DiscussMormonism.com

Tobin wrote:No one in the Church talkes the apologists seriously, nor should they. Mormonism is about speaking with God and doing what God tells you to do. I know those outside the Church have their issues with Deutero-Isaiah, genetics markers, a distinct lack of horses in Mesoamerica and apologists engage them on those grounds. But, the apologists are really mistaken to do so. If they were truly interested in the answers, they would speak with God about it and find out the truth.

dblagent007 wrote:Over on MDD, they have basically declared Southerton's book debunked. Simon wrote a detailed response to the one FARM's review of his book and it sounds to me like it is far from debunked.

My understanding of the apologetic argument is that it would be impossible to detect the genes of 30 people who entered a huge population of American Indians. I realize Simon conceded this point at one time, but more and more studies have come out since then so I'm wondering if that is still true.

dblagent007 wrote:My understanding of the apologetic argument is that it would be impossible to detect the genes of 30 people who entered a huge population of American Indians. I realize Simon conceded this point at one time, but more and more studies have come out since then so I'm wondering if that is still true.

Dan Peterson wrote:For anybody who might be interested: Roughly three hundred affirmations of their faith from reflective and believing Mormons can be read at

http://mormonscholarstestify.org/

http://mormonscholarstestify.org/category/testimonies

And the collection continues to grow steadily.

Natuska wrote:And for anyone interested in what an actual archeologist of note has to say about most everything claimed by the Book of Mormon:

http://www.pbs.org/Mormons/interviews/coe.html

Michael Coe is an emeritus professor at Yale. He spent his life in archeology in one of the places Mormons like to claim is a strong candidate for the Book of Mormon lands. In short, the archeological record provides no support for those who like to claim the Book of Mormon is a historical record of early inhabitants of the americas. The most damning evidence is that no pollen has ever been found *anywhere* for cereals the Book of Mormon claims were grown.

That is completely separate from the lack of DNA evidence. The Book of Mormon claims arrivals from the Middle east were amongst the "principal" founders of the native americans, though the DNA record indicates this is strikingly not the case. The time periods concerned are practically overnight in genetic terms so any trace should be easy to pick up - no one has come close to finding any supporting evidence. Several LDS geneticists have fallen from the faith when they realized the evidence in the DNA challenged the central occurrences in the Book of Mormon. By contrast, the genetic history of world Jewry is so clearcut that Jewish or non-Jewish heritage of any group of people has been trivial to determine.

You will find no scientific support if you choose to believe in the Book of Mormon and Occam's Razor would suggest that the whole story is fantasy.

Dan Peterson wrote:Anyone interested in a profession of faith from a believing Mormon "archaeologist of note" is invited to read

http://mormonscholarstestify.org/2166/john-e-clark

And perhaps also

http://mormonscholarstestify.org/114/john-l-sorenson

(By the way, Michael Coe has had very laudatory things to say over the years about the scholarship of both of these men.)

And more is on its way.

On the DNA issue:

http://maxwellinstitute.BYU.edu/display ... cat_id=488

Several quite prominent geneticists happen to be believing Latter-day Saints. DNA neither proves nor disproves the Book of Mormon.

Natuska wrote:Let's hope these "quite prominent geneticists" read this weeks issue of Science magazine - one of the most reputable peer-reviewed journals.

There's an article entitled "Tracing the Paths of the First Americans" which summarizes the findings of six recent papers looking at the genetic ancestry of native Americans. The key sentence is:

"The findings support earlier indications that the Paleoindians, the ancestors of today's Native Americans, stem from a single Asian source population."

And, a reputable geneticist, who happens to be LDS, has shown that a fragment of DNA (which some LDS thought was a a remnant of Lehi's group) has been in the US for about 15,000 years - way before any of the migrations.

With this new data, and previous work, your assertion that DNA neither proves nor disproves the Book of Mormon, is without foundation. All the extant evidence suggests the Book of Mormon account is not even close to being accurate.

Dan Peterson wrote:http://maxwellinstitute.BYU.edu/publica ... m=2&id=504

http://maxwellinstitute.BYU.edu/publica ... cat_id=488

In light of the considerations laid out by Dr. McClellan and Dr. Whiting, it's difficult to see how anything in the "Science" article could disprove the claims of the Book of Mormon.

But then, Dr. McClellan is a population geneticist and Dr. Whiting is a prominent molecular biologist, so what would THEY know? Better to take the word of a hostile pseudonymous layman, right?

Natuska wrote:Very nice and hostile response. I am not a layman, unless you'd consider an active mid-career academic scientist working in a closely related area a "layman". Hostile isn't accurate - I really could care less what people believe as long as the science they base it on is accurate and not distorted.

It's odd that you would name-drop like this. Both scientists you mentioned are well published though don't work directly on ancestry of native americans. The first is a bioinformatician who works on mitochondrial SNPs and Whiting works on insect mitochondria.

Your FARMS and BYU links (which are not - repeat not) peer-reviewed are from 2003 which is a lifetime in this field and predates many of the most significant discoveries in this area and recent techniques of detecting sequence homology in autosomal DNA (in those days a certain mitochondrial haplotype was considered the great hope of LDS researchers - later shown to be inaccurate by a LDS researcher). They are opinion pieces and should be advertised as such.

I'd take a look at
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6050/1692.summary

if I were you for the newer techniques in action. I will say it again - the peer-reviewed scientific literature (which excludes personal opinion pieces in BYU publications for obvious reasons) categorically rules out the requirement of Book of Mormon.

As I maintain - the evolutionary record is so clear that an undergrad would come to the same conclusion.

Dan Peterson wrote:Dr. McClellan's article is a few years old, but that's not enough, in and of itself, to invalidate his points -- and his points suggest that the "Science" article is probably irrelevant to the Book of Mormon. Incidentally, if I've read the particular "Science" article in question, it specifically notes that more testing is needed, and its accompanying map very conspicuously indicates that testing hasn't been done in the area specifically favored for the Book of Mormon by most believing Latter-day Saint scholars.

Thus, even if Dr. McClellan's points DIDN'T hold, the "Science" article would seem to be indecisive regarding the Book of Mormon.

Natuska wrote:The authors essentially used DNA extracted from burial sites to piece together migration patterns. The data fits prevailing models rather elegantly. Scientists always request more testing to flesh out their datasets and increase the clarity of their results. The request for additional testing noted in the summary piece I cited relates to the not entirely ruled out possibility of additional arrivals from Asia via the Beringian route but additional sequence data will clarify that. That caveat clearly doesn't mean "We're actually expeting some Middle Eastern DNA to pop up if we keep sequencing". The implication of the caveat is entirely different.

Given the abundance of native american DNA already collected, it's not even remotely likely that new samples will change the current outlook, only it will lend further evidence for a precise number of Alaskan arrivals. Were Lehi's party really the "principal founders" they've done a very good job of hiding all evidence - not just in the US genetic record but also in the soil. Their presence was as real in the US as the Kinderhoek plates.

Plus, the data cover both broad regions where one can buy tours to visit the Book of Mormon lands.

Dan Peterson wrote:Actually, if you had read the articles by Drs. Whiting and McClellan, and if you understood my position (I suspect that you have no idea what it is), you would realize that I'm not "punting" on any scientific discipline, and that I don't expect "Middle Eastern DNA" to turn up.

Natuska wrote:I read bits of both references you cited, although I skipped the biology lesson at the start of the first link. I skipped over the sentence which would make a peer-reviewer shudder:
"First, however, I feel compelled by my faith to state that the only reliable way to test the veracity of the Book of Mormon or statements by modern prophets such as Joseph Smith is to put Moroni's promise to the test on a personal level".

His argument seems to be a restatement of absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and that exact answers to research are not an experimental reality. Here we agree though repeated and sustained absence of evidence does undermine the counter hypothesis that Lehi's DNA does exist.

He suggests it's not probable that the genetic trace of a small migrating party would necessarily or logically be detected. Here I strongly disagree - their DNA was different and if they had *any* survivors (even those whose DNA has been collected from native burial sites) it would have shown up, even if those survivors subsequently died out: people reproduce and so does their DNA. Scandinavian and Asian DNA has been detected in the American genetic record.

The author seems to concede that no DNA from Lehi has been found and he's comfortable with this. Given the plethora of accumulated evidence, I'd venture it will never be found. Science attaches a confidence to predictions and on the basis of the available evidence Lehi's DNA never existed.

The second link's author states no scientific experiment can be used to test the account of the Book of Mormon. Then he deals with a number of problems of DNA research and problems associated with detecting evolutionary relationships and points to the difficulties in making conclusions on data which do not directly test a hypothesis: many of the researchers did not specifically look for Lehi's DNA. But scientists are curious beasts and if they detected an interesting bit of DNA they would have devoted attention to it - especially if they detected Middle Eastern DNA. After all - interesting bits of DNA led to our knowledge of mobile DNA and viral integration.

He identifies the problem of the difficulty of detecting small amounts of DNA in a larger population though recent genetic advances, based largely on the explosion of sequence data from around the world, mitigates that concern: traces from tiny founding colonies have been detected in the genetic record.

The enumeration of difficulties still reads like an apology for the lack of evidence. One LDS adherent once told me "Trust me, BYU whizzes are all over this problem". And that itself causes a problem. Evidence of Lehi's DNA would constantly be on our TV screens and used by the missionaries if it were found. But it never will be.

If your position for the lack of DNA evidence (and the more serious lack of a pollen record) is more sophisticated and subtle than this, I'd be very interested to hear it.

Dan Peterson wrote:I suspect that there are only a handful of diehards monitoring this portion of the comments section, so I'm probably going to opt out soon on the basis of the principle of marginal benefit.

In the meantime, though, I just want to say that I think it would be wonderful to live in a world, as you and all non-Mormons apparently do, where no argument ever turns out to be mistaken, no evidence ever turns out to be wrong, no seemingly solid claim ever proves unreliable, no scholar ever makes a mistake, all propositions are accepted without resistance, and there is no controversy about assertions of fact.

Natuska wrote:You're punting on a lot of linguistics, archeology, anthropology, molecular biology and evolutionary science, generated by legions of scientists - some LDS - from around the world being not just mistaken but so profoundly wrong that they somehow miss all the events recorded in the Book of Mormon. Good luck with that.

Stormy Waters wrote:

dblagent007 wrote:My understanding of the apologetic argument is that it would be impossible to detect the genes of 30 people who entered a huge population of American Indians. I realize Simon conceded this point at one time, but more and more studies have come out since then so I'm wondering if that is still true.

Is there any textual evidence in The Book of Mormon for them integrating with a larger population? I can't think of any.

In the meantime, though, I just want to say that I think it would be wonderful to live in a world, as you and all non-Mormons apparently do, where no argument ever turns out to be mistaken, no evidence ever turns out to be wrong, no seemingly solid claim ever proves unreliable, no scholar ever makes a mistake, all propositions are accepted without resistance, and there is no controversy about assertions of fact.