This is for your own link
So being Jewish is not a race, it’s a religious and often familial association. Again, from your own link.
Read my quote from your own reference above. They could have been Jewish, or religiously associated with Judaism without be ethically Hebraic. So it is a possibility.
Try bolding the other part:
**
**That is why being Jewish is both a religion and a race. Nobody ever suggested that a converted Jew was not Jewish. But DNA evidence shows that there is more than just religion that connects Jews.
You have a citation that native Americans practiced the Jewish faith?
The Jewish people reject that distinction as a race. Who are you to force it on them if they themselves reject it?
Plus your article uses the genetic similarities to denote a familial, not a racial, connection.
You are arguing against your own source.
Yes, there have been lots of claims about the Lost Tribes, luckily we have a way of evaluating claims: it’s called science. Using DNA to trace the migration of American Indians does not line up with the idea that they are from the middle east. Archaeologists do not find evidence that the events in the BOM took place. Placing the Garden of Eden in Missouri beggars all belief. It does not match up in any way with historical records, genetic family trees, or archaeological sites.
There is, however, some DNA evidence that some tribes in Africa may be related to ethnic Jews.
You speak for all Jews? The concept of Ethnic Jews is not something that all Jews disavow to my knowledge even if Hitler gave them good reasons to 70 or so years ago…
The article I cited specifically addresses LDS belief.
I am not sure what you are trying to achieve with this argument, April R. The 12 Tribes of Israel were supposed to be founded by the sons of Jacob/Israel, so there should be a genetic link if the Book of Mormon story is true. There isn’t any link. I’m not sure if you can say the Book of Mormon story is literally true while rejecting the Old Testament story.
I wasn’t trying to win or prove anything. I was just pointing our the JSLE’s own source disputes what he was trying to claim. That is all. I have no horse in this race, so to speak.
So using genetics as a definitive proof or disproof of lineage isn’t full proof. If halotypes have been lost, then it is possible genetic evidence of familial lineage has been lost as well. I am not claiming proof or no proof either way, but using genetics as the reason to believe or not believe something isn’t logical. Genetics can give incite as to which groups of people are related to each other, but lack of evidence does not prove lack of relationship.
You’re disputing whether the appropriate term is race or ethnicity, which has no bearing on the facts that you’re discussing.
It’s much better evidence than the Book of Mormon is. I’m not sure what you’re quoting, but if he says the surviving genes were not random, I don’t think that helps you.
Sure it is.
Yes, this comes up a lot with regard to Biblical arguments: you can’t always prove they didn’t happen, but the fact that there is no evidence they happened is pretty strong. As fumster noted, there is also no archaeological evidence to support the Mormon teaching.
I always love how people use science selectively. The study of genetics show nothing to support an “out of Missouri” origin of man, rather they show homo sapiens appearing in Africa about 200,000 years ago after evolving from earlier species. This is supported by fossil evidence. Study of genetics shows how homo sapiens spread out from that central point and that is supported by archaeology and radioactive dating.
There are several theories about the origin of native Americans, and there appears to be several migrations that occurred, but there is noting to support the idea of American Indians being ethnic Jews, or evidence of civilizations that match what is described in the BOM.
Beyond which, if the Garden of Eden was in Missouri shouldn’t that show homo sapiens migrating in the opposite direction?
As I said before, I am really surprised. I though that Mormons would be past some of the silliness and look at the history presented in the BOM as allegorical rather than literal. Especially as there is so little to support it and so much that contradicts it.
What about a tapir?
Maybe governance of the country should be turned over to religion.
(Okay, not so :D. More like :eek:.)
I suppose religious leaders automatically give statements like that every election. Still, after some comments I’ve seen since election night, the LDS statement was a breath of fresh air, maybe a little more so because one of their own lost the election.
Note that Cardinal Dolan’s statement echoes the church-backed lie about the Obama administration attacking religious freedom:
Not very subtle, is it?
Well, according to the Book of Mormon, God changed them into blacks to show how horrible they were.
If he did this, presumably that would change their DNA.
Obviously that is not an explanation I endorse.
However, I’ve never heard any Mormons explain where all the horses, which are referred to repeatedly in the Book yet apparently dissappeared withou leaving any fossil evidence only to be reintroduced by Europeans over a thousand years later.
Just to clarify something that’s getting lost in the conversation here.
Mormons don’t believe that the 10 “lost” tribes of Israel went to North America. Mormons believe that an extended family of Jews/Hebrews living in Jerusalem circa 600 BC built boats and sailed to North America and established a large civilization there. That is why critics of the Mormon Church bring up DNA; if this single Jewish family founded this enormous civilization (which eventually spawned Native American tribes) there should be some DNA evidence remaining.
The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel is a completely seperate issue. The tribes were “lost” AFTER the Book of Mormon family left Jerusalem. In fact, they supposedly left to avoid getting caught up in the coming destruction of Jerusalem and scattering. Now the Mormons do have a teaching about the Lost Tribes that they can’t fanwank away. Joseph Smith composed 13 doctrinal points of the Mormon Church, called the Articles of Faith. They’re basically as close as you’ll get a Mormon to commit to a doctrine. Anyway, Article 10 says that Mormons believe in the LITERAL regathering of these Lost Tribes. This could be considered embarrassing if these tribes weren’t really “lost” but merely mixed together, which is my understanding of current Jewish thought about the supposedly Lost Tribes. This isn’t my field of expertise, so I welcome any corrections.
It said their skin was darkened, no mention of turning them black. That is a separate interpretation. And this was to make them distinct from the faithful, not as a literal punishment. They also distinguished themselves through dress and cultural practices that had nothing to do with skin color.
A couple nitpicks: God cursed them with dark skin, which is code for changed the “white and delightsome” Hebrews into darker skinned Native Americans. I have no idea how much genetic engineering this would require, but I can’t imagine it would mean replacing ALL their DNA. Anyway, modern Mormons have fanwanked this in various ways, including the now popular idea that the Hebrew DNA was eventually subsumed into the pre-existing Native American DNA, but this contradicts hundreds of years of Mormon doctrine.
Horses and steel are a constant pain in the side of Mormon believers. A number of amusing and ridiculous suggestions have been made, most notably that the “horses” of the Book of Mormon were, in fact, tapirs (which are native to the Americas), and the steel swords of the innumerable Book of Mormon battles were macuahuitls. Someone online photoshopped tapirs and macuahuitls into the official Mormon artwork (which shows horses and metal swords) with very amusing results, but I can’t find it right now.
How convenient that it fit the racial prejudice of the day and that the founders were all white.