DNA VERSUS THE BOOK OF MORMON

DNA tests contradict Mormon scripture. The church says the studies are being twisted to attack its beliefs.
By William Lobdell, Times Staff Writer
February 16, 2006

From the time he was a child in Peru, the Mormon Church instilled in Jose A. 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. "It not only made me feel special, but it gave me a sense of transcendental identity, an identity with God."

A few years ago, 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.

"I've gone through stages," he said. "Absolutely denial. Utter amazement and surprise. Anger and bitterness."

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.

For those outside the faith, the depth of the church's dilemma can be explained this way: Imagine if DNA evidence revealed that the Pilgrims didn't sail from Europe to escape religious persecution but rather were part of a migration from Iceland — and that U.S. history books were wrong.

Critics want the church to admit its mistake and apologize to millions of Native Americans it converted. Church leaders have shown no inclination to do so. Indeed, they have dismissed as heresy any suggestion that Native American genetics undermine the Mormon creed.

Yet at the same time, the church has subtly promoted a fresh interpretation of the Book of Mormon intended to reconcile the DNA findings with the scriptures. This analysis is radically at odds with long-standing Mormon teachings.

Some longtime observers believe that ultimately, the vast majority of Mormons will disregard the genetic research as an unworthy distraction from their faith.

"This may look like the crushing blow to Mormonism from the outside," said Jan Shipps, a professor emeritus of religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, who has studied the church for 40 years. "But religion ultimately does not rest on scientific evidence, but on mystical experiences. There are different ways of looking at truth."

According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 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 BC 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 AD the dark-skinned Lamanites had wiped out other Hebrews. The Mormon church called the victors "the principal ancestors of the American Indians." If the Lamanites returned to the church, their skin could once again become white.

Over the years, church prophets — believed by Mormons to receive revelations from God — and missionaries have used the supposed ancestral link between the ancient Hebrews and Native Americans and later Polynesians as a prime conversion tool in Central and South America and the South Pacific.

"As I look into your faces, I think of Father Lehi [patriarch of the Lamanites], whose sons and daughters you are," church president and prophet Gordon B. Hinckley said in 1997 during a Mormon conference in Lima, Peru. "I think he must be shedding tears today, tears of love and gratitude…. This is but the beginning of the work in Peru."

In recent decades, Mormonism has flourished in those regions, which now have nearly 4 million members — about a third of Mormon membership worldwide, according to church figures.

"That was the big sell," said Damon Kali, an attorney who practices law in Sunnyvale, Calif., and is descended from Pacific Islanders. "And quite frankly, that was the big sell for me. I was a Lamanite. I was told the day of the Lamanite will come."

A few months into his two-year mission in Peru, Kali stopped trying to convert the locals. Scientific articles about ancient migration patterns had made him doubt that he or anyone else was a Lamanite.

"Once you do research and start getting other viewpoints, you're toast," said Kali, who said he was excommunicated in 1996 over issues unrelated to the Lamanite issue. "I could not do missionary work anymore."

Critics of the Book of Mormon have long cited anachronisms in its narrative to argue that it is not the work of God. For instance, the Mormon scriptures contain references to a seven-day week, domesticated horses, cows and sheep, silk, chariots and steel. None had been introduced in the Americas at the time of Christ.

In the 1990s, DNA studies gave Mormon detractors further ammunition and new allies such as Simon G. Southerton, a molecular biologist and former bishop in the church.

Southerton, a senior research scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, said genetic research allowed him to test his religious views against his scientific training.

Genetic testing of Jews throughout the world had already shown that they shared common strains of DNA from the Middle East. Southerton examined studies of DNA lineages among Polynesians and indigenous peoples in North, Central and South America. One mapped maternal DNA lines from 7,300 Native Americans from 175 tribes.

Southerton found no trace of Middle Eastern DNA in the genetic strands of today's American Indians and Pacific Islanders.

In "Losing a Lost Tribe," published in 2004, he concluded that Mormonism — his faith for 30 years — needed to be reevaluated in the face of these facts, even though it would shake the foundations of the faith.

The problem is that Mormon leaders cannot acknowledge any factual errors in the Book of Mormon because the prophet Joseph Smith proclaimed it the "most correct of any book on Earth," Southerton said in an interview.

"They can't admit that it's not historical," Southerton said. "They would feel that there would be a loss of members and loss in confidence in Joseph Smith as a prophet."

Officially, the Mormon Church says that nothing in the Mormon scriptures is incompatible with DNA evidence, and that the genetic studies are being twisted to attack the church.

"We would hope that church members would not simply buy into the latest DNA arguments being promulgated by those who oppose the church for some reason or other," said Michael Otterson, a Salt Lake City-based spokesman for the Mormon church.

"The truth is, the Book of Mormon will never be proved or disproved by science," he said.

Unofficially, church leaders have tacitly approved an alternative interpretation of the Book of Mormon by church apologists — a term used for scholars who defend the faith.

The apologists say Southerton and others are relying on a traditional reading of the Book of Mormon — that the Hebrews were the first and sole inhabitants of the New World and eventually populated the North and South American continents.

The latest scholarship, they argue, shows that the text should be interpreted differently. They say the events described in the Book of Mormon were confined to a small section of Central America, and that the Hebrew tribe was small enough that its DNA was swallowed up by the existing Native Americans.

"It would be a virtual certainly that their DNA would be swamped," said Daniel Peterson, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, part of the worldwide Mormon educational system, and editor of a magazine devoted to Mormon apologetics. "And if that is the case, you couldn't tell who was a Lamanite descendant."

Southerton said the new interpretation was counter to both a plain reading of the text and the words of Mormon leaders.

"The apologists feel that they are almost above the prophets," Southerton said. "They have completely reinvented the narrative in a way that would be completely alien to members of the church and most of the prophets."

The church has not formally endorsed the apologists' views, but the official website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — http://www.lds.org — cites their work and provides links to it.

"They haven't made any explicit public declarations," said Armand L. Mauss, a church member and retired Washington State University professor who recently published a book on Mormon race and lineage. "But operationally, that is the current church's position."

The DNA debate is largely limited to church leaders, academics and a relatively small circle of church critics. Most Mormons, taught that obedience is a key value, take the Book of Mormon as God's unerring word.

"It's not that Mormons are not curious," Mauss said. "They just don't see the need to reconsider what has already been decided."

Critics contend that Mormon leaders are quick to stifle dissent. In 2002, church officials began an excommunication proceeding against Thomas W. Murphy, an anthropology professor at Edmonds Community College in Washington state.

He was deemed a heretic for saying the Mormon scriptures should be considered inspired fiction in light of the DNA evidence.

After the controversy attracted national media coverage, with Murphy's supporters calling him the Galileo of Mormonism, church leaders halted the trial.

Loayza, the Salt Lake City attorney, said the church should embrace the controversy.

"They should openly address it," he said. "Often, the tack they adopt is to just ignore or refrain from any opinion. We should have the courage of our convictions. This [Lamanite issue] is potentially destructive to the faith."

Otterson, the church spokesman, said Mormon leaders would remain neutral. "Whether Book of Mormon geography is extensive or limited or how much today's Native Americans reflect the genetic makeup of the Book of Mormon peoples has absolutely no bearing on its central message as a testament of Jesus Christ," he said.

Mauss said the DNA studies haven't shaken his faith. "There's not very much in life — not only in religion or any field of inquiry — where you can feel you have all the answers," he said.

"I'm willing to live in ambiguity. I don't get that bothered by things I can't resolve in a week."

For others, living with ambiguity has been more difficult. Phil Ormsby, a Polynesian who lives in Brisbane, Australia, grew up believing he was a Hebrew.

"I visualized myself among the fighting Lamanites and lived out the fantasies of the [Book of Mormon] as I read it," Ormsby said. "It gave me great mana [prestige] to know that these were my true ancestors."

The DNA studies have altered his feelings completely.

"Some days I am angry, and some days I feel pity," he said. "I feel pity for my people who have become obsessed with something that is nothing but a hoax."

The Mormon Church teaches American Indians are descended from a lost tribe of Israel, but modern DNA test results contradict that tenet.

The DNA tests reveal the ancestors of the American natives came from Asia, not the Middle East, thereby casting doubt on many of the historical depictions found in the Book of Mormon, a 175-year-old book of religious facts the church regards as literal and without error, The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

The Book of Mormon is the central doctrine that divides The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from other Christian faiths.

Critics now insist the Mormon Church admit its mistake and apologize to millions of Native Americans it converted. Church leaders, however, dismiss the DNA test results as heresy, noting the prophet Joseph Smith proclaimed the Book of Mormon the "most correct of any book on Earth."

The Mormon leaders say the DNA test results are being twisted to attack the church.

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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. "It not only made me feel special, but it gave me a sense of transcendental identity, an identity with God."

A few years ago, 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.

"I've gone through stages," he said. "Absolutely denial. Utter amazement and surprise. Anger and bitterness."

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.

For those outside the faith, the depth of the church's dilemma can be explained this way: Imagine if DNA evidence revealed that the Pilgrims didn't sail from Europe to escape religious persecution but rather were part of a migration from Iceland - and that U.S. history books were wrong.

Critics want the church to admit its mistake and apologize to millions of Native Americans it converted. Church leaders have shown no inclination to do so. Indeed, they have dismissed as heresy any suggestion that Native American genetics undermine the Mormon creed.

Yet at the same time, the church has subtly promoted a fresh interpretation of the Book of Mormon intended to reconcile the DNA findings with the scriptures. This analysis is radically at odds with longstanding Mormon teachings.

Some longtime observers believe that, ultimately, the vast majority of Mormons will disregard the genetic research as an unworthy distraction from their faith.

"This may look like the crushing blow to Mormonism from the outside," said Jan Shipps, a professor emeritus of religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis who has studied the church for 40 years. "But religion ultimately does not rest on scientific evidence, but on mystical experiences. There are different ways of looking at truth."

According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 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. The Mormon church called the victors "the principal ancestors of the American Indians." If the Lamanites returned to the church, their skin could once again become white.

Over the years, church prophets - believed by Mormons to receive revelations from God - and missionaries have used the supposed ancestral link between the ancient Hebrews and Native Americans and later Polynesians as a prime conversion tool in Central and South America and the South Pacific.

"As I look into your faces, I think of Father Lehi (patriarch of the Lamanites), whose sons and daughters you are," church president and prophet Gordon Hinckley said in 1997 during a Mormon conference in Lima, Peru. "I think he must be shedding tears today, tears of love and gratitude. . . . This is but the beginning of the work in Peru."

SALT LAKE CITY — Plant geneticist Simon Southerton was a Mormon bishop in Brisbane, Australia when he woke up the morning of Aug. 3, 1998 to the shattering conclusion that his knowledge of science made it impossible for him to believe any longer in the Book of Mormon.

Two years later he started writing Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA and the Mormon Church, published by Signature Books and due in ctores next month. Along the way, he found a world of scholarship that has led him to conclude The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints belief is changing, but not through prophesy and revelation.

Rather, Southerton sees a behind-the-scenes revolution led by a small group of Brigham Young University scholars and their critics who are reinterpreting fundamental teachings of the Book of Mormon in light of DNA research findings. Along the way, he says, these apologist scholars, with the apparent blessing of church leadership, are contradicting church teachings about the origins of American Indians and Polynesians.

"You've got Mormon apologists in their own publications rejecting what prophets have been saying for decades. This becomes very troubling for ordinary members of the church," Southerton said.

And while the work of the BYU apologists — the term means those who speak or write in defense of something — remains confined largely to intellectual circles, some church members who have always understood themselves in light of Mormon teachings about the people known as Lamanites are suffering identity crises.

"It's very difficult. It is almost traumatizing," said Jose Aloayza, a Midvale attorney who likened facing this new reality to staring into a spiritual abyss.

"It's that serious, that real," said Aloayza, a Peruvian native born into the church and still a member. "I'm almost here feeling I need an apology. Our prophets should have known better. That's the feeling I get."

Southerton, now a senior researcher with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Canberra, Australia, has concluded along with many other scientists studying mitochondrial DNA lines that American Indians and Polynesians are of Asian extraction.

For a century or so, scientists have theorized Asians migrated to the Americas across a land bridge at least 14,000 years ago. But Mormons have been taught to believe the Book of Mormon — the faith's keystone text — is a literal record of God's dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas who descended from the Israelite patriarch Lehi, who sailed to the New World around 600 B.C. The book's narrative continues through about 400 A.D.

The church teaches that Joseph Smith translated this record from gold plates found on a hillside in upstate New York in 1820, when he was 14. The Book of Mormon was first published in 1830.

In Mormon theology, Lamanites are understood as both chosen and cursed: Christ visited them, yet their unrighteousness left them cursed with dark skin. The Book of Mormon says Lamanites will one day be restored to greatness through the fullness of the gospel. (The original 1830 version of the Book of Mormon said they would become "white and delightsome;" in 1981, the passage was changed to "pure and delightsome.") Though not mentioned specifically in the Book of Mormon, Polynesians have been taught they are a branch of the House of Israel descended from Lehi.

Traditionally, Mormons have understood the Book of Mormon to cover all of the Americas in what is known as the hemispheric model. At a Bolivian temple dedication in 2000, church prophet and President Gordon B. Hinckley prayed, "We remember before Thee the sons and daughters of Father Lehi." And in 1982, the church's then-President Spencer Kimball told Samoans, Maori, Tahitians and Hawaiians that the "Lord calls you Lamanites."

Southerton's book details how these teachings have helped LDS efforts to convert new members, especially among Indians in Latin America and Maoris in New Zealand. He also offers primers on Mormon history and American race relations, quick tutorials on DNA research and syntheses of Mormon-related genetic research and DNA scholarship.

But in light of BYU scholars' recent opinion that the Book of Mormon's events could only have occurred in parts of Mexico and Guatemala — that is, Mesoamerica — the final third of the book is dedicated to examining the work of LDS scholars at the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, or FARMS, established 25 years ago and housed at BYU.

FARMS findings on Mesoamerica are based on the Book of Mormon's "internal geography," that is, descriptions of how long it took the ancient peoples to get from one place to another. The apologists now believe the events occurred only hundreds of miles from each other, not thousands — provoking new questions including how the Americas could have been so rapidly populated with people speaking so many languages without the presence of vast numbers of people who never appear in the narrative.

In a telephone interview from his Canberra office, Southerton said that keeping up with the rapidly growing body of work in genetic research made it difficult for him to finish the book while also keeping it up-to-date with critics and apologists and those in between all seeking to reframe the Book of Mormon in light of DNA research.

In particular, he's tried to keep up with FARMS qrticles, which he said are "completely at loggerheads with what the church leaders are teaching."

Church spokesman Dale Bills on Thursday said the church teaches only that the events recorded in the Book of Mormon took place somewhere in the Americas. The doctrine of the church is established by scripture and by the senior leadership of the Church, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve.

"Faithful Latter-day Saint scholars may provide insight, understanding and perspective but they do not speak for the church," he said.

On its Web site, under the "Mistakes in the News" heading, the church declares, "Recent attacks on the veracity of the Book of Mormon based on DNA evidence are ill considered. Nothing in the Book of Mormon precludes migration into the Americas by peoples of Asiatic origin. The scientific issues relating to DNA, however, are numerous and complex."

The site then offers Web links to five articles, four of which were published last year in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, a FARMS publication.

"There is such a huge divide between what the scholarly elite with the LDS church knows and will discuss and what the ordinary member knows," Aloayza said. "The burden of proof is on the people who are advancing the Book of Mormon as the word of God."

BYU political science professor and FARMS director Noel Reynolds said FARMS reseabch and writings are not aimed at proving or disproving the Book of Mormon. "We understand the difficulties of that. We get dragged into these discussions repeatedly because of books like Southerton's or ordinary anti-Mormon questions," he said.

The work of FARMS shouldn't be considered counter to church doctrine because the geography of the Book of Mormon has "never been a matter of official church pronouncement," Reynolds said.

While believing in a hemispheric model might be considered "naive," he said, "it's also fair to say that the majority of LDS over a period of time have accepted a hemispheric view, including church leaders."

Added FARMS founder and BYU law professor John Welch, "We don't speak officially for the church in any way. These are our opinions, and we hope they're helpful."

Southerton, who no longer is a member of the church, said given the state of DNA research and increasing lay awareness of it, church leaders ought just to own up to the problems that continued literal teachings about the Book of Mormon present for American Indians and Polynesians.

"They should come out and say, 'There's no evidence to support your Israelite ancestry,' " Southerton said. "I don't have any problem with anyone believing what's in the Book of Mormon. Just don't make it look like science is backing it all up."

Mormonism's Lost Tribes

The Book of Mormon spells out the origins of Mormonism, based on the belief that the Lost Tribes of Israel sailed to the American continent and became identified by European explorers as the American Indians. Using the latest DNA findings Simon Southerton questions this belief.

Rachael Kohn: The story of the Lost Tribes of Israel has some truth to it, but where it ends is anybody's guess.

In the 8th century BC the Assyrians drove the ten Jewish tribes out of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Jews and Christians have often pondered what happened to them. But in the 19th century, Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons, also known as the Latter Day Saints, or LDS, promoted a belief that this and even an earlier dispersion from ancient Israel, went to America. This was the origin of both the Indians and the Mormons. Simon Southerton, a scientist with the CSIRO, rejects that view, but he was once a devout believer.

Simon Southerton: The Book of Mormon claims to be a history of three groups of Israelites, or Middle Eastern groups that sailed to the Americas between about 2000BC and about 600BC, and these groups all sailed to the Americas and at some stage were in contact with each other while they were there. So the Book of Mormon is certainly the origin of these beliefs.

Rachael Kohn: Well then who was the founding father of the Mormon lineages that ended up on the American continents?

Simon Southerton: Well as I mentioned, there were three groups that sailed to the Americas. The first one was the Jaredites, in about 2200BC, but they are essentially invisible now because they were annihilated in a series of battles. The Book of Mormon is primarily focused on a man named Lehi, and his family who lived in Jerusalem in about 600BC, and they then made a voyage, Lehi and his family, in particular his two oldest sons, Laman and Nephi, who then became the leaders of two great civilisations in the Americas after their arrival. Those groups were called the Nephites and the Lamanites, so the Book of Mormon is preoccupied with an account of their dealings, the civilisations that they led.

The name 'Mormon' comes from one of the last prophets in the Book of Mormon called Mormon, and he compiled the records into the gold plates which was then deposited in the Americas and then recovered in the early part of the 19th century by Joseph Smith.

Rachael Kohn: Well these Nephites and Lamanites, they're not actually mentioned in the Bible, are they?

Simon Southerton: No, that's correct. I think Mormons have identified scriptures here and there in the Bible that could be interpreted to support these travels, but it's very obtuse and it would be understandable, that no-one would have seen these, or interpreted that the same way as the Mormons do.

Rachael Kohn: Now Mormons do hold the Bible in some kind of reverence, don't they? I mean is the Book of Mormon the only scripture?

Simon Southerton: No, the Mormons have four canons of scripture. The Bible is certainly one of those. It's pretty much right up there with the Book of Mormon. They believe that the Book of Mormon is more correctly translated than the Bible. They believe that they are Christians, although there are a lot of Christian groups that don't agree with that. But there are two other scriptures that the Mormons hold and that's the Doctrine and Covenants which is a series of revelations Joseph Smith recorded, and then the Book of Abraham which is a translation by Joseph Smith of some papyrus that came into his hands in the early 19th century. So they're the four major scriptures that Mormons adhere to.

Rachael Kohn: Now the Book of Mormon actually recounts many battles which occur in the New World, and the two tribes that really are central are the Nephites and Lamanites as you've mentioned. But the Lamanites are cursed with black skin. Was Joseph Smith trying to sort of justify the racist views of the time?

Simon Southerton: It's difficult to say. I think really, considering what the Book of Mormon is attempting to do in giving a narrative for the people in the Americas, and then trying to explain why these people have a darker skin, I think all he was really doing was reflecting the very common opinions that were held in that time in the Americas. If he had written the Book of Mormon claiming that native Americans had come from Asia, that would have been amazing, because the time Joseph Smith lived, the prevailing opinion in the Americas was that native Americans were descended from Israelites, that they were a degenerate race, and Joseph Smith I guess went just a little bit further, in claiming that the dark skin that they have was a sign of a curse from God.

Rachael Kohn: Was that a kind of imitation of the idea of the Curse of Cain?

Simon Southerton: The curse on the Lamanites in LDS doctrine, actually arose before the Curse of Cain, this curse, in the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon arose before the Book of Abraham, which is where this dark skin curse on the black race, the negroid race, is sort of based on that scripture.

Rachael Kohn: I understood that the Mormons had actually retranslated Genesis so that the Curse of Cain actually was the Black Curse of Cain.

Simon Southerton: They have made retranslations of the Book of Genesis but the scriptural basis for that dark skin curse of Cain is from the Book of Abraham, which part of that is very, very similar to the Genesis account.

Simon Southerton: Yes. Well it was claimed to be a direct translation from some papyrus that he came across, but it's since been found that those papyrus are very common funeral texts included alongside many mummies. That seems to me quite obvious that he's made that up.

Rachael Kohn: Now the Lamanites were dark-skinned and the Nephites were white-skinned, but over the years it seems Mormons have been able to adjust the way Lamanites are presented. Did their skin kind of miraculously lighten?

Simon Southerton: I think with time, and as society has moved on, Mormons have gradually - their beliefs and the way they view Lamanites - have gradually evolved. It's certainly true that Mormons believe that the Lamanite skin, through accepting the gospel, becoming Mormons, that their skin colour would whiten, and there are some interesting reports of leaders of the church commenting on how their skin is whitening. But it would be true to say that most Mormons today have very fond feelings towards the Lamanites.

It's a beautiful story, in fact the original belief only concerned native Americans, but it's taken on a whole new meaning because the Polynesians have been adopted into the Lamanite family, because it's widely believed amongst Latter Day Saints that Polynesia was colonised from the New World, so most Polynesian members of the church regard themselves as a descendent of Lehi, either a Lamanite or a Nephite, descendant of Lehi.

Rachael Kohn: And did that arise because Mormons went out to the Pacific Islands to be missionaries and needed a way of understanding who these people were?

Simon Southerton: Yes, the Latter Day Saint missionaries in Polynesia were among the most successful. The doctrine that they taught and the things that they presented to the Polynesians were very satisfying to them and they adopted Mormonism very readily, much more readily than the white Europeans living in Polynesia. And so I suspect that somebody just sort of twigged to them one day, 'Well gee, they lot a lot like native Americans, they must be descended from native Americans', and so the belief blossomed from there. Joseph Smith never made any mention at all of the Polynesians being Lamanites or connected to Lehi. Many countries in Polynesia have very large Mormon populations, for example Tonga. I think it's something like 40% or maybe even higher, that are members of the church.

Rachael Kohn: Simon, as a senior scientist in the CSIRO, when did you first have doubts about the veracity of the genealogical beliefs of the Mormons?

Simon Southerton: I was a very devout Latter Day Saint for near on 30 years, but it was in 1998 I was going through an article in a church magazine that claimed that the Flood was a universal event, and wiped out most of the plants and animals on the earth and yet if you were a Mormon and didn't believe that, that you were less than faithful. So as a scientist, this got me just a little bit irritated, because I saw lots of evidence that contradicted that claim, and in trying to find answers to this and to find other Mormons that shared my concerns, I stumbled across DNA evidence on native Americans, and Polynesians, which clearly indicated that their DNA was most closely related to Asians and not Israelites.

So when I encountered that, I struggled for two weeks, literally having conflicting beliefs in my brain. I just couldn't resolve it, and then I went to bed one night and woke up the next morning, the whole thing was resolved. It was just the most remarkable epiphany. I never made a conscious decision, No, the Book of Mormon must be wrong, I cannot reject this science, I just woke up one morning and it was just - I just had no way of sort of stemming the tide, if you like, I just suddenly realised that the Book of Mormon can't be true because the science is just undeniable.

Rachael Kohn: Haven't Mormons come up with alternative histories in which there were Lamanites and Nephites but then there were a lot of other peoples who also made it to America? Isn't there some tweaking in the face of this kind of evidence?

Simon Southerton: Yes, I think tweaking is probably an understatement if ever there was one. The Book of Mormon is silent about the existence of any other group in the Americas other than the Lamanites and Nephites, and the Jaredites. It makes no mention of any other groups outside their civilisations. But certainly the LDS scholars and apologists have been extremely busy reinterpreting the Book of Mormon, and putting I guess their slant on the story, and they are claiming that there are references in there to other groups.

If there is a common belief amongst the apologists, they often conflict with each other, but the most predominant belief that Lehi and his group were a small group that entered the native populations that were already there, and then they built their civilisations and incorporated the native groups around them. For me personally, I find that deeply unsatisfying. The Book of Mormon to me is just quite clear. It mentions that the continent was preserved for the Lehites, kept from the knowledge of other nations so that they could establish themselves there. But it certainly is a very hot issue at the moment.

Simon Southerton: Well they certainly excommunicated me. That was quite an interesting experience actually, because if you publicly - and I had publicly challenged the Book of Mormon for a number of years. In the earliest church, public open apostasy is the most serious offence that you can commit, and they had very many opportunities where they could have excommunicated me from the church for committing apostasy, but they chose not to. But then just over a year ago I was excommunicated for having an inappropriate relationship with a woman.

Rachael Kohn: Why were they unwilling to cross you on your argument about the Lost Tribes?

Simon Southerton: When they hold an excommunication hearing, you're entitled to defend yourself to try and defend your reputation, so I would have had an opportunity to raise some very troubling issues with the 15 or 16 men that would have been in attendance at that meeting. I'm pretty sure that's why they didn't want to hold the meeting on the issue of apostasy. In fact they made it quite clear to me that they would have shut down the excommunication hearing if I had made any mention of my apostasy, because that wasn't to be the issue of the excommunication hearing. So it's quite interesting, they were certainly very determined not to have the issues I was concerned about raised.

Rachael Kohn: Are Mormons permitted to read your book, Losing a Lost Tribe?

Simon Southerton: They would claim that they're permitted to read anything they like. But generally Mormons don't read books that the LDS scholars and LDS apologists have been critical of. It's almost a taboo in the Mormon church to read things that are critical of the church.

Rachael Kohn: I want to ask you finally whether there's been a backlash by indigenous people themselves, native Americans, who say that this genealogy, this past, has been thrust upon them.

Rachael Kohn: There certainly are native Americans in Utah who have felt the sting of racism and persecution at the hands of Mormons. I'm not saying that that's what Mormons are like generally, but a lot of Utah native Americans have certainly felt very hurt by the way some Mormons treat them. The amount of evidence now against the Book of Mormon is not just DNA evidence, there is just nothing in the Americas to support the existence of Israelite civilisations, and abundant evidence that native Americans came from Asia many thousands of years ago. So it's just unrealistic I think for the church to expect that people can just turn their nose up at all this evidence.

Rachael Kohn: Simon Southerton is a senior scientist with the CSIRO and is author of Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA and the Mormon Church. Go to our website for alternative views.

NOTE: THERE ARE NO NON-MORMON SCIENTISTS THAT SUPPORT THE REMAINING LDS SCIENTISTS

DNA claims rebutted on Book of Mormon

By Carrie A. Moore
Deseret Morning News
Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007

While two different LDS scientists have said that DNA research discounts the Book of Mormon as an ancient, historical document, a researcher told participants Saturday at the Book of Mormon Lands Conference that such claims are faulty when the details and capabilities of DNA "gene mapping" are understood.

Brant Gardner, a software consultant with training in Mesoamerican studies and anthropology, told about 200 people gathered at the Red Lion Hotel that a lack of DNA evidence showing American Indians are of Hebrew descent is "the most important non-issue we have in modern Mormonism."

Claims in recent years by LDS anthropologist Thomas Murphy and former LDS molecular biologist Simon Southerton regarding the lack of genetic connection to Hebrew blood have caused spirited debate in some quarters about the origin of the Book of Mormon, which Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints founder Joseph Smith said was translated from gold plates given to him by an angel from God.

Southerton, a former bishop, was excommunicated from the church after his writings appeared. Murphy was threatened with church discipline over his writings.

Members of the LDS Church believe the record is an account of some ancient inhabitants of the Americas who descended from the family of a man named Lehi who lived around 600 B.C. His voyage to the Americas from Jerusalem with his family is chronicled in the book.

Gardner said Murphy's claim that the book is "a piece of 19th century fiction" is based less on his own scientific research than on his own preconceived notions about it. "He didn't believe in the book before and went off looking for things that would support his view. He gives us information about what science is doing, but he is making a conclusion that supports what he had already decided."

He said neither Murphy nor Southerton understood that LDS scientists have known "for 50 years" about DNA evidence linking American Indians to Asian ancestry rather than Hebrew blood. "For some reason, these two men think this shocked us. It's been something we've been dealing with for a very, very long time."

Publicity surrounding the writings of the two scientists has created doubt for some Latter-day Saints, Gardner said. "Some people I've talked to are ready to leave the church over this."

Yet Gardner said that response can be attributed to what he called "the 'CSI' effect," referring to the popular TV series that depicts forensic scientists solving complicated questions about crime scenes using DNA evidence. Based on those fictional depictions, "One of the things we all know is that DNA proves pretty much everything," when in reality, there are major limitations on what it can define about family lineage.

Because most genetic mapping is done through mitochondrial DNA, which tracks only the female line, Gardner said the category of people excluded from being linked to a living person by genetic testing going back several generations is huge. "Most tests trace only a few of a person's ancestors and a small portion of their DNA."

He also referred to what is known to researchers as a "genetic bottleneck," where "only a few people survive" some major cataclysmic event "and we end up with only the DNA of the survivors and not the rest of the population. It's entirely possible other people were here that had different DNA, and we can't find it because they never made it through the 'bottleneck event."'

DNA tests also may report false positives or false negatives, he said, and there are many historical scenarios where physical evidence of things that are known to have occurred doesn't match what researchers expected to find using DNA evidence.

Latter-day Saint scientists never have disputed the movement of large groups of people from Asia to the Americas, he said, though many LDS members have grown up believing that the only people who ever migrated to the Americas descended from Lehi's family in the Book of Mormon.

"We're often trying to compare our traditions versus science, but what does the Book of Mormon actually say? ... No matter how many opinions someone might have about the Book of Mormon, if the opinion is wrong, it's the opinion that's wrong and not the book," Gardner said.

"What we know today about the Book of Mormon is more right than what we knew 10 years ago, and what we knew 10 years ago had some misconceptions. Our opinions will continue to change in the future, but that doesn't change the truthfulness of the book."

The daylong conference explored a variety of topics, including Chiasmus and other aspects related to in-depth study of the Book of Mormon. The annual event is sponsored by the Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum. For information, go to www.bmaf.org