Does the Interpreter Foundation Have Colonialist Ambitions?

[Rivendale]

Soon to be a trillion dollar church and they aren't concerned with money?

[Doctor Steuss]

Perhaps the DRC is where EPA/LDS will spend its $150B.

That'd be awesome, but last time an impoverished nation asked the LDS Church for help, they were told by an Apostle "We are not a wealthy people...and we share what we have."

Maybe one day, the Church will have $500B and be moderately wealthy, and able to share more of what it has.

[Gadianton]

Is that any surprise?

"you didn't tip 2 cents on that 12 course meal!"

"just browsing through my receipts and it turns out I tipped a quarter, twelve and a half times that amount!"

[drumdude]

Dan just wrote another response to this thread. Nothing interesting enough to post, except for this one observation about Gemli:

And, finally, here’s something that I found only a few minutes ago in the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™: “Atheists Just Don’t Have Many Kids”

There has, actually, been some debate about whether this link ever really belonged in the Hitchens File. I suppose that the answer to that question might well depend upon whether or not one likes people . . .

Incidentally, for whatever it’s worth, this board’s longtime resident atheist — now voluntarily departed from our midst, presumably to continue reciting his creed elsewhere — was married but childless. And he seemed to have a fairly low opinion of humans generally. Anecdotal, but certainly consistent with the data.

Dan has really built up a strong worldview centered around the supposed dark hopelessness of atheism. One visit to Northern Europe to see the happy godless families would do much to dispel that unfortunate fantasy of his.

It also seems bizarrely personal to bring up Gemli that way. He doesn’t know why Gemli doesn’t have children, but he thinks he can connect it to a throwaway jab in his childish hitchens file. It all really exemplifies the kind soul of Daniel Peterson, the world’s nicest human being according to those who know him.

[Rivendale]

Dan just wrote another response to this thread. Nothing interesting enough to post, except for this one observation about Gemli:

And, finally, here’s something that I found only a few minutes ago in the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™: “Atheists Just Don’t Have Many Kids”

There has, actually, been some debate about whether this link ever really belonged in the Hitchens File. I suppose that the answer to that question might well depend upon whether or not one likes people . . .

Incidentally, for whatever it’s worth, this board’s longtime resident atheist — now voluntarily departed from our midst, presumably to continue reciting his creed elsewhere — was married but childless. And he seemed to have a fairly low opinion of humans generally. Anecdotal, but certainly consistent with the data.

Dan has really built up a strong worldview centered around the supposed dark hopelessness of atheism. One visit to Northern Europe to see the happy godless families would do much to dispel that unfortunate fantasy of his.

It also seems bizarrely personal to bring up Gemli that way. He doesn’t know why Gemli doesn’t have children, but he thinks he can connect it to a throwaway jab in his childish hitchens file. It all really exemplifies the kind soul of Daniel Peterson, the world’s nicest human being according to those who know him.

Gemli has a heart of gold.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

[Gadianton]

Looks like Congo is doing far better than Mormons in child production. Maybe DCP should be taking lessons from them?

[Kishkumen]

Wrong thread?

[Doctor Scratch]

It seems that this thread has really gotten under Dr. Peterson's skin--and he has taken special aim at you, Dean Robbers:

“The Church looks at Africa,” says one of the brighter PO Board denizens, “the same way as the rest of the developed world does, as the planet’s last big value trade. According to Wiki, China is 2 trillion deep into Africa. The Church wants its cut too.” He seems to imagine the Church as a global mining company, drawn by the DR Congo’s mineral wealth to extract cobalt, diamonds, copper, and metallic tantalum.

Meanwhile, he accuses the Reverend of misrepresenting/misunderstanding his position:

“Imagine,” says another of the PO Board’s less intellectually irresponsible participants, “making the argument that the LDS Church is not interested in making money after the Ensign Peak revelations. Good luck, guys!” Another summarizes my position as follows: Church leaders “aren’t concerned with money.”

But, of course, I never said that the Church doesn’t concern itself with money. With its missionary efforts and its humanitarian undertakings and its construction of meetinghouses and temples and its seminaries and institutes and its sponsorship of three universities and a college and its gathering of family history records and so on and so forth, it must pay attention to financial matters. Not to do so would be wildly irresponsible and would very soon result in colossal failure. But if the Church were solely concerned about its bottom line, I think it fairly obvious to any reasonable person (in other words, to the vast majority of people who don’t post on the PO Board) that it wouldn’t be involved in the DR Congo.

I'll leave it to the Dean and the Reverend to deal with these silly remarks. Meanwhile, I will reiterate my main point: it seems clear that the Interpreter Foundation is using its DRC film project in order to extract money from donors. The will become fact rather than assumption the moment that Dr. Peterson mentions this project in one of his many pleas for donations. So in a sense, it's not so much that they are trying to drain money from DRC people (and I don't recall anyone here actually making that claim), rather, the DRC people are essentially be used as "pawns" so that Interpreter can extract donations from other people.

[Gadianton]

He seems to imagine the Church as a global mining company, drawn by the DR Congo’s mineral wealth to extract cobalt, diamonds, copper, and metallic tantalum.

This is precisely what I think, and glad to see we have some common ground. Now, it's not just mining and raw materials, but human capital, outsourcing. China's standard of living has increased so much that to keep its competitive edge, even it must outsource to cheaper labor, and the options are dwindling.

Look at it this way: when that mining company heads out west to look for gold, the miners, cooks and shoe cobblers go out first, but the preacher isn't far behind them.