Address delivered at the FairMormon conference, August 1, 2013
by Michael DeGroote Mormon Times and Deseret News
February 4, 2014
"Book of Mormon and DNA Studies," posted at LDS.org on Friday, is one of several additions or enhancements to the site's "Gospel Topics" pages in recent months.
"The evidence assembled to date suggests that the majority of Native Americans carry largely Asian DNA," the latest page says, while the Book of Mormon is the record of the migration of three groups to the Americas from the Near East or West Asia hundreds of years before Europeans arrived.
Many Latter-day Saints in the 1800s assumed the Book of Mormon groups were the first people in the region, and some critics have suggested that Near Eastern DNA then should be easy to find among Native Americans today.
"The Book of Mormon itself, however," the LDS.org page says, "does not claim that the peoples it describes were either the predominant or the exclusive inhabitants of the lands they occupied."
"Much as critics and defenders of the Book of Mormon would like to use DNA studies to support their views," the page adds, "the evidence is simply inconclusive. Nothing is known about the DNA of Book of Mormon peoples ... and even if their genetic profile were known, there are sound scientific reasons that it might remain undetected."
The page includes descriptions of principles of DNA studies such as "population bottleneck" and "genetic drift" it says would make it unlikely scientists could detect the DNA of the people described in the Book of Mormon.
The post is about 2,700 words long and includes 28 footnotes and links to papers by a geneticist, a DNA researcher and an anthropologist.
AN OPEN LETTER TO ROD MELDRUM
[Rod Meldrum sent me an e-mail recently. My reply is below. A paraphrased version of Rod's text is in red. I speak only for myself, not the Church of Jesus Christ, FAIR, or the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.]
Dear Rod:
Thank-you for your recent e-mail. I have also seen copies of your recent exchange with Stan Barker.
AN OPEN LETTER TO ROD MELDRUM – Number 2 [14 July 2011]
[Dr. Gregory Smith’s reply is below. Rod's paraphrased text is in red.
Introduction
On Jul 13, 2011, rodney meldrum wrote:
Greg,
Thanks for responding with your open letter. I’ve read it but need to look at it more closely. It seems
by Gregory Smith
How to Find Accuracy
by Douglas K. Christensen
by Brant A. Gardner