Top 6 Greatest LDS Athletes

[Guest MormonGator]

33 minutes ago, ephedra said:

BTW- that Bishop needs to be in jail.

Amen

[Vort]

29 minutes ago, ephedra said:

Packer had been investigating this issue for several years while working at BYU. He allegedly was told by BoydKP to knock it off. Also the Tanners were after him (Dunn) for the same reason and this had been going on for several years. Packer gave the info to the AZ Republic who then published it. In the article cited below, Packer's boss at BYU admitted they terminated his contract because he was planning on publishing the information. Additionally, a church rep acknowledged there were accusations against Dunn at the time he was granted retirement. I also never said Packer was disciplined for his actions.

Interesting. I didn't know about this. I would still say that being fired from BYU is not the same as "get[ting] fired by the church". Not only is that untrue in a specific technical sense, but I think it gives a false impression of what happened. Of course, I suppose it's possible that someone on BYU's board of trustees actually said, "Hey, fire this guy." But without any evidence, that's mere conjecture, and not very likely in my judgment.

31 minutes ago, ephedra said:

Dunn was granted Emeritus status in 1989 which makes him 65 years old at the time.  Dunn was born in April 1924 according to his wiki page.

Yes, you're right. I misspoke. Elder Dunn was indeed given emeritus status early, not at age 70. In addition, it looks like Church leadership did have some idea about his lies, and it seems reasonable to assume that that had more than a little bearing on his "retirement".

I did not remember these things from when the event actually took place, but I was also not following the story closely. Clearly, I have spoken beyond my own knowledge. Oops. How embarrassingly ironic (or perhaps appropriate). When the whole thing took place, I was finishing up my time at BYU. I felt bad at the time about (and for) Elder Dunn, especially since he had been a favorite of my father. But his stories, which in retrospect certainly did seem "too good to be true", were embellishments or outright inventions, so life just went on.

34 minutes ago, ephedra said:

I an just surprised the talks are still up on the church website. Oh well must still be ok I guess.

Many Church critics insist that the Church "whitewashes" its history. This appears to be rather the opposite. I don't think that means the Church now sanctions Elder Dunn's lies; I think it's a recognition that Elder Dunn said what he did, and that those speeches formed a part of the General Conferences and Ensign articles in which Elder Dunn's speaking and writing took place. I think you will find few if any references in the last 30 years to Elder Dunn's previous speeches.

[Vort]

43 minutes ago, ephedra said:

Im not angry, I just find it interesting given the background on this that Dunn was allowed to retire, continue to get royalties and all that jazz. 

Why wouldn't he be "allowed" to get royalties from his own books? I don't see how the Church could have legally (or morally) stopped him from claiming the royalties of his own work, invented or not.

If it makes you feel any better, his royalties from his many books and tapes dropped to essentially zero when this came out. I remember the BYU Bookstore at the time selling his stuff at 90+% discount, basically giving it away before just throwing it out.

43 minutes ago, ephedra said:

I will never make an effort to defend a church leader for wrong doing. There is no reason to. I mean look at the Bishop in Ut who just got busted for trying to hire a hooker and pimp some girls out. He will be exed for sure, but the gravity of his sin is far far less than being a GA and lying to the World audience.

Do you seriously believe that telling harmless embellishments and fictions in the name of illustrating some moral principle is "far far" graver than pimping out girls?

I don't think you really believe this. The two sins are of completely different classes. I do not justify Elder Dunn's lies, but neither would I ever claim they are somehow "worse" than attempting to pimp out a girl.

43 minutes ago, ephedra said:

BTW- that Bishop needs to be in jail.

I doubt you need to worry about that for even a fraction of a second. It's a fait accompli.

Edited March 10, 2019 by Vort

[Guest MormonGator]

6 minutes ago, Vort said:

Do you seriously believe that telling harmless embellishments and fictions in the name of illustrating some moral principle is "far far less" grave than pimping out girls?

In fairness @Vort, what Paul Dunn did was walk right up to the line of stolen valor. If you legitimately served in the armed forces, you'd think differently. Heck, my grandfather fought in the Battle of Bulge and earned a purple heart. I'm a little offended by people who steal valor and I never served one day in the armed forces. 

I can see totally someone thinking they weren't "harmless embellishments or fictions." This isn't me in college telling some girl I used to be the bass player for The Ramones just to see if she would go out on a date with me. 

Besides, I was really the bass player for Green Day. 

Edited March 10, 2019 by MormonGator

[Just_A_Guy]

6 minutes ago, Vort said:

I doubt you need to worry about that for even a fraction of a second. It's a fait accompli.

Technically, no; he bailed out the day after he was booked per publicly-available jail records.

[Vort]

23 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

In fairness @Vort, what Paul Dunn did was walk right up to the line of stolen valor.

Agreed. I still maintain that stolen valor is immensely less grave an offense than pimping out a girl.

24 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

Besides, I was really the bass player for Green Day.

By which you mean that you played along on the bass part with Green Day blasting. Sure, I buy that.

[Guest MormonGator]

Just now, Vort said:

By which you mean that you played along on the bass part with Green Day blasting. Sure, I buy that.

That's awesome. lol. 

[Vort]

23 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Technically, no; he bailed out the day after he was booked per publicly-available jail records.

You don't have to go to jail before you get bailed out? In any case, I foresee prison in this man's future, which to the hoi polloi like me counts as jail.

[ephedra]

1 hour ago, Vort said:

Interesting. I didn't know about this. I would still say that being fired from BYU is not the same as "get[ting] fired by the church". Not only is that untrue in a specific technical sense, but I think it gives a false impression of what happened. Of course, I suppose it's possible that someone on BYU's board of trustees actually said, "Hey, fire this guy." But without any evidence, that's mere conjecture, and not very likely in my judgment.

BYU is run by the Church. If you think otherwise you are extremely naïve.

https://president.byu.edu/

[ephedra]

I am not talking a stolen valor theme here. He never claimed awards or rank or positions of authority in the military, just that he was on the receiving end of miracles while in combat which never even happened. He did serve in combat so I will give that to him.

My issue is how can prostituting, pimping or whatever even come close to being worse than a General Authority using his position in the church  to both mislead millions and profiting from it? A lack of integrity undermines the authority of the Priesthood in terms of trust it garners from within and without. It also brings into question in some minds of whether or not the 12 and 1st pres actually have the gift of discernment when this guy somehow eluded their gift for decades while lying to their membership. If he had not been a GA no one would have ever even heard of Paul H Dunn.  It matters not if the intent was good- he intentionally lied. 

While it is terrible someone would hire a hooker and pimp out a few girls, we are not talking about a child sex trafficking ring here. He solicited alleged adult females who were already working the industry. Pretty much voluntary on their part if they had been real prostitutes instead of cops. He should be excommunicated and I bet he will, but that incident pales in comparison to the scope of what dunn did especially considering the position Dunn held when he did it.

This being said, anyone who is ok with lying in order to build faith must also be ok with missionaries lying to investigators. Why not, they needed the church anyway and now they are here right?

[mirkwood]

1 hour ago, MormonGator said:

Besides, I was really the bass player for Green Day. 

Whatever, I was lead singer for Iced Earth.

[Guest MormonGator]

1 minute ago, mirkwood said:

Whatever, I was lead singer for Iced Earth.

Given that at last count 45,000 people have been in that band, not surprising. 

[Just_A_Guy]

48 minutes ago, Vort said:

You don't have to go to jail before you get bailed out? In any case, I foresee prison in this man's future, which to the hoi polloi like me counts as jail.

Oh, OK; I interpreted you as suggesting that he is incarcerated now.  

[Guest MormonGator]

@mirkwood check your FB messages by the way. 

[Just_A_Guy]

I can see why Church members brought up with a certain paradigm would consider a GA telling tall tales, not only terrifically wrong (as I do), but so catastrophically evil as to eclipse the gravity of sins such as prostitution and even human trafficking.  

But, having worked with both trafficked people and their patrons—I no longer feel that way (if ever I did).

GAs, like other humans, sometimes exaggerate—and one of them, so flagrantly so, that thirty years ago his brethren sought to put him away privily rather than make him a public spectacle.  Boo freakin’ hoo.  Suck it up, make your righteously-indignant post on Reddit, put your big-boy pants on, figure out who it is you’re really following in this Church, and a couple months later you’ve got your life back.  Would that recovery from the effects of prostitution and trafficking were so simple.

This isn’t just a first-world problem; it’s a first-world, one-percenter problem.  When we equivocate it with prostitution or human/child trafficking, we unwittingly demonstrate just how blessedly, blissfully unaware we are of what “evil” truly is.

Edited March 10, 2019 by Just_A_Guy

[mirkwood]

14 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

I can see why Church members brought up with a certain paradigm would consider a GA telling tall tales, not only terrifically wrong (as I do), but so catastrophically evil as to eclipse the gravity of sins such as prostitution and even human trafficking.  

I don't.  I just don't understand how people can't see the difference between things like that.

[Vort]

2 hours ago, ephedra said:

BYU is run by the Church. If you think otherwise you are extremely naïve.

Naive? Yes, probably. But to say that the Church owns and even runs BYU is far different from saying that when BYU fires an employee, it's the Church firing that employee.

[Vort]

2 hours ago, ephedra said:

My issue is how can prostituting, pimping or whatever even come close to being worse than a General Authority using his position in the church  to both mislead millions and profiting from it?

If you can't see the moral chasm that separates the evil of telling self-serving but otherwise harmless lies to impress people from the evil of prostituting a woman's sexuality, I doubt there is anything I can write that will reveal it to you.

[ephedra]

11 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

GAs, like other humans, sometimes exaggerate—and one of them, so flagrantly so, that thirty years ago his brethren sought to put him away privily rather than make him a public spectacle.  

****put him away privily...aka cover-up. A clumsily executed one at that.

 

[Vort]

30 minutes ago, ephedra said:

****put him away privily...aka cover-up. A clumsily executed one at that.

Yeah, that's what I thought. ephedra's initial mention was just a clumsily executed excuse to criticize Church leadership. Dredge up a 30-year-old occurrence and try every way you can to find fault with the Church. Predictable.

[ephedra]

41 minutes ago, Vort said:

Yeah, that's what I thought. ephedra's initial mention was just a clumsily executed excuse to criticize Church leadership. Dredge up a 30-year-old occurrence and try every way you can to find fault with the Church. Predictable.

I dredged up nothing. I wasn't even aware of it until told right there in this thread. 

Edited March 10, 2019 by ephedra

[Just_A_Guy]

3 hours ago, ephedra said:

****put him away privily...aka cover-up. A clumsily executed one at that.

*shrig* They rationalized hiding him away for purposes of protecting the Church, the way some nominal Mormons rationalize hiding their increase away for purposes of minimizing their tithing.  To each their own.  

But neither is worse than human trafficking.

Edited March 10, 2019 by Just_A_Guy

[ephedra]

23 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

*shrig* They rationalized hiding him away for purposes of protecting the Church, the way some nominal Mormons rationalize hiding their increase away for purposes of minimizing their tithing.  To each their own.  

But neither is worse than human trafficking.

Say what you want. Neither "net" nor "gross" are found in D&C 119. "Surplus" is mentioned at least twice.  My bishop and past ones know how I calculate income not because they asked me, but I told them. I first asked a bishop years ago (25 ish) about that method because I inherited a dozen or so ledgers from my Pioneer Stock, Polygamist descended,  farmer of a Grandfather (he passed in 1950) . He recorded all his finances for about 35 years in there. Every transaction was recorded involving produce, trading, donations, expense for seed, feed expense, paying boys in the ward for work and so on. All harvests were recorded and even how much of the meat or bushels of produce they kept for family subsistence. Bottom line tithing was settled at the end of the year and it was based on what was left after all the dust settled. He then did the math on what was left over and above the previous year's balance and paid on his increase in "wealth" or surplus. There are even entries from when the Bishop sent members of the ward to come get food. I asked the Bishop about this because it is far different than what I was taught how to do it.

I do nothing differently other than it is my business instead of a farm.

I may be wrong and so may my grandfather, but I am not lying or hiding my increase. If the church considers that so, then perhaps the Bishop should put his big boy pants on (as you would word it) and handle it. Since no one is, I m probably ok.

Edited March 10, 2019 by ephedra

[Just_A_Guy]

15 minutes ago, ephedra said:

Say what you want. Neither "net" nor "gross" are found in D&C 119. "Surplus" is mentioned at least twice.  My bishop and past ones know how I calculate income not because they asked me, but I told them. I first asked a bishop years ago (25 ish) about that method because I inherited a dozen or so ledgers from my Pioneer Stock, Polygamist descended,  farmer of a Grandfather (he passed in 1950) . He recorded all his finances for about 35 years in there. Every transaction was recorded involving produce, trading, donations, expense for seed, feed expense, paying boys in the ward for work and so on. All harvests were recorded and even how much of the meat or bushels of produce they kept for family subsistence. Bottom line tithing was settled at the end of the year and it was based on what was left after all the dust settled. He then did the math on what was left over and above the previous year's balance and paid on his increase in "wealth" or surplus. There are even entries from when the Bishop sent members of the ward to come get food. I asked the Bishop about this because it is far different than what I was taught how to do it.

I do nothing differently other than it is my business instead of a farm.

I may be wrong and so may my grandfather, but I am not lying or hiding my increase. If the church considers that so, then perhaps the Bishop should put his big boy pants on (as you would word it) and handle it. Since no one is, I m probably ok.

I haven’t said anything about your personal practice.  I merely mentioned Mormons who for self-interested reasons hide their increase in order to justify paying a lower tithe, in contrast with Church leaders who dealt with a situation quietly in a sincere attempt to promote the greater good.

If you think your “income isn’t increase as long as I convert it from cash fast enough” regimen may fall under that umbrella—well, that’s not me saying that; it’s you. And as you suggest, it’s none of my business.  I don’t know why you feel it needs to become the focus of this discussion, which up to now has revolved around your apparent assertion that human trafficking is morally preferable to a Seventy who tells tall tales.

[Suzie]

Paul Dunn didn't exaggerate his stories, he lied about them. He was also involved in quite a few fraudulent business activities. His actions are inexcusable. Having said that, as a sister in Christ I feel bad for him, his family and for all the people that were hurt. it's really tragic.

General Authorities are human and as such, we should also try our best to extend our compassion. Not because he was a GA but because he was our brother.