The Book of Mormon (and the Mormon church) claims that the 'Lost Tribes' of Israel came to America, and that American Indians are their descendants. A new book--are you sitting down?--demonstrates through DNA that the Mormons are wrong:
In Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church (Signature Books), research scientist Simon G. Southerton of Canberra, Australia, notes that none of the nearly 7,500 DNA-tested Native Americans shows any link to ancient Israel. More than 99 percent show an Asian heritage. The Book of Mormon, however, says that Israelites emigrated to the Americas 2,600 years ago, with the now-extinct Lamanites and Nephites becoming the ancestors of American Indians.
Southerton, a former LDS bishop, said he has received nearly 500 e-mails in the past five years from Mormons who are troubled by the DNA findings. Even some scholars at the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) at Brigham Young University, the church's flagship school in Provo, Utah, concede the links between Native Americans and Asians are strong, and that a Middle Eastern contribution to the gene pool hasn't been established.
Staunch apologists of the faith deny that science disproves the faith's principal scripture. FARMS founder John W. Welch said such opposition has been circulating for nearly a century. "The DNA factor is just one more indication that people came from various places in the world," Welch said. "This is just one more piece in a very big and complicated and obscure archaeological and anthropological picture."
What, oh what, would Moroni say?
3 comments:
I seem to remember just a couple of years ago when the big news was that the human genome project PROOVED that "race" didn't exist. So how come DNA now shows the racial ancestry of Native Americans?
I am not asking as a defense of Mormons, but what gives?
obviously somebody is uncomfortable with their own religion if they have to spend their time talking down to others. Mormons are beautiful people and carry a lot of people in this world through their traumas. I think that whatever it is, its doing good, so it cant be bad.
So regardless of whether or not Mormonism is built on a lie--which is self-evidently is--is irrelevant? As long as you can declare it 'good' by your standard then don't worry about it? That's certainly not a standard one would see set by the Mormons themselves within their own religion.
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