S U N S T O N E
PAGE 70 DECEMBER 2004
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first installment
of a two-part essay in which LDS philosopher and
theologian Blake T. Ostler employs the tools of
logic and formal argumentation to assess recent
claims against Book of Mormon historicity.
IN HIS SUMMARIES of studies about the
DNA of aboriginal populations in the
Americas, Thomas W. Murphy argues
that these findings challenge the belief that
the Book of Mormon is what it claims to
be—an ancient text written by inhabitants in
America covering a timeframe of about 2000
B.C. to about 421 A.D.1
Murphy’s claims
about the relevance of DNA studies for evaluating
the Book of Mormon have received
moderate notoriety even outside LDS circles
and have generated a variety of responses
from Book of Mormon defenders.
Because of my training in law and philosophy,
whenever I encounter an argument, I
assess it by translating it into its logical form.
This exercise allows me to focus on an argument’s
ability to show what it claims. Since
much in the recent discussions center on just
what DNA studies can show, it is important to
make explicit both the form and premises of
the arguments so we can assess the truth
claims made or assumed in them. In this
essay, I concentrate on the premises and logical
structures of the two main arguments
Murphy advances regarding DNA and the
Book of Mormon. I believe it will be evident
that DNA studies have little or no bearing on
the question of Book of Mormon historicity.
THE DEDUCTIVE DNA ARGUMENT
AGAINST THE BOOK OF MORMON
MURPHY’S initial claim is that DNA evidence
shows that the Book of Mormon’s antiquity
is virtually “impossible.” In an interview
with Living Hope Ministries, Murphy
states:
We, as Mormons, were mistaken
about who American Indians
are and where they came from. We
have based our beliefs upon the
Book of Mormon, which we
thought was an accurate ancient
historical record. The genetic evidence
has pretty conclusively
shown that that is not possibly the
case.
Well, with all these problems, I
think to be honest, we have to
admit them. We have to stop pretending
that they’re not there. We
need to stop looking for plausible
reasons that the evidence doesn’t
exist, and I think we need to acknowledge
a nineteenth-century
origin of the Book of Mormon.
That is, we can, I think, admit that
Joseph Smith produced the Book of
Mormon in the nineteenth century,
and I, as a Mormon scholar, am not
afraid to say that.
I think the most difficult
problem with a nineteenth-century
view of the Book of Mormon is that
we have to confront not just the
possibility, but the almost inevitability,
that Joseph Smith was
attempting to deceive people—at
least at certain periods of time.
When he pretended to have actual
plates, for example. It is pretty clear
he was being deceptive at that
time.2
Murphy makes several assertions in this
small excerpt that are simply irresponsible.
However, I am more interested in the structure
and logic of Murphy’s arguments when
he claims that “the genetic evidence has
pretty conclusively shown that [the view that
the Book of Mormon is an ancient historical
record] is not possibly the case.”3
What kind
of argument could support such a strong
claim?
I have perused the arguments of Murphy
and those who follow him in claiming DNA
evidence challenges the assertion that the
Book of Mormon is what it claims to be. In so
doing, I have found that those who employ
DNA evidence in this manner are vague about
the logical form that their argument takes.
Indeed, I do not see any evidence that those
using a DNA argument against Book of
Mormon antiquity are even aware of the form
their argument takes. However, this is fairly
easy to reconstruct. The deductive argument
against the Book of Mormon is:
P1. The Book of Mormon claims
that all aboriginal inhabitants
of ancient America are of
Hebrew descent.
P2. DNA studies show that all inhabitants
of ancient America
are of Asiatic, not Hebrew,
descent.
P3. DNA studies are accurate.
P4. P1 cannot be true, given P2
and P3.
C1. Therefore, the Book of
Mormon claim stated in
premise P1 is false.
This argument has a valid deductive form.
That is, if the Book of Mormon asserts that all
inhabitants of the Americas are of Hebrew
descent, and if DNA evidence reliably shows
that this is not true, then it follows that one
of the premises must be false. In asserting
this, Murphy and those who follow his lead
are, of course, banking on people trusting
DNA evidence more than they trust the Book
of Mormon itself with respect to claims about
the inhabitants of ancient America.
Understand that Murphy does not assert this
argument; rather, it is presupposed in the
claim that the genetic evidence shows the
Book of Mormon cannot possibly be ancient
and therefore Joseph Smith was a fraud.
Murphy has accepted each of the premises of
the argument and arrived at the conclusion
C1.
Even if an argument has a valid deductive
structure, this does not mean the argument is
sound. Such is the case here. This argument
YEA, YEA NAY, NAY
ASSESSING THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE
OF DNA ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE
BOOK OF MORMON
By Blake T. Ostler
BLAKE T. OSTLER is a Salt Lake City attorney with Mackey, Price, Thompson, and
Ostler. He is the author of many articles on Mormon theology and philosophy, including
the seminal, “The Book of Mormon as a Modern Expansion of an Ancient Source”
(Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Spring 1987).
S U N S T O N E
DECEMBER 2004 PAGE 71
does not succeed as a disproof of the Book of
Mormon’s claim about the inhabitants of
Ancient America for two reasons.
First, premise P2 is not an accurate statement
of what DNA evidence can show. What
is true is actually P2*: Amerindian DNA is consistent
with an Asiatic ancestry, and there is no
persuasive evidence to support Hebrew
ancestry.4
But P2 is a very different assertion
from P2*, for P2* is simply a statement of the
lack of evidence of Hebrew ancestry, not an assertion
that there is conclusive evidence
Amerindians do not have Hebrew ancestors.
This distinction is crucial. Once P2 is replaced
with P2*, the argument is no longer
valid. Thus, the deductive DNA argument
against the Book of Mormon cannot succeed
as disproof of Hebrew ancestry for
Amerindians and is, at most, a statement for
a lack of evidence.
There is another reason that this deductive
argument cannot succeed: premise P1 is
false. Any person who believes that the Book
of Mormon is what it claims to be will also
take seriously what the Book of Mormon itself
claims with respect to its geography. For
those who have taken the time to actually
map out and look at the distances involved
in the Book of Mormon, the assertion that
the Book of Mormon claims to be a history of
all inhabitants of ancient America is absurd
on its face. And even if the writers of the
Book of Mormon made such a claim, clearly
those involved in the record keeping (assuming
these to be historical persons) could
not possibly have known from their epistemic
position that their assertion was true.
They simply did not have the extensive geographical
knowledge necessary to make such
a claim. I see no persuasive evidence that the
Book of Mormon claims that all Amerindians
are of Hebrew descent, and, as I will discuss
in detail in Part II of this essay (to be published
in the next SUNSTONE issue), there are
rather clear indications that the Book of
Mormon claims the contrary.
THE INDUCTIVE DNA ARGUMENT
AGAINST THE BOOK OF MORMON
AFTER asserting that DNA evidence shows it
is impossible that any inhabitants of the ancient
Americas are of Hebrew descent,
Murphy then claims that DNA evidence
shows the Book of Mormon to be “implau-
sible.”5
A claim is deemed “implausible” if it
is not probable given the evidence.
In making his assertion, Murphy speaks
of “parsimonious” claims about the text,
meaning that he believes his claim that the
Book of Mormon was written by Joseph
Smith is the simplest explanation given the
evidence regarding its origins. This claim is
meaningless, for Murphy has not dealt with
all of the relevant evidence to be in a position
to make such an assessment. For example, he
hasn’t dealt with any of the evidence showing
that the author(s) of the Book of Mormon
was (were) acquainted with Hebrew literary
forms such as the prophetic call or Hebrew
ritual forms such as the covenant renewal
festival or Israelite judicial procedures and
substantive law.6
Such features of the book
require an explanation, but someone who
uses DNA evidence as primary support for his
or her view that Joseph Smith is the book’s
author fails to address all of the relevant evidence
and is therefore not in a position to
make claims about which explanation is
most “parsimonious.”
The claim that the Book of Mormon’s
having been translated from an ancient text is
“implausible” amounts to asserting that it is
not just “not probable” but actually improbable,
given the evidence. In other words, it is
based on an inductive argument. However,
as I will show, if it is based solely upon genetic
evidence, this inductive argument
doesn’t have a chance of success.
As with the deductive argument, Murphy
never presents his inductive argument in a
logical form; and indeed, he never presents
his argument as a conclusion based on steps
of reasoning or inductive proof. Rather, he
merely assumes that DNA evidence of Asiatic
origin and lack of evidence of Hebrew origin
is evidence against the claims that the Book
of Mormon makes for itself. Nevertheless,
based on his claims that DNA evidence shows
an Israelite origin for Amerindians is “implausible,”
it is fairly clear what logical form
his argument must take:
M1. “There is no genetic evidence
to support the view that the
ancient inhabitants of the
Americas were of Semitic
descent.”7
M2. If there had been peoples
of Semitic descent in the
ancient Americas, then it is
highly probable that genetic
evidence showing such
Semitic descent would appear
among the DNA samplings that
have been collected so far.
M3. Therefore, it is highly
improbable that there were
any people of Semitic descent
in ancient America.
This argument has a valid inductive form.
However, it fails as a proof, for premise M2 is
not known to be true. Moreover, we simply
don’t have sufficient grasp of the evidence to
know how we could know M2 to be true.
That is, we don’t know what the probability
is that if peoples of Semitic descent were in
ancient America we would find genetic
markers of that descent among the DNA samples
collected to date. Yet that is the crucial
question that must be answered to determine
whether premise M2 of this inductive argument
is true. Moreover, we don’t know what
kind of evidence it would take to be able to
make the assertion contained in premise M2.
Without knowing the probability that if there
had been descendants of Lehi and Nephi in
ancient America we would find markers of
Semitic descent among populations from
whom DNA has been collected, we have no
epistemological basis for assessing the
strength of the probabilities asserted in the
argument. Murphy’s implied claim about
probability cannot be quantified and is therefore
vacuous.
Without knowing whether it is probable
or improbable that today we would find
Semitic genetic markers among DNA samples
if there had been ancient Americans of
Semitic descent, we cannot know if we
should expect to find any. That is the crucial
point. The inductive argument derives its
force from the assumption that if the Book of
Mormon peoples were a Semitic population,
we should expect today to find Semitic DNA.
But we don’t know that we should have that
expectation. The argument assumes that we
should expect Semitic DNA evidence, but for
the argument to have any real persuasive
power, it must prove that point and not assume
it.
I want to make clear that while Murphy
and others employing DNA arguments rather
plainly assert premise M1 and conclude M3,
they have not expressly asserted premise M2.
Nothing can be proven
from an invalid argument.
Recognizing that
DNA arguments against
the Book of Mormon
are both invalid and
unsound demonstrates
that those who rely on
DNA evidence to discredit
the Book of Mormon
are claiming more than
they can know.
S U N S T O N E
PAGE 72 DECEMBER 2004
Further, it is rather clear why they avoid asserting
or analyzing premise M2. It is because
M2 shows that their argument is
stranded on a premise that makes an undefended,
and at this point indefensible, assertion
about probability. On the other hand, if
they feel that asserting M1 is all that is necessary
to prove their case (as Murphy seems to
do in his assertion that “anthropologists”
have long ago disproven the historical claims
of the Book of Mormon),8
then they simply
fail to make the distinction between evidence
against a proposition and the lack of evidence
for it.
FOR the foregoing reasons, I do not believe
arguments from DNA are enlightening
with respect to the historicity of
the Book of Mormon. They are enlightening
with respect to whether all of the peoples
who inhabited the ancient Americas were
solely of Semitic descent. Clearly, they were
not. However, I can see no reason that the
person who believes the Book of Mormon to
be what it claims is obligated, upon pain of
lack of integrity or epistemic accuracy, to believe
that the Book of Mormon cannot be
true unless all inhabitants of ancient America
are exclusively descended from Semitic an-
cestry.
Nothing can be proven from an invalid
argument. Recognizing that DNA arguments
against the Book of Mormon are both invalid
and unsound demonstrates that those who
rely on DNA evidence to discredit the Book of
Mormon are claiming more than they can
know.
I believe one of the main reasons DNA arguments
against the Book of Mormon have
made headlines, despite their clear lack of
logical soundness, is the informal link in
many people’s minds between the issue of
Amerindian origins and what they have been
taught the Book of Mormon says about ancient
American peoples. That is, when confronted
with DNA evidence that doesn’t track
with what they’ve been taught about the inhabitants
of Ancient America, many people
confuse the issue of “that’s not what I’ve been
taught” with the question of “what the Book
of Mormon actually says about its peoples.”
Part II of this essay deals directly with this
confusion, clarifying distinctions that will
show the importance of weighing DNA and
other studies against what the Book of
Mormon actually says about itself instead of
against naive views of what it says, even if
those views have been taught by Church
leaders. The Book of Mormon must be tested
by what it says for itself and not by what
others may believe about it.
NOTES
1. Thomas W. Murphy, “Lamanite Genesis,
Genealogy, and Genetics,” in Dan Vogel and Brent Lee
Metcalfe, eds., American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book
of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002),
47–77. In my view, Murphy is disingenuous in his arguments.
In “Inventing Galileo,” SUNSTONE, March
2004, 58–62, Murphy denies that he had argued that
the Book of Mormon is disproven by DNA evidence.
However, when he responded to a charge by Daniel
Peterson that he has attempted “to show that the
Book of Mormon cannot be reconciled with the findings
of contemporary biology,” Murphy responds, “To
the contrary, I believe that we can reconcile the biological
evidence with the Book of Mormon by approaching
the scripture as nineteenth century
pseudepigrapha. . . .” Ibid, 59. Such a response is
disingenuous. Surely Murphy was aware that
Peterson was arguing that Murphy maintains the biological
evidence is irreconcilable with the claim that
the Book of Mormon is a true ancient story of
Nephites. Murphy’s suggestion that Peterson has misrepresented
his position is misleading. Moreover, he
claims that “DNA is not a ‘Galileo event’” because “the
anthropological community” had “already rejected
the idea that American Indians originated in Israel”
more than a century ago. However, this assertion is
sloppy logic for the simple reason that rejection of a
view is not a disproof of a view.
2. Video interview with Thomas Murphy, hosted
at www.mormonchallenge.com. This partial transcript
is taken from the clip entitled, “Dealing with
Evidence.”
3. Ibid. See also Thomas Murphy, “Simply
Implausible: DNA and the Mesoamerican Setting for
the Book of Mormon,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon
Thought 36, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 109–31; Murphy,
“Inventing Galileo,” 60. It seems to me that Murphy
has attempted to dodge criticisms of his view by
masking it as something that it is not. For example,
he states that BYU geneticist Michael Whiting “misrepresents”
his view when Whiting asserts that Murphy
claims “modern DNA science has conclusively proven
the Book of Mormon false and that Joseph Smith is a
fraud.” In response, Murphy maintains that:
To the contrary, I believe that infallible humans
interpret DNA evidence, and such
interpretations are inevitably affected by
cultural assumptions and preformed expectations.
It would be an abuse of science
to contend that one has conclusively
proven anything. Thus, I have maintained
that the nineteenth-century origin of the
Book of Mormon is the most parsimonious
explanation of existing scientific
and historical data. The scripture, though,
may be historical fiction and still contain
inspired spiritual truths emanating from a
prophet of God. (58)
Yet that is not what Murphy claimed in the Living
Hope Ministries video, and Whiting has not misrepresented
his statements. It is Murphy who is attempting
to dodge a valid criticism by pretending that
he never stated what he rather clearly did state.
Murphy was not as careful in his statements to Living
Hope Ministries as he has attempted to be in later articles.
In making a claim about which view of the
Book of Mormon is most parsimonious, Murphy is
making a claim about probability. However, such a
claim is inconsistent with his later, more decisive assertions
that “there is no genetic evidence to support
the Book of Mormon, and most of us do not expect
any to be forthcoming.” Ibid., 60.
4. See Trent D. Stevens, “Now What?”
SUNSTONE, March 2004, 26–29; Michael F. Whiting,
“DNA and the Book of Mormon: A Phylogenetic
Perspective,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 12, no.
1 (2003): 24–35; D. Jeffrey Meldrum and Trent D.
Stephens, “Who Are the Children of Lehi,” Journal of
Book of Mormon Studies 12, no. 1 (2003): 38–51;
David A. McLellan, “Detecting Lehi’s Genetic
Signature: Possible or Not?” FARMS Review 15, no. 2
(2003): 35–90; Dean H. Leavitt, Jonathan C.
Marshall, and Keith A Crandall, “The Search for the
Seed of Lehi: How Defining Alternative Models Helps
in the Interpretation of Genetic Data,” Dialogue: A
Journal of Mormon Thought 36, no. 4 (Winter 2003):
133–50.
5. Murphy, “Simply Implausible.”
6. A good overview of these and many other
matters Murphy would have to account for before
being qualified to claim what is parsimonious with regard
to the Book of Mormon is my article, “The Book
of Mormon as a Modern Expansion of an Ancient
Source,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 20,
no. 1 (Spring 1987): 66–123. On a Hebrew covenant
renewal festival in the book of Mosiah, see Terrence L.
Szink and John W. Welch, “King Benjamin’s Speech in
the Context of Ancient Israelite Festivals,” in John W.
Welch and Stephen D. Ricks, King Benjamin’s Speech
(Provo: FARMS, 1998), 147–224; Stephen D. Ricks,
“Kingship, Coronation and Covenant in Mosiah 1–6,”
Ibid., 233–76; Stephen D. Ricks, “The Treaty/
Covenant Pattern in King Benjamin’s Speech,” BYU
Studies 24, no. 2 (1984): 151–62; Hugh Nibley, An
Approach to the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City:
Deseret Book, 1957), 295–310; John A. Tvedtnes,
“King Benjamin’s Speech: A Classic Ancient Farewell
Address,” and “Coronation of Kings,” in Reexploring
the Book of Mormon, John W. Welch, ed., (Salt Lake
City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1992), 114–26; and
Gordon C. Thomasson, “Mosiah: The Symbolic
Complex of Kingship in the Book of Mormon,”
Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 2, no. 1 (1993),
21–38. For the various prophetic lawsuit forms in the
Book of Mormon, see my “Book of Mormon as a
Modern Expansion of an Ancient Source,” 93–98;
John W. Welch, “Benjamin’s Speech as a Prophetic
Lawsuit,” in King Benjamin’s Speech, 225–32; Richard
R. McGuire, “Prophetic Lawsuits in the Hebrew Bible
and the Book of Mormon,” Preliminary Report (Provo:
FARMS, 1982). For the form-critical aspects of Lehi’s
vision as a prophetic call, see Blake T. Ostler, “The
Throne-Theophany and Prophetic Commission in 1
Nephi: A Form-Critical Analysis,” BYU Studies 26, no.
4 (Fall 1986): 67–87; Stephen D. Ricks, “Heavenly
Visions and Prophetic Calls in Isaiah 6, the Book of
Mormon and the Revelation of John,” in Donald W.
Parry and John W. Welch, eds., Isaiah in the Book of
Mormon (Provo: FARMS, 1998), 171–190; John W.
Welch, “The Calling of a Prophet,” The Book of
Mormon: First Nephi, the Doctrinal Foundation, Monte
S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr., eds. (Provo:
Religious Studies Center, 1988), 35–54; and John W.
Welch, “The Calling of Lehi as a Prophet in the World
of Jerusalem,” in Glimpses of Lehi’s Jerusalem, John W.
Welch, David Rolph Seely, Jo Ann H. Seely, eds.
(Provo: FARMS, 2004), 421–448.
7. Murphy, “Inventing Galileo,” 60.
8. Ibid., 59. See also my note 1.