Someone posted a photocopy of the following on our ward’s bulletin board recently:
American “Adam” Left a Genetic Marker- Sometime after humans came to the Western Hemisphere, 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, an extraordinarily rare genetic mutation occurred in one man who sired a son. The result was that the son’s Y chromosome, usually an exact copy, varied ever so slightly from the father’s. Now DNA research shows that the son became a native American “Adam.” Some 90 percent of South America’s indigenous people and 50 percent of those in North America share that genetic marker, unknown in other male populations. “you can be from the Great Plains or from the Amazonian rain forest and have the marker,” says Peter Underhill of Stanford University, whose population-defining work has bee confirmed recently by other scientific teams. “They’re from different ethnic groups, have different cultures, and speak different languages, but they share that common male ancestor.”
TEXT BY BORIS WEINTRAUB; quoted from the National Geographic I believe.
No doubt it was a well meaning member trying to educate the ward that there is scientific evidence supporting the Book of Mormon story (that the America’s were populated by Israelites). I had to laugh after seeing this. It is my impression that most Mormons love to see science support the messages of Mormonism. However, Mormons can be very selective in what “science” they cite. I’m surprised that this was even put on the board. Apparently, whoever posted it wasn’t concerned that the “American” genetic marker was unique to American populations (i.e. NOT a middle eastern marker). Also, they were not concerned with the date of 15,000 to 20,000 years assigned to human migrations to the America’s (a time associated with migration over the Bering Strait).
Mormons claim that the Lamanites are the principal ancestors of American Indians. Therefore, the current lack of evidence (in the scientific literature) of middle-eastern genetic markers in Native American populations could be considered discouraging to those trying to bolster Mormon claims via science.
The quote reminded me of an article I read recently entitled, “This is not the place” by Hampton Sides. His article discusses how a well meaning Mormon eventually lost his testimony after years of honest effort to support Mormon claims in the Book of Mormon. After reading this I realized it is useless to hope to be able to prove any of the Church's claims. It will likely end in dissappointment. See:
http://www.ldshistory.net/bomnot.html
http://www.rickross.com/reference/mormon/mormon33.html
It bothers me that no scientific evidence exists to support Mormon claims such as:
1. middle eastern genetic markers in current native American populations. There is plenty of evidence that human migrations over the Bering strait account for the population of the Americas.
2. archaeological evidence for many of the animals mentioned in the Book of Mormon
3. no evidence for Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible being a reality in ancient biblical texts. I think evidence is lacking for the Pearl of Great Price too – i.e. that Joesph literally translated anything correctly from the facsimiles or that they really deal with Abraham.
I guess these things don’t bother a lot of Mormons. They bother this Mormon however. I don’t think that is bad. It is not unreasonable to hope for science to prove some of Mormonism’s claims. If our faith is going to make the claims, it is not unreasonable to look for evidence to validate them.
Science has confirmed some Biblical stories at least in regard to locals. However, there is a lot of fantasy in the Bible too. I don’t believe for a minute that the Noah’s ark story is true. Give me a break. Maybe parts of it are true, and based on a regional flood. But a worldwide flood that covered the entire earth is hard to fathom. The hardest part of the story for me to swallow is that all the animals of the earth originated from animals Noah saved. If Noah released all the animals of the earth in one location there is no way to account for the geographical distribution of animals throughout the world. If the ark story was true, why don’t we find kangaroos everywhere, not just in Australia. It is easy to extend this line of reasoning to many other animals that are only found in unique places.
glorybower2@yahoo.com