DNA
Today’s LA Times rehashes the DNA vs. the Book of Mormon brouhaha. Of some interest is the space the article devotes to disaffected “Lamanite” Mormons who feel recent DNA research condemns the heritage they were once taught to embrace. There is also some discussion of the limited-geography re-alignment by Mormon apologists. The “problem” (if there is one) is illustrated by the LA Times with the seeming tension between these two quotes:
“Whether Book of Mormon geography is extensive or limited or how much today’s Native Americans reflect the genetic makeup of the Book of Mormon peoples has absolutely no bearing on its central message as a testament of Jesus Christ” (Church spokesman Mike Otterson).
“As I look into your faces, I think of Father Lehi, whose sons and daughters you are. I think he must be shedding tears today, tears of love and gratitude” (Gordon B. Hinckley in a 1997 conference in Lima, Peru).
The article wants you to think the Church is now “neutral” as to the Lamanite/Native American question, but President Hinckley’s quote is meant to show how the “myth” still resonates. Simon Southerton’s rugged features also grace the article. Oh, and Jan Shipps makes an appearance too. You’ve read this article a million times, trust me.
Comment by Ronan — February 16, 2006 @ 2:17 pm
The real news is that the article is in the LA Times instead of the Salt Lake Tribune. The LA Times is the big time. A lot of members who were oblivious to this subject will be exposed to it as a result of this article. I wonder if the church will make any official reponses…
Comment by Geoff J — February 16, 2006 @ 2:35 pm
Even if the church makes an official response I doubt many would hear it.
My view is that despite some egregious errors (i.e. Mormons consider the Book of Mormon without error) it’ll lead to people learning more about the LGT which is always a good thing. Nothing wrong with clearing away myths regarding the BoM which are the false traditions of men. The text itself never claims to be either without error or a history of all the Americas.
Comment by Clark Goble — February 16, 2006 @ 2:42 pm
It’s interesting … but is it news? I mean, was there some event that happened recently that made this a story to be put on the front page? [It shows up as the top story in the LA Times online edition.] No, none at all, but anytime’s a good time to run a story that supports your agenda. Why the LA Times has the Church in it agenda drawer is a mystery to me. Nothing that off-base with the story (except the faux-emotional framing — let’s all shed a tear for Hispanic lawyers who talk to reporters about their religious doubts or identity crises), but the paper really ought to explain why it feels a need to run such a story.
FYI, I cancelled my subscription to the LA Times a couple of years ago when they ran hatchet stories on Schwarzeneggar like two days before the election, after sitting on the story for a couple of months. Another Times agenda item. They shot their own credibility, as far as I’m concerned.
Comment by Dave — February 16, 2006 @ 2:49 pm
The LA Times circulation has been in serious trouble the past few years. Mickey Kaus over at Slate is forever making fun of their problems.
Comment by Clark Goble — February 16, 2006 @ 3:04 pm
Clark:Nothing wrong with clearing away myths regarding the BoM which are the false traditions of men.
Of course, I agree. But will we stop calling people in Peru, “children of Lehi”? What about those many tens of thousands of native American and Polynesian Mormons who are, right now (I would bet), still considered “Lamanites”?
Comment by Ronan — February 16, 2006 @ 3:19 pm
Does the LDS church still own a substantial part of the of stock in the LA Times? If not, does anybody know when those shares were sold off?
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — February 16, 2006 @ 3:23 pm
I think we’re going to be taking it on the chin on this issue for a while.
Comment by Jared — February 16, 2006 @ 4:16 pm
Jared, my guess is that it’s only going to get worse with the passage of time — unless an actual pocket of Lamanite DNA is discovered. As testing becomes more thorough and extensive throughout the Americas, the plausibility of even a moderate-sized local colony of Israelites in some part of the ancient world will diminish (unless we believe the idea that there was both a total male-line and female-line extinction — an idea without direct textual support, and certainly an ad hoc, hypothesis-saving theoretical move). For example, extensive testing has evidently now happened in Mesoamerica, with no mtDNA lineages that don’t originate in Asia — indeed, even the controversial X lineage is extremely rare in that part of the Americas. So restricting Book of Mormon geography to Mesoamerica doesn’t even help solve the DNA puzzle.
As far as I know, the only DNA evidence strongly supportive of Middle Eastern origins among Native American peoples anywhere in the hemisphere have been found in areas where Spanish conversos (Jews “turned” Christian to avoid the Inquisition) were known to have settled. Our ability to recover those genetic signals — often based on quite small initial populations — further troubles the current apologetics.
All of this may well change in the near future; perhaps clear evidence of Lamanite DNA will be discovered. But if that doesn’t happen, I certainly expect this strand of discourse to get worse. It’s not clear to me that this will ever cost the church too many members, but I would expect our ability to convert educated non-Mormons to fall to near-zero levels if the DNA evidence continues to worsen…
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — February 16, 2006 @ 4:57 pm
The church has now responded to the article by reissuing a prior statement.
DNA and the Book of Mormon
The lawyer has had his 15 minutes of fame. He also made the papers when the Murphy DNA affair was in the news.
Comment by Justin — February 16, 2006 @ 5:01 pm
I’d be curious to know if someone connected to Signature Books pushed this story.
Comment by Justin — February 16, 2006 @ 5:05 pm
RT,
It’s a while since I read the apologetic material, but I think it suggests that there is reason to assume we wouldn’t find any middle eastern markers (if we know what 600 BC middle eastern markers look like) in modern day native americans. If that is the case why do you think things will get worse with more sampling?
Comment by gomez — February 16, 2006 @ 5:31 pm
There’s nearly two thousand years between the Spanish “Conversos” and Lehi’s family. That’s a lot of time for interbreeding and death/disaster to muddy the lines. Not to mention if the Lamanites were driven out and systematically destroyed as seems happened in later books in the Book of Mormon, we may well be looking for Lamanite DNA in the wrong place. Mormon said that his people were destroyed near the Hill Cumorah. That’s a long way from Mesoamerica. Has anyone tested the Iroquoi, Oneida or other Native American tribes that lived in the area? However, how do we know that they didn’t come to the area later and drive out or intermingle with a still earlier population, further muddying the waters?
All that belongs to the realms of history and science and the day we have a perfect grasp of either is likely to be several days after the Second Coming. The DNA issue may be a stumbling block for some but no one, not even the educated, converts because someone found a significant chunk of rock. They convert because of the Spirit, which will bear witness to them of the truth of the Book of Mormon no matter what the professors and newspapers say.
Comment by harpingheather — February 16, 2006 @ 5:40 pm
Today, I drove over to the LDS Church’s Distribution Center here in Los Angeles to pick up a few items of importance. The Distribution Center is located on Temple Hill in West LA, where, you might have guessed, the Mormon Temple is located. And, of course, I am a card-carrying Mormon (but you can call me member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) who had things to do there, hence the nothing-out-of-the-ordinary trip to our little Mormon mecca in LALA land.
As I came closer to the immense structure at the corner of Santa Monica and Overland, I noticed local carpentry union picketers, who were (yup) picketing something directly in front of the temple. There must have been forty or fifty altogether, but there were no news media or other noteworthy folks in tow. As I pulled up on to Manning and on in to the Temple Hill parking area, the picketers, with hard hats and plenty of signage indicating their carpentry union cause, blocked the entry to the parking lot. Thankfully, the LAPD was there to make sure folks could pass, and, as a Democrat and lover of all things Organizing (unions, workers, etc.) I was certainly happy to see a crowd of folks protesting something and exercising their rights to peaceably assemble. But what could these carpenters possibly have against the Mormons?
I smell some shenanigans in LA today, if you are asking me. First the DNA thing in the LAT and then these protestors. I wrote more about it in my blog at http://www.matthewstringer.com/nerdacumen if you care to see my take.
Comment by Mattso — February 16, 2006 @ 6:18 pm
Ronan #6: “But will we stop calling people in Peru, ‘children of Lehi’? What about those many tens of thousands of native American and Polynesian Mormons who are, right now (I would bet), still considered ‘Lamanites’?”
They may very well be descendants of Lehi, but there is just no way to prove that genetically. In fact, I postulate that Lehi is a descendant of virtually all native Americans, but his genetic signature has been buried over time.
I’m a seventh-generation descendant of Declaration of Independence signer James Smith, and I have the genealogical charts to prove it. But get a sample of my DNA and James Smith’s DNA, and there’s no way I could prove my claim because I’m not a direct father-son descendant.
Comment by Mike Parker — February 16, 2006 @ 6:22 pm
The LA picketing is being discussed here
The guy quoted in the LA Times article is apparently a frequent poster at teh Exmo board. Given the well-oiled Exmo press machine, I wouldn’t be surprised to find some helpful people making “suggestions” of stories to run and providing helpful interviewees.
Comment by Ben S. — February 16, 2006 @ 6:51 pm
Gomez, when we set aside the possibilities of total extinction of the direct male and female lines, as mentioned in my previous comment (as well as the unsupported possibility that Lehite DNA might differ radically from the DNA of all other Middle Eastern groups), then all that’s left is a sampling problem.
Harpingheather, yes, tests on some members of the tribes you mention have been done. No, it didn’t work out.
The most important thing, of course, isn’t the strict, evidentiary meaning of the DNA. It’s the public opinion meaning. As more work gets done, a lack of confirmation will — in informed public opinion — inevitably turn into disconfirmation. That’s why I think this gets worse — unless clear Lamanite DNA is found.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — February 16, 2006 @ 9:28 pm
I’m surprised at the number of comments here that seek to discredit the story by attacking the messengers. I’d think that we’d be more sensitive to such a fallacious approach, having had it applied to ourselves so often.
The church’s statement does all that needs to be done: it affirms and points to counter-arguments, primary of which is to test it by living it.
If I were an outsider listenting to the rants against LAT and Southerton, etc…I’d be suspicious.
Comment by Watt Mahoun — February 16, 2006 @ 9:56 pm
Watt,
I think maybe your rant-meter needs adjusting, ’cause I just don’t see them here.
Comment by Jared — February 16, 2006 @ 10:31 pm
Yeah, I immediately regretted the comment after posting it. I was just picking-up on the unrelated criticism of LAT in 4 and 5…but by and large most comments have been insightful and fair.
Sorry for the negativity.
FWIW, I agree most with the idea that, fair or not, we’re going to get the short-end of the public perception stick on this….It’s really just beginning.
Comment by Watt Mahoun — February 16, 2006 @ 10:46 pm
Mike Parker wrote:
The ability to trace descendancy from a specific progenetor and that of a general linage like asian vs middle-eastern are two seperate issues. The former being problematic as you suggest, and the latter being much more reliable and the basis of the “DNA evidence” against native americans being lamanites.
I think it’s important that we remain clear on the fact that the DNA evidence is not disproving the existence of the Book of Mormon peoples, but showing the belief/teaching that native americans and polynesians as descendants of Lehi as insubstantial.
And we should remember that this belief/teaching has been used to convince people of their racial connection to a divine promise. This is no small matter.
Comment by Watt Mahoun — February 16, 2006 @ 11:22 pm
I think Ronan hit the real problem on the head. The issue is with the teaching (still on display in the Introduction to the Book of Mormon) that Lehi and his party are the “principal ancestors of the American Indians”. That appears to just not be the case. Lehi could easily be one of many thousands thousands of genetic contributors to current native Americans, but that is not the same as being the principal ancestor.
This is not a problem for the text itself, because no such claim is made within the actual Book of Mormon. But church leaders have taught this idea since the days of Joseph, so backing away from that position will admittedly be a little embarrassing. The problem is that I think RT is right that this issue will not just go away. I will not at all be surprised to see an edited Introduction to the Book of Mormon in the next decade or so.
Comment by Geoff J — February 16, 2006 @ 11:23 pm
I agree Geoff. We already were way overdue for a new edition of the scriptures. But the introduction really needs to be rewritten due to serious problems with it.
Comment by clark — February 17, 2006 @ 12:20 am
RT, at some point, there was a tree chart that showed church holdings (in The Economist, maybe?) that showed the Church’s interests and holdings. This kind of thing leads people to assume that the LDS church controlled the paper (it’s only the natural assumption, right?). I sure thought at one point that this was the case.
But the deal is this: According to Time Magazien (August 4, 1997 Cover story), the church owned $28 million worth of stock in Times Mirror Company in 1997. The Times Mirror Company merged with Tribune in June 2000. (http://www.tribune.com/about/history.html). I haven’t been able to find anything indicating that the Church sold this stock.
The $28 million in 1997 stock is doubtless worth far more at this point. Even so, it is far from a controlling (or even an influential) share even before it was deluded from the merger.
Comment by DKL — February 17, 2006 @ 12:42 am
Having just re-read the preceding comment, it strikes me that it’s not completely obvious that I’m referring to RT’s question about the Church owning a substantial amount of the LA Times.
Comment by DKL — February 17, 2006 @ 12:44 am
DKL, thanks for the information. I actually didn’t mean to imply that the church controlled the paper — just that it had a significant financial stake in it. (And I would call $28 million significant.) That kind of financial relationship simply seems sort of ironic in light of this news story…
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — February 17, 2006 @ 1:08 am
RT, there’s significant and there’s significant. For example, if I had $28 million dollars in Tribune stock, I’d consider that significant.
But the Tribune Company has a market value in the neighborhood of $13 Billion. The LDS Church has a market value that is sometimes estimated (who knows how accurately) at several times that. When you’re dealing with numbers of these magnitudes, $28 million is less than a drop in the bucket.
Comment by DKL — February 17, 2006 @ 1:59 am
Maybe someone can answer a question I’ve had for a while about the DNA-BoM isue:
The BoM says that the Lamanites’ physical appearance was changed from how they appeared when their forebearers left Jerusalem. Once we accept that, wouldn’t we expect their DNA also to have changed?
For me, the part of the BoM that is difficult to accept purely by rationality is their miraculous change in appearance, not that their DNA *also* would have changed.
Comment by manaen — February 17, 2006 @ 3:59 am
Slate picked up the story:
Comment by Ronan — February 17, 2006 @ 8:25 am
I want to second manaen’s comments. We are already talking about some serious human modification, so why is this the sticking point?
Comment by John C. — February 17, 2006 @ 8:46 am
UPI has the story on its wires. Apparently,
Comment by Ronan — February 17, 2006 @ 9:58 am
Manean and John,
The first thing that must be established is that the Lamanites did suddenly and miraculiously change appearance. I’m not sure that the record insists on this. It does say that over generations the Lamanites were darker in complexion than than the Nephites, but that hardly sounds like a miracle to me. Further, they were all one people for hundreds of years after Chirist came so by the end of the book any early differences would have been melded.
Fankly, the whole notion of miraculous DNA change sounds like an ad hoc excuse to me. Sort of like how people come up with some really bizarre explanations why God intentionally makes the evidence look like evolution is accurate or how God masterfully covered up a worldwide flood a few thousand years ago. I personally just don’t think God works that way.
Comment by Geoff J — February 17, 2006 @ 10:13 am
2) Maybe the folks who came from the lost tribe were few, and their DNA was “swamped†by immigrants from Asia. Try falsifying that!
Indeed. But I think it is the most plausible answer. But again, this direction requires our dropping the “principal ancestors” message.
Comment by Geoff J — February 17, 2006 @ 10:15 am
Even so, it is far from a controlling (or even an influential) share even before it was deluded from the merger.
I’m not usually one to mock spelling errors, but this one is just too funny. Still, I’m not so deluded as to believe that my elitist mockery will result in anything but undiluted criticism.
Comment by Last Lemming — February 17, 2006 @ 10:18 am
So, ten minutes after posting #34 above, I run across these two items on another blog:
I sincerely hope that no person is actually so diluted to believe any of the above “postulates†and think that they are being even remotely in step with science.
followed by
KLC said:
Jeffry Giliam, nice pun talking about diluted men in a thread about the flood…
Just so DKL doesn’t think I’m picking on him.
For the original versions, see http://ourthoughts.ca/2006/02/16/the-flood-allegory-exaggeration-or-literal-world-wide-disaster/
Comment by Last Lemming — February 17, 2006 @ 10:42 am
Manean and John,
That proposal requires a deceiver God. The miraculous DNA change would have to not only eliminate Middle Eastern traits, but also establish an exact correspondence with Asian DNA traits. This is a God who falsifies evidence deliberately to try our faith, or something. I don’t accept that kind of deity.
Geoff #33,
One major problem is that dropping the “principal ancestors” message requires rewriting the self-understanding of many of our Latin American members, as the recent news coverage as well as Thomas Murphy’s book chapter on this back in 1998 have pointed out. A second major problem is that accepting this model, in which the Lehites were a truly tiny group, raises serious problems for prophetic statements reaching back to the first Moroni vision — because a group of this size becomes truly problematic as universal ancestors of all indigenous people in the Western hemisphere.
But there’s a third problem. Unless there was a total male-line or female-line extinction, then a small initial population size really just means that there’s a sampling problem requiring extensive data collection. Hence, Lamanite DNA should eventually be found anyway, and if it isn’t, that becomes evidence against. (Note that the hypothesis that Lehi has become a literal ancestor of every indigenous person in the Western Hemisphere actually makes this problem worse; there is then an immense population of Lehites to choose from, and the probability of zero direct male or direct female lines is correspondingly smaller.)
These problems obviously don’t reflect on the truth (or really even on the historicity) of the Book of Mormon. But what they do mean is that the book doesn’t come off as the obvious winner in this discussion, even when the discussion is conducted at a fairly high level. As I mentioned above, it seems to me that this is relatively unlikely to cost the church too many members, in comparison with issues like Joseph Smith’s polyandrous marriages, for example. But it does create immense new barriers to conversion for educated outsiders. And I’m not happy about that.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — February 17, 2006 @ 10:44 am
RT,
I agree with the first two problems you mention (though the second one is a bit obvious). But your third objection is problematic I think. You are essentially saying that Lehi’s genetics could not have been swamped and must be still in everyone who has native American blood. I think this is a major stretch. It assumes all sorts of things:
1. That we sufficiently know what genes from a person living in 600 BC in Jerusalem would look like
2. That we know what markers would persist (even in most diluted form)
3. That we know where to look for them.
Again, if we assume the model of that recent study about ancestors is correct (and it is reportedly a robust model) then every person living on the American continents around 600 BC would be an ancestor to every person with Native American blood today. So Lehi’s genetics are mixed in with surely tens of thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands or even millions of others (I don’t know how many people lived in the Americas in 600 BC). That means your first two problems are very real and difficult but your #3 problem might not be legitimate.
Comment by Geoff J — February 17, 2006 @ 11:10 am
I think it is a mistake to think that principal ancestor must refer to some comment about most of the ancestors of that generation being from Lehi’s party. I think a more acceptable, and reasonable defintion would be principal in the same way that Abraham is our principal ancestor and the way that we each are of a tribe of Israel.
RT,
You might want to take a look at this article on FARMS– http://farms.byu.edu/pdf.php?filename=NjcwODc2NjI2LTE1LTIucGRm&type=cmV2aWV3
It goes through the assumptions required to pull male or female lines over time and there are lots of ways that alleles found in Lehi’s generation might not be around in his direct male descendants. The Hardy-Weinberg model has a set of assumptions to allow one to sort out the male line, all of which are violated by the Nephite story. Or at least, this is my reading of the paper I link to.
Lastly, you seem to think that complete male-line extinction is far-fetched. I don’t think you have thought through the numbers. Each Indian has one direct male ancestor from Lehi’s generation (speaking loosely). Thus the chance of finding one of these desendents is, assuming equal descendants, comparable to odds of picking Lehi out of a hat of all the New Worlders when he arrived. BUT, this ignores the massive influx of Europeans, which only makes matters worse. It also ignores the genetically correlated extinction of 90-99% of Indians when the Spanish arrived. It also ignores the Nephite genocide. Adding these up, if we guess there were maybe 30,000 people in Mesoamerica when Lehi got here (I’m making that up, it might have been far more or less), it could easily be the case that only 1 in several hundred thousand, or even million, people is a direct male descendant of Lehi.
You call this a “sampling problem”, which is true, but a massive one. It could easily be the case that only a handful of people (or none at all) in 1600 AD mesoamerica were direct male desendants of Lehi, by the time the smallpox/flu had carried its course. Most of the people in Mexico now are going to be from European lines. And if you did happent to sample one of these one in a million pure Lehites, you would probabaly not conclude, based on that one person, that Lehi must have come! You might think that maybe it was a one in a million anomaly and chuck it. So the sampling problem is that even sampling the entire population, the rate with Middle eastern alleles may be so low as to be ignorable. And this is only one of the Hardy-Weinberg violations. There are others.
Comment by Frank McIntyre — February 17, 2006 @ 11:27 am
RT,
I disagree with your characterization. In stating that God possibly monkeys with DNA, I did not endow the act with motive. You have read into my statement something that isn’t there. There are likely thousands of reasons why such might have taken, not a one necessarily including the decision to try the faith of folk on earth.
The reason that I brought it up is that, as has been noted, I don’t think this will have much effect on public perception of the church, even amongst the intelligentsia. Religious belief is inherently irrational (a cause I often champion). So, on that front, I don’t really see how this causes much of a barrier for educated newcomers (who would presumably be put off the second you mention angels, much less Lamanite ancestry).
Comment by John C. — February 17, 2006 @ 11:58 am
Speaking of intelligentsia, here is the conclusion by the author of the FARMS piece I linked to above, a geneticist:
“The general conclusion of this essay, therefore, is that although
it may be possible to recover the genetic signature of a small migrating
family from 2,600 years ago, it is not probable. But either way, it
would not allow the story line of the Book of Mormon to be rejected
because the absence of a genetic signature means absolutely nothing.
…I have read a large body of primary literature while compiling this
review, and I have found the methods and interpretation of results
to be consistent with scientific principles and current thought. I am
convinced that there has been constant gene flow between Asia and
the Americas, but I am also convinced that there has been a trickle
of migrants from other source populations. Though far from verifying
or proving the Book of Mormon, this observation allows for the
plausibility of the Book of Mormon story line. It is very possible that
a group or groups of people from the Middle East found their way
to the New World in 600 b.c. Others had made the trip from somewhere
other than Asia at much earlier dates. Thus, a statement that
the Book of Mormon account is absolutely impossible would be at
the very least naïve, but most probably quite foolish. It would reveal
the overall absence of scientific training, as well as an underlying
agenda.”
My favorite is the end where he calls people pushing this evidence naive.
Comment by Frank McIntyre — February 17, 2006 @ 12:06 pm
Also speaking of mormon intelligentsia, I predict that, barring a miraculous discovery, mormons will be increasingly driven away from scientific/historical discussions about the BoM. It will quickly become entirely a matter of faith, and the glory days of our hope and passion for scientific affirmation will fade to black. Not too hard to predict when the lights are already flickering.
Comment by Watt Mahoun — February 17, 2006 @ 12:22 pm
#32 Geoff
“the record [...] does say that over generations the Lamanites were darker in complexion than than the Nephites, but that hardly sounds like a miracle to me.” Do you mean it took generations for the Lamanites to become darker or that they were darker for generations? If the former, in what part of the BoM do you see that? The reading I’ve had is that
http://scriptures.lds.org/2_ne/5/21#21 the change came quickly.
“Fankly, the whole notion of miraculous DNA change sounds like an ad hoc excuse to me. ” Well, I did think of it after this issue broke, but it seems to me that if their DNA did not change, we would have the miracle of same-DNA/different-appearance between Nephites and Lamanites, whether the difference in appearance came quickly or over generations.
#36 & #39
I, like John C, also don’t make the leap that shared DNA traits mean that God put them there to deceive us.
Comment by manaen — February 17, 2006 @ 12:42 pm
John and Manaen, how do you account for the fact that the DNA was evidently not only changed, but changed so as to almost exactly match that of Asian populations–who also have connections in linguistic, cultural, and other terms? It isn’t just the change, but the content of the change, that’s at issue here. Having made a DNA change in such a way as to make an alternative origin story for American indigenous folks look overwhelmingly probable seems deceptive, indeed deliberately deceptive. Can you offer an alternative divine motive for such a targeted change?
Frank, I’ve read all of the FARMS material and even stretched myself to read some of the research in scientific journals. All of the material about genetic transmission in effect boils down to the hypothesis of a total direct male- and female-line extinction. We know from the Book of Mormon text that the direct male line survived the first several generations–the period when such an extinction would have been most likely because the number of direct male descendents would have been smallest. Since it didn’t happen when it was most likely to happen, there’s really no reason to think it did happen at all, other than as an ad hoc theory protecting one interpretation of the text from evidence. As Lakatos taught us, all theories have such collateral, protective hypotheses. However, the emergence of such hypotheses marks a theory as regressive rather than progressive; a window is opened for the victory of a theory that accounts for the evidence while requiring fewer ad hoc protective hypotheses. In other words, while it might be correct that there was a total male-line and female-line extinction, that hypothesis plays a damaging social role for Mormons.
And, Frank, you misrepresented the closing rhetorical flourish from the FARMS author. The article characterizes as naïve those who see the book’s historical narrative as absolutely impossible. Of course, anyone who would label basically anything as absolutely impossible on the basis of scientific evidence is naïve. However, the article certainly does not apply that label to those who see the Book of Mormon’s historical narrative as highly improbable in light of current archaeological and scientific evidence, a category that includes most of the critics.
Geoff, the study of ancestry you refer to is actually just a theoretical model. Furthermore, its empirical implications seem to fail to some extent, due to the fact that significant, long-standing genetic differences in human populations persist. The implication would be that the model failed to incorporate an adequate depiction of human breeding behavior. At any rate, it’s not necessarily advisable to draw serious implications from an untested theoretical model. But if this is correct, it actually seems to make things worse for Book of Mormon historicity. Even if only a small percentage of Lehi’s descendents have recoverable genetic signatures, if every single indigenous person on the continent is Lehi’s descendent, then that percentage is multiplied by a rather large number and the total quantity of recoverable genetic signatures should be positive. Hence, as testing continues, either clear Lamanite DNA should be found or the lack of evidence may legitimately count as evidence against the hypothesis.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — February 17, 2006 @ 2:19 pm
If you believe the limited geography theory, then perhaps God wanted said lamanites to look like their Asian ancestry neighbors and perhaps that meant altering the DNA is such a manner that it matched the DNA of the Asian ancestry neighbors.
To some degree I am irritated that I am defending an argument that I am uncertain I believe. The point, originally, was that belief is irrational and, as such, is not dependant upon objective evidence for confirmation or refutation. Educated people will immediately recognize this (as it holds true for all religions) and adjust accordingly. Apologetics do not convince the skeptic; at best, they provide something for the rational believer to hold onto. To be honest, I don’t know enough about genetics to be able to understand the issues at stake. I will likely eventually look into it when time is available. In the meantime, I am willing to allow the swamping to take place as a stop gap until sufficient time and effort is easily expendable. If I am willing to believe in a literally resurrected Savior and an actual atonement, I am willing to put up with this as a mystery unresolved until such time as I am able to wrap myself around it.
Comment by John C. — February 17, 2006 @ 2:58 pm
John, I’m sorry if I forced you into defending an argument you didn’t want to defend. I know how frustrating and unproductive that can be.
I am less sanguine about the consequences of the DNA debate for the church, though. While I agree that educated people accept the irrationality of belief, it’s also true that most educated people are unwilling to believe things that they see as having been proven false. The DNA evidence tends to move our beliefs into that category in the public eye. Believing in the Book of Mormon stops looking as much like believing in the resurrection and begins to look more like believing in a flat earth. A public-opinion effect of pushing our belief structure out of the category of religious mythos and into the domain of “scientifically disproven” nonsense is what I fear. And the news stories over the last few days are evidence that this is in fact occurring.
Nobody has any kind of scientific evidence that angels didn’t visit Joseph Smith, so the obstacles to belief in those claims are, ironically, somewhat less severe than the obstacles for educated outsiders to belief in the Book of Mormon. Visions and angels remain a matter of faith; the Book of Mormon runs the risk of being perceived as demonstrably false…
I wish this weren’t happening. The Book of Mormon’s message is needed by the people who are becoming culturally unable to even listen to it in light of recent events…
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — February 17, 2006 @ 3:27 pm
RT,
Actually, the article goes into some detail on how changes in environment and migration can cause previously stable alleles to disappear over time when starting from small groups that intermarry. Thus it is wrong to say that all the issues boil down to male-line extinction.
I did not actually say much about his closing phrase, I just enjoyed it. Obviously, though, he is referring to the genetic evidence, not all evidence.
Here is the article’s conclusion, quoted above “…although it may be possible to recover the genetic signature of a small migrating family from 2,600 years ago, it is not probable. ”
And the reasons he gives in the article are not dependent on sampling issues. As I showed in a previous comment, complete male extinction is neither crazy (given the history) nor required to make this question scientifically uninteresting. Just how many male line descendents of Lehi do you think there should be in Mesoamerica? WIthout assumptions or evidence about that number, there is no way to make any claims about how sceince can inform us. Clearly, if there were only 1 in Mesoamerica, that would not be enough for any sort of scientific evidence, because it would be treated as an anomaly (of which there are plenty in genetic population research). And if there were 1 50 years ago, obviously the line could easily be gone now.
Comment by Frank McIntyre — February 17, 2006 @ 3:29 pm
Frank,
Let me try to clarify the major theme of my comments here: whether the arguments you’re citing are correct or not is basically beside the point, because this kind of ad hoc argument is unhelpful in terms of public opinion even when it is correct. I’m not trying to argue about the merits of the case, but rather about the perception of the merits, which is clearly quite bad.
On more specific points, the various environmental and migration-related ideas are in fact ways that a total male-line or female-line extinction might have happened, not alternatives to that event. If the direct male line continues, then the only change you can have is mutation in that line, which is a kind of change that scientists are quite good at handling. What the article really offers is various ways that such an extinction might have happened, not various things other than direct-line extinction that might have wiped out the mtDNA and Y-chromosome evidence. If such an extinction is rejected, then we’re down to sampling issues, which become less intense as the sample size grows (as it has been doing). And I’ve never seen a persuasive argument from the Book of Mormon text that a complete male-line extinction is likely. Hence, these apologetics may be sufficient to allow members of the church to maintain their faith (indeed, I hope they are!), but they are unlikely to be persuasive to outsiders…
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — February 17, 2006 @ 4:03 pm
RT,
I’ll ignore the public perception argument. I am intereste din this question. Just how many male line descendents of Lehi do you think there should be in Mesoamerica now? You claim that male line extinction is unlikely. What do you base that on? Why do you think it is rare for male lines to go extinct. Male lines only grow linearly with population. And given the bottlenecks in mesoamerican history (the flu being one), many lines probably have gone extinct.
Comment by Frank McIntyre — February 17, 2006 @ 4:20 pm
Frank, the Book of Mormon text suggests that the male lines survived until the Lehite civilizations were orders of magnitude larger than they were in the opening scenes. If the direct male line is a linear function of the Lehite population size, as you suggest, then the direct male line should have been quite large (i.e., hundreds of thousands if we take the text’s population statements seriously, but certainly thousands in any case) by the end of the text. Given another 1000 years of slow but steady growth, the Lehite direct male line in 1491 should be at least tens of thousands of people, concentrated in Mesoamerica but also scattered throughout neighboring regions. These numbers and geographical spread are large enough that a bottleneck effect is probably not a convincing explanation. If we don’t assume that the European diseases distinctively targeted Lehite descendents, the proportion of Lehite direct-male descendents ought to have remained constant through the flus and so forth. Last but not least, it shouldn’t be at all difficult to recover the genetic signature of a population of tens of thousands.
Obviously, the situation is more complex than this, but nuance doesn’t sell well…
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — February 17, 2006 @ 4:37 pm
RT (#36) One major problem is that dropping the “principal ancestors†message requires rewriting the self-understanding of many of our Latin American members
I agree with this. But I think the brethren need to address it sooner rather than later so as to cut off at the pass further misunderstandings. I should add that I think there some obvious ways to address this. Not all that entail rejecting most Latin American members being heirs to the promises of Lehi (as I think many LDS critics are assuming) But it is not my job to either make such statements nor to get revelation on behalf of the church regarding such issues. So I’ll leave that to those who have to deal with such matters.
A public revelation clarifying the subject would be useful though.
RT (#43), We know from the Book of Mormon text that the direct male line survived the first several generations–the period when such an extinction would have been most likely because the number of direct male descendents would have been smallest. Since it didn’t happen when it was most likely to happen, there’s really no reason to think it did happen at all, other than as an ad hoc theory protecting one interpretation of the text from evidence.
That seems far too strong to justifiably assert. Especially given the stated events in the text as well as the problems Geoff outlined. To claim it as ad hoc seems far too pronounced. I recognize why some might say this. (Ad hoc seems a popular term of late with regards to many theories) But I think merely acknowledging the ignorance the evidence provides isn’t ad hoc. It is being rather fair.
Those claiming knowledge have the burden of proof, not those claiming ignorance.
RT (#43), The DNA evidence tends to move our beliefs into that category in the public eye. Believing in the Book of Mormon stops looking as much like believing in the resurrection and begins to look more like believing in a flat earth.
It seems, RT, that most religions are treated that way in the media. Certainly all conservative Christians are so treated. Further Mormons have been treated that way as par for the course the past 150 years. This is hardly a new thing.
And, the obvious rejoinder is that problems with the BoM are nothing compared to problems with the OT. Especially the flood and typical way the fall is interpreted by most Christians.
Comment by Clark Goble — February 17, 2006 @ 5:03 pm
“suggests that the male lines survived until the Lehite civilizations were orders of magnitude larger than they were in the opening scenes.”
I find this for Jacob’s line. I don’t know of anything compelling for anybody else, although one could make a case for Nephi.
Your analysis misses the part where populations mingle with indigineous groups. So, for example, if there are ten Israelite men landing on the shore of an area with 100,000 residents, ignoring nuance, suppose the population grows to 10,000,000. Then there will be about 1000 with direct male-line Israel descent. Except that you have genocidal wars in and after the text. Then kill off 95% in 1491 and start over. Since flu does strike in genetically non-random ways, you are making a big leap to assume that the same ratio survive. They might all disappear right there. But if they don’t, that is only about 50 men left. The male line in the original example is only 1 in 10,000 of the population. So how big of a sample do I need before I am going to find enough of these people (if they exist still) to know anything useful? Probably at least a million.
But if I have a million observations and 100 of them show a middle eastern allele, am I going to call that anomaly or powerful evidence? I don’t know, but since I don’t think we’re anywhere close to a million, I don’t think it matters. As I’ve shown, it is not hard at all to imagine the male line getting blown away if you believe the high count estimates of native american population, which imply massive, and non-random, losses due to disease.
Comment by Frank McIntyre — February 17, 2006 @ 5:18 pm
Clark, the reason the claims about total male-line extinctions look ad hoc is that nobody adopted them during the 160+ years before the DNA evidence arose. As late as the 1980s, John Sorenson was predicting that we would find Israelite DNA in Mesoamerica. (His geography was large enough to essentially require it.) The fact that nobody discussed these problems until after Thomas Murphy published is the reason I think the term “ad hoc” is applicable here. Again, that doesn’t mean the idea in question is incorrect, just that it has negative consequences for the social reaction to the theory in question.
Frank, the Book of Mormon text seems to depict the Lehite population growing dramatically faster than you suggest.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — February 17, 2006 @ 5:53 pm
We are not talking about the whole population. We are talking about the pure male descendency line.
Comment by Frank McIntyre — February 17, 2006 @ 6:01 pm
What I find most interesting about this discussion is that, in a Church based on continuing revelation, we seem to be feeling our way in the dark at least as much as the “world” is.
Comment by Jonathan N — February 17, 2006 @ 6:26 pm
Just in passing I’d like to point out that eventually we will be dealing with more than just mtDNA and the Y chromosome. Maybe those other autosomes will have some info that will help us out, but they might not.
Comment by Jared — February 17, 2006 @ 8:21 pm
The story was picked up by anthropologist John Hawks.
“It’s also interesting to see the varied way that religious traditions respond. Some simply deny the relevance of science, of course. Others differentiate the subjects into categories appropriate to science (history of life) and religion (morality).
The LDS response quoted in the article has a great deal of genealogical sophistication — it is much like the way that anthropologists argue about the persistence or swamping of Neandertal DNA, for example. Definitely different traditions respond to scientific insights in different ways! ”
I’d like to think that we can take that as a compliment.
Comment by Jared — February 17, 2006 @ 9:22 pm
Frank, I should just note that, if we adopt the common LDS position that the Nephites (as faithful Israelites) would have been basically endogamous, then something approaching 100% of the Nephites at the admixture point between Nephites and Lamanites starting about a generation before Christ’s visit would have had Middle Eastern Y chromosomes and mtDNA. Restricting to the pure male and female lines may not help reduce the expected genetic pool at all in that case.
Jared, I think that’s probably right — I think it’s great that we LDS folks for the most part want to engage with science rather than simply disregard it.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — February 17, 2006 @ 9:46 pm
RT (#52), if an argument is taken (and discounted) as ad hoc simply because it was irrelevant until a particular question was raised then we really are in a problematic situation. I think it wiser to ask whether this was entailed by the arguments and postulates regarding LGT in the 80’s and 90’s prior to the DNA issue. And frankly I think it is.
Maybe it looks ad hoc to some critics. But there’s nothing one can really do about that. It doesn’t mean the arguments don’t have merit. It’s just a way to avoid the fundamental arguments being made (IMO).
Comment by clark — February 18, 2006 @ 12:56 am
RT (#57) – Why do you think it a common LDS belief that the Nephites were endogamous? Most apologists I’ve read argue quite the contrary. Indeed they argue that simply to get the numbers the BoM reports they couldn’t be endagmous. There are lots of claims in this area, including discussions of baptism as a kind of adoption rite as with washings in Judaism. It’s hard to say too much given the limited aspects of the text that simply don’t address these issues (along with the valid issue that the “others” are called Lamanites and are still seen as Jewish in a sense – although one can’t help but think of the Samaritans as a quasi-similar situation)
Comment by clark — February 18, 2006 @ 12:59 am
Its time to wake up and smell the coffee!
If DNA can acquit members on death row it can also free confused and misinformed believers from the clutches of a powerful church bent on worldwide conversion and containment of its existing membership base.
Why would God direct Smith to write something so profound and importantant only to have its most powerful claims refuted by modern DNA science? Its time the Archaic/aging leadership own up to the misinformation and stop trafficing falsehoods on the backs of its impressionable young missionaries many who are often coerced and shamed into such service. Where is the comitment to ethics and honesty in asking people to reorient their lives based on scietifically refuted Book of Mormon falsehoods? At a minimum all information should be layed out on the table in seeking out the converitble, that way no one is rudely awakened by the power of such facts and evidence.
I think we all get the point.
Comment by David — February 18, 2006 @ 3:13 am
#45
the Book of Mormon runs the risk of being perceived as demonstrably false…
I don’t see that. I do see a continuation of one of the basic challenges of this life: having both spiritual witness from God and physical evidence that we do not now know how to reconcile with our spiritual witness, do we:
1) Hold to the answer God gave us and humbly set aside our current interpretation of physical evidence until we understand how to reconcile it with the spiritual witness, or
2) Hold to our current interpretation of the physical evidence and pridefully set aside the answer God gave us until we understand how to reconcile it with our current understanding of the physical evidence?
Choosing #2 runs the risk of never understanding how to reconcile our spiritual witness and physical evidence (see Al 12:9-11)
This is not a cop-out from rationality, but a reasonable choice of which understanding is more reliable: God’s or our own. I choose to follow God’s answer and so avoid stamping my foot on issues like the prior claims that:
* there was no cement in the BoM Americas
* there was no ancient writing on metal plates
* the Salamander Letter rocked the LDS Church to its foundation (per NY Times, very similar wording to LA Times now re: DNA)
As I said, one of the basic challenges of this life is to learn to recognize and trust the Holy Ghost for guidance. Also, a basic purpose of missionary work is to teach people how to obtain their own answers from the Holy Ghost.
Jesus taught that this is the way to know all truth.
Paul taught that we cannot do it any other way
Comment by manaen — February 18, 2006 @ 4:54 am
RT,
I think Clark nails the point. By the time of Christ, the Lamanites could have been (and many people think they had been) mixing with natives for 600 years. And there is also the question of whether Sherem in Jacob (to name one) was a Nephite or a leftover Jaredite (which would make him a “native” of Asian descent). At which point you have possible native intermingling even with the Nephites from very early on. So no, although I am sure there are people who assume endogamy, I don’t know that it is a hypothesis with much support.
Comment by Frank McIntyre — February 18, 2006 @ 8:59 am
RT: Your assessment that we have merely a sampling error and that a reasonable person would expect the problem to be solved by broader sampling is difficult to sustain given the text of the BofM. BTW, there are numerous documented instances of genetic bottle necks and genetic drift among amerindians populations. I’ll provide sources if you’d like.
As I read the BofM, the Lamanites (Laman and Lemuel) and their descendants almost immediately began to intermarry and thus we see the effects of genetic changes in skin pigment almost immediately along with the Nephite judgment that such intermarriage constitutes a breach of covenant with God. However, the Nephites do not intermarry but there are vast numbers of native americans among them. The Nephites remain a “pure-blood group” but there are numerous tribal distinctions among them. To be a pure descendant of Nephi is a claim of distinction even during Jacob’s life-time. However, Nephi’s brother, Jacob, states that the people who followed Nephi (which had to include native americans) were already divided into tribes during his life-time; only a small number of which were descendants of Nephi and Jacob.
However, we don’t know how the tribal lines blur during two hundred years after Christ. Nevertheless, we know that the tribes begin to distinguish themselves again along old tribal lines about two hundred years after Christ. Here’s the rub. The book says that the pure line of Nephi was obliterated by those who were identified with tribes of Lamanites. So we do in fact have a mass extinction.
Thus, at least as I read the book we should expect that the surviving Lamanite DNA is swallowed up in the DNA of existing populations; but the DNA of Nephites was olbiterated in a war of genocide. That suggests, to me at least, that the BofM gives its own explanation as to why we should not expect to find Israelite DNA (whatever that could mean genetically).
Virtually everyone in the discussion (including Southerton), except you apparently, agrees that it would be nearly impossible to detect any DNA from Lehi’s group given the number of persons in Lehi’s company within the larger existing amerindian culture — even if everyone in his company intermarried and had remaining descendants. It isn’t a sampling error. It is a matter of war, genocide and genetic purity based on the Israelite sense of covenant.
Comment by Blake — February 18, 2006 @ 12:41 pm
I think Frank is basically right about the “sampling” argument. Especially if you accept the theory that Lehi’s band quickly intermixed with a pre-existing population. (Is there a name for that theory?)
But I’m interested in this statement by Frank:
In what way is Abraham our “principal” ancestor? I’ve never heard the term used like this in the church. And do you really think that BRM meant anything like this when he wrote the intro to the BOM, or that readers would ever interpret it that way?
Comment by ed — February 18, 2006 @ 3:49 pm
Blake, the Nephites who are obliterated are defined by the text to be a spiritual, not lineage-based, resorting of the homogenized Nephite-Lamanite group after 0 AD. And there are plenty of people, Southerton included, who think that Lehite DNA ought to be detectable…
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — February 18, 2006 @ 4:41 pm
RT: Southerton doesn’t expect to find Lehite DNA because he doesn’t believe there were Lehites. He admits that it would be difficult to find any Lehite DNA if there were intercourse with existing popuations. In any event, he admits the crucial fact that given a limited population of Lehites being assimilated into a larger culture we should not expect to find Lehite DNA. He simply claims that such a view is not consistent with what modern prophets have taught IMO.
You’re probably right that detecting who is and who is not Nephite after 0 A.D. is impossible — but it seems most plausible to me that the old tribal identities returned as the text states. If they didn’t, and there was total intermarriage, then the likelihood of DNA being detectable is again reduced in probablity because of the already existing intermarriage of Lamanites and, after that, intermarriage with both existing populations and intermarraige between Lamanites and Nephites. In any event, Mormon can still boast that he is a pure descendant of Nephi, so all tribal identity didn’t disappear as your view assumes, i.e., It was not merely spiritual.
Comment by Blake — February 18, 2006 @ 5:09 pm
Blake, two quick quibbles and then I’m checking out of this discussion. Intermarriage simply doesn’t reduce the number of direct-male-line and direct-female-line descendents. It creates admixture, certainly, resulting in the hypothesis that Israelite DNA ought to be found at low levels throughout Mesoamerica (or wherever), but it doesn’t obliterate mtDNA and Y chromosome DNA.
The fact that small, 500-year-old populations of conversos (much smaller, in fact, than the Nephites cerca 0 AD) did leave recoverable DNA traces suggests that these arguments just aren’t as cut-and-dried as some apologists have tried to make them look.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — February 18, 2006 @ 8:35 pm
Blake,
Your comment #63 has some excellent stuff. Thanks!
Comment by Geoff J — February 19, 2006 @ 1:11 pm
David,
Yeah, basic …
Whatever man.
I love how people just throw out unbacked assertions and then label it as “obvious to anyone with half a brain,” and then expect us all to simply take their word for it.
Why should I believe you when you say it’s all “basic?”
Furthermore, what on earth does LDS leadership have to do with how much land is owned by native Americans in Utah? That’s purely a federal issue. You want to know why the “indians” don’t have more Utah land, go ask the feds. Brigham Young was actually fairer in dealing with the indians than just about any other community leader in the “wild West.”
By the way, the Mormons got driven out of Missouri largely because they were abolitionists.
If you’d actually read the Book of Mormon, you also would have come across parts where the Lamanites actually end up more righteous than the Nephites and have one of their own sent by God to the Nephites to call them to repentence.
It seems plain to me that Joseph Smith, and his book were actually more progressive on race relations than the rest of the US was at the time, and most of Europe, and Asia, and Africa (Asians and Africans at the time, quite frankly practiced and even encouraged slavery around Joseph’s time).
I mean, it’s all basic man. Right?
Comment by Seth R. — February 19, 2006 @ 10:11 pm
As Blake points out, to prop up the Mesoamerican LGT, we’ve reached the point of inferring not only the existence of large indigenous populations never mentioned in the Book of Mormon, but the complete replacement of Book of Mormon peoples, at least in terms of DNA, by those unmentioned people.
Nephi and Lehi asserted that their seed would not utterly be destroyed, according to the flesh, but would be preserved. I don’t understand the purpose of such a promise if their descendants were indistinguishable from any other inhabitant of the land.
RT’s comment about the preservation of direct-male and direct-female line descendants seems much more consistent with the promises of “seed” being preserved.
Comment by Jonathan N — February 20, 2006 @ 12:26 am
Jonathan, are you seriously saying Nephi would only care about his descendents if they could be detected with DNA tests? The mind boggles.
Comment by clark — February 20, 2006 @ 1:47 am
Jonathan,
Where does Nephi assert that his seed would not be utterly destroyed?
“but the complete replacement of Book of Mormon peoples, at least in terms of DNA”
Actually we’re just talking about how easy it is to find _evidence_ linking the DNA. Since our tests are imperfect, and we haven’t sampled the whole population, that is why the size of the direct male line becomes relevant. Lehite DNA is still there, we just don’t have tests for it ecept direct male/female line ones.
Comment by Frank McIntyre — February 20, 2006 @ 9:27 am
The church’s website has posted a link to a new article by John Butler on DNA and the Book of Mormon.
Comment by Justin Butterfield — February 23, 2006 @ 5:49 pm
A recent article in Slate is interesting. One excerpt:
“From a practical point of view, that is the biggest problem with today’s genetic genealogy tests. In many cases, they can’t tell you what you don’t already know. And unlike DNA fingerprinting tests with error rates of one in a billion or less, the chance of misidentifying ancestral groups in these genealogy tests may be 5 percent or higher. With this chance of error, the test won’t be wrong about a full Native-American grandparent, but it might be wrong about a great-great grandparent. ”
If these tests have accuracy problems going back three generations, I imagine there are going to be serious problems going back two and a half thousand years.
Comment by Eric Russell — March 21, 2006 @ 5:06 am