Last week The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints posted yet another undated, unsigned document on its official website, this one on the topic of “Book of Mormon and DNA Studies.” The essay addresses issues raised by the fact that there is little to no DNA evidence supporting the Mormon claim that the indigenous people of the Americas are the descendants of Hebrews who left Jerusalem around 600 BCE. This belief was so ingrained that for a very long time, Mormons referred to Native Americans as “Lamanites,” a name that also refers to a people in the Book of Mormon.
I’ve seen discussions arguing that it’s a tacit endorsement of evolution, and also, because it discusses events believed to have happened 10,000 years ago, a tacit repudiation of the Fall and the Flood and other events that supposedly occurred less than 10,000 years ago.
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