A Mormon History of the Americas
Can the history of the American continent as presented in the Book of Mormon be true?
Filed under Ancient Mysteries, Religion
| Skeptoid #43 May 06, 2007 Podcast transcript | Listen | Subscribe |
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By Brian Dunning, Skeptoid Podcast
Episode
43 , May 06, 2007
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/
4043
Join us now as we slip into our magic underwear and enter a mysterious building that no outsider has ever visited — a Mormon temple — for today we're studying that most curious of history texts, the Book of Mormon.
The Mormons, formally and properly known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, is the same as any other more conventional Christian church, but with the additional element of a belief that after the Resurrection, Jesus also appeared to peoples in the Americas. The story goes that a man in Jerusalem named Lehi built a boat for his family and sailed across the Atlantic to the American continent in about 600 B.C., and they became the forebears of the American Indian people of North and South America. The history of the continent was kept on gold tablets, passed from generation to generation, compiled by a warrior named Mormon and finally buried in upstate New York by his son Moroni. A golden statue of Moroni, now an angel and holding a long trumpet, stands atop most Mormon temples — all unofficially pointing toward Jackson County, Missouri, which Mormons believe is the geographic center of the continent, and where they believe Jesus will make his Second Coming. That's a free tip for you property investors.
Now the early days of the Mormon church were violent. It all began around 1827 when a young man of 22 named Joseph Smith revealed that Moroni had been appearing to him in dreams for some time, and had guided him to the location of the buried gold plates. With divine guidance, he translated the plates from the "modified Egyptian" in which they were written, published the text as the Book of Mormon, and begun to acquire followers. This was a tall order in those days of staunch Protestant Christianity, and the early days of the church were bloody indeed. Whole wars were fought in counties throughout Illinois and Missouri, and it was some decades before the Mormons decided enough was enough, and were led by Brigham Young to the safe haven of Utah, where they founded their kingdom called Salt Lake City, and got to work building some of our finest ski resorts.
Once we get past their early years, when murders and even massacres were committed by both sides, what you'll find to be generally true of Mormons today is that they are among the most upstanding of citizens. They generally don't drink or smoke, crime is almost unheard of, they have great family values, and if you believe Playboy magazine, BYU women are among the hottest in the nation. It's true that toward the end of his life, Howard Hughes kept his inner circle composed largely of Mormons, not because they never drank as some stories say, but because he felt they were the only people who were truly trustworthy. You could do a lot worse than Mormons if you want good next-door neighbors. They even use pooper scoopers.
So what is there about the Mormons to be skeptical of? Well, it's not the polygamy, which the church gave up as a condition of statehood in 1896. Certainly nobody who believes in the Bible should have a problem with polygamy, and most of the rest of us couldn't care less how many wives other people want to have. It's not even the whole thing with the gold plates, evidenced only by a sworn testimonial from Joseph Smith's closest confidants who claimed, as Mark Twain noted, to have "hefted" them. It's not even that Joseph Smith couldn't possibly have written that much detailed and well-constructed stuff all by himself: Whether he did it himself or was assisted by his team of ghost writers doesn't prove or disprove anything about the accuracy of its contents.
The part of Mormonism to be skeptical about is the demonstrably untrue ancient history.
People who believe in Bible stories are on thin enough ice as it is, but at least a lot of them have enough sense to say that the stories are allegorical and not meant to be taken literally. Mormonism, on the other hand, claims that the history in the Book of Mormon is the correct history of the peoples of the American continents, no allegory involved. Yet, every falsifiable detail of the Mormon account has been easily shown to be completely untrue.
For one thing, the genetic evidence shows that native populations in the Americas came from Asia via the land bridge at the Bering Sea, not from Europe. American native populations fall into one of four haplogroups. Haplogroups are the main branches of the human genealogical tree, defined by markers on the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA, and corresponding to early human migrations to the various continents. The consensus of opinion among biological anthropologists is that all four American haplogroups bear markers that tie them to Asia. There is very little dissent from this consensus, and what little there is comes mainly from fringe religious groups. Dr. Michael F. Whiting, a biologist with Brigham Young University's Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, responds to the majority opinion thusly:
The first point that should be clarified is that those persons who state that DNA evidence falsifies the authenticity of the Book of Mormon are not themselves performing genetic research to test this claim. This conclusion is not coming from the scientists studying human population genetics. It is not the result of a formal scientific investigation specifically designed to test the authenticity of the Book of Mormon by means of genetic evidence, nor has it been published in any reputable scientific journal open to scientific peer review. Rather, it has come from outside persons who have interpreted the conclusions of an array of population genetic studies and forced the applicability of these results onto the Book of Mormon. The studies cited by these critics were never formulated by their original authors as a specific test of the veracity of the Book of Mormon. To my knowledge there is no reputable researcher who is specifically attempting to test the authenticity of the Book of Mormon with DNA evidence.
This is probably true, and the reason is that the Book of Mormon is not a scientific theory. If it was, research teams would be trying to test it and falsify it, to verify its validity. Since it's a religious myth, there are about as many legitimately funded biologists studying it as there are zoologists trying to determine whether serpents can talk.
Evidence against the Book of Mormon is not just genetic. The Book of Mormon is full of references to technologies and species that are known to have not existed in pre-Columbian America. Michael Coe, an archaeologist at Yale University, said:
There is an inherent improbability in specific items that are mentioned in the Book of Mormon as having been brought to the New World by...Nephites. Among these are the horse, the chariot, wheat, barley, and [true] metallurgy. The picture of this hemisphere...presented in the book has little to do with the early Indian cultures as we know them.
Mormon scholars do have answers to some of these questions. For example, they propose that meteoric nickel-iron alloy could have been mistaken for steel. FairLDS.org defends the Book of Mormon against the contradicting scientific evidence, in a series of lengthy essays full of scientific language, yet often citing the Bible as the authority for its assumptions. Well, it's all well and good to hypothesize all day long, but the only thing we can know for sure is what we find in the physical evidence. And all the evidence shows that many technologies and species described in the Book of Mormon were introduced to the continent in modern times, and that the native Americans all descend from Asian migrations many thousands of years before the Book of Mormon stories were said to take place.
There are no better next door neighbors than Mormons. No better examples of family values and clean, healthy living. But, you can be all of those things and have all of those things — including being a good Christian, if that's what you want — without insisting on the literal truth of a nineteenth century book that is not only improbable, but is exhaustively evidenced to be false.
Are you or someone you know a Mormon? How do you reconcile your faith with the contradicting evidence? Do you have or know of real evidence that bucks the scientific consensus? Come to Skeptoid.com and tell us about it. Either comment on this podcast, post it in the Skeptoid.com forum, or put it on the Skeptalk email discussion list.
© 2007 Skeptoid Media, Inc.
References & Further Reading
Coe, Michael. "Mormons and Archaeology: An Outside View." Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. 1 Jul. 1973, Volume 8, Issue 2: 40-48.
Eliason, E. Mormons and Mormonism: an Introduction to an American World Religion. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2001. 1-4.
Krakauer, J. Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. New York: Anchor, 2003.
Tamm, E.,Kivisild, T. "Beringian standstill and spread of Native American founders." PLoS ONE. 5 Sep. 2007, Volume 2, Issue 9: e289.
Weldon, J., Ankerberg, J. What Do Mormons Really Believe?: What the Ads Don't Tell You. Eugene: Harvest House Publishers, 2002. 21-30.
Wells, Spencer, Read, Mark. The journey of man: a genetic odyssey. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. 137-144.
Whiting, Michael F. "DNA and the Book of Mormon: A Phylogenetic Perspective." Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. 1 Jan. 2003, Volume 12, Issue 1: 24-35.
Reference this article:
Dunning, Brian.
"A Mormon History of the Americas." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc.,
6 May 2007. Web.
7 Feb 2012. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4043>
Discuss!
5 most recent comments | Show all 70 comments
Remember, you should always read with skepticism the comments of anyone too lame to put their real name & city.
here's a rough quote i heard from the top religious scholar at the vatican years ago during a christmas special on t.v.:
"the very idea of god is unfathomable to man"
this, from the top religious scholar of one of the strictest religions on earth.
so, why waste your whole life believing in something that NO ONE can fathom? all the religious texts were written by PEOPLE. it's all PURE CONJECTURE.
i suppose if it fulfills your life for some reason(to believe) or causes you act like a nice person, then that's good.
but religious people certainly can't argue as to the existence of god based on any kind of facts. and the fact that they are able to inform public policy and the actions of government based on their myth-based belief system is, well... unbelievable.
oh, and mormonism?? scientology?? how did they get anyone to fall for that?
why can't religious people give themselves and other humans credit for anything? why is it always "i wanna thank god for... giving us this win in the football game", or the nascar race, or...beauty pageant... really? that's what god is up to? are the losers on satan's side?
mike, asheville, NC
January 07, 2011 8:30am
I had an old and very dear friend who made violins, Mike. People would write to him saying they could hear the voice of God in his violins, many of which were truly superb.
He'd write back to say "thankyou" but add, "please do not give God any credit for my work. I spent a lot of time researching and learning how to make my violins, I am very good at it, and I am an atheist"
I hope there is a Heaven somewhere where he and God can laugh over this. I know I do - when I remember the little old man who made beautiful violins, and generously lent them freely to people - because he thought money was rubbish too.
Phi, Sydney
March 23, 2011 12:55am
I just listened to this one in my car and I was yelling at Brian. Though he was quite correct throughout this episode he was VERY wrong about one thing. There HAS been genetic research done SPECIFICALLY to challenge the Book of Mormon's assertion of Native South and North American Indians. In 2003 Dr. Thomas Murphy (a former professor of mine, and a personal/professional hero) argued his dissertation at the University of Washington titled "Imagining Lamanites: Native Americans and the Book of Mormon". Needless to say, the LDS Church was none too pleased. They gave him the choice of recanting or facing excommunication. He has been regarded as the LDS version of Galileo
Hailey, University of Oklahom
May 19, 2011 4:05pm
I've recently become an ex-Mormon and yes, most Mormons do take the history in the BoM and most have been born into the church while few are converts. I left, as a convert, because of the utter disappoints in the temple ceremony and found an article proving that the BoM was writen by Joseph Smith. Mormons also claim to be the true Jews and as a Jew, this is what got me into the church.
I am now an agnostic Jew and a skeptic.
Alex, LA
June 13, 2011 12:23am
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irrespective of the real or non-existence of God it seems to me that all formal religions have a single source in inherited components of human psychology. In some people - for whatever reason - these elements seem to distort themselves into religious neurosis or religious psychosis. Religion and religiosity are probably closer than the religious amongst us like to think, and the latter is the likely cause of the former, which concept is a reversal of the more frequent ordering of the two
From this delusional state, and in combination with deliberate fraud - marketed through emotional vulnerability - the mythical histories emerge - generally accompanied with a land grab on behalf of the adherents. Sometimes, as in Judaism, it would seem that pre-existing bardic epics become incorporated into the mythologies. On other occasions fictional accounts are deliberately constructed.
There is no real mystery in all this - except perhaps the amount of time, centuries in fact, that it has taken human self awareness to come to grips with this phenomena. In the meantime conflicting religious fictions continue to dominate and disrupt our world ,and the sane amongst us live in disappointment at human stupidity and underdevelopment - and doubt if its continuation is the will of any God.
It is a pity that science and academia should have to waste any time on this nonsense. But we live in a time of theological Reformation. The future will scratch its head over all of this and pity us.
Phi, Sydney
January 04, 2011 1:09pm