"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.
Critics of the Book of Mormon have argued that DNA evidence has demonstrated once and for all that the book was contrived by Joseph Smith and is hence a fraud. They appeal to the precision of DNA evidence and tout their conclusions as being objective, verifiable, assumption free, and decisive. However, these critics have not given us anything that would pass the muster of peer review by scientists in this field, because they have ignored the real complexity of the issues involved. Further, they have overlooked the entire concept of hypothesis testing in science and believe that just because they label their results as "based on DNA," they have somehow proved that the results are accurate or that they have designed the experiment correctly. At best, they have demonstrated that the global colonization hypothesis is an oversimplified interpretation of the Book of Mormon. At worst, they have misrepresented themselves and the evidence in the pursuit of other agendas.
I return to my original question: Is testing the Book of Mormon by means of genetic information a fundable research project? I do not think so. Given the complications enumerated above, it is very unclear what would constitute sufficient evidence to reject the hypothesis that the Lamanite lineages were derived from Middle Eastern lineages, since there are so many assumptions that must be met and so many complications that we are not yet capable of sifting through.
I have not made the argument that DNA is not useful for inferring historical events nor that population genetics is inherently wrong. Current research in population genetics is providing marvelous insights into our past and, when properly wielded, is a powerful tool. Nor am I disputing the inference that Native Americans have a preponderance of genes that carry a genetic signature for Asian origination. But what I am saying is that given the complexities of genetic drift, founder effect, and introgression, the observation that Native Americans have a preponderance of Asian genes does not conclusively demonstrate that they are therefore not descendants of the Lamanite lineage, because we do not know what genetic signature that Lamanite lineage possessed at the conclusion of the Book of Mormon record.
If you were to go back in time to when the Book of Mormon is closing and began sampling the DNA of individuals who clearly identified themselves as Lamanites, you might indeed find a strong Asian signature and no trace of a Middle Eastern signature because of the effects, as we have noted, of genetic drift, founder effect, and especially introgression, particularly if the surrounding population was derived from an Asian origin. The point is that the current DNA evidence does not distinguish between this and other possibilities because a study has never been designed to do precisely that.
But in all this discussion of the limitations of DNA analysis, it is important to remember that science is only as good as the hypotheses it sets forth to test. If you test the veracity of the Book of Mormon based on a prediction that you define, then of course you will "prove" it false if it does not meet your prediction. But if the prediction was inappropriate from the beginning, you have not really tested anything.
In sum, the Book of Mormon was never intended to be a record of genetic heritage, but a record of religious and cultural heritage that was passed from generation to generation, regardless of the genetic attributes of the individuals who received that heritage. The Book of Mormon was written more as an "us versus them" record, with the "us" being primarily Nephites and the "them" being a mixture of the genetic descendants of Lamanites plus anyone else who happened to occupy the land at the time. This interpretation accepts as a strong possibility that there was substantial introgression of genes from other human populations into the genetic heritage of the Nephites and Lamanites, such that a unique genetic marker to identify someone unambiguously as a Lamanite, if it ever existed, was quickly lost. It would be the pinnacle of foolishness to base one's testimony on the results of a DNA analysis. As someone who has spent a decade using DNA information to decipher the past, I recognize the tentative nature of all my conclusions, regardless of whether or not they have been based on DNA. There are some very good scientific reasons for why the Book of Mormon is neither easily corroborated nor refuted by DNA evidence, and current attempts to do so are based on dubious science.
One could of course argue that it is impossible to directly test the authenticity of the Book of Mormon with the tools of science, since the Book of Mormon lies within the realm of religion and outside the realm of science. It would be like asking a scientist to design an experiment that tests for the existence of God. There are no data that one could collect to refute the hypothesis that God exists, just as there are no data that one could collect to refute the hypothesis that he does not exist: science simply cannot address the question, and one might argue that the same is true for the Book of Mormon. If one holds this view, and there may be some very good reasons why one might, then there is no need to read any further: DNA can tell us nothing about the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.
However, one might argue that it is possible to indirectly judge the validity of the text by testing the authenticity of the predictions made within the text. If one can demonstrate that some predictions are specifically violated, then perhaps one would have some basis for claiming that the text is false. This is the line of reasoning followed by those who pursue the genetic argument. They suggest that the Book of Mormon makes specific predictions about the genetic structure of the Nephite-Lamanite lineage, that this genetic structure should be identifiable in the descendants of the surviving Lamanites, and that if the Book of Mormon is "true," then these predictions should be verifiable through DNA evidence. The critics argue that the Book of Mormon predicts that the Lamanite lineage should carry the genetic signature of a Middle Eastern origin and that the genetic descendents of the Lamanites are Native Americans. They then scour the literature to show that current DNA research suggests that Native Americans had an Asian origin. These results are then trumpeted as invalidating the authenticity of the text.
However, by simply applying the results of population genetic studies, which again were never intended to test the Lamanite lineage history put forth in the Book of Mormon, these critics have ignored crucial issues that any reputable scientists designing a research program would have to consider. My thesis is that it is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to use DNA sequence information to track the lineage of any group of organisms that has a historical population dynamic similar to that of the Nephites and Lamanites. This is not an argument that the Nephite-Lamanite lineage is somehow immune to investigation through DNA evidence because its record is a religious history, but simply that the Nephite-Lamanite lineage history is an example of a class of problems for which DNA evidence provides--at best--ambiguous solutions. It does not matter to me whether we are talking about humans or fruit flies; you could substitute the term Lamanite with Drosophila and the argument would be the same. The lineage history outlined in the Book of Mormon is a conundrum from a DNA perspective; the critics have grossly underplayed or are ignorant of the complications associated with testing this history. Further, because of the complicated nature of this lineage history, I would suggest that the Book of Mormon can neither be corroborated nor refuted by DNA evidence and that attempts to do so miss the mark entirely. I would be just as critical of someone who claimed that current DNA testing proves the Book of Mormon is true as I would of those who claim that DNA evidence proves it is not true. The Lamanite lineage history is difficult to test through DNA information, DNA provides at best only tangential information about the text, and anyone who argues that it can somehow speak to the authenticity of the text should consider the following complicating factors."
That's from a discourse given by a man named Michael Whiting.
http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=305 - This website provides another discourse too lengthy to reprint here.
http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=312&previous=L3B1YmxpY2F0aW9ucy9kbmEucGhw - So does this website.
http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=314&previous=L3B1YmxpY2F0aW9ucy9kbmEucGhw - And so does this one
It needs to be understood that the Book of Mormon does not purport to contain the history of the ONLY inhabitants of the Americas. Lehi and Nephi found themselves with other peoples when they landed on the shores of south America, and they were outnumbered by them. These groups of people intermarried from the first day on. The existence of "semitic" blood springing from a group of twenty people that assimilated into an entire continent's population over two thousand years ago is a scientific impossibility. The research (which neither tried to prove or disprove the Book of Mormon) has been taken grossly out of context and twisted to prove wrong a theory that was never postulated to begin with.
Many years ago a scientist went to Egypt to study mummies. She was fascinated by them and wanted to do a series of tests on them to find out more about the Egyptian culture. She found in the bones of one mummy traces of cocaine and marijuana. She repeated these tests over a dozen times on this mummy because the conclusions did not agree with history. Cocaine and marijuana did not come to the eastern hemisphere for another thousand years after this mummy was buried. She tested the authenticity of the mummy (many British people during the 18th and 19th century thought it was cool to mummify people). All her tests came back conclusive and she had to arrive at a conclusion that stunned the scientific community. That person had once travelled to South America and returned to die and be buried in Egypt. This woman is far from being a Latter-day Saint, but no evidence has been produced to refute her conclusion, despite numerous attempts to do so. The gambit of scientific research of OUR DAY is beginning to point at the Book of Mormon as one of the most transcendant annals of anthropologic history.
I have many other stories if this one tickled your fancy. I assume you're familiar with Thor Hyerdahl. His book, Kon Tiki proved his theory that the Pacific Islands could have been populated by indigenes South Americans. Everyone on the face of the entire earth told him he was insane, but in the 1940s he constructed a small raft using only materials and methods available and utilized by the Peruvian culture of the time period he guessed made the trip. He arrived safely on a pacific island, and proved the entire scientific community wrong. The funny thing is Joseph Smith already pushed that theory over a hundred years earlier in the Book of Mormon. Thor, by the way, is also far from being a Latter-day Saint.
Joseph Smith made a few waves in the US when he asserted that the early inhabitants of the Americas were civilized. He spoke of roads, cement, writings and polity; but the whole world told him he was an idiot. Everyone at that time knew that they were all savages, uncivilized and primitive. It wasn't till nine years after the publication of the Book of Mormon that a Mr. John L. Stephens uncovered an ancient meso-American city that would forever change the world's perception of the Americas. He found roads, art, cement, languages, and even evidence of polity. Mr. Stevens was never a Latter-day Saint.
There are four very old books that have perplexed scientists for years that come from the country of Peru. They all speak of an Incan legend that a white, bearded God visited them and promised to come back. Similar legends are found in EVERY single ancient American civilization. When Columbus showed up he was mistaken for this God. That's why the Indians allowed him to rape them of their treasures. These books were written by four 16th Century historians, Pedro Cieza de Leon, Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, Juan Betanzos and Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti. They researched a story of a great destruction that was followed by the ministration of a white bearded God. They also speak of a family crossing the ocean and coming to the Americas from a "great tower" where their languages were confounded. Have you ever read the Book of Mormon? It may behoove you to do so. By the way, those men died 250 years before there was a Latter-day Saint on the earth, so it is safe to conclude that they were not Mormons.
Many people denounce the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon based on the assertion that their existed horse and elephants in the Americas during and before Christ's ministry. Scientific evidence showed no support for this idea. In recent years the bones of elephants, mammoths, horses and many other animals mentioned in the Book of Mormon (that were previously believed to be later introduced to the Western Hemisphere) have been discovered and have been shown to predate the Common Era.
Remember in Tommy Boy when the gas station guy tells David Spade, "Get yourself a new map"? Well, today I tell y'all, "Get yourself some new studies."
Slowly the scientific community is coming to the realization that Joseph Smith was either a prophet, or the greatest scientist that the world has ever, or will ever produce. Either way, he's OK in my book.
