Episode 4: Interpretering Book of Mormon Genetics

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Billy Shears
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Episode 4: Interpretering Book of Mormon Genetics

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Introduction
Episode 4 of Kyler Rasmussen’s “Estimating the Evidence” on the Interpreter blog is entitled, “On Nephite Genetics.” In this episode, he concludes “It seems unlikely that the colonization of the American continent described in the Book of Mormon would’ve left no genetic evidence in modern (or ancient) Indigenous populations.” He then moves the decimal 3 places in favor of the critics in recognition of this.

The Central Issue: ”Others”
On this episode, I couldn’t get past Kyler’s gaslighting about what the Book of Mormon actually says and how it has historically been interpreted. He claims “the Book of Mormon doesn’t actually say that [Lehi and his posterity were the principal ancestors of the American Indians],” and that “this thought isn’t one that would’ve entered the mind of anyone in the nineteenth century.” Rather, this was just impulsively put into the 1981 introduction of the Book of Mormon by somebody who hadn’t read it very carefully.

Kyler’s defense of this gaslighting is a link to the paper, “When Lehi’s Party Arrived in the Land, Did They Find Others There?” by John L. Sorenson. The paper is available on Book of Mormon central here:

https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org ... hers-there

Sorenson’s argument is based on the premise that the Book of Mormon is historical, full stop. Given that premise, it looks at inconsistency after inconsistency in the Book of Mormon and argues that the best way to reconcile the inconsistency is to posit “others.” This is an interesting approach, because the inconsistencies Sorenson points out all have a much more obvious explanation: his assumption that the Book of Mormon is historical is false.

For example, the Book of Mormon says that after about 40 years of being in the promised land, the Nephites had “multiplied in the land” (2 Nephi 5:13), had already had wars and contentions with the Lamanites (2 Nephi 5:34), and were already desiring many wives and concubines (Jacob 1:15). However, given the size of the original Lehite party and the realities of population growth, none of this could have happened. Therefore, Sorenson concludes, when Nephi said his people “multiplied in the land of promise,” what he really meant is that they quickly integrated themselves into a huge population of gentiles.

As another example that proves the Nephites integrated with “others,” Sorenson points out that the Nephites grew corn. Corn is a domesticated crop that the Nephites didn’t have time to domesticate and couldn’t have brought from the old world. Therefore the natives must have taught the Nephites how to grow corn.

As yet another example, Sorenson points out the story of the Mulekites and Lamanites immigrating from the old world at the same time. It says that after a few generations when they met they could not communicate with each other because “their language had become corrupted” (Omni 1:17). According to Sorenson, this isn’t plausible. In Sorenson’s own words,
John Sorenson wrote:“Basic vocabulary” changes at a more or less constant rate among all groups. In the course of the three or four centuries since the ancestors of Zarahemla and of Mosiahish are the same Hebrew tongue in Jerusalem, how different could the two dialects have become, based on what linguists know? They should have been about ninety percent similar, so their separate versions of Hebrew would have remained intelligible to each other.
Sorenson reconciles this by claiming that their languages really weren’t corrupted through the natural evolution of language as the Book of Mormon says, but rather the tiny groups of actual Nephites and Mulekites both immediately integrated with two preexisting nations of “others” and adopted the languages of those nations.
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What the Book of Mormon Itself Says About the Genetic Makeup of Native Americans
The Book of Mormon clearly states that the land of promise was preserved for a righteous people and that whatsoever nation shall possess this promised land should serve God, or they should be swept off. The idea that a group of pious Jews would immigrate to a “land of promise” and would immediately integrate with the local gentiles is laughably implausible.

According to 1 Nephi 7, “the Lord spake unto him again, saying that it was not meet for him, Lehi, that he should take his family into the wilderness alone; but that his sons should take daughters to wife, that they might raise up seed unto the Lord in the land of promise.” If God knew that the Land of Promise was absolutely full of civilizations of Asian descent and that Lehi and his family would immediately integrate into those civilizations and that their seed would be completely diluted in those populations, what was the point of going back to Jerusalem to get Ishmael’s daughters?

Throughout the Book of Mormon, the people are described as Nephi’s seed and the seed of Nephi’s brothers (e.g. 1 Nephi 12:15). In 1 Nephi 13:12, Nephi saw a vision in which God told him “I looked and beheld many waters; and they divided the Gentiles from the seed of my brethren.” God himself describes the native Americans as “the seed of Nephi’s brethren” and explicitly juxtaposes this with “the gentiles.” The gentiles weren't genetically drowning out the seed of Lehi in the promised land. The gentiles were across the ocean.

The Book of Mormon explicitly says that the seed of Nephi, Jacob, Joseph, and Sam had white skin, while the seed of Laman, Lemuel, and the sons of Ishmael had dark skin, and this was done so that the seed of the former wouldn’t intermingle with the seed of the latter (Alma 3:6-10). Why would Mormon possibly write so emphatically about keeping their seed pure if in reality they were immediately integrating themselves with the gentile nations of the new world?
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Weighing the Evidence
According to what the Book of Mormon explicitly, repeatedly, and emphatically states, the native Americans were not gentiles, but rather were the seed of Laman, Lemuel, and the sons of Ishmael. If this were true, being able to detect Israelite DNA in the seed of Laman and Lemuel would be 100%.

But at the same time, we know that the Book of Mormon’s teachings about seed of Lehi and the Promised Land are false. In the words of Sorenson:
Archaeology, linguistics and related areas of study have established beyond doubt that a variety of peoples inhabited virtually every place in the Western Hemisphere a long time ago. The presence of over 1500 different languages belonging to dozens of major groupings which were found in the Americas when the Europeans arrived can be explained only by supposing that speakers of the ancestral tongues had been in America for thousands of years. The option that “the Indians” constituted a single ethnic entity is a totally outdated one which neither scholars nor lay people can justifiably believe nowadays.
How should this be approached from a Bayesian perspective? It seems there are three possibilities:

1- The Book of Mormon is 19th Century fiction that represents the now outdated belief that “the Indians” were a single ethnic entity.
2- The Book of Mormon is true, and Sorenson is wrong about everything he says in this paper.
3- The Book of Mormon is historical, but the Book of Mormon itself is wrong about everything it says about the seed of Lehi, the seed of his sons, the promised land, and the gentiles.

Science shows that option 2 is false. The option Kyler and Sorenson prefer, option 3, is so self-contradictory I don’t know what to make of it.

I try to be very conservative with my estimates. Up to this point, my Bayesian prior for the Book of Mormon being historical was 1-in-4,000. Kyler says the evidence on this point moves the decimal point 3 places towards disbelief. I think it moves it much, much, further than that, but out of an abundance of conservativeness I’ll go with his estimate. My new estimate against the Book of Mormon is one in four million.
Last edited by Billy Shears on Fri Jul 30, 2021 11:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Episode 4: Interpretering Book of Mormon Genetics

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The needle on the desperation meter hits 10. I always thought the LGT "walking distance" idea was pretty good. But these others are a laugh fest. No wonder DCP is so sensitive about the LGT.
but rather the tiny groups of actual Nephites and Mulekites both immediately integrated with two preexisting nations of “others” and adopted the languages of those nations
Yet, as disparate tiny pockets getting absorbed by different groups, the Nephites will have such a systematic influence on those languages that it will make it look like the Uto-Aztecan proto language common to all arose from long-distant genetic descent from Hebrew. (there's a remote chance I said that right)

Kyler's going to have 3 Phds by the time he's done.
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Re: Episode 4: Interpretering Book of Mormon Genetics

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A book of its length, according to KR, completely offsets the total lack of DNA evidence for a civilization of millions who passed dark skin to native Indians. So the trick to passing off a fake civilization as plausible is to write a very long book? Passes the smell test?
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Re: Episode 4: Interpretering Book of Mormon Genetics

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Dr Moore wrote:
Fri Jul 30, 2021 11:48 pm
A book of its length, according to Kyler Rasmussen, completely offsets the total lack of DNA evidence for a civilization of millions who passed dark skin to native Indians. So the trick to passing off a fake civilization as plausible is to write a very long book? Passes the smell test?
It will be interesting though, once all the irrelevant analysis has been thrown out, how are things looking per the stuff that's in the ball park? Chiasmus will need to be a major workhorse. I take it that's what Billy's running tally of 4 million represents.

by the way, as a reminder of why trying to prove a modern composition is really ancient is totally pointless, consider there are other possibilities to what's going on in the text. Brandt Gardner has a creative solution contrary to Sorenson and the official version. Brandt argues for a limited geography, but instead says that the large population numbers and large numbers in war are a fabrication. The Book of Mormon authors are lying. And that is proof that the book is an ancient text, because lying about your people's greatness, taking credit for the victories of others, and basically, writing completely fabricated religious histories is a totally ancient thing to do. And to the small extent I've delved into New World history, Brandt is totally right. If the Book of Mormon can be taken as true as in, a wordy and heartfelt historical monograph, then that's the most anachronistic part about it.
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Re: Episode 4: Interpretering Book of Mormon Genetics

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Gadianton wrote:
Sat Jul 31, 2021 12:17 am
Dr Moore wrote:
Fri Jul 30, 2021 11:48 pm
A book of its length, according to Kyler Rasmussen, completely offsets the total lack of DNA evidence for a civilization of millions who passed dark skin to native Indians. So the trick to passing off a fake civilization as plausible is to write a very long book? Passes the smell test?
It will be interesting though, once all the irrelevant analysis has been thrown out, how are things looking per the stuff that's in the ball park? Chiasmus will need to be a major workhorse. I take it that's what Billy's running tally of 4 million represents.

by the way, as a reminder of why trying to prove a modern composition is really ancient is totally pointless, consider there are other possibilities to what's going on in the text. Brandt Gardner has a creative solution contrary to Sorenson and the official version. Brandt argues for a limited geography, but instead says that the large population numbers and large numbers in war are a fabrication. The Book of Mormon authors are lying. And that is proof that the book is an ancient text, because lying about your people's greatness, taking credit for the victories of others, and basically, writing completely fabricated religious histories is a totally ancient thing to do. And to the small extent I've delved into New World history, Brandt is totally right. If the Book of Mormon can be taken as true as in, a wordy and heartfelt historical monograph, then that's the most anachronistic part about it.
Huh, well if all facts and fungible and fungible ideas are allowed to be facts, there is no point engaging. That’s like spider man fighting sand man.
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Re: Episode 4: Interpretering Book of Mormon Genetics

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Huh, well if all facts and fungible and fungible ideas are allowed to be facts, there is no point engaging. That’s like spider man fighting sand man.
when there's nothing to bind you to reality, then it's whatever a person can imagine. All parallel, no spade.
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Re: Episode 4: Interpretering Book of Mormon Genetics

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THANK YOU Billy Shears. It's soooo COOL having so many of us who can check things out and analyse. I shall get back here in a bit. I am just finishing another video on DNA and the Book of Mormon.
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Re: Episode 4: Interpretering Book of Mormon Genetics

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Just for fun, running a concurrent Bayesian Analysis on Aesop's Fables might return some interesting proofs of Book of Mormon validity.
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