http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131120-science-native-american-people-migration-siberia-genetics/

Everytime a discussion on social media about DNA and book of Mormon pops up, apt LDS defenders post links to this article.

It most certainly couldn't be Jewish DNA if the DNA goes back 24,000 years. That length of time destroys the Biblical literalist's timeline anyway, but I suppose tbms will just say something ignorant like "carbon dating isn't that accurate" and not give this glaring contradiction a second thought.

If there's the scantiest plausibility, or the appearance thereof, the tbm will take it. What's annoying: if we say "DNA disproves the book of Mormon" the amateur apologist might point to this article and say "look, they're lying."

If someone posted this link in a discussion you were hosting about the Book of Mormon, how would you respond?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/10/2015 10:41AM by Cold-Dodger.

> If someone posted this link in a discussion you
> were hosting about the Book of Mormon, how would
> you respond?

i would agree with the article

and then i would argue the timeline by posting this link:

https://www.lds.org/ensign/1998/01/the-flood-and-the-tower-of-babel?lang=eng

"There is a third group of people—those who accept the literal message of the Bible regarding Noah, the ark, and the Deluge. Latter-day Saints belong to this group. In spite of the world’s arguments against the historicity of the Flood, and despite the supposed lack of geologic evidence, we Latter-day Saints believe that Noah was an actual man, a prophet of God, who preached repentance and raised a voice of warning, built an ark, gathered his family and a host of animals onto the ark, and floated safely away as waters covered the entire earth."


if they try to argue against carbon dating let them - the belief in a literal global flood a few thousand years ago is a far bigger problem for them to explain

maybe someone else has a better angle but that's how i would go about it

Here's a previous thread about it:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1531796,1531796#msg-1531796

http://simonsoutherton.blogspot.com/

If someone wants to see an example of one's brain on Mormonism, a couple of my friends took one of the faithful apologists to task in the comments section, but he obviously had his blinders and earplugs firmly in place.

>Not surprisingly some Mormons reading these headlines have seized upon this research as conclusive proof that Native Americans have Middle Eastern, and thus potentially Jewish, DNA (1, 2, 3, 4). To be fair there are the odd exceptions who have suggested caution in interpreting the research as supporting the Book of Mormon. However, even President Newsroom cited Raghavan's research in the Church's official DNA essay, claiming it proves the picture isn't clear and challenges previous conclusions. In reality, the conclusions being challenged have nothing to do with recent Hebrew migrations and everything to do with major human migration events that took place over 30,000 years ago. There is absolutely nothing in the Raghavan research that supports the Book of Mormon or challenges the mainstream scientific views about the colonization of the New World. Native Americans are still essentially all descended from Asian ancestors.

>Raghavan's research did not appear in a vacuum. It adds another detail to a broad scientific understanding of the timing and route our ancestors took as they colonised the globe. The common ancestors of all humans lived in sub-Saharan Africa. They began migrating "out of Africa" about 80,000 years ago and by about 50,000 years ago had colonized Western Asia, India and Southeast Asia and Australia (Fig.1). Eastern Asia was colonised by people derived from this southern migration event. By about 40,000 years ago people arrived in Europe and Central Asia via a northern route, finally reaching the Americas between 15 and 25,000 years ago.

Bingo. Here's a direct link to dismantling the article:

http://simonsoutherton.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-great-dna-surprise.html?m=1

"Great Surprise"—Native Americans have African origins as do the rest of us.

AND all of us have Neanderthal origins---some more so than others...

I have noticed some LDS members conflating the 6 days of creation in the Bible with the 6,000 years in D&C 77. Maybe they do this on purpose to try to make science fit or maybe they are just confused.

The LDS church that I once belonged to taught me that the creation of the earth took 6 "days", or intervals of time, not necessarily 1,000 years for each day. But after Adam fell and became mortal, the clock began ticking for the events of people to unfold and happen. I learned that D&C 77 was the time from the mortal Adam up to the time of Christ's return: 6,000 years and then Christ will come back to earth and there will be 1,000 years of the millennium.

Anyway, when some Mormons I have talked with take things like that National Geographic article, they don't seem to comprehend that it was before Adam. They try to say that we don't know how long the creation took, but that is a different matter than how long ago Adam became mortal. If they followed the teachings of their church they would have to conclude that the remains studied in that article were not from Adam.

The idea that one day equals a thousand years comes from 2 Peter 3:8. I think they make too much of it.

Some make too much of it for Genesis and the church allows for a much longer period of time for the creation. But not for D&C 77.

I was taught that each "day" was merely representative of a phase of the creation process.

I'm pretty sure neither Nephi nor Jared migrated through Siberia, which is where this proof comes from.

If I tried to share the information with my TBM friend, I'd just get the same response - that the carbon dating is wrong.

I'd point out that they were being hypocritical by accepting
science when they think it helps their case but rejecting
science when it doesn't. This cherry-picking of the evidence is
what crackpots do, not honest seekers of truth.

I'd further point out, as everyone has mentioned, that the
existence of a human being 24,000 years old disproves Mormonism.

Yeah my DW sent this to me. All I had to do was say 24,000 years and that was the end of the conversation. I really don't see where they have any legs to stand on after the 24,000 years.

I haven't heard anything about it since I pointed that out.

It makes me laugh though. Mormons always say "You don't need evidence. It's all about faith." Yet they are always running out trying to point out evidence they have found. Which never seems to work out in the end. You'd think they'd just give up trying to prove the church true.

That's contrary to the BoM.

Alma 32 - the mustard seed experiment.

Especially look at verse 34: "And now, behold, is your knowledge perfect? Yea, your knowledge is perfect in that thing, and your faith is dormant; and this because you know..." - well, the rest of the verse is garbage, but this point is something every Mormon should memorize. Knowledge makes faith dormant. Knowledge trumps faith. Obtaining knowledge is the objective of exercising faith (corollary).

That's a thought.

Moose, stop quoting that fake crap at me :P



How ya doin buddy?

one of their own.


ETA: I'll e-mail ya in the next day or so.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/11/2015 06:26PM by moose.

The best weapon against a combatant is a bigger, stronger, faster, more accurate weapon with a superior range, skilfully deployed by a professional outside the range of their inferior weapon.

George Boole is still the greatest arms manufacturer the world has ever known.

Well this is an inconvenient find, that Indians came from Russia? Maybe the scientists don't know as much as they thought they did after all. What if all this new "indians came from china" talk is misguided?

As with everything else, in 20 years they'll be saying something else as absolute truth. One thing about science is that it is always changing and never finds the truth, lol!

They didn't come from Russia, they had a shared ancestry with people 24,000 years ago who were in Siberia.

Here is the summary from the report published in the Journal of science "Nature".

"Our study has four important implications. First, we find evidence that contemporary Native Americans and western Eurasians share ancestry through gene flow from a Siberian Upper Palaeolithic population into First Americans. Second, our findings may provide an explanation for the presence of mtDNA haplogroup X in Native Americans, which is related to western Eurasians but not found in east Asian populations29. Third, such an easterly presence in Asia of a population related to contemporary western Eurasians provides a possibility that non-east Asian cranial characteristics of the First Americans13 derived from the Old World via migration through Beringia, rather than by a trans-Atlantic voyage from Iberia as proposed by the Solutrean hypothesis30. Fourth, the presence of an ancient western Eurasian genomic signature in the Baikal area before and after the LGM suggests that parts of south-central Siberia were occupied by humans throughout the coldest stages of the last ice age."

Why would it be inconvenient? It provides ammo to counter Rod Meldrum's haplogroup x theory and it counters the Solutrean hypothesis with a more plausible explanation backed up with evidence.

In response I'd remark how cool it is that DNA can help establish conjectures once thought ludicrous. An example:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140129-neanderthal-genes-genetics-migration-africa-eurasian-science/

A few weeks ago some here were engaging in what I saw as some "unnecessary--and over-hyped--dramatics" on one off-topic subject or another, and I countered with some simple facts and "common sense" analysis...

That one prompted a "Buzzkill" retort from one of the the D.Q.'s (that's not "Dairy" folks), and it's a label I'll wear proudly. Afterall, we cabbies are routinely charged with the sacred duty of transported inebriated sorts to their domiciles, and that occasionaly entails "slapping them sober"--at least verbally--in order to get some coherent answers/directions.

Anyway, I was deeply bothered from the get-go by the claims of "Neanderthal DNA in the modern human genome." I discussed this subject in e-mails with Simon Southerton, who answered the "contamination issues" nicely, and added that Svante Pääbo had "developed new methods" that other geneticists were still "working hard to understand."

Okay, I didn't have a problem with that; my problems had to do with the "geography of the deed," i.e. where did these cross-cultural couplings take place? Asia is a really big place. I also stuck in a one liner about how ancient Cro-Magnons--or whichever H. sapiens did the deed--might've had trouble finding compliant Neanderthal women, given that one of those gals could snap a human forearm as easily as we break a dry turkey wishbone during the holiday season...

Here are some "consensus" claims that have emerged:

a) The Neanderthal DNA sequences are found in every human population outside of Africa, from Europe to aboriginal populations in New Guinea and Australia (as well as Native Americans in this hemisphere).

b) They have not been found in African populations, which is what gave rise to the "Interbreeding Theory" in the first place. However, African DNA has not been extensively sampled, and given that humanity's origins are found there, the genetic variability is greater there than anywhere else. This was what first confirmed the "Out of Africa" theory about human migrations, of course.

c) Neanderthal Y-chromosome and mitchondrial DNA has not been found in modern humans, which was what led the first researchers to conclude we were not closely related.

I also get really troubled when the percentage of Neanderthal DNA suddenly jumps from the original 1-4 percent to the 20% figure given in the Nat Geo article "lastofthewine" just linked.

I love Nat Geo; I've recommended subscribing here repeatedly, noting it's wonderful "anti-BOM" reading in addition to helping innoculate people in other areas such as the claims of the Creationists, etc., but as Simon has pointed out, it's often "soft science." In his blog article on those West Eurasian origins of Native Americans he identifies one statement as obvious hyperbole, and having tried to argue with TBM parrots on that one, I couldn't agree more.

National Geographic has "other priors" in my book as well I'll doubtless mention at some point, but right now I'll content myself with pointing out some parts of that organization have apparently been infected with the "Fox virus," and I find that particularly disturbing.

For those not wholly smitten by the "Geico Cavemen sure are sexy!" hype, here's an alternative voice I find particularly compelling:

http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/05/12/more-mystery-about-neanderthal-and-humans-how-reliable-is-ancient-dna-analysis/

>These questions were long a matter a mere speculation. However, advances in DNA technology during the past decade have opened the questions up to scientific investigation. In May 2010, it was reported that a research team led by Paabo had sequenced “the whole Neandertal genome from powdered bone fragments taken from three females who lived in Europe 40,000 years ago.” The sequencing revealed that “[b]etween 1% and 4% of the DNA in modern Europeans, Asians and those as far afield as Papua New Guinea, was inherited from Neanderthals.”

As I noted, there's a huge gap between one and four percent and 20 percent...

>To be perfectly clear, Paabo and his colleagues did not really sequence “the whole Neandertal genome” in precisely the same sense that the whole genome of a person living today can be sequenced and analyzed. As soon as any organism dies, its DNA begins to break down and decay as the nucleotide bonds fall apart. Chemical reactions with water in the ground accelerate the decay. After examining such factors, Danish and Australian researchers reported in 2012 that DNA has a half-life of only 521 years.

>These challenges and complexities raise the possibility of the inadvertent introduction of errors in the sequencing process—even when all precautions are taken by highly professional researchers. These issues also open up any obtained data to different interpretations and to possible limitations in the application of the data.

>Nevertheless, these analytical limitations have not prevented some media outlets from reporting each latest find as if it is clearly definitive and absolutely conclusive. This can give the public faulty impressions of the findings. There is also a disturbing current trend among academic and scientific institutions and agencies (all types of science, not only anthropology) to inflate the significance of certain finds—perhaps to raise the public prominence of their institutions or to increase their chances of obtaining more government funds. The press and public relations departments of science-related institutions and university departments are light-years ahead of where they were a couple decades ago, in terms of their media savvy.

No fooling...

I trust interested--and skeptical--sorts will read the rest of the article (there are also some worthwhile links to discussions of GMO "issues" as well).

>In addition, a little old-fashioned journalistic cynicism could go a long way toward furthering public understanding of complex scientific topics. Journalists should ask tough questions of scientists, just like they do of politicians. (But then, they don’t often do that anymore either, do they?) It would also help if scientists themselves (or their public relations representatives) used less hyperbole in their press releases and other communications with the public.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2015 02:52AM by SL Cabbie.