Simon Southerton's response to ....

[Rollo Tomasi]

If St. Simon wishes to address a completely different point he is of course fully entitled to do so; but let's not pretend that he is in any way "responding" to Dr. Butler.

We here are not "pretending" anything. Simon himself said he was responding to Dr. Butler's reliance on the Icelandic study.

[The Dude]

FARMS recently published a brief article by John Butler addressing questions about the BofM and DNA research. In that article, Dr. Butler wrote this:

<snip>

Simon Southerton has posted this response on RfM:

Butler's citation of the Iceland study is completely unnecessary, as many debates on this board have shown--and most of us agree--that the lamanite DNA issue is one of scripture interpretation and not science. But to keep up appearances that he is on top of the issues, Simon gives a rebuttal to the Iceland study. Round-and-round-and-round....

[Rollo Tomasi]

It may be what Bruce R McConkie (and others) thought it meant. Not what every LDS has to think it means.

Agreed. But I think it does give insight as to what the author(s) meant by the word "principal" when the Introduction was first published in 1981. That was my point.

Nor is it scripture.

Agreed, which is why it can be easily corrected.

[katherine the great]

Katherine:

I think if there were zero selection pressure to keep resistance to smallpox, etc., it would very likely be lost from 600 BC-1492 AD.

Thank you Dude.

[Pahoran]

If St. Simon wishes to address a completely different point he is of course fully entitled to do so; but let's not pretend that he is in any way "responding" to Dr. Butler.

We here are not "pretending" anything. Simon himself said he was responding to Dr. Butler's reliance on the Icelandic study.

But he was not, and yet you kept up the pretense on his behalf.

Bruce's Doctrine is not an authoritative source of "LDS theology" ....

I disagree.

I know you do, even though you know perfectly well that I'm right. Your undeniable anti-Mormon agenda simply won't let you admit it.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Rollo Tomasi]

We here are not "pretending" anything. Simon himself said he was responding to Dr. Butler's reliance on the Icelandic study.

But he was not, and yet you kept up the pretense on his behalf.

[Daniel Peterson]

I brought Dr. Southerton's comment to Dr. Butler's attention in a post that I sent last night. Dr. Butler replied, this morning, that he sees nothing in Dr. Southerton's reply that merits a response. I'm inclined to agree.

[smac97]

Rollo,

>> Smac97: LDS theology has nothing to say about undetectable DNA.

> Rollo: But it certainly has as to detectable DNA:

==No, it doesn't. Elder McConkie's opinion does not establish "LDS theology."

> Simon himself quotes many passages from the BofM in his book, Losing a Lost Tribe.

==I know. It doesn't change the fact that he is arguing against contemporary interpretations of those verses, not the verses themselves.

>> Chapter and verse, please, as to where Joseph Smith quotes Moroni "as describing American Indians as 'literal descendants of Abraham.'"

> Joseph Smith's journal entry for November 9, 1835 ("[Moroni] said the Indians were the literal descendants of Abraham ...."), quoted in Dean Jessee, The Papers of Joseph Smith, Vol. 2, p. 70.

==Wow! Thanks! You're pretty fly...for an Anti.

>> Smac97: An even assuming Joseph said this, so what? Is he wrong? Has so-called "DNA evidence" precluded the possibility?

> Rollo: Certainly not; my problem is that I expected DNA to support this and many other similar teachings and beliefs (when, in fact, it doesn't support them in the least).

=="DNA evidence" neither supports nor refutes the Book of Mormon.

==I don't think your expectation was reasonable.

...

>> Pahoran: Bruce's Doctrine is not an authoritative source of "LDS theology" ....

> Rollo: I disagree.

==Disagree away. It doesn't make Elder McConkie's opinion "an authoritative source of 'LDS theology.'" The very source you are citing, Mormon Doctrine, expressly states that it is his (McConkie's) own opinion and not endorsed by the LDS Church (does anyone have the actual text of the disclaimer handy? Rollo?).

> And I further submit that his statement about American Indians' "dominant blood lineage" reflects what was meant by "principal" when the BofM Introduction was first published in 1981.

==First, the Introduction to the Book of Mormon is not a part of the canonical text. Please note that you continue to argue for your position by quoting contemporary interpretations of the Book of Mormon, not the text of the Book of Mormon itself.

==Second, I understand that McConkie is a likely candidate for the author of the Introduction. So using one statement of McConkie to corroborate another doesn't really do much for me.

The Dude,

> Butler's citation of the Iceland study is completely unnecessary, as many debates on this board have shown--and most of us agree--that the lamanite DNA issue is one of scripture interpretation and not science.

==AMEN!

==So, the real question is this: Does "LDS theology" mandate inerrancy of scriptural interpretation by its leaders? No. In fact, LDS theology virtually precludes such a notion.

-Smac

[smac97]

Rollo,

>> Jan: It may be what Bruce R McConkie (and others) thought it meant. Not what every LDS has to think it means.

> Rollo: Agreed. But I think it does give insight as to what the author(s) meant by the word "principal" when the Introduction was first published in 1981. That was my point.

==Great! So we are all in agreement. Southerton's "point" has nothing to say about the Book of Mormon text itself, but rather contemporary interpretations of the text.

-Smac

[Lachoneus]

(does anyone have the actual text of the disclaimer handy? 

Preface

This work on Mormon Doctrine is designed to help persons seeking salvation to gain that knowledge of God and his laws without which they cannot hope for an inheritance in the celestial city.

Since it is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance of God and his laws, and since man is saved no faster than he gains knowledge of Jesus Christ and the plan of salvation, it follows that men are obligated at their peril to learn and apply the true doctrines of the gospel.

This gospel compendium will enable men, more effectively, to "teach one another the doctrine of the kingdom"; to "be instructed more perfectly in theory, in principle, in doctrine, in the law of the gospel, in all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient" for them "to understand." (D. & C. 88:77-78.)

For the work itself, I assume sole and full responsibility.

Salt Lake City, Utah

June 1, 1958

[Brant Gardner]

Rollo Tomasi:

Speaking only for myself, the teachings I heard and read throughout my life concerning the "Lamanite" lineage of Native Americans (including Polynesians, Maoris, etc.) led me (initially) to expect that Native American DNA would reveal some Semitic connection.

You wouldn't be the first person in a religion or a school or anywhere else to form an opinion that was different from what the official voice of the religion/school/organization had said. I am aware of quite a few things that become something quite different once the media has "translated" them for wide belief.

You aren't really saying that the church was wrong because you were?

[Rollo Tomasi]

No, it doesn't. Elder McConkie's opinion does not establish "LDS theology."

As I said above, I do think it offers valuable insight into what the author(s) meant by the word "principal" when the Introduction was first published in 1981.

Simon himself quotes many passages from the BofM in his book, Losing a Lost Tribe.

==I know.  It doesn't change the fact that he is arguing against contemporary interpretations of those verses, not the verses themselves.

I agree to a certain extent, but some of the passages he quotes seem very clear regardless of a contemporary interpretation.

Wow!  Thanks!  You're pretty fly...for an Anti.

My name is not "fly," and don't call me pretty (with apologies to the Airplane! movie).

"DNA evidence" neither supports nor refutes the Book of Mormon.

And this first part is what is so disheartening for some.

Disagree away.  It doesn't make Elder McConkie's opinion "an authoritative source of 'LDS theology.'"  The very source you are citing, Mormon Doctrine, expressly states that it is his (McConkie's) own opinion and not endorsed by the LDS Church ....

But, despite such a disclaimer, even David O. McKay recognized that the membership was treating the book as representing official Church doctrine (which is why DOM, unsuccessfully as it turned out, tried to make sure that didn't happen). See Gregory A. Prince, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, pp. 49-53.

[Corky Wallace]

I'm going to ask some of our geneticists about the Iceland study & conclusions, but there is a fairly simple explanation for how lineage charts & DNA evidence sometimes don't line up: marital infidelity.

Even in the animal kingdom it's not uncommon for males in a mated pair to act as the father for offspring that is not their own.

Among human beings I think everyone can agree there would be lots & lots of "surprises" if the entire population was tested - even using simple blood type tests.

Does the Iceland study blow the top off anthropological genetics as a science? Or is the incongruence of DNA & lineage charting a lark, a convenient dismissal of genetics to protect religious ideologies?

Stay tuned...

[Brant Gardner]

Rollo Tomasi:

Actually, I thought Southerton's overall point was to explain why the Icelandic folks living 300 years ago have a dearth of living descendants in Iceland today.

If that is true, then Southerton is skewing his proposition. His tests go the other direction, from modern to ancient. He is making an assumption about the ancient based on the present.

The Iceland data tell us that such presumptions can lead to a misunderstanding of what the DNA data tell us. In this case, it is known to skew the inheritance. This is the problem of going backward - it inherently becomes simpler when the reality of reverse geneology is exactly the reverse. Or ancestry increases exponentially. Our DNA lineage decreases to a single ancestor.

[Rollo Tomasi]

You wouldn't be the first person in a religion or a school or anywhere else to form an opinion that was different from what the official voice of the religion/school/organization had said. I am aware of quite a few things that become something quite different once the media has "translated" them for wide belief.

I believe that my understanding was consistent with what most members traditionally thought on the subject (and what leaders believed and taught, as well). Do you believe I was out-of-step with the majority thought of LDS leaders and members on this subject?

You aren't really saying that the church was wrong because you were?

No. Just that the traditional belief and teaching on this issue was wrong.

[Beowulf]

I have lived my whole life (50 years!) in the Church, and yet I was not the least bit flummoxed by non-appearance of Jewish (read: Cohen clan) DNA in Native Americans. Nor did I see it contradicting the 1981 preface to the BofM, calling the BofM characters the "principal" ancestors of Native Americans.

Believe it or not, I actually read that preface as a concession to the idea that the BofM characters were not the ONLY ancestors of modern Native Americans, and that there were many others.

I think Southerton and others (like our friend Rollo) are the naive ones here, being unable to sort out Mormon folk belief from what the text actually says and what the evidence on the ground says (archeological and otherwise).

Beowulf

[Pahoran]

We here are not "pretending" anything.  Simon himself said he was responding to Dr. Butler's reliance on the Icelandic study.

But he was not, and yet you kept up the pretense on his behalf.

He certainly was; he listed several reasons why Dr. Butler's reliance on the Icelandic study may be misplaced. If that's not a response, I don't know what is.

Something that actually responded to what Dr. Butler argued would be. Since Dr. Butler argued that the Icelandic study proved that DNA studies fail to detect actual ancestors in the real world, St. Simon's verbose waffle about why people who lived 300 years ago don't have any living descendants is deliberately talking past Dr. Butler, and fails entirely to address his argument.

Still, I suppose it's enough to satisfy his fawning acolytes on the apostates-only club that he has "responded." Which is probably the reason for his blatantly disingenuous pretense.

I know you do, even though you know perfectly well that I'm right.

Actually I don't, "perfectly" or otherwise.

Rollo, Rollo, Rollo, you and I both know that you are much too intelligent and well-informed to actually believe the anti-Mormon falsehood that Bruce's Doctrine is an authoritative source of LDS theology.

Your undeniable anti-Mormon agenda simply won't let you admit it.

Do you include Bruce McConkie's words in that "agenda"?

I imagine your agenda has room for any statement from any source that you can exploit for polemical purposes.

Regards,

Pahoran

[The Dude]

==So, the real question is this: Does "LDS theology" mandate inerrancy of scriptural interpretation by its leaders? No. In fact, LDS theology virtually precludes such a notion.

-Smac

Well, that's one question and you may be right. But there is another related questions: are there limits on how far the Book of Mormon story can be reinterpreted before it becomes meaningless and void? Or is it so ambiguously constructed, and "LDS theology" so absurdly maleable, that really anything--anything--is possible? What are the limits of this liberal theology?

(Imagine that a time-viewing device is invented that allows us to scan the history of North and South America during the period of 600BC-400AD. If this technology finds nothing whatsoever indicating that Lehi & co. arrived in this hemisphere, is the BoM then proven as non-historical? Or is it so ambiguously phrased that LDS leaders and apologists would be able to propose that Lehi & co. settled a different continent, or even a different planet or parallel universe? )

[Brant Gardner]

Corky Wallace:

Or is the incongruence of DNA & lineage charting a lark, a convenient dismissal of genetics to protect religious ideologies

I suspect it will take some time before the popular ideas about what the DNA lineages mean and what the scientists think they mean begin to line up. A simple example is the popular press discussion of the "genetic Eve" a while back. The scientific tracing to a single woman somehow was extrapolated to their only being a single woman at the time - which is not what the science said nor intended.

The current abuse of DNA with respect to the Book of Mormon is a similar conflict between popular understanding and scientific understanding.

There is no scientific issue between the Book of Mormon and DNA.

There is a theological issue that relates to the way you understand the various statements about the Book of Mormon as the sole progenitors of the Native Americans.

What is amazing about this particular controversy is that it people still try to clothe it in terms of DNA. The theological problem has been around forever. Before DNA it was blood-type. Before blood-type it was the dating of the arrival of people into the New World. Science has been telling us for a very long time that the hemisphic exclusivity of Book of Mormon peoples doesn't fit. I suspect that the reason that DNA has received the press is a side-effect of programs like CSI or the various Cold Case shows that report the scientific power of DNA in cases of some mystery.

Since Southerton has agreed that there isn't a scientific issue, I think it should be time for the ruse of a scientific conflict would be dropped and we can get on to discussing everyone's view of prophetic vs personal utterances.

[Pahoran]

I'm going to ask some of our geneticists about the Iceland study & conclusions, but there is a fairly simple explanation for how lineage charts & DNA evidence sometimes don't line up: marital infidelity.

Even in the animal kingdom it's not uncommon for males in a mated pair to act as the father for offspring that is not their own. 

Among human beings I think everyone can agree there would be lots & lots of "surprises" if the entire population was tested - even using simple blood type tests.

Does the Iceland study blow the top off anthropological genetics as a science?  Or is the incongruence of DNA & lineage charting a lark, a convenient dismissal of genetics to protect religious ideologies?

Stay tuned...

Corky,

entertaining though it may be for you to speculate about an entire population behaving like the characters in Desperate Housewives, I'm afraid the reality is far less titillating: population genetics is simply incapable of detecting all ancestors. In fact, for any given individual, it can detect only one or two ancestors from any specified generation. You have sixteen great-great-grandparents, each of whom contributed to your DNA, but only one of them gave you her mitochondrial DNA. If you are male, you have a Y chromosome, and only one of your sixteen great-great-grandparents gave you that. Thus, if you are male, it is possible to detect two of your sixteen great-great-grandparents; while if you are female, it is possible to detect only one.

So no, the Iceland study does not "blow the top off anthropological genetics as a science," it simply highlights its limitations.

But clearly it's not only positive "religious ideologies" that need protection.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Homestar Runner]

I'd just like to point out that the vast majority of all DNA-related message board threads have 95% of their original relevant points lost to the later posts.

In fact, griping about McConkie, FARMS peer-review, Sister Klambert's personal opinions expressed in her sunday school class, and Dr. Peterson's alleged nasty backbiting habits of virulence, all represent "issue drift".

HSR

[takes bow]

[Brant Gardner]

Rollo Tomasi:

I believe that my understanding was consistent with what most members traditionally thought on the subject (and what leaders believed and taught, as well). Do you believe I was out-of-step with the majority thought of LDS leaders and members on this subject?

Of course you were not out of step. There are any number of Sunday School doctrines that are passed along quite firmly, and are just as much wrong.

What I am suggesting is that:

1) This has nothing to do with science. Even Southerton has admitted that.

2) If it isn't science, then we are arguing theology.

3) What you are arguing has nothing to do with the Book of Mormon, but the nature of the church's method of teaching Sunday School.

Are you prepared to suggest that Sunday School classes are determinative of the church's official position?

You aren't really saying that the church was wrong because you were?

No. Just that the traditional belief and teaching on this issue was wrong.

To be clear, you cannot say that THE traditional belief and teaching was wrong. You may say that A tradtional belief and teaching was wrong.

In any case, the question is what this means for the church as an institution. Since I can't think of any institution that has never taught anything that was later discovered to be incorrect, the problem isn't in the teaching. The problem is that when we take something that is normal in the secular world and place inside a religion, we make up an entire argument based on the presence of such and such inside religion.

In this case, you would have to suggest that all popular opinions were representative of revelation from God. Good luck.

[Rollo Tomasi]

If that is true, then Southerton is skewing his proposition. His tests go the other direction, from modern to ancient. He is making an assumption about the ancient based on the present.

I have no problem with this; I think Simon's issue is that the Icelandic study is not particularly relevant to Dr. Butler's conclusion because LDS theology would not seem to allow for the same effect on BofM peoples as the Icelandic folks 300 years ago. That is why I suggest the Church's revisiting past, incorrect assumptions, beliefs and teachings may be in order.

[Rollo Tomasi]

Rollo, Rollo, Rollo, you and I both know that you are much too intelligent and well-informed to actually believe the anti-Mormon falsehood that Bruce's Doctrine is an authoritative source of LDS theology.

Well, David O. McKay was fearful enough that the membership was treating the book in this exact fashion.

[Brant Gardner]

The Dude:

But there is another related questions: are there limits on how far the Book of Mormon story can be reinterpreted before it becomes meaningless and void? Or is it so ambiguously constructed, and "LDS theology" so absurdly maleable, that really anything--anything--is possible? What are the limits of this liberal theology?

Fascinating question, particularly given the extremely liberal early position of the church vis-a-vis just about anything. Joseph Smith certainly didn't think twice about reading/reinterpreting Biblical history. Brethren in the early church were quite willing to posit a very old earth (at least compared to others of the time - they were still off by a long shot, even though they were talking millions, if I recall correctly).