Hard Core Christianity (sorta) Responds to BOM DNA issue

I notified the blogger, Melissa Travis, at Hard Core Christianity of my article in response to her original article, "Genetic Evidence: The Achilles Heels of Mormonism." claiming that DNA studies are fatal to Mormonism's claims. She sent me this reply:

The article was based on research papers as recent as 2011 from geneticists, physical anthropologists, and archaeologists that was covered in one of my grad school human origins courses. I didn't include even half of the resources in the article, since it was intended for the popular-level audience.

Her words me of this exchange between Paul Owen, who like Melissa Travis, is a Biola grad, and John Weldon, who does not have an accredited degree, on discussing Mormon scholarship:

How convenient it is to take the "Keep It Simple Stupid" (KISS) approach. That way, whenever someone points out that you have neglected important scholarly arguments against your position, you can just say that you were more interested in communicating to the "simple laypeople."

 This is even stranger in Melissa Travis's case because her degree is accredited and she is trained in science communication. Melissa continues:

It's a blog article, not a journal paper. However, I stand behind all assertions, and I can provide sound scholarship to support them. Of course, the LDS church has their own rebuttals. I read the FARM arguments. None were compelling.

I was not asking for a full-blown rebuttal of FARMS arguments. The problem with her article is that she does not demonstrate any awareness of genetic drift, a basic principle in evolutionary biology. I suspected that this stems from that the curriculum through which she was trained does not require any training in evolution. She does not explain if she is not aware of genetic drift, or she just refuses to engage it. She hides from her readers the complexity of the issue.

They have their own version of which data is "good" and which data is "bad." The argument from genetic analysis isn't even necessary for discrediting Mormonism (it falls all on its own), I just found it particularly interesting, since my background is genetic research.

I agree with her that Mormonism doesn't stand or fall on this issue. I am also raising this issue because it is a hard-science issue, not because the DNA issue is central to the LDS Church's claims. But if she is as interested in genetics as she claims to be (and I believe she is), why did she not talk about genetic drift? Who isn't interested in genetic drift? My guess is that anything about evolution is blacked out in the Biola curriculum. In regards to "The argument from genetic analysis isn't even necessary for discrediting Mormonism (it falls all on its own)," I recommend she take her own advice. Finally, Melissa said:

You use the term "fundamentalist" improperly. Anyone who holds to any religion or atheistic belief system can be correctly termed a fundamentalist. Using it pejoratively is intellectually careless. 

I made the change without further argument. In our subsequent discussion, she notified me that the Bat Creek Stone finding has been challenged. I will post the link she provided, here: http://www.ramtops.co.uk/bat1.html.

Book of Mormon DNA: Response to Evangelical Critic

Someone notified me of yet another evangelical Christian using the DNA argument against the Book of Mormon, to which I will respond. This time it is from Melissa Travis, who runs a blog called Hard Core Christianity.
I enjoyed much of the blog, as I am a big fan of John Lennox and Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism (although she forgot the punchline to the argument: There are false beliefs that are useful for survival). But I am afraid her analysis of the Book of Mormon DNA issue is shallow. Richard Mouw, the president of Fuller has said has said that Evangelicals have not kept up with the latest scholarship in regards to Mormonism, and Travis's analysis stands in this category. The following is her post with regards to the limited geography theory, espoused by most LDS scholars:

As for the hypothesis that the Lamanites stayed in Central America as a small population, this is highly unlikely. There should be at least a detectable trace of even a small population’s contribution to the gene pool of that region.

Travis missed the admission by leading BOM DNA critic Simon Southerton:

7. The bottleneck effect, genetic drift, and other technical problems would prevent us from detecting Israelite genes.
In 600 BC there were probably several million American Indians living in the Americas. If a small group of Israelites, say less than thirty, entered such a massive native population, it would be very hard to detect their genes today. However, such a scenario does not square with what the Book of Mormon plainly states and with what the prophets have taught for 175 years.

Setting aside whether Southerton is right on what the BOM "plainly" teaches, he does acknowledge that yes, it would be very hard to detect Israelite DNA when genetic drift and bottleneck effect if the LGT held.  These are basic principles of evolutionary biology. When we have a small colony like Lehi's integrating with a large native population, chance changes in allele frequencies can lead to a complete disappearance of genes. In addition, the genocide perpetrated by white settlers reduced 90% of the native population, and according to Ugo Perego, about one third of the native gene pool. Travis is at least as well-qualified as I am, with an M.A. from Biola in "Science and Religion" and a bachelor's in biology. One wonders how she is not familiar with these concepts. Assuming that she did her bachelor's at Biola as well, I looked on Biola's catalog and there's no class devoted to evolutionary biology. Perhaps that is why.

Travis continues:

The problem with the LDS teaching does not stop with the genetic data. Archaeology has revealed no evidence of an ancient migration of Jews to the Americas. There are no artifacts that link the New World with ancient Israel.

This is a misinformed statement. Cyrus Gordon has pointed out to the Bat Creek Stone. We also have the Las Lunas Decalogue. Neither fit the Book of Mormon timeline, but the eminent Biblical archaeologist William F. Albright has confirmed the presence of Egyptian hieroglyphs on a cylinder seal in Mesoamerica dating to 600-300 BCE, which falls in the period in which the Book of Mormon was written. The BOM was written with a modified Egyptian script.

Travis also claims:

Rather, the Bible gives a history of the Israelite people (some of whom still live in their ancestral homeland), a history that is not threatened by the data from molecular anthropology, archaeology, and linguistic studies. The Out of Africa model of human origins and dispersal, which is the model best supported by the various sub-disciplines of anthropology, indicates a recent origin of humanity in or near the Middle East and a rapid dispersal of humans from that region to the rest of the world. This fits extremely well within the biblical model, which tells of a relatively recent origin of man in a single location and a rapid scattering of humankind from the Tower of Babel.

¿En serio? First, genomic data indicates that humans did not descend from a primal couple, vitiating a literal Adam and Eve. She is apparently speaking on the subject, but unfortunately, doesn't treat it in the blog (aside from citing John Lennox in agreement over the primal couple's historicity). It would be interesting to hear her case. Nevertheless, hers is a minority position.

Furthermore, the Bible lumps the Canaanites with Ham, not Shem (Gen. 9:22), when Canaanites were clearly Semitic, and their DNA, language, and religion bears the most resemblance to Israelite DNA, language, and religion. While Bible scholars dispute whether Biblical religion evolved from Canaanite religion, clearly the two were nearly identical at one point in time before diverging. And let me make one thing clear: I accept the Bible as divinely inspired even though I don't believe the origin myths in the patriarchal narratives to be literal.

She also repeatedly quotes Thomas Murphy on this issue. This is problematic. Murphy is an anthropologist, not a geneticist. Michael F. Whiting, a reviewer for NSF grants, has said that Murphy's work on Book of Mormon genetics would not pass the "muster of peer review."

For these reasons, Melissa's critique is under-argued. But the rest of her blog is interesting and resourceful (in spite of the fact that I am an evolutionist and am proud that my alma mater BYU teaches evolution exclusively).

Deseret News Article on Evolution, dinosaurs, and faith

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865557613/Science-and-faith-Navigating-the-world-of-discovery.html?pg=1

Mormonthink Responds

In response to my objection that the impossibility of a literal Adam and Eve disprove LDS claims, Mormonthink stated the following:

We appreciate this response to the critics' issues regarding Adam & Eve and welcome the dialogue between critic and believer. However, we take issue with the charge that MT's critics 'cherry-picked' quotes from General Authorities supporting a literal Adam & Eve. We have been unable to find any quotes from General Authorities or LDS scriptures that suggest that the story of Adam & Eve should not be taken literally.

Thanks to MT for their response. The "cherrypicking" I was talking about is about LDS statements on evolution. MT chose General Authority quotes most antagonistic towards evolution, ignoring statements more friendly. I already responded to MT in the comments in the previous posts. And it looks like FAIR has already planned a full-fledged response to each issue MT raises. Below I will just mention issues that I do not think FAIR will address, mostly regarding the curious manner in which MT presents its evidence.

1. MT is unsuccessful in demonstrating how Adam and Eve could not have existed. They claim that the truth of evolution and our relatedness to apes shows that Adam and Eve were mythical. It does no such thing, since Adam and Eve could have been the first homosapiens at some cutoff. What they should have done is point to evidence from the genome showing that the human population has never been under 10,000.
2. When arguing for the validity of evolution, they miss clearly the strongest argument for evolution - that is, that human chromosome 2 is a fusion of chimp chromosome 2a and 2b. They put it in a link but do not discuss it. The genomic evidence they do cite - interrelatedness of species, pseudogenes - are not as compelling. The interrelatedness of species is merely a correlation; with chromosomal fusion, we have a causal mechanism. Pseudogenes are not really "pseudo" because uses were found for the genes previously thought to be junk.
3. This is something MT put in the comments to my previous post:

   "evolution is the official explanation for human origins taught at LDS institutions of higher learning" But this is not the official LDS Church position. If you can document otherwise, we will be happy to add it.

   I concur with MT here, which is why I am curious as to why they posted the Ensign article by Donald Parry asserting the literalness of the Flood and talk about how Church-approved the Ensign is. Ensign is not official church doctrine either. And Parry is a Bible scholar, not a scientist. He was my Old Testament professor at BYU, and I can tell you that he does not believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch, as MT claims the LDS Church teaches. It would be more proper if MT quoted Parry on their section on Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch than in a science-related topic.
4. Again, what MT said in the comments:

   If not, then there is nothing authoritative for MT to add, because if we were to do so, we would be called out for "trusting in the arm of flesh".

   If they really are scared of being challenged for "trusting in the arm of the flesh," why are they posting all this secular knowledge?

It is clearly MT's agenda to demonstrate conflict between LDS teachings and the data, with science education serving only as fodder, as is evidenced by the haphazard manner they present the evidence for evolution and against Adam and Eve.

UPDATE: I just found this article in the Deseret News.

Our Secular Critics and the Adam and Eve Myth

The people over at the Orwellian "Mormonthink," in their section, "Conflicts with Science," paint the picture that because Mormonism depends on founding Biblical myths like Adam and Eve, the Flood, and Babel, the scientific impossibility of these myths disprove Mormonism. "Mormonthink" actually stifles the thought of its readers by oversimplifying the issue.

I won't offer a full-blown correction of all their errors. Nevermind that Mormonthink's (henceforth MT's) representation of the LDS Church's stance on evolution is woefully and misleadingly incomplete (cherrypicking Church statements, ignoring that evolution is the official explanation for human origins taught at LDS institutions of higher learning). MT's argument with regards to Adam and Eve and the Church is fallacious. Their first error is making a roundabout, convoluted argument that because evolution happened, Adam and Eve could not have existed, because people are related to apes, etc. If I were arguing their case, all I have to do is cite the genomic evidence showing that not all humans descended from a primal couple! They can thank me later for improving the sophistication and succinctness of their argument.

I also won't go into the myriad of ways that Adam and Eve can be interpreted allegorically within the LDS tradition (For one, MT must have missed strong cues in the temple ceremony). What I will do is introduce a better test if facts regarding Adam and Eve can sink the Mormon case. If the myth was formulated at a very late date, i.e., after Lehi allegedly left Jerusalem, then Mormonism would be false, because the Adam and Eve tradition would be anachronistic. But the Book of Mormon does not require Adam and Eve to be real. It only requires that the tradition predates the Babylonian exile.

I have considered the possibility that Israelites formulated the Fall tradition in exile as a way to allegorize their expulsion from the Promised Land. The myth also may have been due to Zoroastrian influence during the exile. Zoroastrian myths hold all humans descending from a primal couple, when all other Ancient Near Eastern creation accounts like the Enuma Elish do not.

However, there is evidence that Adam and Eve account in Gen. 2-3 was written during the Assyrian exile, which started in 722 B.C., well before Lehi left Jerusalem (See Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Eden Narrative [Eisenbrauns, 2007]) . So the Adam and Eve story could have been available on the Brass Plates.

Just because George Washington existed does not require that he literally chopped down the cherry tree. Myths can be joined with history, and that is one among many things MT blatantly ignores.