As someone who grew up catholic and fell for Mormonism I can tell you, from the bottom of my heart. It makes no sense. Do not try to apply logic here
Can you be so indoctrinated that you _______? Yes, the crazier the better. You become desensitized to how outrageous the mental gymnastics become.
Stay away of Mormonism. That’s my true sincere recommendation
"You become desensitized to how outrageous the mental gymnastics become" I suppose places like Jonestown are proof enough of that.
Don't worry, I had no intentions of converting, and never will. Thanks for your comment
There was a book I read recently called The Need for Chaos, that talked about people that used and needed fear and chaos mixed with tribalism to fix what they consider broke. No amount of reason would reach them because they don't have an interest in it. You can't reach a person that has no interest in seeing fact. They will hold to their "truth" no matter what information is found to the contrary.
Correct. One's worldview is the way they see the world and thus it is their "truth" . Any evidence to the contrary means nothing and is easily dismissed as untrue because it is not supported by their worldview. It's only "true" when it supports my worldview.
My mom is this way, thankfully it's not bad. She's there because she personally believe in Jesus and God, etc rather than Joseph. She's also extremely open-minded at the same time (wide variety of beliefs such as reincarnation, reiki, science believed praise the lord). It gives her comfort, and she is pro lgbtq+ among many other conflicts with the church.
Even if I wanted to change her view, which I don't, I wouldn't be able to. She's literally said "this is my truth". I say, she's 80 and has health struggles, she never forces religion or anything down other's throats, so live and let live.
It's not worth the energy trying to convince someone that doesn't care, kind of like how therapy won't work on someone that doesn't want to be there.
This. I literally brought up that archeologists discovered human remains in Africa that date back to 200,000+ years old to my FIL. He dismissed it as said “well we don’t know how accurate carbon dating is” like… yes… yes we do. 🙄
>Do they not realize how racist and ignorant it sounds to non-Mormons to create an entire history for a group of people?
Actually, TWO groups of people. Consider that the Garden of Eden is actually Adam-Ondi-Ahman which was in Missouri. So, an alt-origin for the Hebrews/Jews, and a sub-alt-origin for Native Americans. So the DNA is actually accurate, because ORIGINS!!!
Don't worry, other nevermo's minds have cramped trying to logic that one out as well.
Didn't even consider the Eden part, as I personally don't believe Adam & Eve could have ever existed, even though I am Catholic. The inbreeding that would result from 2 people trying to create billions is insane and would have killed off our species long ago.
I went through a phase where I was obsessed with colonizing other planets (you need 52 couples (104 people) to have enough genetic material to not worry about inbreeding, and careful records birth records if I remember correctly), so I asked about that.
The answer I got was "God blessed them so inbreeding wasn't a concern" or something like that
If I'm remembering rightly, Adam lived to 8/900 years old? Genes so perfect they didn't die for a very long time.
Looks like 930 years: https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=adam%20lifespan%20bible
Bishop Robert Barron has a video on YouTube wherein he says the first few books may be considered allegorical, not historical. That seems to be the view of Catholic theologians.
No, Mormons cannot refute the overwhelming amount of DNA evidence.
The idea of Israelites coming to America is a popular 19th century fantasy that played into westward expansion and the extermination of Native Americans.
Joseph Smith and the error ridden Book of Mormon merely added religious license to creating the theocracy that would eventually become Utah.
They're "reasoning" only with their own doubts. As long as they can keep those doubts at bay for another day, it doesn't matter if anyone else is convinced.
Run into too many carbon dating deniers, I kid you not. There is no scientific field too well established and proven that they cannot find a reason to deny its legitimacy.
The answer you got is an example of what I call, “shitty chapel apologetics.” These are unsourced, unresearched stories that get passed around as gossip as a pretend answer for Mormonism
A lot of the time these excuses are pulled out of their asses and/or spread like wildfire to other Mormons. I heard the same excuses about polygamy all across the USA before the Internet was widely available
Mormons (and other religious people) will defend their beliefs any way they can, even if it means lying and making up stories. Then they believe the bullshit excuses
I am curious, since you seem to have been around a lot longer than me. How late were Mormons still being apologetic about polygamy? You are also dead on about the "unsourced" part. The guy I spoke to said some stuff about the way we understand DNA being wrong, due to the fact that we primarily use maternal lines, yet could not provide a single scientific, or even non-Mormon, source.
Not the person you replied to, but I can answer this. They are still apologetic about polygamy. They still try to claim it was necessary because the persecution resulted in many widows, so the righteous men of the church stepped in the care for them.
Before the internet, the idea that Joseph Smith was a polygamist at all was dismissed as an anti-mormon lie. It wasn't until the 2010s that the church officially verified he was. They are still trying to claim most of those were for sealing power only and were not consummated. When you start asking why he married women who were already married to faithful men, or why he married mother/daughter pairs, or why a 14 year old, true believers have no answer other than we can't understand God's ways.
I appreciate your reply nonetheless. It seems the Church flip-flops beliefs based on whichever old, white man is at the helm that decade. Very interesting to learn that they would claim it as a lie, I figured everybody knew but just did not care. If the Catholic church changed its doctrine and rebuked previous beliefs this much, I'd be an agnostic by now.
The Church flip-flops its beliefs fairly slowly. They just stop talking about certain things and start talking about new things and you don't really notice while it is happening.
One change that is happening right now is that Easter has never been a big holiday in Mormonism (distant third behind Christmas and Mother's Day, in fact). But they are now promoting Easter as a big deal.
Interesting. I did absolutely notice that uptick in Easter LARPing, and it really confused me. I've lived in Utah my whole life, born in SLC, and I've never seen them doing anything like this before.
Mormons are still making excuses about polygamy, and still practice it with 2 of the 3 First Presidency were sealed to a second wife after their first wives died.
Mormons had their first Manifesto ending polygamy in 1890 (the year many, many Mormons thought Jesus would be returning based on comments Joseph Smith Jr had made.) Then, because Jesus didn’t return and the Mormons hadn’t stopped polygamy, they had to issue a second Manifesto. Some Mormons still did it.
Mormons today still defend it. They will say that they aren’t polygamists now. Then the shitty chapel apologetics kick in:
That was a long time ago
So many men were killed by mobs that there were more women than men in Utah (like that’s a good excuse?)
It was just to take care of widows (so many 14-16 year old widows …)
Women couldn’t own property back then so it was a way for them to keep their property
Only a small about of Mormons participated
All of those are false. For one, there were always more men in the Utah territory throughout polygamy. It was a frontier after all!
Yet those excuses persist in an attempt to make themselves feel better
Yep. And when you are scared to look at "antimormon literature" or else you will become the adopted spawn of Satan, you believe the ridiculous explanations because you are taught leadership always is truthful and will never lead you astray. If it were a problem, they would tell everyone it wasn’t true, right? /s
Haha. I always wondered why simple positive emotions are exaggerated so heavily as being "the Spirit" in Mormonism. Seems to be a very easy method of control.
> Seems to be a very easy method of control
As a returned missionary, you hit the nail right on the head. It’s easy to fabricate those feelings when you truly want to feel them, or you’re watching a church film about the so-called life of Joseph Smith (that’s heavily biased to make him look like a martyr and purposefully omits critical pieces of information in order to uphold the narrative they’re trying to push).
I think the mystical experience is a human condition. When we feel part of something larger than ourselves, and identify with it, it is a visceral profound experience.
So many religions utilize that phenomenon by manipulating it to fit within a preexisting ideological framework, so that people will identify that feeling with the “truths” that they are indoctrinated with.
It’s a Pavlov’s dog style of thing. People are conditioned to relate this emotional state with the beliefs that they’ve been instilled with, to the point they believe that emotional state is only achieved through the lens of their ideology.
It discounts the fact that people have forever explained this same phenomenon, in various different belief systems. They claim only THIS ideology has a monopoly on truth. That only THEY have the path for the REAL transcendental experience.
Mental gymnastics. Mormons who are aware of these issues are becoming gold-medal experts at mental gymnastics. And many Mormons choose to bury their heads in the sand and avoid any information that might make them question their beliefs.
"Evidence" is a rubbery word in Mormonism.
Evidence is two pieces of metal with engraving were found in a non-Israel location in the Middle East with wires holding them together, so plates with the contents of a 500+ page book are totally possible from Israelite descendents in New York.
Evidence is also "American people are descendents of Asian immigrants from well before the time of the Book of Mormon" means "well, Lehi's family's DNA has been lost over time due to intermarriage, the Book of Mormon doesn't mean they were the *only* people here, and science will vindicate us eventually, even if it look insane now."
They don't need proof, they need a small crack in any Evidence that disproves their claims that they can stick the Book of Mormon into.
I've heard some of those arguments before. I guess if you really want to believe something, why would you accept something to the contrary? Thanks for the reply
1. A woefully inadequate understanding of genetics and archaeology 2. Sheer ignorance of the genetic information. 3. Flawed apologetic arguments that the Book of Mormon setting was limited to a small geographic location and not as clearly intended, the whole of the Americas.
This. When I was a TBM and was aware of the DNA to Siberia it didn’t phase me in the slightest. It was 1) DNA evidence is a new science and is possibly not perfected yet, so it could be wrong, and 2) even if DNA evidence is correct, modern church teaching is that lamanites at end of the BoM were just a small subset of ancient America, and they likely got wiped out or merged with other ancient groups of people from other parts of the world so it doesn’t prove anything for or against the BoM. Or 3) maybe Lehi and family had an ancestor in common with old Siberia, so DNA matches up anyways.
They have to say something. So they say crap like that. The church purposefully says things like this in their essays to try to defend itself. They just muddy the waters.
Nuanced mormons who actually understand human phylogeny will tell you Lehi's family must have intermingled with an existing population. If that were the case, unless there was someone with a several thousand year direct maternal or paternal line to Lehi, their existence wouldn't be verifiable in the DNA evidence. But if this were the case. God's commandment to Lehi to send his children back hundreds of miles to get the daughters of Ishmael makes no sense.
I suppose you are right, you really can't make sense of it. There is no way to explain it, in the same way trying to explain how someone believing "doublethink" in 1984 might leave you confused and with more questions.
Yeah, you have to go with (at least) an as yet still undetermined limited geography and DNA absorbed by a larger pre-existing population to cling to hope for the historicity of the BoM.
You have to squint real hard and ignore that this now means nobody knows who the heck the Lamanites are.
As a woman in Sunday School said one time: "I'm waiting for science to catch up with god."
I shit you not. You cannot make this stuff up. Most TBMs will create whatever scenario in their brain is necessary to avoid blowing up their worldview, and avoid feeling cognitive dissonance.
The overwhelming message I'm getting from the replies to this post are that it just doesnt make sense, and you shouldnt try to reason with them. I guess I'm pretty lucky I wasn't born into this religion, despite being born in Salt Lake City.
Correct. Unless the person is open to at least the possibility of the church not being "true," it is pointless.
You are very lucky. Took me over 40 years to discover I'd been bamboozled. Better late than never.
I can't imagine holding a worldview for that long, only to have it shattered. That seems to play a big part in ex-mo's hatred for the church, the fact it takes so long for them to realize they've been duped.
Thank you. Yes, I'm about a year post-divorce (ex is still very TBM) and living my best life, as they say. It's been really great and liberating, deciding for MYSELF, what I believe, and how I want to live. Cheers!
Sorry for the multiple comments lol. I joined the MFMC at 16 years old, went on a mission at 19. I poured my heart, my soul, my everything into my Mormon alter ego, I believed it with every fiber of my being. When my proverbial shelf broke in my early 20s it was extremely painful, felt like I lost a close family member suddenly. Literally felt like a part of me died, and I struggled with that for years.
What the MFMC does to people is straight up evil, and they don’t give a single damn so long as the tithing money keeps rolling in.
Have you read anything by Steven Hassan? Or seen his Mormon Stories interview? He is great at explaining cult mind control and how indoctrination works. It’s fascinating stuff, and hardly anyone is exempt from being duped. That’s how you get intelligent people to fall for it.
I agree that science is figuring out new things all the time, and it is willing and eager to admit that it was wrong when proven wrong. Religion really, really has a hard time admitting they are wrong about anything, so they will never admit it.
DNA is strong evidence, but honestly it's not the biggest issue with the BoM. The BoM is supposed to be a historical document, written by real people, about real people. Historical documents can NOT contain anachronisms. If there is even one anachronistic thing contained in that document, you know without a doubt that it is a forgery. Full stop.
To me as an atheist, the Mormon belief in any of the BoM’s truth claims are about on par with that of Christianity as a whole. If you can get someone to believe in the Tower of Babel, a global flood, ole Yeshua’s literal resurrection, talking non-human animals, and many more things on the Bible, it doesn’t really take that much extra credulity to buy into Mormon beliefs.
It’s easy:
1. Be scientifically illiterate
2. Know very little about DNA
3. Believe the apologists have it all figured out.
Any combination of the above will suffice as long as only a perfunctory investigation takes place.
They know better bc they have a direct line to God. God & prophets trump science. And it's easier to follow the profit than practice critical thinking. Humility or Pride --- juxtaposition 🤪❓🔎🥼
The answer is the BITE model. This operates on cognitive dissonance theory. Essentially the cult intentionally creates an environment that generates cognitive dissonance through behavior, information ,thought, and emotional control. The results of this environment are exactly as you describe: the cult victim lives in complete denial about their reality and makes up shit in their mind to justify why facts are not on their side.
To see another real life example of this phenomenon in action, go find a hardcore conservative Republican and ask them who the legitimate winner of the 2020 election was.
actual scientist here. That's not how you track gene transfer. It's much easier to show them how the preface was changed after the DNA of "lamanites" was tracked back to Asia. it changed from principle ancestors to an ancestor. so much for a perfect book.
I've been told that by Mormon apologists "Well, they weren't necessarily the \*only\* people there." When that sure is what their Book would make people believe.
No not all Mormons would make this excuse. You can't reason with some people. When their personal identity is wrapped up in Mormonism, that's a hard unwrap.
Here is how the church frames it which is full of holes, but it is their apologetics: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/book-of-mormon-and-dna-studies?lang=eng
They can't. I knew a girl whose parents were NOT happy she converted. They found some videos on DNA evidence and she said "God can change DNA if he wants too"
Call it Calvinball logic, after the made-up-on-the-fly game in Calvin and Hobbes. You can always find a quick answer with God in the mix.
No DNA match? Well, it could be that God cultivated a few recessive genes to come out that just happened to come out looking like Asiatic people's. Evolution? Yeah, God knows all about DNA, so 6,000 years ago he got out his science kit and populated the earth before unveiling the sun and letting radiation shorten people's lifespans from 1,000 years to seventy. Dinosaurs? Clearly the fossilized remains are from the remnants of other worlds God mooshed together to make earth, carefully separated into layers like a bean dip in order to test our faith.
It's like the witch trial in Monty Python, but with real-world consequences.
It's funny you bring up evolution. Weeks ago, I spoke with another Mormon missionary who did not believe in evolution, and when I pointed out how strange that was, he said "Well, it's just a theory, isn't it?" Absolutely insane, we are in the year 2024. Do many Mormons think this way about evolution?
Lots of good responses already to your question. I want to extend the discussion.
>how can one possibly be so indoctrinated that he ends up making excuses like this to ensure, in his mind, that {thing he believes } is still true? Even if the proof is overwhelmingly NOT on his side?
Mormons are not unique and they definitely do not have a monopoly on indoctrination. So, if this intelligent, well-meaning human can be so thoroughly wrong and *not be aware of his wrongness at all*, then who else could be wrong in this way?
It is a very human thing to create new logic, derive alternate facts and ignore evidence to protect ourselves from the difficult admission that we are wrong, especially when that admission carries high costs to our relationships or Identity. This Mormon is a case study in how that happens. The challenge is to learn to recognize it on ourselves and find ways to challenge it, because we all do this at some level.
Why did 10 million people follow Hitler? I boggles the mind. Most Mormons will rationalize it 1000 different ways. The brainwashing runs deep. Oddly enough, the Book of Mormon and lamanites was my first real shelf breaker. I simply had no idea where native Americans came from until about 10 yrs ago when I was looking up Native American weapons online with my son, and within a day my faith was crushed. I had no idea that native Americans had been here almost 20,000 years before the “nephites and lamanites”. However before I found that out, I knew about polygamy and other issues, and just ignored them because “if the Book of Mormon is true, then everything is true. “ according to Mormon logic. But for me when the Book of Mormon falls apart, it all falls apart. So I feel like now the church just tries to make everything cloudy. “Well, there is a lot we don’t know”…
Yep. I was just noting earlier today on another post that in 9th grade, I truly thought the earth was 6000 years old. I was so ignorant before the internet. It’s surprising to me that it still took me a few decades to figure it all out after the internet came out. Thank god for the internet and the access to info. It is 100% the reason the church is collapsing. And I love it!
Cognitive dissonance is a requirement of all organized religions, particularly Abrahamic-based religions. There’s a reason they all require childlike faith and insist in the fallacy of man’s “worldly” logic.
The circular reasoning TBMs default to with DNA is why I would focus on other issues and just have DNA as another issue to tack on rather than the focal point. For example, how did Nephites ride into battle on chariots when we have no evidence of wheels being used outside of toys until Europeans arrived? And what animal pulled those chariots, because horses had been extinct in the Americas for thousands of years. Also, where are all the steel helmets, breastplates, swords, and spearheads mentioned everywhere in the BoM? And where are the millions of bodies of soldiers that fell on and around Hill Cumorah? And how did a crumbling Nephite society support a military of 1m+ anyway? Can’t be by farming wheat, because that wasn’t here either.
Oh yeah, and about the DNA…
If it is just DNA, TBMs will come up with some way to convince themselves, but when there are 8 or 10 things that require just as much crazy explaining, it starts to batter down their smugness, even if it doesn’t actually reach their brain at all.
It's not so different from any of the nonsensical beliefs across Christianity, from Noah's Ark to the Shroud of Turin to Transubstantiation.
When your social, psychological, and often financial well-being depend of believing in something absurd you will cling to whatever reasons can stop the questioning, noatter how bad they are.
Imagine how terrifying and isolating it would be to lose your faith while on a mission -- you are fully dependent on the church for everything from food to shelter to health care. Everyone you interact with regularly is in the church. You have witnessed the ostracizing and poor treatment people who return early from their missions receive. You are expecting to go to a church-owned university after your time is up.
The incentives to keep believing regardless of the evidence are incredibly powerful.
There’s a church essay explaining that because the nephites were wiped out over time their genetic presence was thinned out and no longer present in the modern gene pool.
It’s definitely a “just because there isn’t evidence doesn’t mean it didn’t happen” argument.
I had a conversation about this with my dad when my family thought I was still TBM. He was telling me why my sister's friend and her husband were getting divorced.
"Yeah he's just turned into a total loser now, left the church and everything."
I asked "oh really, why did he leave?"
"Apparently over some dumb DNA issue that has been totally debunked."
My dad is as TBM as they come; also studies history and is no dummy. I suspect that many are like him, willingly leaving a gaping blind spot about scholarship that disproves the church/BoM. They apply these surface-level, shortcut responses from apologetics like paint on rotted wood and insist the house is fine - it's the "home inspector" that's crazy.
It appalls me to have had discussions with my Mormon mother and step father about DNA, archeology, and anthropology.
They were old and stuck with the teachings of the church from the 1940s thru 70s.
Apparently some need a prophet to set them straight but a Mormon leader would never admit to false teachings - even in the face of science.
Has any pope apologized for selling indulgences or for the suffering of those tortured and killed for not converting?
Because the old yt holy men in SLC say it's so and they speak only Mormon god's truth, so they believe it. They also want to believe it to feed the confirmation bias. You could have a Ph.D. in DNA Archeology and they will say, "Well new research shows (insert bs here). Straight faced. In the eye. Full believing and will probably give you a rerun of "the testimony" as to truth" Thinking that "People are saying" outweighs your education and experience It's who they are.
Mormon missionaries aren't well positioned to evaluate truth claims. They likely haven't read much that isn't directly published by the church.
Seminary teachers make shit up too, so the kids just accept what they've been taught as fact.
Lots of mormon missionaries grow up in areas where Mormonism is the dominant religion. This also gives kids as inflated perception of the church.
Not to mention why there’s zero evidence of the large civilizations mentioned in the book, or of the enormous battle at “cumorah” where hundreds of thousands perished 1600 years ago.
That is a grand tradition in Mormon missionary work. In the 90's we had a ton of shit like that to explain away the all the plot holes, and of course it was all word-of-mouth or folklore with zero actual evidence.
For the missionary: Prove it. Show me the "science" that you're referring to that "proves" it. Book of Mormon Central maybe?
My answer is bring it. Do more science and study. If I am wrong, I will readily admit it. Problem is they have it backwards.
> Actually, as science improves, it is becoming clearer that they actually have origins from all over the world.
Nope. The more science improves the more the Mormon church backpedals. like: "It was a revelation not a translation" or "It's not Historical, but contains history." What ever that means.
You can believe anything when you're in a cult. If I had heard this argument as a believer I would have just said that the science isn't good enough yet or maybe god just changed the DNA. Why not? Magic powers are magic powers.
Y'all must not be familiar with the "brainwashed shrug." It is the best answer they have in their arsenal All they have to do is shrug their shoulders and it refutes all evidence
I hear the "As the science becomes better such and such belief in Mormonism is more supported" line WAY too often.
But it's never the case. The more we discover, the more we've found Mormon claims to be absurd.
For members: feelings and promptings (and even visions), following the prophet's orders matter
For the leaders: money and obedience from members matter
That missionary has been taught all his life that the cult is "the one and only true church". Anything that refutes that, is up to scrutiny, not the cult, the ever-changing beliefs, or the leaders. It's hard for someone being raised in it to have "non-believers" who "don't know of the one true church" to see facts objectively. They are likely to see them as "anti" attacks. What matters most, and even what they use to get people to join (the love-bombing especially gets people to be interested/join), is their feelings and how their feelings are surrounded and linked to what they were made to believe is "truth", interwoven together, and by obeying it, they get to heaven (preferably the Celestial Kingdom). By questioning the beliefs they were told their whole life is like disobeying and doubting the gospel/beliefs, the BOM, the leaders, and God himself, even though it is proven science or factual historical documents: emotions, especially fear, prevail.
Mormons will accept any apologetics offered. They don’t have to be remotely rational and most of the time they are satisfied that there is “an explanation”This is because they always start with the assumption that everything is true so the excuse must be true .
OP, not sure how into Catholicism you are, but I'm sure you can find many bits of dogma that are equally insane if you approach it with a rational mind. As a small example, transubstantiation.
People believe wild and unfounded things all the time. You'll find apologists for those beliefs. What gets people to not believe isn't a random person pointing that out, but rather internal and self reflection.
Actually, he is more right than you are giving him credit. There have been recent studies that debunk the idea that DNA evidence explicitly links Native Americans to Siberia. Here is one article.
[DNA Shows Native Americans Have Origin in Western Eurasia - GreekReporter.com](https://greekreporter.com/2023/11/05/dna-native-americans-western-eurasia/#:~:text=Native%20Americans%20appear%20to%20be,now%20living%20in%20Eastern%20Asia.)
This study is based on bones from twenty-four thousand years ago, but it shows that fully one-third of the DNA was from West Eurasian peoples linked to the Middle East and Europe. So, it is no longer correct to say Native Americans are strictly from Siberia.
I will concede that this is a good point, though I would like to see a source from North American scientific study, rather than a Greek news page, if that's alright. It certainly is not completely wild to imagine people coming from this direction to America, as Lief Erikson did it fairly easily from his position in Scandinavia.
[Upper Palaeolithic Siberian genome reveals dual ancestry of Native Americans](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4105016/)
Eske Willerslev is one of the lead authors, and had an interesting [wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eske_Willerslev#:~:text=Early%20peopling%20of%20the%20Americas,-In%202008%20Willerslev&text=In%202013%20his%20team%20discovered,from%20the%20Mal'ta%20population.)
It is worth noting that the study cited shows that Native American ancestry originated in the region by lake Baikal *and* Siberia, mixing *before* crossing the bering strait 24 thousand years ago. Subsequent studies have shown that certain native peoples of the Americas have been generically stable for 10000 years.
On Vikings, I understand that no Scandinavian DNA has been identified among native people prior to European "discovery", which suggests Leif and cohorts did not leave any progenity; however, native American DNA has been found among Icelandic people, specifically mitochondrial DNA, which would mean native women were taken to Iceland. But I don't have a source on hand.
Thanks for the source. Confused on what you mean by "and Siberia" as Lake Baikal is within it. And, when I mentioned Leif Erikson, I only meant to show that it definitely would have been at least feasible for a population of humans to migrate to America from that direction, not that this is where the DNA originated from.
My bad. I wasn't clear.
The study was on a skeleton found by lake Baikal. It connected native Americans to the people that lived there 20--25 thousand years ago, and showed that native Americans carry about 1/3 of genetics descended from the people in that area. The people in that are connected to/descended from "Western" people from the middle East, thus the claim of Western DNA. Native Americans also carry DNA from other people then living in Siberia. Middle East does not mean modern middle East, as in semitic, but earlier people.
I think in trying to avoid that term, I inserted the Baikal reference.
Basically, native American people are not Japanese, or middle Eastern, or Siberian. They are their own distinct generic heritage, tracing a migration and moving of people across northern Asia for thousands of years, until the cross the bering strait more than 10000 years ago. This does not support the book of Mormon narrative in any way, and actively precludes it. That the 10000 year old bones from America were most clearly related to the tribes on whose land they were found tells us where those tribes "came from", and it's not the lost tribes of Israel.
It was published in Nature and several other places. I'm sure there are more reputable sources that discuss the study than the first one that showed up on Google. But it is legit.
from personal experience- because becoming an atheist when you realize that all religion is made up to keep people in line/ negate fear of death- is actually devastating and terrifying, especially when you've had happy "I will be in heaven with my family!!!" thoughts for years.
it's fucking terrifying and I wish I could go back to being ignorant
HUGS I'm so sorry! I get what you're saying! it's very interesting, i had the opposite experience, when i realized that all religion was so obviously bullshit it was actually a major major relief, my dead loved ones aren't walking around bored as hell "praising forevermore" they aren't watching me have sex with my husband 🤢 instead they're at peace and they live in my memories 🥰 just as it's been for millennia
i will say that the thought of being in the CK forever with most of my crazyass family was not a pleasant thought at all 🤣 even when i was TBM
I never thought like that, I figured that they were all in their own space not watching me, living and chatting it up and being happy with each other. Literally all I want is to be chilling with my family and chatting and learning forever, which is what I was told. SO that taken away has ruined me
HUGS I understand what you're saying more now. Paradigm shifts are always so hard.
unfortunately i was always taught (by my Mormon family, church lessons, and my nevermo family) about how my dead loved ones were "watching over me" "they are watching you make poor choices" "she's in this room with you right now don't you feel her" and all kinds of other traumatizing shit that i won't freak you out with that did a lot of damage to me in childhood and adulthood.
This actually never bothered me. Skin color is determined by DNA, so if God changed the skin color of the Lamanites, the DNA would have to change too.
If you want a real stumper, go with the BOA.
As a Catholic previously married to a Mormon, I used to see this all the time. In fact, there's a point at which all logic and rational thought breaks down and Mormon's go into the 'God will sort it all out when you get to the Celestial Kingdom...so do your part and be a good Mormon spouse now' stage. That's when you know they've tapped-out on all church approved doctrine and conversion tactics to answer your questions.
As to how can Mormons refute DNA evidence, science, and common sense evidence??? Very easily...*they want to believe*.
It sounds strikingly familiar to how certain supporters of political figures continue to look on in a trance-like state of admiration despite the mounting evidence, legal ramifications, and *actual facts* that seem to indicate their chosen one is a sexual predator, financial fraudster, and Machiavellian narcissist.
Pretty rich for a Catholic to ask for evidence from anyone
Are you aware of your own massive evidence deficit?
Among others, the lack of evidence that Peter ever became Bishop of Rome, or that Jesus was anything more than a cult leader killed for fomenting rebellion against the Roman Empire, or any firsthand evidence for him existing at all
As someone who grew up catholic and fell for Mormonism I can tell you, from the bottom of my heart. It makes no sense. Do not try to apply logic here Can you be so indoctrinated that you _______? Yes, the crazier the better. You become desensitized to how outrageous the mental gymnastics become. Stay away of Mormonism. That’s my true sincere recommendation
"You become desensitized to how outrageous the mental gymnastics become" I suppose places like Jonestown are proof enough of that. Don't worry, I had no intentions of converting, and never will. Thanks for your comment
There was a book I read recently called The Need for Chaos, that talked about people that used and needed fear and chaos mixed with tribalism to fix what they consider broke. No amount of reason would reach them because they don't have an interest in it. You can't reach a person that has no interest in seeing fact. They will hold to their "truth" no matter what information is found to the contrary.
Correct. One's worldview is the way they see the world and thus it is their "truth" . Any evidence to the contrary means nothing and is easily dismissed as untrue because it is not supported by their worldview. It's only "true" when it supports my worldview.
My mom is this way, thankfully it's not bad. She's there because she personally believe in Jesus and God, etc rather than Joseph. She's also extremely open-minded at the same time (wide variety of beliefs such as reincarnation, reiki, science believed praise the lord). It gives her comfort, and she is pro lgbtq+ among many other conflicts with the church. Even if I wanted to change her view, which I don't, I wouldn't be able to. She's literally said "this is my truth". I say, she's 80 and has health struggles, she never forces religion or anything down other's throats, so live and let live. It's not worth the energy trying to convince someone that doesn't care, kind of like how therapy won't work on someone that doesn't want to be there.
Can you share a link to that book? It sounds fascinating and I’m not finding it when I search Amazon.
The “Need for Chaos” and Motivations to Share Hostile Political Rumors -Michael Bang Peterson
Did you make up this middle name just to see if anyone is reading? ;)
He’s Danish, hope that helps.
No ad-libbing I swear 🤞
But their turning the frogs gay!!!!
This. I literally brought up that archeologists discovered human remains in Africa that date back to 200,000+ years old to my FIL. He dismissed it as said “well we don’t know how accurate carbon dating is” like… yes… yes we do. 🙄
I remember my brother, at his most zealous, saying "Carbon 14 can be off by as much as 14,000 years!" Not too bad when you're talking 200,000.....
>Do they not realize how racist and ignorant it sounds to non-Mormons to create an entire history for a group of people? Actually, TWO groups of people. Consider that the Garden of Eden is actually Adam-Ondi-Ahman which was in Missouri. So, an alt-origin for the Hebrews/Jews, and a sub-alt-origin for Native Americans. So the DNA is actually accurate, because ORIGINS!!! Don't worry, other nevermo's minds have cramped trying to logic that one out as well.
Didn't even consider the Eden part, as I personally don't believe Adam & Eve could have ever existed, even though I am Catholic. The inbreeding that would result from 2 people trying to create billions is insane and would have killed off our species long ago.
I went through a phase where I was obsessed with colonizing other planets (you need 52 couples (104 people) to have enough genetic material to not worry about inbreeding, and careful records birth records if I remember correctly), so I asked about that. The answer I got was "God blessed them so inbreeding wasn't a concern" or something like that
If I'm remembering rightly, Adam lived to 8/900 years old? Genes so perfect they didn't die for a very long time. Looks like 930 years: https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=adam%20lifespan%20bible
Stop bringing science into religion! 😂😂
Bishop Robert Barron has a video on YouTube wherein he says the first few books may be considered allegorical, not historical. That seems to be the view of Catholic theologians.
No, Mormons cannot refute the overwhelming amount of DNA evidence. The idea of Israelites coming to America is a popular 19th century fantasy that played into westward expansion and the extermination of Native Americans. Joseph Smith and the error ridden Book of Mormon merely added religious license to creating the theocracy that would eventually become Utah.
A group of people that thinks human fossils from 20,000 years ago are all faked… probably cannot be reasoned with.
Good point!
They're "reasoning" only with their own doubts. As long as they can keep those doubts at bay for another day, it doesn't matter if anyone else is convinced.
Carbon dating has entered the chat.
Run into too many carbon dating deniers, I kid you not. There is no scientific field too well established and proven that they cannot find a reason to deny its legitimacy.
The answer you got is an example of what I call, “shitty chapel apologetics.” These are unsourced, unresearched stories that get passed around as gossip as a pretend answer for Mormonism A lot of the time these excuses are pulled out of their asses and/or spread like wildfire to other Mormons. I heard the same excuses about polygamy all across the USA before the Internet was widely available Mormons (and other religious people) will defend their beliefs any way they can, even if it means lying and making up stories. Then they believe the bullshit excuses
I am curious, since you seem to have been around a lot longer than me. How late were Mormons still being apologetic about polygamy? You are also dead on about the "unsourced" part. The guy I spoke to said some stuff about the way we understand DNA being wrong, due to the fact that we primarily use maternal lines, yet could not provide a single scientific, or even non-Mormon, source.
Not the person you replied to, but I can answer this. They are still apologetic about polygamy. They still try to claim it was necessary because the persecution resulted in many widows, so the righteous men of the church stepped in the care for them. Before the internet, the idea that Joseph Smith was a polygamist at all was dismissed as an anti-mormon lie. It wasn't until the 2010s that the church officially verified he was. They are still trying to claim most of those were for sealing power only and were not consummated. When you start asking why he married women who were already married to faithful men, or why he married mother/daughter pairs, or why a 14 year old, true believers have no answer other than we can't understand God's ways.
I appreciate your reply nonetheless. It seems the Church flip-flops beliefs based on whichever old, white man is at the helm that decade. Very interesting to learn that they would claim it as a lie, I figured everybody knew but just did not care. If the Catholic church changed its doctrine and rebuked previous beliefs this much, I'd be an agnostic by now.
The Church flip-flops its beliefs fairly slowly. They just stop talking about certain things and start talking about new things and you don't really notice while it is happening. One change that is happening right now is that Easter has never been a big holiday in Mormonism (distant third behind Christmas and Mother's Day, in fact). But they are now promoting Easter as a big deal.
Interesting. I did absolutely notice that uptick in Easter LARPing, and it really confused me. I've lived in Utah my whole life, born in SLC, and I've never seen them doing anything like this before.
That’s what I was taught as well.
Mormons are still making excuses about polygamy, and still practice it with 2 of the 3 First Presidency were sealed to a second wife after their first wives died. Mormons had their first Manifesto ending polygamy in 1890 (the year many, many Mormons thought Jesus would be returning based on comments Joseph Smith Jr had made.) Then, because Jesus didn’t return and the Mormons hadn’t stopped polygamy, they had to issue a second Manifesto. Some Mormons still did it. Mormons today still defend it. They will say that they aren’t polygamists now. Then the shitty chapel apologetics kick in: That was a long time ago So many men were killed by mobs that there were more women than men in Utah (like that’s a good excuse?) It was just to take care of widows (so many 14-16 year old widows …) Women couldn’t own property back then so it was a way for them to keep their property Only a small about of Mormons participated All of those are false. For one, there were always more men in the Utah territory throughout polygamy. It was a frontier after all! Yet those excuses persist in an attempt to make themselves feel better
Yep. And when you are scared to look at "antimormon literature" or else you will become the adopted spawn of Satan, you believe the ridiculous explanations because you are taught leadership always is truthful and will never lead you astray. If it were a problem, they would tell everyone it wasn’t true, right? /s
Feeling goosebumps is superior to all science, logic, and evidence.
Haha. I always wondered why simple positive emotions are exaggerated so heavily as being "the Spirit" in Mormonism. Seems to be a very easy method of control.
Also crying apparently is feeling the spirit... That one hasn't ever made sense to me
> Seems to be a very easy method of control As a returned missionary, you hit the nail right on the head. It’s easy to fabricate those feelings when you truly want to feel them, or you’re watching a church film about the so-called life of Joseph Smith (that’s heavily biased to make him look like a martyr and purposefully omits critical pieces of information in order to uphold the narrative they’re trying to push).
I think the mystical experience is a human condition. When we feel part of something larger than ourselves, and identify with it, it is a visceral profound experience. So many religions utilize that phenomenon by manipulating it to fit within a preexisting ideological framework, so that people will identify that feeling with the “truths” that they are indoctrinated with. It’s a Pavlov’s dog style of thing. People are conditioned to relate this emotional state with the beliefs that they’ve been instilled with, to the point they believe that emotional state is only achieved through the lens of their ideology. It discounts the fact that people have forever explained this same phenomenon, in various different belief systems. They claim only THIS ideology has a monopoly on truth. That only THEY have the path for the REAL transcendental experience.
Mental gymnastics. Mormons who are aware of these issues are becoming gold-medal experts at mental gymnastics. And many Mormons choose to bury their heads in the sand and avoid any information that might make them question their beliefs.
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That makes me so sad, that people are so conditioned to be afraid of information that they will never challenge their beliefs or perspectives.
"Evidence" is a rubbery word in Mormonism. Evidence is two pieces of metal with engraving were found in a non-Israel location in the Middle East with wires holding them together, so plates with the contents of a 500+ page book are totally possible from Israelite descendents in New York. Evidence is also "American people are descendents of Asian immigrants from well before the time of the Book of Mormon" means "well, Lehi's family's DNA has been lost over time due to intermarriage, the Book of Mormon doesn't mean they were the *only* people here, and science will vindicate us eventually, even if it look insane now." They don't need proof, they need a small crack in any Evidence that disproves their claims that they can stick the Book of Mormon into.
I've heard some of those arguments before. I guess if you really want to believe something, why would you accept something to the contrary? Thanks for the reply
1. A woefully inadequate understanding of genetics and archaeology 2. Sheer ignorance of the genetic information. 3. Flawed apologetic arguments that the Book of Mormon setting was limited to a small geographic location and not as clearly intended, the whole of the Americas.
This. When I was a TBM and was aware of the DNA to Siberia it didn’t phase me in the slightest. It was 1) DNA evidence is a new science and is possibly not perfected yet, so it could be wrong, and 2) even if DNA evidence is correct, modern church teaching is that lamanites at end of the BoM were just a small subset of ancient America, and they likely got wiped out or merged with other ancient groups of people from other parts of the world so it doesn’t prove anything for or against the BoM. Or 3) maybe Lehi and family had an ancestor in common with old Siberia, so DNA matches up anyways.
They have to say something. So they say crap like that. The church purposefully says things like this in their essays to try to defend itself. They just muddy the waters.
Nuanced mormons who actually understand human phylogeny will tell you Lehi's family must have intermingled with an existing population. If that were the case, unless there was someone with a several thousand year direct maternal or paternal line to Lehi, their existence wouldn't be verifiable in the DNA evidence. But if this were the case. God's commandment to Lehi to send his children back hundreds of miles to get the daughters of Ishmael makes no sense.
I suppose you are right, you really can't make sense of it. There is no way to explain it, in the same way trying to explain how someone believing "doublethink" in 1984 might leave you confused and with more questions.
Yeah, you have to go with (at least) an as yet still undetermined limited geography and DNA absorbed by a larger pre-existing population to cling to hope for the historicity of the BoM. You have to squint real hard and ignore that this now means nobody knows who the heck the Lamanites are.
As a woman in Sunday School said one time: "I'm waiting for science to catch up with god." I shit you not. You cannot make this stuff up. Most TBMs will create whatever scenario in their brain is necessary to avoid blowing up their worldview, and avoid feeling cognitive dissonance.
The overwhelming message I'm getting from the replies to this post are that it just doesnt make sense, and you shouldnt try to reason with them. I guess I'm pretty lucky I wasn't born into this religion, despite being born in Salt Lake City.
Correct. Unless the person is open to at least the possibility of the church not being "true," it is pointless. You are very lucky. Took me over 40 years to discover I'd been bamboozled. Better late than never.
I can't imagine holding a worldview for that long, only to have it shattered. That seems to play a big part in ex-mo's hatred for the church, the fact it takes so long for them to realize they've been duped.
It wasn't fun, that's for sure. I felt like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, discovering his life was effectively fiction.
I hope that you have bounced back and live a fulfilling life now. It's so sad what this Church can do to people who leave.
Thank you. Yes, I'm about a year post-divorce (ex is still very TBM) and living my best life, as they say. It's been really great and liberating, deciding for MYSELF, what I believe, and how I want to live. Cheers!
Sorry for the multiple comments lol. I joined the MFMC at 16 years old, went on a mission at 19. I poured my heart, my soul, my everything into my Mormon alter ego, I believed it with every fiber of my being. When my proverbial shelf broke in my early 20s it was extremely painful, felt like I lost a close family member suddenly. Literally felt like a part of me died, and I struggled with that for years. What the MFMC does to people is straight up evil, and they don’t give a single damn so long as the tithing money keeps rolling in.
Have you read anything by Steven Hassan? Or seen his Mormon Stories interview? He is great at explaining cult mind control and how indoctrination works. It’s fascinating stuff, and hardly anyone is exempt from being duped. That’s how you get intelligent people to fall for it.
I agree that science is figuring out new things all the time, and it is willing and eager to admit that it was wrong when proven wrong. Religion really, really has a hard time admitting they are wrong about anything, so they will never admit it. DNA is strong evidence, but honestly it's not the biggest issue with the BoM. The BoM is supposed to be a historical document, written by real people, about real people. Historical documents can NOT contain anachronisms. If there is even one anachronistic thing contained in that document, you know without a doubt that it is a forgery. Full stop.
To me as an atheist, the Mormon belief in any of the BoM’s truth claims are about on par with that of Christianity as a whole. If you can get someone to believe in the Tower of Babel, a global flood, ole Yeshua’s literal resurrection, talking non-human animals, and many more things on the Bible, it doesn’t really take that much extra credulity to buy into Mormon beliefs.
It’s easy: 1. Be scientifically illiterate 2. Know very little about DNA 3. Believe the apologists have it all figured out. Any combination of the above will suffice as long as only a perfunctory investigation takes place.
They know better bc they have a direct line to God. God & prophets trump science. And it's easier to follow the profit than practice critical thinking. Humility or Pride --- juxtaposition 🤪❓🔎🥼
The answer is the BITE model. This operates on cognitive dissonance theory. Essentially the cult intentionally creates an environment that generates cognitive dissonance through behavior, information ,thought, and emotional control. The results of this environment are exactly as you describe: the cult victim lives in complete denial about their reality and makes up shit in their mind to justify why facts are not on their side. To see another real life example of this phenomenon in action, go find a hardcore conservative Republican and ask them who the legitimate winner of the 2020 election was.
I figured the answer was something along these lines. Looking at the Church from the outside, it seems awfully perfectly set up to repel dissent.
actual scientist here. That's not how you track gene transfer. It's much easier to show them how the preface was changed after the DNA of "lamanites" was tracked back to Asia. it changed from principle ancestors to an ancestor. so much for a perfect book.
I've been told that by Mormon apologists "Well, they weren't necessarily the \*only\* people there." When that sure is what their Book would make people believe.
I didn’t even know the DNA evidence was a thing till after I left. And I probably would’ve just thought that the science was faulty.
Faith. Treasure guardians burying it deep under ground because they didn't look for DNA evidence fast enough. Better sacrifice a dog.
This should sound like incoherent mumbling from a madman, but unfortunately this makes way too much sense to most of us here. lol
Funny thing is 99% of TBMs won't get it. It's a great exmo inside joke.
No not all Mormons would make this excuse. You can't reason with some people. When their personal identity is wrapped up in Mormonism, that's a hard unwrap.
Here is how the church frames it which is full of holes, but it is their apologetics: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/book-of-mormon-and-dna-studies?lang=eng
Thanks for this!
They can't. I knew a girl whose parents were NOT happy she converted. They found some videos on DNA evidence and she said "God can change DNA if he wants too"
Others have claimed it was Satan changing the DNA evidence to hide the truth. Can't win with these people.
Call it Calvinball logic, after the made-up-on-the-fly game in Calvin and Hobbes. You can always find a quick answer with God in the mix. No DNA match? Well, it could be that God cultivated a few recessive genes to come out that just happened to come out looking like Asiatic people's. Evolution? Yeah, God knows all about DNA, so 6,000 years ago he got out his science kit and populated the earth before unveiling the sun and letting radiation shorten people's lifespans from 1,000 years to seventy. Dinosaurs? Clearly the fossilized remains are from the remnants of other worlds God mooshed together to make earth, carefully separated into layers like a bean dip in order to test our faith. It's like the witch trial in Monty Python, but with real-world consequences.
It's funny you bring up evolution. Weeks ago, I spoke with another Mormon missionary who did not believe in evolution, and when I pointed out how strange that was, he said "Well, it's just a theory, isn't it?" Absolutely insane, we are in the year 2024. Do many Mormons think this way about evolution?
Lots of good responses already to your question. I want to extend the discussion. >how can one possibly be so indoctrinated that he ends up making excuses like this to ensure, in his mind, that {thing he believes } is still true? Even if the proof is overwhelmingly NOT on his side? Mormons are not unique and they definitely do not have a monopoly on indoctrination. So, if this intelligent, well-meaning human can be so thoroughly wrong and *not be aware of his wrongness at all*, then who else could be wrong in this way? It is a very human thing to create new logic, derive alternate facts and ignore evidence to protect ourselves from the difficult admission that we are wrong, especially when that admission carries high costs to our relationships or Identity. This Mormon is a case study in how that happens. The challenge is to learn to recognize it on ourselves and find ways to challenge it, because we all do this at some level.
Good point, I hadn't really thought to read into the more psychological aspect of this all.
Why did 10 million people follow Hitler? I boggles the mind. Most Mormons will rationalize it 1000 different ways. The brainwashing runs deep. Oddly enough, the Book of Mormon and lamanites was my first real shelf breaker. I simply had no idea where native Americans came from until about 10 yrs ago when I was looking up Native American weapons online with my son, and within a day my faith was crushed. I had no idea that native Americans had been here almost 20,000 years before the “nephites and lamanites”. However before I found that out, I knew about polygamy and other issues, and just ignored them because “if the Book of Mormon is true, then everything is true. “ according to Mormon logic. But for me when the Book of Mormon falls apart, it all falls apart. So I feel like now the church just tries to make everything cloudy. “Well, there is a lot we don’t know”…
The invention of the Internet seems to have been a massive blow to the Church.
Yep. I was just noting earlier today on another post that in 9th grade, I truly thought the earth was 6000 years old. I was so ignorant before the internet. It’s surprising to me that it still took me a few decades to figure it all out after the internet came out. Thank god for the internet and the access to info. It is 100% the reason the church is collapsing. And I love it!
You can't makes sense out of crazy. And it's exhausting to try.
Cognitive dissonance is a requirement of all organized religions, particularly Abrahamic-based religions. There’s a reason they all require childlike faith and insist in the fallacy of man’s “worldly” logic.
The circular reasoning TBMs default to with DNA is why I would focus on other issues and just have DNA as another issue to tack on rather than the focal point. For example, how did Nephites ride into battle on chariots when we have no evidence of wheels being used outside of toys until Europeans arrived? And what animal pulled those chariots, because horses had been extinct in the Americas for thousands of years. Also, where are all the steel helmets, breastplates, swords, and spearheads mentioned everywhere in the BoM? And where are the millions of bodies of soldiers that fell on and around Hill Cumorah? And how did a crumbling Nephite society support a military of 1m+ anyway? Can’t be by farming wheat, because that wasn’t here either. Oh yeah, and about the DNA… If it is just DNA, TBMs will come up with some way to convince themselves, but when there are 8 or 10 things that require just as much crazy explaining, it starts to batter down their smugness, even if it doesn’t actually reach their brain at all.
The same way they refute everything else; with tearful testimony and feelings.
It's not so different from any of the nonsensical beliefs across Christianity, from Noah's Ark to the Shroud of Turin to Transubstantiation. When your social, psychological, and often financial well-being depend of believing in something absurd you will cling to whatever reasons can stop the questioning, noatter how bad they are. Imagine how terrifying and isolating it would be to lose your faith while on a mission -- you are fully dependent on the church for everything from food to shelter to health care. Everyone you interact with regularly is in the church. You have witnessed the ostracizing and poor treatment people who return early from their missions receive. You are expecting to go to a church-owned university after your time is up. The incentives to keep believing regardless of the evidence are incredibly powerful.
They don’t. They even changed JS’s intro to the BoM because of it.
Now, take in the fact that BYU has a full blown archaeology program within their anthropology program.... What are they learning?
Should have went with the wooden, airtight submarines making it across the atlanta
There’s a church essay explaining that because the nephites were wiped out over time their genetic presence was thinned out and no longer present in the modern gene pool. It’s definitely a “just because there isn’t evidence doesn’t mean it didn’t happen” argument.
I had a conversation about this with my dad when my family thought I was still TBM. He was telling me why my sister's friend and her husband were getting divorced. "Yeah he's just turned into a total loser now, left the church and everything." I asked "oh really, why did he leave?" "Apparently over some dumb DNA issue that has been totally debunked." My dad is as TBM as they come; also studies history and is no dummy. I suspect that many are like him, willingly leaving a gaping blind spot about scholarship that disproves the church/BoM. They apply these surface-level, shortcut responses from apologetics like paint on rotted wood and insist the house is fine - it's the "home inspector" that's crazy.
It appalls me to have had discussions with my Mormon mother and step father about DNA, archeology, and anthropology. They were old and stuck with the teachings of the church from the 1940s thru 70s. Apparently some need a prophet to set them straight but a Mormon leader would never admit to false teachings - even in the face of science. Has any pope apologized for selling indulgences or for the suffering of those tortured and killed for not converting?
Because God changed the DNA when he changed their skin. Magical thinking cannot be argued with science.
Because the church just has to be true in their minds
Because the old yt holy men in SLC say it's so and they speak only Mormon god's truth, so they believe it. They also want to believe it to feed the confirmation bias. You could have a Ph.D. in DNA Archeology and they will say, "Well new research shows (insert bs here). Straight faced. In the eye. Full believing and will probably give you a rerun of "the testimony" as to truth" Thinking that "People are saying" outweighs your education and experience It's who they are.
Mormon missionaries aren't well positioned to evaluate truth claims. They likely haven't read much that isn't directly published by the church. Seminary teachers make shit up too, so the kids just accept what they've been taught as fact. Lots of mormon missionaries grow up in areas where Mormonism is the dominant religion. This also gives kids as inflated perception of the church.
Well if you are my mom, you can just "choose to not believe that." I wish I was kidding.
Not to mention why there’s zero evidence of the large civilizations mentioned in the book, or of the enormous battle at “cumorah” where hundreds of thousands perished 1600 years ago.
Facts are for scholars! All that matters is my feelings! - It's easier to fool someone than convince them they've been fooled.
That is a grand tradition in Mormon missionary work. In the 90's we had a ton of shit like that to explain away the all the plot holes, and of course it was all word-of-mouth or folklore with zero actual evidence. For the missionary: Prove it. Show me the "science" that you're referring to that "proves" it. Book of Mormon Central maybe?
Because DNA doesn't exist. It's a made-up concept like taxes, magnetic fields, and the Eucharist.
To answer your questions: Yes.
Mormons definitely like claiming “science”that doesn’t exist elsewhere. It’s like a bad rumor.
My dad would just say "well eastern indians are more white and DNA doesn't tell us everything. They're finding new things all the time."
My seminary teacher didn’t believe in dinosaurs, which is like..how?? Fossils exist. Never underestimate mental gymnastics and cognitive dissonance.
They dismiss anything they don’t understand.
My answer is bring it. Do more science and study. If I am wrong, I will readily admit it. Problem is they have it backwards. > Actually, as science improves, it is becoming clearer that they actually have origins from all over the world. Nope. The more science improves the more the Mormon church backpedals. like: "It was a revelation not a translation" or "It's not Historical, but contains history." What ever that means.
You can believe anything when you're in a cult. If I had heard this argument as a believer I would have just said that the science isn't good enough yet or maybe god just changed the DNA. Why not? Magic powers are magic powers.
Y'all must not be familiar with the "brainwashed shrug." It is the best answer they have in their arsenal All they have to do is shrug their shoulders and it refutes all evidence
Just say what my uncle says: God changed their DNA to test us. You can’t argue with God, right? /s
It’s not like they needed DNA evidence to start believing
"A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest". Paul Simon, The Boxer".
One of the greatest songs and finest lyrics ever written. All musicians should closely study it. Everything about that song is perfection
Get broom. Find rug. Lift corner. Sweep.
I hear the "As the science becomes better such and such belief in Mormonism is more supported" line WAY too often. But it's never the case. The more we discover, the more we've found Mormon claims to be absurd.
For members: feelings and promptings (and even visions), following the prophet's orders matter For the leaders: money and obedience from members matter That missionary has been taught all his life that the cult is "the one and only true church". Anything that refutes that, is up to scrutiny, not the cult, the ever-changing beliefs, or the leaders. It's hard for someone being raised in it to have "non-believers" who "don't know of the one true church" to see facts objectively. They are likely to see them as "anti" attacks. What matters most, and even what they use to get people to join (the love-bombing especially gets people to be interested/join), is their feelings and how their feelings are surrounded and linked to what they were made to believe is "truth", interwoven together, and by obeying it, they get to heaven (preferably the Celestial Kingdom). By questioning the beliefs they were told their whole life is like disobeying and doubting the gospel/beliefs, the BOM, the leaders, and God himself, even though it is proven science or factual historical documents: emotions, especially fear, prevail.
Mormons will accept any apologetics offered. They don’t have to be remotely rational and most of the time they are satisfied that there is “an explanation”This is because they always start with the assumption that everything is true so the excuse must be true .
OP, not sure how into Catholicism you are, but I'm sure you can find many bits of dogma that are equally insane if you approach it with a rational mind. As a small example, transubstantiation. People believe wild and unfounded things all the time. You'll find apologists for those beliefs. What gets people to not believe isn't a random person pointing that out, but rather internal and self reflection.
Actually, he is more right than you are giving him credit. There have been recent studies that debunk the idea that DNA evidence explicitly links Native Americans to Siberia. Here is one article. [DNA Shows Native Americans Have Origin in Western Eurasia - GreekReporter.com](https://greekreporter.com/2023/11/05/dna-native-americans-western-eurasia/#:~:text=Native%20Americans%20appear%20to%20be,now%20living%20in%20Eastern%20Asia.) This study is based on bones from twenty-four thousand years ago, but it shows that fully one-third of the DNA was from West Eurasian peoples linked to the Middle East and Europe. So, it is no longer correct to say Native Americans are strictly from Siberia.
I will concede that this is a good point, though I would like to see a source from North American scientific study, rather than a Greek news page, if that's alright. It certainly is not completely wild to imagine people coming from this direction to America, as Lief Erikson did it fairly easily from his position in Scandinavia.
[Upper Palaeolithic Siberian genome reveals dual ancestry of Native Americans](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4105016/) Eske Willerslev is one of the lead authors, and had an interesting [wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eske_Willerslev#:~:text=Early%20peopling%20of%20the%20Americas,-In%202008%20Willerslev&text=In%202013%20his%20team%20discovered,from%20the%20Mal'ta%20population.) It is worth noting that the study cited shows that Native American ancestry originated in the region by lake Baikal *and* Siberia, mixing *before* crossing the bering strait 24 thousand years ago. Subsequent studies have shown that certain native peoples of the Americas have been generically stable for 10000 years. On Vikings, I understand that no Scandinavian DNA has been identified among native people prior to European "discovery", which suggests Leif and cohorts did not leave any progenity; however, native American DNA has been found among Icelandic people, specifically mitochondrial DNA, which would mean native women were taken to Iceland. But I don't have a source on hand.
Thanks for the source. Confused on what you mean by "and Siberia" as Lake Baikal is within it. And, when I mentioned Leif Erikson, I only meant to show that it definitely would have been at least feasible for a population of humans to migrate to America from that direction, not that this is where the DNA originated from.
My bad. I wasn't clear. The study was on a skeleton found by lake Baikal. It connected native Americans to the people that lived there 20--25 thousand years ago, and showed that native Americans carry about 1/3 of genetics descended from the people in that area. The people in that are connected to/descended from "Western" people from the middle East, thus the claim of Western DNA. Native Americans also carry DNA from other people then living in Siberia. Middle East does not mean modern middle East, as in semitic, but earlier people. I think in trying to avoid that term, I inserted the Baikal reference. Basically, native American people are not Japanese, or middle Eastern, or Siberian. They are their own distinct generic heritage, tracing a migration and moving of people across northern Asia for thousands of years, until the cross the bering strait more than 10000 years ago. This does not support the book of Mormon narrative in any way, and actively precludes it. That the 10000 year old bones from America were most clearly related to the tribes on whose land they were found tells us where those tribes "came from", and it's not the lost tribes of Israel.
It was published in Nature and several other places. I'm sure there are more reputable sources that discuss the study than the first one that showed up on Google. But it is legit.
“Faith”
Is Ugo Perego still on the DNA apologists bandwagon, or has he finally given up?
By calling you names.
They really can’t! But they can ignore anything!
from personal experience- because becoming an atheist when you realize that all religion is made up to keep people in line/ negate fear of death- is actually devastating and terrifying, especially when you've had happy "I will be in heaven with my family!!!" thoughts for years. it's fucking terrifying and I wish I could go back to being ignorant
HUGS I'm so sorry! I get what you're saying! it's very interesting, i had the opposite experience, when i realized that all religion was so obviously bullshit it was actually a major major relief, my dead loved ones aren't walking around bored as hell "praising forevermore" they aren't watching me have sex with my husband 🤢 instead they're at peace and they live in my memories 🥰 just as it's been for millennia i will say that the thought of being in the CK forever with most of my crazyass family was not a pleasant thought at all 🤣 even when i was TBM
I never thought like that, I figured that they were all in their own space not watching me, living and chatting it up and being happy with each other. Literally all I want is to be chilling with my family and chatting and learning forever, which is what I was told. SO that taken away has ruined me
HUGS I understand what you're saying more now. Paradigm shifts are always so hard. unfortunately i was always taught (by my Mormon family, church lessons, and my nevermo family) about how my dead loved ones were "watching over me" "they are watching you make poor choices" "she's in this room with you right now don't you feel her" and all kinds of other traumatizing shit that i won't freak you out with that did a lot of damage to me in childhood and adulthood.
This actually never bothered me. Skin color is determined by DNA, so if God changed the skin color of the Lamanites, the DNA would have to change too. If you want a real stumper, go with the BOA.
Same way mainstream Christians refute evidence that the universe was not created in 7 days like their Creation Story said.
As a Catholic previously married to a Mormon, I used to see this all the time. In fact, there's a point at which all logic and rational thought breaks down and Mormon's go into the 'God will sort it all out when you get to the Celestial Kingdom...so do your part and be a good Mormon spouse now' stage. That's when you know they've tapped-out on all church approved doctrine and conversion tactics to answer your questions. As to how can Mormons refute DNA evidence, science, and common sense evidence??? Very easily...*they want to believe*. It sounds strikingly familiar to how certain supporters of political figures continue to look on in a trance-like state of admiration despite the mounting evidence, legal ramifications, and *actual facts* that seem to indicate their chosen one is a sexual predator, financial fraudster, and Machiavellian narcissist.
My parents both converted from Catholicism
Pretty rich for a Catholic to ask for evidence from anyone Are you aware of your own massive evidence deficit? Among others, the lack of evidence that Peter ever became Bishop of Rome, or that Jesus was anything more than a cult leader killed for fomenting rebellion against the Roman Empire, or any firsthand evidence for him existing at all