on the meaning of the church roles, so could be very wrong.

Which implies there’s not a lot of intellect there. Not saying this means he was stupid, just saying I don’t read that comment as him being that bright, though it does suggest he picked up what others taught him quickly and could incorporate it in new ways. Given Tucker’s style in that quote, he seems sarcastic. The “portentous” comes across as self deprecating, mocking the “juvenile debate team” as thinking of themselves as world fixers or something…a debate team that avoids debating with critics sounds more like a group wanting to pat each other on the back with how smart they are.

Feebly, very passably sound more like faint praise to me than labeling him exceptional.

It helps when you know already (are pretty sure anyway, lol) it exists. OTOH, I could have saved myself some wrk if I hadn’t tried to find the specific item and just started with google. Still, I was glad to refresh my memory on the estimate of the principal amount as well as the size of the portfolio to confirm if the leak is accurate, the expenditures were at most about 1/20 of the fund and therefore the principal was untouched.

https://www.deseret.com/faith/2020/2/14/21133740/mormon-church-finances-billions-presiding-bishopric-ensign-peak-tithing-donations-byu-real-estate/ Okay, think I am done diving on this, lol

For the claim he is inconsistent see page 6 and 7 as I can’t get the screenshot to work. First he described the fund on page 6 as made up of “recent tithing surplus” or from the “capital gains in having invested tithing” and then on page 7 says EPA “paid $600 million using exclusively tithing dollars”, when exhibit D (page 45 of 74) shows the withdrawal was from the fund, not the contributions before they hit the fund (assuming he is right and all the contributions are from tithing surplus and not other donations, income, etc). Careless, didn’t know what he was doing or lying to make the Church look bad because he knew people would only quote some of what he wrote and not all or look at his alleged sources or a combo of the above, take your pick.

Bluebell, I did find another copy of the report and it does look like speculation as where Neilsen claims the documents are talking about tithing, all I am seeing is “donations” and “contributions”. He uses both “tithing” and tithing and invested tithing funds iirc to describe the full fund, so he is not consistent even there and not accurate. Here’s a link if you want to check yourself. I did a quick search on “tithing” and couldn’t find the actual source of his numbers for 7$ billion received in tithing, but I believe it’s someone else’s estimate. The $1 billion in excess tithing received comes from his assumption as far as I can tell that all or the vast majority of EPA’s “granted” income comes from excess tithing. See exhibit D if this is hard to read: This below is the closest I think he gets to documentation and it states it is an approximation. He claims zero withdrawal activity for the past 5 years, but bases that I believe on a list that is headed “examples of withdrawals” (it’s on exhibit D) which he apparently assumes is the total expenditures rather than just some of them (why use “examples” rather than “list” if it was all of them?) It does say the “draw” has been small, but does that mean there weren’t any others? Not to me, but maybe? Maybe they just used an old slide? The only date on it is 2009 and it’s supposedly from a slide? from 2013. https://openargs.com/wp-content/uploads/IRS-Letter-Final.pdf

You need to remember that the Church went practically bankrupt a few times, so I think it is likely complicated trying to trace from where and how much earlier donations contributed to current church wealth (it’s not like in the low times they lost their businesses or property, for example). I suspect you are right, in part because one of the alleged leaked documents show total portfolio balance and even if the fund was 1/4 tithing that would leave much, much more that what was removed (1.5 billion over 5 years). https://openargs.com/wp-content/uploads/IRS-Letter-Final.pdf

There may be documentation elsewhere as I am remembering its existence, but it may be an assumption on my part based on speculation. I couldn’t find the specific information in scanning the Mormonr page. I may or may not keep looking. Added: see below from DeseretNews confirming it, though not the amount

Mormonr quoted the Nielsen report (I don’t trust his calculations and other stuff because he doesn’t provide actual sources for some of his stuff, but makes claims and then footnotes them as if documented facts iirc, so grain of salt this): https://mormonr.org/qnas/kQII1/the_100_billion_fund

Yeah, I just don’t get people who claim that tithing has been the sole source of the Church’s wealth (tithing itself or invested tithing, businesses bought with tithing).*** We have documentation from the beginning of people gifting money to the Church for various projects outside of tithing when requested. Why would people only donate money outside of tithing now and not in the past? There are complaints in exMormon communities online about family members gifting or leaving money to the Church, those have probably been voiced since the Church started. Then there was the announcement of private funding for the Nauvoo temple, donations for BYU, etc. ***a variation of the tithing was used for non sacred purposes argument

Bluebell, Can’t get it. My Scribd isn’t working. It’s one of the appendices in the Letter to an IRS director claiming to be from an orientation handout for 2012 if my memory is accurate…remember, good chance it’s not, but it surprises me at times.

The Nielsen documents include a sheet that shows unused tithing being sent to the Ensign Peaks fund iirc. I will try and find it. I can’t remember if there are other sources confirming that beyond what Pres Hinckley said.

Thanks for the info. I probably won’t watch it as it will make me too frustrated right now. I watched a in-depth video by one flat earther doing an experiment at a lake iirc. Had to go and refresh my math to remind myself where he had gone wrong. Would be convincing if one didn’t have the additional context and the ability to go looking for it. I respect those who do the actual work to prove their theories, I don’t get the ones who passively absorb it. I know there are payoffs for thinking that way that are important to them. It is just irrational to me in this day and age to want to make things so complicated. There is no beauty in it.

Did he even realize he had done it or did he just not understand the implications of his experiment? No doubt eventually he would have been confronted by someone informing him what he had actually done, but I wonder if it didn’t register until afterwards…and he just then chalked it up to how real facts were all distorted anyway. I can’t remember why they believe anyone would perpetuate the error/fraud of the world being round, what motivation could have been.

Why do you assume if they didn’t use tithing in that way, they would have been unable to build up the fund in other ways, possibly ways they were already using.*** It seems like it’s too much fortune telling on too little information to say if they hadn’t decided to build the fund by adding unused tithing to it, they wouldn’t have been able to build it another way. As far as I am aware, we do not have the records of all funds that were ever added to the investment fund that would tell us the percentage of the fund that came from tithing. We have a snapshot at most (assuming the documents that were leaked are accurate and not faked). Is this correct? ***Do we even know what the size of the fund was when the money was removed?

When did this occur in his life? Do you think training and experience would have had an effect on him?

Seems to me the controversy is fundamentally how much responsibility does the Church have in educating its members before asking for donations once the judges decided the information made public was sufficient and thus the Church wasn’t hiding anything. But was it publicizing the information enough? Obviously (imo, maybe others don’t see it as obvious) not every member would have heard/read or paid attention to what Pres Hinckley said, so the question would be was the effort enough? (I think it was, btw) If not in the general view, then I wonder what would be, what would satisfied a reasonable person? Maybe the Church needs to include something like the read once, ignored every other time as too long agreement I have to ‘sign’ every time I go to a doctor’s appointment. Not that such is a guarantee people will read it, but they have the choice. (Being mildly sarcastic here since I believe members had the choice to pay attention to Pres Hinckley or not as both comments were made in conference and even if it wasn’t watched, it could be read as ward libraries are to keep copies of the Ensign/Liahona available for members….even if it’s rare in the US and Canada in my experience for them to be used; otoh members may not have a choice when it comes to forgetting and if you have forgotten it was even mentioned, how are you to know you should go review any comments so you don’t get confused?)

I figured, but I have never heard or seen it used where it wasn’t mocking. It seems to be less common now, so possible to miss the connotation. If you have only read it, for example and not heard the tone attached when spoken…

Looky-loos has a derogatory connotation, are you sure you want to use that term? Some at least commenting in that thread were devout members defending the Church, plus it seems to me you fall into the same category since you were self selecting and commenting on a topic you don’t have to. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lookie-loo

Yes, this is a big issue. Not knowing enough of a field to know what you don’t know and assuming the lack of detailed technical knowledge doesn’t make a difference.

Impressive. I could not have kept track of the language without writing it down. I am grateful such things are seen as acceptable these days rather than a waste of time or worse. Kids should feel comfortable embracing their creativity and sharing adds more opportunities. I had a lot of wonderful hours, at least thousands, if not tens of thousands (since it was a nightly effort for at least an hour as the only competition was reading under the covers with a flashlight). I did share in my senior year of high school some world making with my best friend of a science fiction genre, but that was pretty limited as we didn’t go to the same school, met through work and could only get together on occasion. So much fun. I wrote a play once about Japan. So wish I still had that as that was a summer’s effort. Probably ten.

Given males have entered female only spaces and assaulted them prior to any change in law, we shouldn’t assume that the assault wouldn’t have happened if the policy wasn’t there. Coverup….well, unfortunately coverups of sexual assaults in schools were not unknown either. So my question is has the change actually caused an increase in assaults and coverups? Or just a change in the perception of them? What does the data show? Not always reported. I have experienced personally and know of other cases where boys and men entered women’s bathrooms for apparently convenience. No one reported them as far as I am aware. In my cases, they weren’t acting creepy, just urgent. Cell phones weren’t a thing yet, so them taking pictures never occurred to me.

Dehlin doing a three minute video. I am shocked!