A course correction for the Maxwell Institute?

[Calm]

9 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Ha!  Sorry if you're feeling burdened.  I try to be kind when expressing my perspectives.  

When your perspectives require people to be lying rather than simply mistaked and involve ego protection and duplicity, I don't see that as very kind myself.

Edited January 4, 2019 by Calm

[The Nehor]

11 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Ha!  Sorry if you're feeling burdened.  I try to be kind when expressing my perspectives.  

Yeah, me too.

[hope_for_things]

7 minutes ago, Calm said:

When your perspectives require people to be lying rather than simply mistaked and involve ego protection and duplicity, I don't see that as very kind myself.

I think there are degrees of honesty along a spectrum.  I also think that people are motivated by difference factors, and self interest is one of those factors as is protecting institutions and confidences that they are loyal too.  These are all common sense elements of the human experience that I think it is wise to consider. 

Learning to critically evaluate conflicting accounts and look at what motivates people, bringing together disparate pieces of evidence, asking questions, evaluating the responses, its all part of an endeavor to learn and try to better understand.  

Edited January 4, 2019 by hope_for_things

[juliann]

45 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

 

One other important thing that we got confirmation of during this series of disclosures is that the church not only supports these third party apologetic groups by encouraging their use, but that the church also is supporting them financially.  I had suspected this in the past, so I'm not surprised.  

"The church" never, ever, supported FM financially during my tenure. Ever. That is an outright lie. 

CFR all knowing one. CFR

Edited January 4, 2019 by juliann

[juliann]

1 minute ago, hope_for_things said:

I think there are degrees of honesty along a spectrum.  I also think that people are motivated by difference factors, and self interest is one of those factors as it protecting institutions and confidences that they are loyal too.  These are all common sense elements of the human experience that I think it is wise to consider. 

Learning to critically evaluate conflicting accounts and look at what motivates people, bringing together disparate pieces of evidence, asking questions, evaluating the responses, its all part of an endeavor to learn and try to better understand.  

Passing around lies is part of an endeavor to learn and try to better understand.  Riiiiiiggggt. But I better understand your motivation now.

[hope_for_things]

1 minute ago, juliann said:

"The church" never, ever, supported FM during my tenure. Ever. That is an outright lie. 

How the church technically supports these organizations to avoid "direct" support is the only question in my mind at this point.  Perhaps a lawyer somewhere thinks the distinction of direct support is an important differentiating factor, but I'm not as interested in whether the support is given directly or indirectly, its pretty clear that these organization are not only supported in their mission, but that they are also supported monetarily at some level.  

Its similar to how the church was trying to parse their support of Prop 8.  They were trying to argue against direct monetary support, when in reality they contributed significantly to the efforts in many different forms through volunteering and encouraging members to donate, etc.  

I'm not saying the support of FM is at the same magnitude as Prop 8, but I have very little doubt that they are being supported.  I suspected this before recent comments were made, and those recent comments have increased my confidence about this.  

[juliann]

CFR, Hope. 

CFR

CFR 

CFR

[stemelbow]

50 minutes ago, Daniel Peterson said:

I am, by the way, unaware of any request from Elder Packer for us to write or to publish anything -- not in general and certainly not in order to defend him in particular.  I've never so much as heard of such a thing before.

I'm feeling more intrigued by all of this with these comments.  Midgley suggested Packer did contact him and asked specifically for Dr Smith to write a piece.  The best candidate that was found was a 2011 article by Smith that defended Packer's 2010 conference address, as far as I see.  This all gets pretty close to the events of 2012.  It'd be odd that there was a dustup between Bradford and Midgley about responding to a request from Salt Lake, sparking Bradford's statement of "we don't take orders from Salt Lake" and other major parties, including you, for the MI, were unaware.  It appears Bradford even said Smith wasn't a part of the MI, trying to distance the MI from him.  Why else was Bradford so unhappy with Smith?  

Well...then came 2012 and an article about Dehlin from Smith.  I get why Midgley muddled those up though.  Makes sense.  It seems tensions were pretty high.  I'm surprised you seemed unaware of all of it.  

[juliann]

"The church" has put out Church News articles on FM for years and years, brilliant one. They also used us for references. In August, they sent a GA to give formal approval to use certain apologetic sites. AAaaaaiiiieeeee.....end of life as we know it!   And a really, really big secret that only your crafty mind could ever figure out. After Elder Ballard encouraged using LDS scholarship like, gee....how many years ago?