Longest Thread Ever

[Dr. Jones]

We need to get together and talk about this.

OK, I play with theories and ideas on a big stage, but I hardly ever go anywhere in actuality, and have never made a significant archaeological find, or ever screen a wheelbarrow of dirt looking for some cultural artifact. I took a class on archaeology and the Bible where we looked at the methods of some studies, like a lady named Kenyon for example, who found to her satisfaction and mine, that the mound of "Jericho" contained the remains of thirty or so separate cultures across three thousand years, the last of which pre-dated the "Hebrew" occupation by a significant period, hundreds of years. . . . .

It doesn't mean I don't believe in the Bible in some fashion anyway, though. I consider that it was an impressive mound that probably provoked some "faithful" storytellers, who made up a story good enough to become interwoven with the tribal legends of the Hebrews, and was some hundreds of years later just something any "faithful" scribe telling the Hebrew story would just have to include in the history.

I bet if you read Kenyon's research, you'd be glad to have some way to still believe in the Bible.

Right?

I understand what you are saying, precisely. And, yes, right.

 

[Dr. Jones]

So, here's another garbled bit of reaction to facts as set in this situation. . . . .

When you trot out terms like fraud in respect to Joseph Smith I sort of surmise that perhaps you feel sorry for people who "believe" in the Book of Mormon for being such dupes. I know folks who will lace their sneering lips with sympathy just like that for anyone who believes in "God" at all.

Mormons don't talk about the "Pure Adamic Language" much any more, or use the Deseret Alphabet when they write their two-minute talks either. Not very many people delve into the works of Parley P. Pratt, as in "The Key to Theology" anymore, either.

Mormonism could be understood in a patronizing way. . . . with a bit of a sneer, I suppose. . . . . as a period romance of the early nineteenth century, when a lot of people were curious if not fascinated by the native peoples they were encountering. . . . bible-reading, bible-believing folks who were quite set upon their own ways as being enlightened or civilized. I'm just the kind of person who goes out to find the natives' accounts of the story. I have on my kitchen table at the moment, the "Myths of the Cherokee", and set of DVD's called "Chiefs", put out by advocates of the native tribes, telling the stories of Sitting Bull, Joseph Brant, Poundmaker, Pontiac, and Blackhawk. Great stuff.

I also have the set of DVDs done by Rod Meldrum and the FIRM outfit he runs. I have listened to/watched them several times. I understand he's an apologist for Mormonism. I think he does a good job at it. I also like some other "apologists", such as for example Robbie Zacharias who produces some excellent talks in favor of Christianity as he understands it.

Well, I admit that in here I do a lot of babbling, but this is an excursion of sorts for me. A journey into unknown, unexplored lands. When I sit down at this computer and write stuff in Jazzfanz, it's an exercise of trying to organize the stuff I've been thinking about, or studying.

I could not just say I don't believe there's something to the Book of Mormon. I wouldn't say that even if I knew for the fact that Sidney Rigdon re-worked the Solomon Spaulding fable. Sidney Rigdon was a college-educated preacher of the proto-Baptist sort, something of a Campbellite I believe. He was also something of socialist, a believer in a different economic order based on communal interests rather than individual interests. . . . . a dreamer, a utopian of a type.

Many Mormons wouldn't accept me in their number because I just don't latch on to stuff without a second thought. Many Christians wouldn't accept me in their number for the same reasons. . . .

The way I make it out, people in the field of religion are idiot-savants who can tell you the truth of God while believing in absolute lunacy on every hand. . . . The priests of King Solomon tasked with pulling together the lore of the Hebrews with the scraps of texts they might have still had from their earliest days in the land of Israel, to me or to my way of thinking, obviously used a lot of what I call "Madison Avenue" liberties with the truth in formulating a respectable text that incorporated the major belief themes of their times.

You might call that "Spirit-Breathed Inspiration" or "The Word of God" and you might approve of your minister thumping it soundly on his pulpit to make a good point. . . . . but you are on no firmer ground than the average Mormon who takes the Book of Mormon as scripture, or who believes in the LDS leaders as "The Living Oracles".

Faith is a funny thing.
I do believe the BoM is far easier to debunk and is far more difficult to accept at face value than the Bible.
I also believe it is impossible for me to accept the Bible, verbatim, in its current form.
If not for faith (and by definition - belief in something unseen) I would not be able to 'believe' in any form of religion.
I recognize some truths in the atheists point of view. As I do in most religions point of view.
I don't ever spend time trying to prove my faith to anyone. I simply try to live a life that is 'good' and treat people with care. I choose, by faith, to accept that I can only do that through the aid and guidance of the Holy Spirit, rather than of my own strength and power.

I don't feel the need to convince anyone I'm right, nor to convince them they're wrong.. in other words, I honor the spirit of faith.
And because of that, no, I don't pity Mormons, sneer, look down my nose at them. In my intellectual self I can ponder the question, "how can very bright people accept such doctrine that has such uphill difficulty of proving at, imo, even the smallest degrees. However, I see the looks on the faces of non-believers and how they view me... and it's no different.. how could I be so dumb.

Faith cannot be fully described or understood. The sincere pursuit of absolute knowledge, in this existence, is to kill that very thing you're chasing/grasping onto.

Believe what you will.. but do it with a pure, albeit at times troubled, heart.

 

[Dr. Jones]

There has indeed been a significant amount of DNA research on native Americans. This is addressed in Rod Meldrum's DVD set with a one of about five of the set specifically addressing it.

Rod Meldrum seems a bit hokey to me on some points. But not all. Of interest in particular to the point of a "Nephite/Hopewell" connection is the presence of a mitochondrial RNA marker that is present in the tribes of the Algonquin area that matches up with some European and particular a middle-eastern group. . . The Druze, I think is what they're called. . . . a small sect of Hebrew origins who have kept a strict ban against marrying "outsiders" for over a thousand years. . . . The marker is present in one particular tribe in American at the level of 25%, which is about it's frequency in the Druze in Jordan/Syria.

So here's my own little discussion. . . . I've satisfied myself that there were people here, and everywhere on this planet, over twenty to fifty thousand years ago. . . . not an issue with me. We can talk about Adam and follow the fabulous "genealogies" of the Bible for whatever purpose we want, except I don't accept that data as "factual". . . . It's a flawed history, perhaps with allegorical or metaphorical values, and a nice story. The fact is, people were here before twenty to fifty thousand years ago. . . .

In relation to DNA, I profess to know a little about DNA, and fancy myself to be a "breeder" of sorts, following what I think I learned in college about genetics. There are a number of exceptional phenomena that do happen in genetics. We have learned to do them in the lab, but there is a non-zero probability that these things can occur in nature as well, and a possibility that an interested actor on the universal scene could have, somewhere or sometime. . . . possibly billions of years ago. . . . done the same sorts of things on purpose. . . .

There is a lot we just don't know, for sure. . . .

But in the line of natural and ordinary events, we need to understand a few facts about population genetics before we start jumping to unfounded conclusions about the past. . . .

If any of us will do a factual genealogical research back twenty generations. . . . we will be looking at over a million ancestors. . . way back then. . . . only six hundred years ago. Whether hutched up in Europeans hovels, or Asiatic, or African. . . . it would mean we have a significant chance of being a descendant of any particular one of several million total people living then, in that area. . ..

And yet we only have 46 specific elements of DNA, and that means almost all. . . . over 99%. . . . of those ancestors from 600 years ago. . . . lost out on passing one of their chromosomes to a specific living person at this time. . . .

Only the maternal extranuclear ribosomal DNA and the male Y chromosome can be followed across time in a manner that can generate a positive statement of inheritance. one mother to daughter, the other father to son.

The Book of Mormon story brings four groups of people into America. . . . one supposedly about five or six thousand years ago, two about 2600 years ago. One group that left, and came back, and some of which left again with others, about 2400 years ago. So if it were the Hopewell/Nephite identity, the Nephites would be practically gone. The displacing culture would be Lamanites from the south and the western plains. Nothing is said about Lamanite contacts with other groups, but it should be presumed that there were other groups "out there".

We are told about the Nephites encountering and assimilating one other group. Any reputable "scientist" trying to debunk the Book of Mormon story should address the genetic implications of this basic history, and I have not seen one such erudite "scientist" who has done so. None of them read the Book of Mormon past the title page, and none of them actually understand even what it says there.

So, the reasonable position is that the "Lamanites" we might encounter today have been in long contact with larger groups around them, particularly to the north and west, and the genetic fact is we should expect the genetic "markers" for the smaller group to get "washed out" over a long period of time. . . as the 1400 years since the close of the Book of Morman account should be considered to be. . . . .

so, any, as erudite as it may seem, the DNA "disproof" is BS.

I agree about the Adam paragraph and it's flawed historicity completely.
The rest I admit I am not as schooled as you are and will have to cautiously take what you wrote at face value.
Even if what you say is true. Even if the Hopewells or any other group were, in fact, of namely Hebrew descent (and I don't believe that), there are, in my mind, many, many more issues such as a few I named several posts up.

Again, I'm not trying to convince you of anything regarding faith.. just debating the historicity of the Americas is all.

 

[Dr. Jones]

I also have the set of DVDs done by Rod Meldrum and the FIRM outfit he runs. I have listened to/watched them several times.

As do I/have I.

There has indeed been a significant amount of DNA research on native Americans. This is addressed in Rod Meldrum's DVD set with a one of about five of the set specifically addressing it.

Rod Meldrum seems a bit hokey to me on some points. But not all. Of interest in particular to the point of a "Nephite/Hopewell" connection is the presence of a mitochondrial RNA marker that is present in the tribes of the Algonquin area that matches up with some European and particular a middle-eastern group. . . The Druze, I think is what they're called. . . . a small sect of Hebrew origins who have kept a strict ban against marrying "outsiders" for over a thousand years. . . . The marker is present in one particular tribe in American at the level of 25%, which is about it's frequency in the Druze in Jordan/Syria.

Some thoughts on Meldrum;

I believe most of his theories hold little water and his 'evidence' is contrived and more 'pitched' than substantiated.
In my opinion, it hurts his credibility even further when he has made claims of "scholars" supporting his claims, that many of those scholars have, in fact, sued Mr. Meldrum. They claimed they were asked very general questions and were "duped" into making it appear they wholesale agreed to his claims, which they say they do not.

As to the mitochondrial RNA marker, the only potential genetic evidence in favor of a Hebrew/Native American connection rests with the "X Haplogroup" of mitochondrial DNA (which is passed on maternally). X is a very old lineage, found in Europe as well as in Siberia, among the Altai people. The sequences among the Altai are much more closely related to Native American mtDNA than the ones in Europe, which is overwhelming evidence that it arrived via the Beringia land bridge and not on a transoceanic voyage (an absurdity in and of itself in the days before the development of the maritime compass).

The conspiracy claim suggests that evidence of Native American's Hebrew ancestry was suppressed to provide "scientific justification" for "Manifest Destiny," which included the displacement of Native Americans from their ancestral lands and the resultant genocide.

Unfortunately, all of the "evidence" they point to has proven to be archaeological frauds that have been repeatedly debunked by legitimate scientists. These include the Kensington Runestone (claimed to be proof of Viking presence in Minnesota, never mind that the St. Lawrence river was unnavigable until modern times), the Bat Creek Stone, and the "Newark Holy Stones."

Here's a sample article describing the "Newark Holy Stones" as discussed by a legitimate archaeologist...

https://www.newarkadvocate.com/article/20080505/NEWS01/805050301/Hoax-thrust-area-into-slavery-debate?nclick_check=1

 

[Dr. Jones]

Again, I don't feel the need to be overly focused on the DNA aspects of this debate, but I will just add that they're trying to confuse the picture by going off on a tangent. Here's a brief summary of how DNA is used:

1) We inherit our DNA from both our parents, roughly half from each.. BUT there are TWO major exceptions

2) Our Y-DNA (from father to son) is passed straight on, and is NOT diluted.

3) Our mt-DNA (from mother to BOTH sons and daughters) is also passed straight on and is NOT diluted eiher.

4) Both Y-DNA and mt-DNA are subject to occasional mutations which are passed on to descendants. These markers are used both to identify people descended from the same ancestor, and are also used to group people descended from a common ancestor. Based on the number of markers used you can go from the present (siblings) to tens of thousands of years ago (e.g back to mankind's common ancestors).

5) This is the basis of DNA genealogy. These sets of mutations are used to group sets of population that share them together. They are known as Haplogroups.

6) There's a set of Haplogroups for Y-DNA and another one for mt-DNA

7) Occasionally a new mutation will arise, on top of the ancestral ones, which will show that one group is descended from its parent group.

8) No matter how many thousands of years pass, or how many male descendants I have, they will ALL inherit my sets of Y-DNA markers (plus the occasional mutation), no matter where they live or who they marry and they will show as my descendants, just as my own Y-DNA can be traced back to my ancestors. Likewise with their mother's mt-DNA.

This is how scientists for instance determine the peopling of the Americas. Based on their Y-DNA and mt-DNA the various native populations can be placed in certain haplogroups, and their distant ancestry traced back.

THIS CAN BE DONE FOR ANY INDIVIDUAL.

Either there is a conspiracy by nearly every DNA researcher, scientist, archeologist, paleo-linguist, most serious LDS academics, etc,, and they are ALL lying their teeth off, or else Mr Meldrum is wrong. I know which one is most likely.

 

[PearlWatson]

One thing you do well, Pearl, is pose starkly opposite images in context right next to each other...

After reading your current conversation, I'm rather ashamed of my lackluster effort. Come to think of it I wasn't even trying for starkoppositness. It kinda fits us in a way...me the black ship and you the beautiful mermaid with flowing golden hair and everything just flows right off your odd tail...figuratively speaking.

 

[babe]

After reading your current conversation, I'm rather ashamed of my lackluster effort. Come to think of it I wasn't even trying for starkoppositness. It kinda fits us in a way...me the black ship and you the beautiful mermaid with flowing golden hair and everything just flows right off your odd tail...figuratively speaking.

I tend to view it more like me with the clod-bustin' boots and you the princess. . . .

 

[babe]

Again, I don't feel the need to be overly focused on the DNA aspects of this debate, but I will just add that they're trying to confuse the picture by going off on a tangent. Here's a brief summary of how DNA is used:

1) We inherit our DNA from both our parents, roughly half from each.. BUT there are TWO major exceptions

2) Our Y-DNA (from father to son) is passed straight on, and is NOT diluted.

3) Our mt-DNA (from mother to BOTH sons and daughters) is also passed straight on and is NOT diluted eiher.

4) Both Y-DNA and mt-DNA are subject to occasional mutations which are passed on to descendants. These markers are used both to identify people descended from the same ancestor, and are also used to group people descended from a common ancestor. Based on the number of markers used you can go from the present (siblings) to tens of thousands of years ago (e.g back to mankind's common ancestors).

5) This is the basis of DNA genealogy. These sets of mutations are used to group sets of population that share them together. They are known as Haplogroups.

6) There's a set of Haplogroups for Y-DNA and another one for mt-DNA

7) Occasionally a new mutation will arise, on top of the ancestral ones, which will show that one group is descended from its parent group.

8) No matter how many thousands of years pass, or how many male descendants I have, they will ALL inherit my sets of Y-DNA markers (plus the occasional mutation), no matter where they live or who they marry and they will show as my descendants, just as my own Y-DNA can be traced back to my ancestors. Likewise with their mother's mt-DNA.

This is how scientists for instance determine the peopling of the Americas. Based on their Y-DNA and mt-DNA the various native populations can be placed in certain haplogroups, and their distant ancestry traced back.

THIS CAN BE DONE FOR ANY INDIVIDUAL.

Either there is a conspiracy by nearly every DNA researcher, scientist, archeologist, paleo-linguist, most serious LDS academics, etc,, and they are ALL lying their teeth off, or else Mr Meldrum is wrong. I know which one is most likely.

I can't fault the basic outline of your understanding of mtDNA and the Y chromosome, but for this. I'm the youngest son of a youngest son and I think that's unusual. So how many of your male descendants say nine hundred years from now will have your Y chromosome?

At thirty years average per generation, you're talking, possibly, of a billion descendants in all. The chances of any male having your Y chromosome, however, is about zero. You'd have to be looking for thirty straight generations of male descendancy. Let's say you're a particularly robust male breed of man, so to speak, and that in each generation ninety percent of your male descendants will sire a male for the next generation. Can you calculate the chances of thirty straight male descendants? On this assumption, it's (0.9) exp 30 times the number of sons you have. My old science calculator is not handy at the moment, but it goes like this. . . .

0.9, 0.81, 0.729. and so on, nearing zero asymptotically in many generations.

Somewhere along the line, the male line may die out in the statistical crunch with a man who has only daughters, or who gets killed in a war, or turns gay. . . . The speculators who theorize about "Mother Eve" being a woman a few hundred thousand years ago who's mtDNA is in the line of every type of mtDNA among the current gene pool. . . . are postulating about a statistical zero. The statistics indicate that a "Mother Eve" would naturally be much closer to us than that. . . . well, maybe. . . . we humans have wandered around a lot, and some little bands have lived in isolation for a long long time. . . . tens of thousands of years. . . . so that changes the statistics. . . . you have to find an appropriate mathematical expression that takes all that into account. . . . how many little bands, and how widely scattered, and how cut off from other bands. . . .

most mutations are non-beneficial or perhaps deleterious. . . . . some women's kids won't be as healthy as others'. . . . . same thing with the Y chromosome. . . . so that fact would extend the statistical chance of survival beyond the simplistic math equation substantially. . . .for the mothers or the males with the "good stuff".

 

[PearlWatson]

asymptotically

nice word

Now you people have confused me on how the origins of a group of people are determined. I never cared before and now I sort of do. I enjoyed learning about the munk's bean experiments and all but the other details were kinda boring on that account.

Now they say Africa is everyone's origins because we evolved from the ape-like ancestor but I can't even buy into that...because then I should get to call myself an African-American too.

 

[babe]

nice word

Now you people have confused me on how the origins of a group of people are determined. I never cared before and now I sort of do. I enjoyed learning about the munk's bean experiments and all but the other details were kinda boring on that account.

Now they say Africa is everyone's origins because we evolved from the ape-like ancestor but I can't even buy into that...because then I should get to call myself an African-American too.

I worked in a tissue-typing lab for some years, on the research end of it. Back then we supplied lawyers with blood type groups to be used in paternity cases. . . . The rise of DNA polymerase technologies revolutionized all that. Back in those days researchers were compiling blood type maps of the populations around the world.

I was just browsing last night to see the current topics on the DNA haplotypes/population data/maps. Years ago when I looked at the blood type maps I realized it would not fit any simplistic migration model, such as the land-based migrations across the Bering Stratits on mythical "land bridges" bordering glaciers. People had to be using boats a lot fifteen thousand years ago, and there has got to be a much more complex migration/intermarriage pattern in our past. The DNA data does not change my opinion on that, which I deduced with only blood group data.

Think about it.

Every pile of rubble in the Holy Land, across six to eight thousand years, has been the result of one clan moving in on the territory, taking it over with violence. . . . killing the men, salvaging the women, or raping them in the war party. How the hell does anyone think after thirty or forty "revolutions" like that, that we have a chance to trace all the peoples of the earth through all our history????

The Vikings would be another example.

Professionally-indoctrinated absolutists, like our "Land Bridge" folks are proving to be, are simpletons who don't understand reality and are pridefully committed to their absolute notions. . . . . interpreting piles of rocks through an ideological set of colored glasses that imparts their prejudices on every scholarly work they churn out. . . .

Like in the field of religion, the simple drives out the complex. . . .

While I see Ocam's razor having some utility especially in the physical sciences, when you're studying people I think the reverse principle is the more probable. . . . .

people are incomprehensible generators of complexity.

 

[Dr. Jones]

I can't fault the basic outline of your understanding of mtDNA and the Y chromosome, but for this. I'm the youngest son of a youngest son and I think that's unusual. So how many of your male descendants say nine hundred years from now will have your Y chromosome?

At thirty years average per generation, you're talking, possibly, of a billion descendants in all. The chances of any male having your Y chromosome, however, is about zero. You'd have to be looking for thirty straight generations of male descendancy.

I thought, for a moment, you were saying me and my future generations would most likely lack decency.

Let's say you're a particularly robust male breed of man, so to speak, and that in each generation ninety percent of your male descendants will sire a male for the next generation. Can you calculate the chances of thirty straight male descendants? On this assumption, it's (0.9) exp 30 times the number of sons you have. My old science calculator is not handy at the moment, but it goes like this. . . .

0.9, 0.81, 0.729. and so on, nearing zero asymptotically in many generations.

and I'm fat..

Somewhere along the line, the male line may die out in the statistical crunch with a man who has only daughters, or who gets killed in a war, or turns gay. . . . The speculators who theorize about "Mother Eve" being a woman a few hundred thousand years ago who's mtDNA is in the line of every type of mtDNA among the current gene pool. . . . are postulating about a statistical zero. The statistics indicate that a "Mother Eve" would naturally be much closer to us than that. . . . well, maybe. . . . we humans have wandered around a lot, and some little bands have lived in isolation for a long long time. . . . tens of thousands of years. . . . so that changes the statistics. . . . you have to find an appropriate mathematical expression that takes all that into account. . . . how many little bands, and how widely scattered, and how cut off from other bands. . . .

most mutations are non-beneficial or perhaps deleterious. . . . . some women's kids won't be as healthy as others'. . . . . same thing with the Y chromosome. . . . so that fact would extend the statistical chance of survival beyond the simplistic math equation substantially. . . .for the mothers or the males with the "good stuff".

Good hypothesis and explanation how this may happen. Honestly, I feel it's weak as it relates to the 2,000+/- year old Hopewell culture, as a whole. The scales are not in balance with the evidence pro and fro.

Hope you're well and the holidays treated you well.

 

[LogGrad98]

nice word

Now you people have confused me on how the origins of a group of people are determined. I never cared before and now I sort of do. I enjoyed learning about the munk's bean experiments and all but the other details were kinda boring on that account.

Now they say Africa is everyone's origins because we evolved from the ape-like ancestor but I can't even buy into that...because then I should get to call myself an African-American too.

On the census you can claim to be whatever you want.