Come ON, DU!!
SURELY you can do better that Fproy's fallback position!
Where's the BEEF?
Posted on 02/14/2009 6:41:48 PM PST by restornu
Was Hebrew DNA recently found in American Indian populations in South America? According to Scott R. Woodward, executive director of Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, a DNA marker, called the "Cohen modal haplotype," sometimes associated with Hebrew people, has been found in Colombia, Brazil and Bolivia.
But it probably has nothing to do with the Book of Mormon -- at least not directly.
For years several critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and of the Book of Mormon have claimed that the lack of Hebrew DNA markers in living Native American populations is evidence the book can't be true. They say the book's description of ancient immigrations of Israelites is fictional.
"But," said Woodward, "as Hugh Nibley used to say, 'Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.' "
Critic Thomas Murphy, for example, wrote in one article about how the Cohen modal haplotype had been found in the Lemba clan in Africa. The Lemba clan's oral tradition claims it has Jewish ancestors.
Murphy then complained, "If the (Book of Mormon) documented actual Israelite migrations to the New World, then one would expect to find similar evidence to that found in a Lemba clan in one or more Native American populations. Such evidence, however, has not been forthcoming."
Until now.
So will Murphy and other critics use this new evidence of Hebrew DNA markers to prove the Book of Mormon is correct? Probably not. But neither should anyone else.
Why?
According to Woodward, the way critics have used DNA studies to attack the Book of Mormon is "clearly wrong." And it would be equally wrong to use similar DNA evidence to try to prove it.
This is because "not all DNA (evidence) is created equal," Woodward said.
According to Woodward, while forensic DNA (popularized in TV shows like "CSI") looks for the sections of DNA that vary greatly from individual to individual, the sections of DNA used for studying large groups are much smaller and do not change from individual to individual.
Studies using this second type of DNA yield differing levels of reliability or, as Woodward calls it, "resolution."
At a lower resolution the confidence in the results goes down. At higher resolution confidence goes up in the results.
Guess which level of resolution critics of the Book of Mormon use?
The critics' problem now is what they do with the low-resolution discovery of Hebrew DNA in American Indian populations.
For people who believe that the Book of Mormon is a true account, the problem is to resist the temptation to misuse this new discovery.
Woodward says that most likely, when higher-resolution tests are used, we will learn that the Hebrew DNA in native populations can be traced to conquistadors whose ancestors intermarried with Jewish people in Spain or even more modern migrations.
Ironically, it is the misuse of evidence that gave critics fuel to make their DNA arguments in the first place. According to Woodward, the critics are attacking the straw man that all American Indians are only descendants of the migrations described in the Book of Mormon and from no other source.
Although some Latter-day Saints have assumed this was the case, this is not a claim the Book of Mormon itself actually makes. Scholars have argued for more than 50 years that the book allows for the migrations meeting an existing population.
This completely undermines the critics' conclusions. They argue with evangelic zeal that the Book of Mormon demands that no other DNA came to America but from Book of Mormon groups.
Yet, one critic admitted to Woodward that he had never read the Book of Mormon.
Woodward also sees that it is essential to read the Book of Mormon story closely to understand what type of DNA the Book of Mormon people would have had. The Book of Mormon describes different migrations to the New World. The most prominent account is the 600-B.C. departure from Jerusalem of a small group led by a prophet named Lehi. But determining Lehi's DNA is difficult because the book claims he is not even Jewish, but a descendant of the biblical Joseph.
According to Woodward, even if you assume we knew what DNA to look for, finding DNA evidence of Book of Mormon people may be very difficult. When a small group of people intermarry into a large population, the DNA markers that might identify their descendants could entirely disappear -- even though their genealogical descendants could number in the millions.
This means it is possible that almost every American Indian alive today could be genealogically related to Lehi's family but still retain no identifiable DNA marker to prove it. In other words, you could be related genealogically to and perhaps even feel a spiritual kinship with an ancestor but still not have any vestige of his DNA.
Such are the vagaries, ambiguities and mysteries of the study of DNA.
So will we ever find DNA from Lehi's people? Woodward hopes so.
"I don't dismiss the possibility," said Woodward, "but the probability is pretty low."
Woodward speculated about it, imagining he were able to identify pieces of DNA that would be part of Lehi's gene pool. Then, imagine if a match was found in the Native American population.
But even then, Woodward would be cautious. "It could have been other people who share the same (DNA) markers," said Woodward about the imaginary scenario.
"It's an amazingly complex picture. To think that you can prove (group relationships) like you can use DNA to identify a (criminal) is not on the same scale of scientific inquiry."
Like the Book of Mormon itself, from records buried for centuries in the Hill Cumorah, genetic "proof" may remain hid up unto the Lord.
Millions shall know ‘Brother Joseph’ again.
_________________________________________
Joe Smith is busy screaming in Hell...
I doubt if he will be available for keg parties...
this is neat
If you Could Hie To Kolob (Spanish Version)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFfIaYUxiMk
There were times I did not make my sacrament so I would take it in the Spanish Ward their spirit was so sweet fill with the Lord I did not understand a word but it was delightful!
Earth must atone for the blood of that man
___________________________________________
What blasphemy...
God doesnt hold anyone responsible for the death of a pagan occultist, a debaucherer of little girls, a thief and a murderer who led millions into Hell through his lust for women, riches and power...
God is the one who destroyed Joe Smith...
God had His revenge...
The times we are living in I am so thankful for the Lord’s Jesus Christ and his humble servant Joseph for restoring the Lord’s Church upon the earth again.
_________________________________________________
That doesnt make a lick of sense and doesnt line up with the Bible...
the mormon god is perverted as all get out...
But the Jesus of the Bible...
Jesus Christ the Lord does not have a Jesus Christ of His own...
Jesus is Lord, Himself...
Jeus was never a weak puny thing like the mormon god, and didnt ever lose His Church...
It was impossible for Jesus who is God to lose His Church...
and the idea that a convicted criminal like Joe Smith had to help Jeus Christ the Lord ????
ScrappleFace religion, right ???
Joe Smith was a proud boastful liar and never met God or Jesus, and started his own religion to make some quick money and get him some female companionship...
L Ron Hubbard was an admirer of Joe’s and copied some of his ideas...
“The way to make a million dollars is to start a religion.” (L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology founder)
There is no absence of evidence DU, there is an abundance of evidence following those multiple (as well as other) lines of investigation. That evidence clearly shows that Nephi/Lamamite story is a myth. Only those most ignorant ignore the application of Occam's razor at this point, so why are you avoiding it DU?
DNA studies to prove the book of Mormon is true? Give it a rest, there is no Way to prove the Book of Mormon false with DNA, the Book of Mormon says they started with a genetically impure sample by including slaves in the party that set off and letting them marry in, not only that, but it speaks of meeting people who were already in the Americas and marrying in with them. The story line just does not support DNA verification in the negative.
DU, you are the one who posted the whole DNA nonsense on this formerly caucus thread and the thread was started by a mormon, so at least get your short history correct. Those slaves came from the same region of the world, they would have the same genetic markers. But to even admit that Nephi was around to even begin such a journey is laughable. IF he even existed, he would have been carried away to Babylon. Nephi records himself as the youngest of four brothers and although "exceedingly young", he declares himself to be a man (1st Nephi 4:31). Nephi’s stature and strength lead this writer to the conclusion that he could have been between fifteen and twenty-five years of age. He was allegedly a strong young Jewish man in his prime. Nephi would have been considered strong and apt (able) for war. No doubt he would have been called upon to defend the city should there have been a need. Biblical history records that the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, had appointed Zedekiah to be king of Judah after deporting 10,000 Jerusalem residents to Babylon and leaving only the poorest sort of people of the land in Jerusalem. As a strong young man in his prime, Nephi would have been deported to Babylon with all the rest of the 10,000 captives just prior to Zedekiah's appointment (the beginning point of the Book of Mormon) if he had truly existed in Jerusalem as advertised.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence is a flat-earth argument when it is not supported by other avenues of evaluating the truth.
If you guys understood DNA, and had actually read the Book of Mormon, you'd know that, but you don't or at least claim not to.
I'm an avid reader, and have read a lot of the DNA related articles written by people who really know what they are talking about. I can understand most of it because I am a professional scientist and the formats are consistent. They may or may not have read the bom, but the nearly universal (except for the BYU profs wanting to retain their tenure) interpretation of the data is that the Americas were not populated by peoples from the area of Israel in 600 BC.
As for proving the book of Mormon true, you ignore the Middle eastern markers including Jewish ones common in pure descendants of Mayans to claim "nothing shows..."
You of all people should know that I have not ignored that challenge, and have repeatedly cited to you the studies that clarified the issue. Many of what were previously thought to be X lineages among the Jews and Middle Eastern populations belong to a different lineage, haplogroup N1b.19 The N1b mtDNA lineage is not found among American Indians. If you are referring to Crandall's misrepresentation of a 2005 paper by Noah Rosenberg and colleagues. Crandall, who goes to considerable lengths in a FAIR DVD to point out how tricky this type of population genetic data is, concludes that since a small portion of Maya chromosomes is colored blue (the dominant color of Middle Eastern chromosomes), this is evidence of Middle Eastern DNA in the Maya. Is it a reasonable conclusion? This is answered in great detail here.
But then that would make you a Limited Geographists now wouldn't it DU? The link goes further to point out follow-up studies by Wang in 2007 that brought greater detail and expanded studies - including Siberians. Now all those alleged middle eastern DNA have been associated more closely with Siberian populations, thus this magical middle eastern DNA link vanishes into mormon mythology. So quit insulting the intelligence's of the readers here with such pitiful arguments.
One last note on this. A parallel study that included one of Crandall's proof cases - the Pima - were genetically evaluated in another way. The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence variation of the South American Ticuna, the Central American Maya, and the North American Pimawas analyzed by restriction-endonuclease digestion and oligonucleotide hybridization. The analysis revealed that Amerindian populations have high frequencies of mtDNAs containing the rare Asian RFLP HincII morph 6, a rare HaeIII site gain, and a unique AluI site gain. In addition, the Asian-specific deletion between the cytochrome c oxidase subunit II (COII) and tRNA(Lys) genes was also prevalent in both the Pima and the Maya.
A separate study, separate line of evaluation, same conclusion, Asian origin for the Native Americans and not Hebrews. You see, studies may operate alone, when all the lines of evidence are put together from DNA studies of not only humans, but intestinal bacteria and dogs, just to mention a couple, Hebrew origin for any people group in the Americas is none existent. Again, the silence in DNA publications arguing for the mormon interpretation of DNA studies is lacking, where are Crandall's articles? He has a lot of crawfish articles, but none on Nephite DNA sequences in the new world.
As always it is a pleasure to observe your ivory towers of mormon proofs crumble into dust.
THe dishonorable end to a depraved criminal...
The following prophecy by Joseph Smith, although it was fulfilled quickly and literally, is rarely cited by Mormons.
July 1828. D&C 3:4. “For although a man may have many revelations, and have power to do many mighty works, yet if he boasts in his own strength, and sets at naught the counsels of God, and follows after the dictates of his own will and carnal desires, he must fall and incur the vengeance of a just God upon him.”
On May 26, 1844, Joseph Smith made the following statement in a public sermon (Brodie p 374, HC 6:408-412):
“Come on, ye persecutors! ye false swearers! All hell, boil over! Ye burning mountains, roll down your lava! For I will come out on the top at last. I have more to boast of than ever any man had. I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam. A large majority of the whole have stood by me. Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet.”
At this time he was secretly married to over 40 women, some of them wives of men still living. Many who knew of these secret marriages accused him of changing the doctrine of the church to satisfy his own carnal desires, in violation of the Book of Mormon (Jacob 2:23-29, 3:5) and D&C 49:16.
FULFILLMENT: Almost exactly one month after this boast, on June 27, 1844, he was killed while shooting his way out of the Carthage Jail.
Simon G. Southerton, is a plant biologist, which means he does not specialize in animals, yet he takes other people's data and applies his interpretation to it. Interestingly, he has no name, no books, he is a nobody and a Mormon, but when he leaves the church and publishes a book "Proving the book of Mormon wrong with Genetics" he becomes a popular guy who sells books and can make a living.Let's compare that to his essentially opposite:
Keith Crandall, Keith is a population geneticist which means this is his speciality, and he already had books, job offers and was a star in the Genetics world. Keith is asked to look into the Book of Mormon DNA claims specifically because Simon is citing Keith's work as precedent, but not following Keith's methodologies. The first thing Keith does is read the Book of Mormon to note all the places where genetic claims are made. Then he analyzes it and determines that it would be impossible to prove the Book of Mormon wrong by it's own genetic claims, he then reviews the claims by those opposed to the church, finds them to be violating the rules of good genetics and because there was a grant performs a study. Surprisingly, he finds a match and while not claiming absolute confirmation (that would be amazing) he claims supporting DNA was found. Not only does Keith write this paper before joining the church, he leaves a good job, and angers an apparent group of highly motivated people by joining the church and becoming faculty at BYU.
You have guy #1 who leaves the church, then publishes a book outside his specialty, which starts earning his living. You have guy #2 who is a pioneer in his field widely recognized and respected who risks all of that to join the very church he has been investigating scientifically.
Either Keith Crandall is the biggest fool in the church, or there is no disproving DNA evidence. I believe the latter, you are free to believe ehat you wish... until Mr. Obama makes us both Muslim by executive order that is.
Then you go into the balderdash of throwing up a smokescreen of claims (mostly specious, and already disproven) which is an obvious tactic. IMHO the only reason you would do this is because your position on DNA is backed by a losing hand and you know it, so you try to change the subject precisely because the DNA evidence favors us and not you.
Perhaps you need to read statements from real scientists
I have been, and from scientists with credentials in the field in question too.
You waived that dullard beneath my nose a while back. There is absolutely no documentation to his talk. Show me the peer review articles that state that the claims he is making are recognized by the wider archaeological community. (crickets).
If you actually went to the links I gave for Keith Crandall, you would see a list of peer reviewed papers as long as your arm, maybe longer (it depends on the length of your arms...) You didn't look, so you didn't see, which is exactly my point about anti's they don't see only because they won't look.
But since he is in the employment of BYU, he has to speak the party line of face excommunication - isn't that how Mormonism has dealt with scientists who've not toed the line on the myth?
You seem to have missed the fact that he wrote his papers before he joined the church... They cannot be coerced on point of execution... Oops.
Godzilla, and I mean this with all my heart, don't give up your day job, God bless.
And, as has been frequently observed, the claims of Joseph Smith to have been called as a “prophet” stand upon the very shakiest and most tenuous of grounds...
Not only does he not meet the OT standards for a Prophet (uttering something while he speaks for G_d which does not come to pass...which Smith was guilty of far more often than not!)
Smith does not even meet the standards for a Bishop or an Elder in a church (at least not one of repute)
One of the things NOT yet raised in the course of this discussion is the issue of the origins of the whole mythology of the Indians as a lost tribe of Israelites.
Contrary to the “scrubbing” efforts of many modern LDS historians, the belief in this story was quite common during the 1800s around Smith’s locale - near Palmyra, NY.
In 1825, there was an article in the “Wayne Sentinel” of Palmyra which printed a speech wherein Native Americans were labeled “descendents of the lost tribes of Israel”, and a later story chorused,”Those who are most conversant with the public and private economy of the Indians, are strongly of the opinion that they are the lineal descendents of the Israelites.”
Research has shown beyond a reasonable doubt that Smith was strongly influenced by, and drew inspiration from many books, actually incorporating text from a few into his book of mormon.
(these include Josiah Priest’s “The Wonders of Nature” published in 1825; Priest’s “American Antiquities” was in fact quoted in the LDS publication “T & S”, June 1, 1842, vol. 3, no 15, pp813 - 814, and “The Wonders of Nature” was available in Smith’s neighborhood prior to the time the bom was ‘translated’.
Jerald and Sandra Tanner have a photograph of an original copy of “Wonders” that contained a sticker showing that it belonged to the library in Manchester, New York where Smith lived. A side-by-side chart of passages directly plagiarized by Smith is available.)
There are dozens of textual similarities between the bom and Ethan Smith’s “View of the Hebrews”, published in 1823. Each book has the same basic story line about a large band of Israelites who arrived in the New World and separated into warring factions, the most brutal of them came out on top and eventually reverted to a “savage state”.
Little Joe’s tale of a buried book written by the predecessors of the Native Americans was also lifted wholesale from “View of the Hebrews”. As well, the two books shared the following interesting characteristics:
- they begin with frequent references to the destruction of Jerusalem
- they tell of inspired prophets among the ancient Americans
- they each quote heavily from the OT book of Isaiah
- they both describe the ancient Americans as a highly civilized people
- they declare that it is the mission of the American nation in the last days to gather Native Americans into Christianity, thereby hastening a great and glorious millennium.
ANY of this sounding even vaguely familiar yet?
It gets better (or worse if you are a mormon raised on all this cornpone and BS!)
When “View of the Hebrews” was first published in 1823, and then again in 1825, there was a teenage lad living in the town of Poultney, Vermont, where the book was first released.
That boy’s name? Oliver Cowdery - third cousin of Joseph Smith, (and Smith’s future scribe). Oliver did not leave Poultney for New York until about 1825 (according to LDS historian Andrew Jenson.)
Further...
[according to records of the Poultney Congreg. Church]
The Cowdery family also happened to be associated with the Poultney Congregational Church...
Which church was led by none other than...
Pastor Ethan Smith, author of “View of the Hebrews”.
Ooooooopsy-daisy....BUSTED! Poor Joe and Ollie...common thieves of intellectual property..
for a detailed look at the similarities, go to Sandra Tanner’s “Where Did Joseph Smith Get His Ideas For the Book of Mormon?” at:
www.utlm.org/onlineresources/bomindianorigins.htm
To be fair about it though, there were a number of other even earlier volumes which proffered the idea of Native Americans as Israelites published well before little Joe EVER came along...
Including but not limited to:
“Jews In America” (Thomas Thorowgood, 1650) “promoted the idea that the Indians were descendents of the lost tribes of Israel.”
“The History of the American Indians” (James Adair, 1775)
“Essay Upon the Propagation of the Gospel, in which there are facts to prove that many of the Indians in America are descended from the Ten Tribes” (Charles Crawford, 1799)
There are other problems (than Smith’s blatant plagiarism of bom content from not less than three different books that were known in his time)affecting the believability of the tale.
The original 1830 edition of the bom as supposedly “revealed” to Joe was ‘translated’ by use of the seer-stone which he had dug from the well of one Mason Chase. But rather than truly translating the symbols in an academic fashion, he looked into his stone and “read” his text aloud as it appeared to him on the surface.
Isaac Hale (Smith’s Father in law) said Smith translated, “The same as when he looked for the money diggers, with the stone in his hat, and his hat over his face, while the book of plates were at the same time hid in the woods.”
This mirrors the accounts of Joseph Knight Sr., Michael Morse (Smith’s brother in law) and David Whitmer (bom witness).
BYU’s Noel B. Reynolds concedes this story, but sees it as a plus for mormons: “for any mortal to dictate a 500 page book in this way, off the top of his head would invariably lead to wandering, repetition, contradiction, non sequiturs and pointlessness.”
It is exactly a mortal source which is so laughably and ironically obvious in the bom (not a supernatural source as contended often).
In the 1830 first edition, the grammar is absolutely horrible. Smith’s frequent attempts to use the archaic English of the King James Bible fail often, although these were corrected in the 1837 edition (revision).
Some examples from the 1830 edition:
-”As I was a journeying to see a very near kindred...I was a going thither (pg 249)
- “They did not fight against G_d no more” pg 290)
- “No man can look in them...lest he should look for that he had not ought”
- “...this they done throughout all the land” (pg 220)
- “...and they had began to possess the land of Amulon” (pg 204)
- “...they was angry with me” (pg 248)
- “...thus ended the record of Alma, which was wrote upon the plates” (pg 347)
- “...the Lamanites did gather themselves together for to sing” (pg 196)
- “we depend upon them for to teach us the word” (pg 451)
These glaring mistakes - erroneously formed past participles, double negatives, incorrect forms of the past tense, needless insertion of “a” before participles - are collectively more than enough to eliminate divine authorship, and point conclusively to the bom being a (partially plagiarized ) product of Smith’s mind
Not G_d - Smith.
This is the other major problem: Every sentence and every word in the 1830 edition had supposedly come directly from G_d.
In a meeting in 1870, Edward Stevenson told how Martin Harris explained the “translation process”.
“By aid of the seer stone, sentences would appear and were read by the prophet, and written by Martin, and when finished he would say, “Written” and if correctly written, that sentence would disappear and another would appear in its place, but if not written correctly, it remained until corrected, so that the translation was just as it was engraved on the plates, precisely the language then used.”
In other words no changes (except correction of printer errors) should have been made to the bom - especially given what happened when Smith (allegedly) prayed about the volume.
A voice spoke from heaven, telling him that the translation of the text was correct, “These plates have been revealed by the power of god, and they have been translated by the power of god. The translation of them which you have seen is correct and I command you to bear record of what you now see and hear.”
So, then the 1830 version should not ever have been changed in any way, as it supposedly had the divine imprimatur upon it.
This is a problem since significant errors of fact survive even to this day in the current version - errors of zoology, botany, anthropology, archaeology, geography...
For example: bom “Israelites” leave Israel BEFORE the Babylonian captivity and build synagogues (bom quote) “after the manner of the Jews”...
Problem - the Jews did NOT build synagogues until AFTER the beginning of the Babylonian captivity!
Problem: There are bom references to goats, cows, horses, oxen, in the New World 500 to 600 years BEFORE Christ...
But NONE of these animals were in the New World for men to use UNTIL they were imported hundreds of years later - by EUROPEANS!
You can yammer about DNA all you want, and it will never change the fact that Smith himself said that all American Indians were “literal descendents of Abraham” - not some smaller tribe, later intermingled in portion with an already-established indigenous population, as is now being claimed by revisionists - and that the very latest and most accurate DNA research has excluded the possibility of well known, and well-defined Semitic “markers” from North and South American natives as anything other than a late arrival from European populations.
The DNA doesn’t even matter - the bom’s glaring errata are enough
So, anyway - I’m just saying these unresolvable contradictions...
COMPLETELY PUT THE LIE to ALL of the BOM claims about these “civilizations”
A.A.C.
Resty: you are on YOUR way to Prophethood!!
(Oh.. WAIT!! you are FEMALE!
Forget what I said!)
“Latin people have a special quality of softness and graciousness and kindness. They are a great people — they are sons and daughters of Father Lehi, and they have believing blood. They are a beautiful people, inside and out.”
Must be a REALLY big bead!
Come ON, DU!!
SURELY you can do better that Fproy's fallback position!
Where's the BEEF?
Too bad, for GOD already had an answer to the BoM: the BIBLE.
IT testifies to MOST of us the UNTRUTHFULLNESS of MORMONism.
Oh??
1 John 4
1. Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,
3. but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.
Reading compreshension seems to be a bit low!
I am simply amazed that you would attempt to place yourself in such a role.
And yet you have no qualms about believing a man did just what you have described.
Of course not; but I can show you one from MORMON history.
You keep posting facts.
When will you GENTILES get it??
WE DON'T CARE!!!
We True Believers have an EXPERIENCE that trumps ALL logic, data, and inspection!
--MormonDude(Dang! these guys are SO slow to learn!)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.