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KUER Radio West Science & Foundations of the Book of Mormon

Interview: Terryl L. Givens, Thomas Murphy and Scott Woodward
Host: Doug Fabrizio
Salt Lake City, UT, 19 Dec. 2002
Posted by permission of KUER Radio

What does science say about the claims of the Book of Mormon? Is there genetic evidence connecting American Indians and the "Lamanites?" Guests, Tom Murphy, faculty member at the University of Washington, Scott Woodward, Professor of Molecular Biology at BYU, and Terry L. Givens, author of By the Hand of Mormon.

Fabrizio: Many people suspend their sense of the rational or literal when they worship. For them, God and the mysteries of life aren't linear kinds of things they're ideas or symbols but there are others for which God and scripture is in fact tangible and real. It's the basis for its relevance in their lives. For these people it would follow certain aspects of the stories of scripture could be discovered and tested, in essence, proven. Proof wouldn't have to displace faith but if an archaeologist can find a rock with the name of a Book of Mormon character on it, why not? The problem of course is that science can also play the other way. Call in to question literal claims from scripture and prophets. Today on the program we're continuing a conversation about science and the Book of Mormon. Can evidence be found to support its ideas, or is science calling into question the essence of Mormon belief.

A little more than a week ago local leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Washington state indefinitely postponed a disciplinary hearing for Thomas Murphy. Murphy who is Chairman of the Anthropology Department at a community college in Edmonds, Washington, has written papers and essays that challenge Mormon claims that American Indians are the descendants of ancient Israel. The basis for the claim is the Book of Mormon of course and Murphy uses DNA evidence to make his claims. Others have also used science to question whether the book is historically accurate. Today on the program we're continuing our conversation about science and the Book of Mormon. What evidence is out there? How are the faithful and critics interpreting it and what does it mean for the Church itself? You can join the conversation if you like our number is *** or you can email us at ***.

Terryl L. Givens

First today on the program we're joined by Terryl L. Givens, he's the author of the recently published book By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion. Dr. Givens is a professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond, Virginia and he joins us on the line from his office in Richmond, and Professor, welcome, thanks for joining us.

Givens: Thank you for having me.

Fabrizio: I want to start, if we could, with a question. Has it been difficult do you think, historically, to get a truly objective view of Mormon history?

Givens: Well, I think it's been historically difficult to get an objective view of any religious history. I don't know that it's been more difficult in the case of Mormonism than Protestant or Catholic history per se. Although it seems that the debate has grown increasingly acrimonious in recent years over who controls, who is telling Mormon history and how should it be told.

Fabrizio: Why do you figure it's been so difficult to get an objective view because either side seems so incredibly vested and we are talking about incredibly personal passionate beliefs I suppose.

Givens: Well I think it has to do with the professionalization of history and the question of how can one be a faithful member of a faith group and still observe conventional criteria and standards of historical writing. In the past there haven't been a great many historians who are interested in telling the history of Mormonism and so most of the histories were told by Mormon scholars and Mormon writers themselves and then it was back in the 1960s that a movement formed within the Mormon community to attempt to tell their history more objectively and more in conformity with prevailing historical standards of scholarship and then the question becomes is it possible to tell the story of a Church that makes claims for such a providential role in its history using a model that is naturalistic or verges on naturalism in which the hand of providence is absent from the telling of the story.

Fabrizio: You write in your book that any effort to subject religious text to scientific methods or to subsume them within an academic discipline runs some risks. Like what?

Givens: Well, as I said in the case of, I think the risks are more complicated in the case of the Book of Mormon than they are with other religious texts. I think the context in which I wrote that had to do with the difference as I see it between subjecting the Book of Mormon to analysis and trying to naturalize it and doing the same thing to the Bible. In recent years, a fairly vigorous movement has arisen within a Mormon intellectual community to argue for a kind of compromise approach or compromise position regarding the Book of Mormon as a scriptural work and the analogy that is often invoked is that increasingly we have subjected the Bible to scientific and historical modes of analysis and it has remained intact as a focus of faith even if few people, other than diehard fundamentalists, they no longer believe in the claims, the literal claims that it makes. So the analogy that is argued is that the Book of Mormon can similarly be subjected to these kinds of standards of scholarship. For example the work of Tom Murphy is a case in point. The argument being made that one can impugn the providential or divine origins of the scripture and yet it can still remain intact as an object of faith. That doesn't work in the case of Mormonism because the relationship of the Book of Mormon to Mormonism is not the same. It's not even, it's in no way equivalent to the relationship of the Bible to historic Christianity.

Fabrizio: So what are, what are some of these scholars and some of these people saying? They're saying "Look let's not focus on the historical accuracy of this book let's focus on the lessons that are in it because if we look too close we may be disappointed or a little disillusioned."

Givens: Exactly. That's right. In fact there is a large number of writers who are making the claim that we need, meaning the Mormon community, needs to get away from the story of the angel and the gold plates and all the supernaturalism associated with the Book of Mormon and evaluate it on its own merits. The problem is that that flies in the face of the history that the Book of Mormon has had within the Mormon religion. One can argue that Moses could've gotten some of his geography or population numbers wrong and yet the Bible could still reasonably be accorded status of scripture but one can't argue that the Book of Mormon is a fraud from its initial design to its execution and it still have the place that it has had as a scripture in the Mormon faith community and that's because unlike the Bible which is generally considered to be scripture because of the truth claims that it makes, right? Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, He resurrected, there was a virgin birth, those are the things that make the Bible valuable as a source of a faith tradition. The Book of Mormon doesn't make any particularly unique claims in that regard as, it doesn't function, it has never functioned within Mormonism as primarily a source of doctrine or moral teachings. What it has served to do is to ground Joseph Smith's claims to be a prophet of the restoration so it isn't the content of the Book of Mormon, the stories that it tells, the wars that narrates, that are important as the stories surrounding the Book of Mormon; that it came from gold plates that were hand-delivered to him by an angel, called Moroni, that he translated it by the Urim and Thummin. To remove those elements of the story from the Book of Mormon might make it possible to study it as a kind of cultural artifact or some interesting kind of literary or religious document but it's to completely divorce it from the role that it has served historically within the Mormon faith community.

Fabrizio: Do you see beyond I guess the sort of fringes where a lot of the people like Tom Murphy I expect would be, do you see within the body of the Church among believers maybe, maybe even among leaders themselves any move do you think to move more in a direction, um, outside of this really straight ahead belief that in fact the Book of Mormon is historically accurate. Do you see any massaging of that notion at all.

Givens: Well, I don't think that that can ever succeed within the Mormon faith community. First of all most Mormons, lay members of the Church, the rank and file, aren't terribly interested, I don't think, in the historical dimensions to the Book of Mormon, in the debates raging between FARMS and Signature books for example. They read it, now ever since the leadership of President Ezra Taft Benson, they have re-centered their scripture study on the Book of Mormon as a source of inspiration, and doctrine and teaching. So I think many of these debates rage without rank and file members really being too fully aware of what's even going on, but I don't think that to the extent that they are aware of those debates that they are prepared to compromise.

Fabrizio: So I want to ask, in the book you make note that the Church has long negotiated a balance between faith and scholarship.

Givens: Right.

Fabrizio: What do you mean?

Givens: Well, there's a saying, it was some words that were spoken by Austin Farrer and they're often quoted by both church leaders and church scholars that I think are key to understanding the place of Mormonism in this regard. He said: "Though argument does not create conviction, lack of it destroys belief."¹ And as I was writing this book, and visiting with different scholars and interviewing different scholars, especially scholars of the Book of Mormon and talking to people at FARMS for example, the attitude that they conveyed to me was that nobody ever thought that we would someday hear that archaeologist's had gone to Guatemala and found a lintel that said "Welcome to Zarahemla High home of the fighting Nephites." It's not the kind of evidence that anybody anticipates, or necessarily even thinks would be a terrific thing, on the other hand, Mormon scholars do see an obligation to respond to the efforts of outsiders and critics from within the Church to, as they see it, breakthrough the mythology surrounding the Book of Mormon and kind of impose a kind of higher criticism on the record and so they simply I think, as I see their project, they're trying to create a basis for rational faith not to prove anything but simply to prove that faith in the Book of Mormon is reasonable, plausible.

Fabrizio: Let me ask you this finally, Dr. Givens, you write that "it remains to be seen what effect an increasing emphasis on historical substantiation of the Book of Mormon will have on the spiritual basis of Mormonism itself".

Givens: Well, I think that's because it's increasingly easy to get distracted by these kinds of debates swirling around the history of the Book of Mormon. I think that traditionally Mormons have been encouraged, through the missionaries for example before they're even baptized into the Church, to read the Book of Mormon and to pray for a spiritual witness of its truthfulness. So historically, ever since Samuel Smith first went out selling the Book of Mormon the emphasis has been on an entirely spiritual approach to getting a heavenly revelation that confirms to the person praying the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon as a scriptural work. As, back in 1997, the FARMS institute was formally incorporated into Brigham Young University and that represents to my mind an important step because it suggests that the Mormon Church is officially sanctioning and endorsing and supporting now that kind of intellectual or scholarly approach to the Book of Mormon. Before they've always been done semi-independently and that as we are seeing can be a very very sharp two-edged sword, because in many cases the archaeological evidence doesn't support Book of Mormon claims as obviously or to the extent that many Mormon faithful would like it to and so critics of the Church are very quick to use that weapon against the Church themselves as we see again in the case of somebody like Tom Murphy. Mormon scholars may argue, I think rightly, that some of those arguments aren't very well founded but the point is that the Church has opened the door to that kind of a debate by formally endorsing an organization like FARMS.

Fabrizio: Terry L. Givens is the author of "By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion" he's a Professor of Literature and Religion at the University of Richmond in Virginia and he joined us from his office there. Professor Givens thanks for the time.

Givens: Thank you for having me.

Tom Murphy

Fabrizio: You can join the conversation *** or you can send us an email us at ***. Joining us now on the line is Tom Murphy. Thomas Murphy is on the faculty at the University of Washington, he is the Chair of the Anthropology Department there he joins us I expect from his office on campus. Mr. Murphy are you with us?

Murphy: Yes, let me clarify there, I'm the Chair of the Anthropology Department at Edmonds Community College and I'm a graduate student at the University of Washington and I do teach there occasionally.

Fabrizio: o.k. Thank you so much for joining us. I wonder, I want to start with is it too simple from your perspective to say that the Book of Mormon is a fanciful story. That Joseph Smith, it has wonderful scriptural messages, life messages, but it's something that was made up. Have you come to that conclusion finally?

Murphy: Yes. I've come to the conclusion that the Book of Mormon is fiction. And now, I do think that it's a separate question to explore whether it's inspired or not and one that science really and history can't answer. That that's one that is best dealt with on a personal level.

Fabrizio: Yes, but to the question of your sense of it. As a scientist now whether or not there was a people who traveled from ancient Jerusalem to the Americas that is settled in your mind.

Murphy: Yeah, I think we can be quite solid in our conclusion that the Book of Mormon's claim that the Lamanites are the principle ancestors of the American Indians that that is not correct. That is, that there is no genetic evidence for an Israelite population anywhere in ancient America in the DNA evidence that's been checked to date or showing Lamanite or Israelite, excuse me, ancestry among any living American Indian in the American population. So in essence, we've got a Book of Mormon without a people.

Fabrizio: What do you, um, maybe we should lay out some context here explain for us if you would why it is that Native Americans are the literal descendants of Abraham is important to Mormons.

Murphy: Well this whole argument actually that American Indians were Israelites was not invented by Mormons at all but was debated quite widely by Protestants and Catholics for a couple of centuries prior to Joseph Smith's lifetime in the early nineteenth century. Joseph Smith drew up on those arguments that American Indians were Israelites and was most definitely influenced by them as well. To make the proposition that the Book of Mormon was this lost record, that other scholars had speculated existed, Ethan Smith in particular the author of "View of the Hebrews" had speculated that there was this lost book out there that told about the American Indian connections' to Israel and the Book of Mormon in a sense filled that void of that lost book and it provided what the Catholics and Protestants were not able to do and that is some evidence that this Israelite idea was more than just speculation. That is the Book of Mormon itself was intended, I think originally, to be that evidence that American Indians were Israelites and why was that important?

Fabrizio: Yeah.

Murphy: Well because at that time people were debating about whether the Bible was really historically accurate because the Bible had no explicit references to the American Indians. In fact critics at that time were saying that that meant that the Bible was not the word of God, that it was not an accurate portrayal of the world's history and the Book of Mormon in a sense became a defense of the Biblical tradition by making a connection between American Indians and the Bible itself.

Fabrizio: So in that sense you think that the Book of Mormon is sort of a cultural artifact, it reflects a thought, a theory of the day.

Murphy: Yes. It's definitely a product of the ideas that were circulating around in the nineteenth century. Not only the stereotype about American Indians being the Israelites but ideas like a dark skin was a curse from God. That was also used by the Puritans as a justification for enslaving American Indians. That idea likewise appears in the Book of Mormon. The other speculations that people come from the tower of Babel is another story that was common in the nineteenth century that appears in the Book of Mormon. Likewise the Book of Mormon uses the language of the King James Bible even reproduces the same mistakes that appear in the King James Bible, same translation errors and so in this sense there's the strong indication that it's a product of the nineteenth century. We can add to that as well that the stories in the Book of Mormon as pointed out by Robert Anderson in his book "Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith" reflect the struggles that Joseph Smith himself had as he dealt with traumas in his life such as surgery at a young age. That the narrative in the text itself reflects his childhood experiences so in that respect I think it's fair to call the Book of Mormon fiction and a product of Joseph Smith and his environment. Now in my research, I look at the genetic evidence but I look at it within the context of all of these other problems that face the Book of Mormon.

Fabrizio: So I wonder when was it Thomas Murphy that you, did you have a particular epiphany in your life, did this all come sort of as a slow kind of evolutionary thing, did you feel suspicious early on in your devotion to Mormonism and have you, do you feel yourself, we are starting to make that jump now to the personal, do you feel yourself connected to Mormonism in a different way if at all you feel connected.

Murphy: Yeah. Well let me start by saying how I got interested in Book of Mormon studies. It all started actually with an argument with a friend of mine who was a Christian and he kept telling me that we have no archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon. He said things like you can go to Jerusalem, for example, but nobody knows where Zarahemla is, Zarahemla being a city in the Book of Mormon, and he said not only that the Book of Mormon has all the wrong plants and animals he said you know it claims that there are horses yet we don't have any horses archaeologically. It claims that there are cattle and sheep and goats and wheat and oats and claims there was steel and chariots, none of that is found archaeologically in ancient America and I thought well that can't be true and so I started investigating it myself in order to argue against this friend and eventually I came to the conclusion that in fact we as Mormons were wrong and that my friend was at least right on this point that the Book of Mormon was not supported by any historical or archaeological evidence. Now, it was only more recently that I looked at the genetic research. I did so at the request of mormonscripturestudies.com which is a group of Mormon scholars comparable to the Protestant and Catholic Jesus seminar. That is scholars who try to peer behind the myths of scripture, who try to get a more accurate portrayal from history and they had asked me as an anthropologist to summarize the genetic research that had been found to date and its implications for the Book of Mormon and with that request I explored the genetic research, which I had already been teaching in my classes, but I went into it in a lot more depth and found that although we can connect Israelites to a population say in South Africa we cannot find similar genetic markers in the Americas. In fact of the genetic markers that we find those that are found associated with mitochondrial DNA and those that are associated with the Y chromosome, that's the male line of the mitochondrial DNAs that of the female line, that those show us that the lineages of American Indians go back to northeast Asia in the area probably around Siberia not to the middle east. The lineages that are found in the middle east, not just among Israelites but among other middle eastern populations are not found in the Americas. So for me this does raise a question about how can I be Mormon and be truthful to the evidence and here's where I think Charles Gibbons really has raised a very fundamental problem that we as Mormons face: that if the Book of Mormon is not just a claim about history it's also a claim about Joseph Smith's prophetic status and I don't know that there's any easy resolution to this, but what for me seems the most appropriate response is to reconsider what we mean by scripture and what we mean by prophets. Because we need to entertain the possibility this scripture might very well be fiction and we also need to stop expecting prophets to be sources of history to be able to reliably tell events that happened in the past or for that matter maybe even the future.

Fabrizio: So I do hear you, Thomas Murphy, sort of clinging still to your Mormon heritage, trying to reconcile these things, trying to stay devoted to at least one aspect of your spiritual heritage I guess.

Murphy: Yes, I well, even if I wanted to abandon my Mormon heritage I don't think I could, you know, I think I'm a product of a Mormon cultural environment and I will be regardless of whatever my Stake Presidency and High Council decide to do with my membership. I'm a product of that culture and I suppose I could walk away from it. A lot of people are encouraging me to do so but I don't think that I would be able to leave in the sense that its shaped who I am and I'm comfortable with that. I'm comfortable with being a latter-day skeptic if you will.

Fabrizio: You can join the conversation at *** or you can send us an email us at ***. With us on the line is Thomas Murphy. Let's take a call from Salt Lake, Greg, now joins us on the line. Greg welcome to the program.

Greg (caller): Good morning. I'm so glad that this conversation is going on and it's an honour to speak to Mr. Murphy. I guess my first thing was to talk a little bit about back in the time in which Joseph Smith was alive that the main, I guess, anthropological theory was that native Americans could not have built the mounds that were in central um, the mid-west and what have you and I can see that Mormons are still kind of holding on to that. Do you ever see a time, do you think, that the Church will change its mind, maybe make an apology for its stance on native Americans and just quickly maybe just a personal comment here I was Mormon and left because of all the discrepancies that I found. I was an anthropology major here at the U., and then maybe a personal question to you Mr. Murphy how are things going as far as the disciplinary actions are going right now, if you wouldn't mind commenting on that.

Murphy: Well I would first like to respond to his question about what we know as the mound-builder myth in anthropology and this was also predominant in the time of Joseph Smith and was also addressed by Ethan Smith in his "View of the Hebrews" and that was the idea that American Indians could not have constructed the monumental architecture that dotted the northeast and mid-west and even the southeast of the United States. The assumption was that American Indians were not smart enough intellectually and skilled enough in their technology to have constructed such incredible works of art and of architecture. That obviously is a racist assumption that is incorrect and Jace Weaver at Yale University, a Cherokee scholar, has criticized us as Mormons for perpetuating this old slur that native Americans were not capable of this type of architecture. I think we need to, as the caller has suggested, apologize for this misrepresentation and even a hostile attack that the Book of Mormon advances against American Indians. I think we have a serious legacy of abuse of Native American peoples, we've removed their children from their homes, we placed them in Mormon homes, told them that their histories were not true and that we have their true history. These children were taught that they would become white and delightsome even Spencer W. Kimball claimed that some American Indians were becoming white and delightsome as a product of their involvement in this Mormon Indian placement program. We've done a horrible injustice to Native American peoples and we do have an obligation to apologize and to make things right and I think acknowledge the Book of Mormon as fiction is a first step in that direction. I don't think it gets us there but it's a step in that direction. And then to answer his question on the status of my disciplinary council: I received a call on December 7th, the Saturday before, the day before I was supposed to have the disciplinary council from my Stake President at which time he asked to indefinitely, well he didn't ask he told me he was indefinitely postponing my disciplinary council and that we would be in touch later. He's not made any effort to contact me, that I'm aware of, since that time and I'm not encouraging them to proceed so that's the status that it is at at this point.

Fabrizio: You feel like you're in limbo though in some ways?

Murphy: I feel both in limbo and at times I also feel vindicated. I feel vindicated in the sense that when the media attention was directed towards my case I think that people began to realize that we do have a real problem. That the genetic evidence does not support the Book of Mormon, in fact it strongly contradicts the basic claim that American Indians are the descendants of Lamanites and I think as people wrestle with that they realize that excommunicating me will not make the problem go away. At least that's what I would like to believe, I don't know for sure exactly all of that went through the Stake President's mind but he did tell me that the media attention was a major concern.

Fabrizio: Tom Murphy is the Chair of the Anthropology Department at Edmonds Community College in Edmonds, Washington, is it Tom Murphy?

Murphy: It's actually in Lynnwood, Washington, which is right next to Edmonds.

Fabrizio: We're glad you could join us. Thank you very much for the time. You're listening to Radio West you can join the conversation at *** or you can send us an email us at ***. A few e-mails before we go to break.

Steve from Price, UT, asks, we'll treat this as a rhetorical question Steve, "If the historical accounts in the Book of Mormon cannot be proved does that mean the unique doctrines in the Book of Mormon are myths too?" and a question from Don who wants to know "Dr. Givens does not disclose his own faith commitments." I confess I'm not sure entirely what Dr. Givens' faith commitment is, I can tell you he's not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.² (break)

This is Radio West I'm Doug Fabrizio. The Mormon Church is considering the status of Church member Thomas Murphy, a scholar who has used genetic research to disprove the common Mormon belief that American Indians are the descendants of ancient Israel. Today on the program we're talking about the issue what does science say about notions usually left to faith. You're listening to Radio West you can join the conversation at *** or you can send us an email us at ***.

Dr. Scott Woodward

Joining us now in the studio is Dr. Scott Woodward, a Professor at Brigham Young University, he's a professor of Micro and Molecular Biology. Professor welcome and thank you for joining us.

Woodward: Thanks Doug.

Fabrizio: Let's start with the basic idea. Is it, it's an awfully complicated question clearly, but is it as simple as to say that you take genetic material from Hebrews, or Jewish people, and then you take genetic material from Native Americans, look at that material and see if they match. Is it as simple as that. Some think it might be.

Woodward: That is certainly the question that I've heard over and over again over the last probably dozen years and the answer is no, it is not that simple. And there are some real difficulties with that question and the first one starts right at the beginning - take some DNA from some Hebrews - that's a difficult definition. Where would you go in the world today to identify Hebrew DNA that would correspond to DNA that would be reflected in descendants of Lehi. That's a difficult question by itself. What kind of DNA did Lehi have so what kind of DNA would we be looking for, what markers, what specific markers would we be looking for and how would we know when we had something of Lehi's DNA. The other question has to do with what about characterizing Native Americans and how are they characterized and what genetic evidence is there out there concerning Native Americans and Tom is very right in some aspects of what he has said in that the mitochondrial DNA, which is a piece of DNA that's is maternally inherited looks very much like the most probable origins for that DNA comes from Asia but we have to be careful with that also Doug in that there are four or five major mitochondrial groups. We call them A, B, C, D and X. If you look at native Americans today probably about 95% of all native Americans fall within one of those groups then the question was where else in the world do we find those groups and if you look out in the data today and the things that Tom has been able to do in reviewing the literature, it's pretty clear that A, B, C, D and Xs are also found in Asia. Most recently, some of the evidence of Xs found in call area in the Lake Baikal in Mongolia, southern Siberia but, and this is where I have some of the difficulties with some of the conclusions that Tom has come to is that the story's over I think as far as Tom and a lot of other people are concerned that "Oh we found these in Asia, that then confirms the anthropological and archaeological evidence of a migration of a people across the Bering Strait into the Americas and the populating of the Americas." I don't have a problem with that, I don't have a problem at all with that particular conclusion. I think we're a little time challenged in mixing apples and oranges. We're probably talking of very early migrations ten-fifteen thousand years ago versus something that we might expect to see at the time of Lehi two thousand years ago, but interestingly enough all parts of the world have not been surveyed for A, B, C, D and Xs, in fact if you look at the southern Urals in much further west in Asia and just north of Turkmenistan which is moving a long ways west right on the shores of the Caspian Sea twenty percent of that population actually carry the D haplotype which has been characterized as an Asian type, well we're still talking about Central Asia but we're certainly on the western end of that so I think there's a lot of evidence yet to come out and I think that it's probably quite premature to make some of the conclusions that Tom has made concerning the genetic evidence and the Book of Mormon.

Fabrizio: What about, have you first seen any elements, I don't even know what we would call it, Hebrew/Jewish DNA.

Woodward: That's an interesting hypothesis that I think has been set up incorrectly. Let me tell you what I think is going on in that the hypothesis, as I read it, is that, because we have not seen any Hebrew DNA in native Americans therefore the Book of Mormon cannot be true. That is certainly a simplistic view of the hypothesis but that's what I keep getting fed back to me, that that's what people are thinking. But I wonder what would happen if we tried to turn that around. What if we said if there is evidence of Hebrew DNA in the Americas then the Book of Mormon is true. I don't think anybody would accept the reverse of that hypothesis, and the reality is, and I'm going to say this, and then I'm going to come back and clarify it, there has been Hebrew DNA found in the Americas. o.k. Tom mentioned some of the Y chromosome DNA by far, there's one particular marker that we find on the Y chromosome - 199T we call it - that is very characteristic of native Americans of a large proportion of native Americans carry that. However, Tom has mentioned the story about the Lemba in South Africa and the Cohen marker well it turns out that the Cohen marker on the Y chromosome which certainly seems to be an Israelite haplotype DNA marker that has been found in the Americas. It's been found in Columbia, that work was published a little over a year ago. Now, do I claim that that's Lehi's DNA, absolutely not. I think that there's a much more clear explanation of that data but I use it to emphasize my point, yes, there has been Hebrew DNA found in the Americas. Does that prove the Book of Mormon correct? No. But I think we have to be very careful when we turn it around the other way and say because we have not found any Hebrew DNA in the Americas then the Book of Mormon is incorrect and so I still believe that there's a tremendous amount of information yet to come from the DNA information, the DNA story in native Americans.

Fabrizio: Do you see it as your mission professionally to find evidence that the Book of Mormon is true?

Woodward: Absolutely not. In fact that's not the way that I think that science proceeds and I don't think that that's the way of really what happens. You don't set something out there and then go and look for evidences for that. You can build hypothesis and then you test those hypotheses. Those hypotheses need to be falsifiable, ones that you can tell whether or not you have an answer or don't have an answer at the end. That particular one doesn't fall into that category.

Fabrizio: Let's go back to the phones. Doug is on the line, Doug welcome.

Doug (caller): My question, and hearing your latest guest it may have already been clarified I've recently come across some research I believe it was in National Geographic, but I was doing some other research and it could've been in some various places frankly, and its got a lot of people kind of up in arms and that would indicate that possibly the native Americans as we consider them now are not the earliest peoples in America. That in fact there is in the archaeological record of digs done here in North America evidence that in fact there are different DNAs that preceded the native Americans and my question would be how would that play into this discussion and could it not easily be that, let's just assume for a moment that the Book of Mormon were true could our understanding of who the peoples are and the different groups of peoples if we're on the wrong group of people for instance, the native Americans as we believe them to be are not the peoples that we're talking about. Could that not be a possibility? And also, my other question is do the Mayans, the Incans, the Aztecs, do their genetic fingerprints if you will match what we would consider the North American Plain Indians as well?

Woodward: A couple of comments on that. First of all, the survey of native American DNAs, those DNAs have for the very large part, greater than 99% of the DNAs have been looked at have been from living descendants of native American, those people who claim, who are native Americans today. Those all fall mostly into the A, B, C, D and Xs with a few extra other ones out there. The interesting question I think is how many different migrations may have occurred into the Americas. The DNA evidence that we have right now are mitochondrial DNA at various times in the last half a dozen years has been interpreted differently. Once as a single migration, once as four migrations, back to three migrations, back to one migration, back to multiple migrations. My personal opinion is that we will yet see evidence of probably many migrations into the Americas at various times over the last thousands of years.

Fabrizio: Did you want to say anything else about what Doug had to say?

Woodward: I'm not sure I remember.

Fabrizio: Joe is on a cel phone, Joe welcome to the program.

Joe (caller): Good afternoon, I'm a forty-three year old guy, I served a mission, my disaffectation from the Church came not from any kind of empirical evidence and I have not joined with any other religious group. I think that Mr. Murphy's talking about his inability to separate himself from his Mormon heritage is interesting because I think that's important. I don't think that this is a scientific issue, I think this is a spiritual one because no matter what religious group you come from there is a tendency to use circular evidence, circular reasoning to support the dogma and I think that that's important that a person not spend too much of their lives to go around in circles rather that they should find their spiritual answers and I mean, this argument is exactly the same as creationism vs evolution. There is no, uh, it becomes a contest of wills, a contest of intellectuals rather than a true search for the spiritual truth.

Fabrizio: Scott Woodward is it that simple in your mind? I mean is this similar, he used the analogy of creationism vs evolution.

Woodward: There are some aspects that are connected and that are similar. My own personal view, if we can get personal, is that we need to be able to look at all of the evidence wherever that evidence comes from. Whether it be revelation or whether it be the scientific method and to be able to incorporate all of that evidence into the whole and be able to draw the conclusions and come to your own personal conclusions based on that.

Fabrizio: An e-mail from Mark who asks is it true that BYU has done more of this research and that it has so far refused to publish the results?

Woodward: Good question. We have that a lot and we've been accused of suppressing evidence in the past and that's not true. The personal work, the work that I'm doing in my laboratory involves building a very large database of peoples throughout the world. We currently have about 30,000 individuals in that but it's a very shallow genealogical database compared to what we're dealing with in this question. We're looking at the last four, five, ten, twelve generations of people. We do have a large sample of DNAs from South America, primarily Peru, about 6,000 samples of which we have typed mitochondrially and we find the same types of evidence that have been found by other researchers that primarily those mitochondrial DNAs are A, B, C, D and Xs and some others.

Fabrizio: This email comes from Troy. He writes, allow me to explain how I know the Book of Mormon is a true account. It's because I asked God the Father in the name of his Son Jesus Christ to tell me. I asked in faith that He exists and that He would answer me. As an engineer I can appreciate the value of evidence of things that are so surrounded in faith but such evidence is not critical to my testimony. Back to the phones, Raymond.

Raymond (caller): It seems to me that we have a context here which I've seen in (?) which I used to be part of and other faiths in that there is quite a spectrum of people from those who need to have answers for everything to those who don't seem to have the need to have answers for everything. Who can think of their faith as being provisional and I think people should consider the possibility that any religion can be incorrect on the facts but really right on the principles.

Fabrizio: Raymond we're glad you called. Debbie is on the line.

Debbie (caller): I agree with everything the past five callers have said but one man in particular was talking about a National Geographic article he may have read about previous colonization, well not colonization but previous diaspora of people into North America prior to what we now call native Americans. There's more, U.S. News and World Report, January 29th, 2001, there's an article partially by Douglas Wallace, he is the Director of the Center for Molecular Medicine at Emory University and it says: "Wallace's newest and most surprising discovery is a set of genetic markers found only in the Ojibwa and other tribes living near the Great Lakes; the markers are not found in any other native Americans or in Asia. "We just don't know how it got there," Wallace says, "but it's clearly related to the European population." The simple answer would be that the DNA arrived with European colonists, but the strain is different enough from the existing European lineage that it must have left the Old World long before Columbus."³

Fabrizio: Scott Woodward do you want to respond to that.

Woodward: Actually that's a very interesting article. Doug Wallace is a leader in this field, he's done a lot of work with mitochondrial DNA. This marker that she's talking about, is an X marker originally thought not to be found in Asia which goes to show, and that article is in 2001, today we know with further analysis that that marker has also been found in Asia. However there are other markers that are also have shown up that we don't know where they've come from and it goes, I think, to emphasize the point that anyone who wants to draw a conclusion today based on the DNA evidence is probably going to be very disappointed because the DNA evidence is going to continue to bring more light on this subject.

Fabrizio: We're glad you called. Nick is on the line.

Nick (caller): Yes I wonder if the professor would discuss the apparent absence of evidence of steel, horses, barley, wheat, which are recounted in the Book of Mormon.

Fabrizio: Chariots, things like that. It's a good question.

Woodward: Does steel have DNA? I mean my expertise is in molecular genetics and DNA. There have been a number of articles that have been written that have addressed those specific questions. I would refer you to some of the things by John Sorenson.

Fabrizio: Glad you called Nick. So I wonder, Scott Woodward, have you had to adjust your perceptions as you do research, maybe even adjust your beliefs in any ways as a scientist and as a believer?

Woodward: I think my beliefs are adjusted daily. I don't know, and I want to emphasize as you mentioned Doug, I am a believer. I think that the Book of Mormon is what it purports to be. I think you have to be very careful about defining what the Book of Mormon purports to be within the Book and what people say that the Book of Mormon purports to be and that's an important distinction in this situation going on making sure that we don't set up a straw man that can be knocked down and that we've set up incorrect hypotheses to test.

Fabrizio: But I do wonder though if you ever think that as you, when you confront issues for example like the questions, evolution and the things that may not entirely square with orthodox religious beliefs, let's not even say Mormon beliefs. If you have to kind of adjust the way you think in some ways.

Woodward: I like to think of my set of beliefs in a loose leaf notebook and as I gain more information, and more knowledge from whatever source that is, I take those pages out, add to it, alter it, change things, put it back in and continue to grow and to evolve as far as where I'm going so far as my belief system.

Fabrizio: A call now from Steve. Steve welcome to the program.

Steve (caller): I think this is a really interesting subject. I was reading something in a journal this morning they're saying that they've actually traced the origin of domesticated dogs back to basically three breeds in Asia and which is quite a revelation because people think our dogs came from wolves and all that and this genetic data says otherwise. I wondered if they've carried that on with people and if they can show that whether we truly all came from one man one woman, the Adam and Even concept? Or whether we actually evolved from several different tribes of wherever we evolved from.

Woodward: There has been a lot of work in attempting to reconstruct the relationships of all the peoples of the world in putting them back together into one single origin. Again, those results are very interesting, they put us back in some of our origins as far as our mitochondrial DNA back into the areas of Africa, there was some discussion early on as an origin in Africa, an origin in Asia. Doug Wallace whom we mentioned before supported an Asian origin, others support, including Wilson and Berkeley an African origin. This actually made, I think, the cover of Newsweek probably about ten years ago "The Mitochondrial Eve" story. Those are very very deep origins, those are origins of mitochondrial DNA maybe 150,000 years ago. The questions that we're dealing with now although they're related are much more shallow.

Fabrizio: Let me ask you finally, we have one minute so you'll have to be very brief. Personally, Scott Woodward, does it really matter to you whether the people of the Book of Mormon were real, were historical figures or that they are just a good story. It matters to you.

Woodward: Yes. That's short isn't it? It does matter to me. I think that that's what we're dealing with in the Book of Mormon, we are dealing with a true history of a group of people that were in the Americas and the interactions that they had with God.

Fabrizio: Scott Woodward is a Professor of Micro and Molecular Biology at Brigham Young University. Thank you very much for joining us, Dr. Woodward.

Notes

¹ Austin Farrer, "The Christian Apologist," in Light on C.S. Lewis, edited by Jocelyn Gibb (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965), 26.

² The following is from ZLMB (an internet message board): I also received an e-mail back from Fabrizio. He said that they had been told he was non-Mormon, and that was the reason they invited him to do the show, to be a neutral voice. He didn't find out till after the show that Terryl's LDS. He did say that he was pleased with Terryl's contribution, and accepts blame for the confusion, saying it was sloppiness on their part.

³ Doug Wallace, "Where we come from: recent advances in genetics are starting to illuminate the wanderings of early humans," U.S. News & World Report, 29 January 2001. (See http://www.justpacific.com/bits'n'pieces/genetics.html)

KUER Radio West Science & Foundations of the Book of Mormon

Terryl L. Givens

Tom Murphy

Dr. Scott Woodward

Notes

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