I wonder if there's one about "The Donation of Constantine"? ;')
Losing a Lost Tribe:
Native Americans, DNA,
and the Mormon Church
by Simon G. Southerton
Posted on 03/18/2006 9:48:03 AM PST by Cato1
From the time he was a child in Peru, the Mormon Church instilled in Jose Loayza the conviction that he and millions of other Native Americans were descended from a lost tribe of Israel that reached the New World more than 2,000 years ago. "We were taught all the blessings of that Hebrew lineage belonged to us and that we were special people," said Loayza, now a Salt Lake City attorney. ... Loayza said, his faith was shaken and his identity stripped away by DNA evidence showing that the ancestors of American natives came from Asia, not the Middle East.
For Mormons, the lack of discernible Hebrew blood in Native Americans is no minor collision between faith and science. It burrows into the historical foundations of the Book of Mormon, a 175-year-old transcription that the church regards as literal and without error.
According to the LDS, an angel named Moroni led Joseph Smith in 1827 to a divine set of golden plates buried in a hillside near his New York home. God provided the 22-year-old Smith with a pair of glasses and seer stones that allowed him to translate the "Reformed Egyptian"writings on the golden plates into the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Mormons believe these scriptures restored the church to God's original vision and left the rest of Christianity in a state of apostasy.
The book's narrative focuses on a tribe of Jews who sailed from Jerusalem to the New World in 600 B.C. and split into two main warring factions. The God-fearing Nephites were "pure" (the word was officially changed from "white" in 1981) and "delightsome." The idol-worshiping Lamanites received the "curse of blackness," turning their skin dark. According to the Book of Mormon, by 385 A.D. the dark-skinned Lamanites had wiped out other Hebrews.
(Excerpt) Read more at concordmonitor.com ...
The significant difference in Scripture and the Book of Mormon is the object of faith. It will only be a faith in God through Christ that will coincide with His grace in providing salvation to our already condemned status. Faith in any other thing is not the same faith as a nonmeritorious faith in something that is divinely righteous.
Insofar as the Son is the Word, faith in Scripture might indeed be included in salvific faith, then comes the obvious question as to the verity of documents asserted by other persons to be Scripture.
Why let any other person than God discern what is indeed Scripture? Jesus Christ Himself used passages from what we classify as the Old Testament and is quoted and doubly witnessed in the New Testament. Whereever any other source contradicts the Word of God contained in what we call the Old and New Testaments, there exists sufficient grounds to cast doubt on the credibility of the extraneous document. It is for this reason I find the Book of Mormon to not qualify as Scripture.
When discussing cults, it is interesting how many subtle statements might be made, used to deceive or to mislead, and frequently with even the 'best' of intentions, though still lacking in divine righteousness.
I am always amazed at how people embrace science when it proves what they want and berate it when it debunks their views.
There was a recent series on PBS that dealt with Blacks using DNA analysis to trace ancestral roots. The show dealing with DNA was the fourth in the series African American Lives called "Beyond the Middle Passage".
There were some surprises for some of these blacks tracing their ancestors because the DNA tests showed they were mostly from white Europe and less from black Africa. Yes, the DNA tests showed that some very black people were white according to their DNA.
A good article can be on the series can be found here: DNA rewrites history for African-Americans
"You can be 31/32 black, but if that 32nd ancestor is white you could show up as white, too," the article says.
I hope that this is helpful to you. While I am not Mormon, I will not stand on the side of science, which all to often only proves the scientist's biased preconceptions.
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I wonder if there's one about "The Donation of Constantine"? ;')
Losing a Lost Tribe:
Native Americans, DNA,
and the Mormon Church
by Simon G. Southerton
I don't take that into account because I do not believe for one second that it happened that way. New history?
Thanks for your post and the links provided. I'll do some more reading on this in the next few days. I'm not a scientist so it takes me longer to study these issues and I appreciate any help. ;)
I understand, though, that DNA studies are in their infancy and have a lot of gaps and assumptions built in to them. To me, many of them stand on the same shaky grounds as evolution and global warming--that is, perhaps some validity but the proof is not not nearly as strong as its proponents claim.
The American Indians studies are questionable because there is a lack of control subjects with which to compare the DNA groups. Comparing contemporary American Indians with contemporary Jews in Israel (even Jews who have always been in Israel) is a problem, partly because the Book of Mormon groups were not Jews, but primarily of one of the now Lost Tribes (they mingled a couple of centuries later with a group presumably of the tribe of Judah or Benjamin but it was a smaller group.
Furthermore, the Jews who remained in the Middle East frequently intermarried with local peoples so their DNA would be changed while the Book of Mormon group remained largely pure or mingled with totally different groups in another continent more than 2000 years ago. Given that intermarriages tended to be convenant men with noncovenant women, the different DNA in each intermarriage comes from the mothers and mDNA studies most often cited as definitive proof American Indian ancestry trace genetic markers of mothers, not fathers.
Finally, comparing modern Jews with modern Indians is faulty because most of the Jews of Israel these days are Sephardim from northern Europe who survived the persecutions and returned to Israel. These individuals are part of a small percentage of the descendants of Abraham and even of the tribe of Judah and their DNA would reflect the narrow part of an hourglass-shaped graph of Israelite peoples in the sense that many were killed and the few survivors would pass on only a limited amount of DNA. These Jews presumably were also part of a large group of non-Israelites who converted to Judahism more than a thousand years ago and intermingled their DNA with Israelite peoples. This narrows the confidence in studies of the bottom part of the hourglass peoples compared to a group which supposedly isolated itself while the group was still in the upper part of the hourglass. I don't know how to link sites but this same article was posted a month or so ago and links were provided, if you are interested.
In other words, there are lots of reasons to doubt the validity of the studies at this point. There is no saying what science will prove in the future but I don't think it's there yet. But, as a matter of fact, I don't believe science will ever be able to prove or disprove religion conclusively because that obviates the need for faith. I'm not going to hold my breath on this one.
similar topics:
Native American Origins Debated (now with DNA analysis)
Tucson Citizen | October 11, 2002 | Paul L. Allen
Posted on 10/12/2002 11:37:42 AM EDT by Tancred
Edited on 05/07/2004 8:37:47 PM EDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/767901/posts
Church put to DNA test: Instructor risks expulsion with his claim that Book of Mormon is racist
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer | 1/13/03 | M.L. LYKE
Posted on 01/14/2003 3:02:30 AM EST by ppaul
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/822283/posts
DNA vs. The Book of Mormon
Living Hope Ministries | Mar 1, 2003 | Director / Producer: Joel Kramer
Posted on 01/18/2006 2:50:52 PM EST by johnk
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1560452/posts
sort of related:
Missouri Cherokee Tribes proclaim Jewish Heritage
Christians Unite dot com | February 7, 2003 | Editorial Staff
Posted on 02/21/2003 4:42:37 PM EST by vannrox
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/848921/posts
As they say in Kentucky; "Cymru am bith".
News Wales (UK^ | 8/26/02 | Unknown
Posted on 08/29/2002 12:51:38 PM EDT by scouse
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/741385/posts
Study Says Americas Settled 15,000 Years Ago
Source: National Geographic
Published: 8-31-2001 Author: Not stated
Posted on 09/03/2001 06:59:54 PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b938cda48c8.htm
other sidebars:
Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? The Spalding Enigma
http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product?p=1010185&item_no=605277
Posted on 02/14/2006 10:43:07 AM EST by truthfinder9
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1578244/posts
Supernatural Selections. An inteview with Toby Lester
Atlantic Monthly | February 8, 2002 | Toby Lester ,Katie Bacon
Posted on 04/06/2002 8:12:05 PM EST by Valin
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/661089/posts
The Mormon Stem-Cell Choir
Source: Slate.com
Published: Aug 2, 2001 Author: Drew Clark
Posted on 08/03/2001 10:01:58 PDT by Pooler
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b6ad9060bf7.htm
Does DNA Evidence Refute the Authenticity of the Book of Mormon? (Michael F. Whiting)
Michael F. Whiting, Director of BYU’s DNA Sequencing Center and Associate Professor in BYU’s Department of Integrative Biology
Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS)
Dr. Whiting discusses recent DNA questions related to the Book of Mormon.
AUDIO http://farms.byu.edu/video/dna-audio.mp3
Download MP3 (46:09 min, 42.2MB)
This week in South Park, the Super Adventure Club [SAC] brainwashed Chef into becoming a pedophile. The SAC cult sounded like a mixture of Scientology and Children of God.
Since so many Freepers belong to cults like Mormonism, these thread exposing cults are usually moved to Religion or Chat forum, or deleted altogether.
2nd Nephi, 3:18 -- And the Lord said unto me also: I will raise up unto the fruit of thy loins; and I will make for him a spokesman. And I, behold, I will give unto him that he shall write the writing of the fruit of thy loins, unto the fruit of thy loins; and the spokesman of thy loins shall declare it.The term 'spokesman of thy loins' recalls The Vagina Monologues.
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