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News

Dealing with Facts, Silencing Critics

In a recent discussion on the Reachout Trust Forum someone posted a news story about migrations to America. The story is based on 40,000-year-old footprints found on the edge of a volcano south east of Mexico City.

The discovery challenges the traditionally held view that settlers first crossed the Bering Straits, from Russia to Alaska, at the end of the last ice age, around 11,500 to 11,000 years ago.

Evidence for this theory comes from "Clovis Points" tools used to hunt mammoths found in many locations in the American continent.

But the discovery of footprints provides new evidence that humans settled in the Americas as early as 40,000 years ago, Gonzalez said.

"We think there were several migration waves into the Americas at different times by different human groups."

The implication made by the one posting the story is that, while the migration across the Bering Strait is often cited to "disprove" traditional Mormon claims that America's native population is descended from a small migratory group out of Jerusalem around 600 BC, this discovery calls this into question.

Dealing with Facts

Someone asked how the Mormon Church deals with growing and compelling evidence against Mormon claims for the Book of Mormon story and we posted the following:

Mormonism is dealing with this in three ways.

1. The Mormon Church is officially saying nothing on the sound basis that saying something only draws more attention to the problem. They did exactly the same with Negroes and the priesthood after 1978 and it worked very well.

2. They are leaving it to unofficial organisations like FAIR and FARMS to answer critics in the knowledge that if they come up with some good answers the Mormon Church can own them but if they come up with questionable arguments the Mormon Church can disown them as "unofficial". These organisations are rewriting the laws of science, the facts of history and earlier Mormon claims in an attempt to come up with answers. They are failing and know it.

3. The ordinary Mormon is doing what he/she always does, i.e. trusting that "the brethren" know what they are doing, that there is an answer somewhere but it hasn't been found yet, after all the church is true therefore this must be a glich - and blaming the "anti-Mormons" for it all.

The truth is, however, that I see no difficulties presented by this new discovery. The debate over migration from Jerusalem was never over whether man moved across ice at the Bering Straits. It is clear that he probably did. Nor was it about whether there were other migrations. It would be peculiar if there were not. It was about the traditional view taught in Mormonism that the migrations from Jerusalem and from the Tower of Babel described in the Book of Mormon, account for the entire population of the continent, and that Native Americans (Lamanites) are direct descendants of these migrations and no other.

Of course the debate has moved on since the discovery that there is no Semitic DNA in native Americans and they are almost entirely descended from Asian stock, with just a little European blood mixed in since the conquests of Spain after 1592. The original claim of Mormonism, i.e. that native Americans are entirely Semitic in their ancestry is now an embarrassment and the Mormon Church and its scholars are furiously back-pedalling in an attempt to revise and moderate their claims. It makes no difference, however, since we know where they came from even before we discover how they arrived. DNA has told us that. The Mormon Church, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, has yet to show that any Semitic blood can be found in Native American stock. In light of this migrations are really yesterday's story.

Silencing Critics

The DNA problem came to light thanks to the efforts of an Australian biochemist. According to his CV Simon Southerton is a senior research scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research organisation (CSIRO) in Canberra. He is a former research scientist in the Department of Biochemistry of Queensland, and post-doctoral fellow at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England. He holds a Ph.D from the University of Sidney in plant science and now specialises in the molecular biology of forest trees. In other words, he knows a thing or two about these things.

More interestingly, he has been a Mormon for many years, serving a mission for the Mormon Church in Melbourne in the 1980s. He has not been an "active" church member for seven years however. It was his book that alerted the world to the plain fact that Native Americans simply do not have Semitic blood, which you would expect them to have if they were descended from Jews who left Jerusalem around 600 BC. He has faced a number of "disciplinary hearings" but with the world watching the Mormon Church has found it inexpedient to discipline him as they wished. Well, finally the author of "Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA and the Book of Mormon" has been excommunicated by the Mormon Church.

It was a dirty game they played but they got what they wanted. Perhaps moralisers will want to say it was his own fault but personally I am sickened that the Mormons should feel they could sneak around and take advantage of him when he was just getting his life together after a very difficult time in his marriage. I am reminded of the Pharisees confronting Jesus in John chapter eight. They had an agenda beyond what they presented to the world. They, however, dropped their stones and walked away when confronted with the judge of all men. These Mormon Pharisees also had an agenda beyond what they presented to the world. However, they were utterly shameless and simply hurled their stones even while claiming to follow and emulate the God of mercy.

An Associated Press story ran in the Provo Daily Herald.

Reader comments can be found here.

One comment was particularly interesting (emphasis added)

You can read a statement by Simon Southerton himself on www.exmormon.org. He tells about the whole ordeal. Keep in mind they called it an "inappropriate relationship", not adultery. I have a brother in law who had an inappropriate relationship and they only disfellowshipped him. The LDS church will go out of their way not to publicly excommunicate someone for writing books because it makes them look tyrannical, it is always very convenient for them to find another reason. I don't know of too many cases where the church has gone after members who have been inactive for many years. Southerton says that they tracked down his friend that the relationship was with, and asked her to sign a statement saying they had had an affair. Is that the usual process, tracking people down and trying getting a SIGNED confession for a transgression which usually doesn't merit excommunication?

The above comment can be found here.

The specific page publishing Southerton's statement on the ex-Mormon web site can be found here.

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