Readers may be interested in the write-up of the Olivewood Book event that appears on the Mormon Times site:
Book answers DNA critics of Book of MormonBy Rodger L. Hardy
Deseret NewsFriday, Dec. 05, 2008
PROVO, Utah -- Brigham Young University professor Daniel C. Peterson answers DNA critics of the Book on Mormon with a new collection of articles by leading scientists who are also Latter-day Saints.
Peterson introduced "The Book of Mormon and DNA Research," Thursday at the Olivewood Book Store. The book is the first to come out of the Maxwell Institute, of which the bookstore is affiliated, in a series of collections Peterson called "the best of the best."
Authors include John M. Butler, who holds a doctorate in chemistry; D. Jeffrey Meldrum, an Idaho State University associate professor of biology; David McClellan, a BYU assistant professor of integrative biology; and others.
Critics began using DNA research several years ago to challenge the apparent Book of Mormon claim that Native Americans have Israelite roots.
And while critics thought they had brought The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to its knees because no such DNA evidence exists in modern Indians, Peterson said their claims are flawed as illustrated in the new book.
Critics called the finding a Galileo event, referring to the time in history when Galileo Galilei discovered the sun was the center of the solar system.
Peterson argues that the science the book's critics use is unsound; Internet bloggers simply say it's "common sense" that if Israelite blood isn't found in the modern descendants of Book of Mormon people then the book is a fraud.
However, the collection of scholarly writings refutes that argument, Peterson said.
An associate with whom Peterson appeared on a coast-to-coast radio show, Mike Whiting, explained it this way, Peterson said: "Galileo got his science right."
One of the articles by Butler sites a study of 131,060 Icelanders whose ancestors were known by their record. But research into their DNA couldn't prove that their ancestors existed 150 years earlier based on the Y-chromosome and the mitochondrial DNA tests.
How then could scientists expect the people in the Book of Mormon to leave a genetic imprint on their descendants, Peterson queried. The markers simply disappear over time, he said.
Not only that, but the Book of Mormon doesn't contain enough genetic data to work with. For example, the females in the Book of Mormon inherited their DNA from the wife of Ishmael, an important figure early in the Book of Mormon.
"We know nothing about her," Peterson said.
"To assume all questions about Meso-America are answered by DNA is naïve," he said. "This is not a simple subject. There is a lot of naïvété in this subject."
The Book of Mormon population was relatively small when those people first landed on the shores of the New World, he said. At the time millions of native peoples already were living on the continent. Through intermarriage the genetic pool could have easily and quickly become "swamped," Peterson said.
Geographically, the Book of Mormon story takes place in a small area, which also would limit the gene pool.
"This is a tempest in a teapot," Peterson said, dismissing critics' claims. "There's not much there. So what (if most of the people) came from Asia."
The Book of Mormon is in the realm of faith. It has enough evidence for those who want to believe, he said, but not enough to prove it or force others to believe.
"That's by design," Peterson said.