I’ve been reading a bit about Mormon theology for my book, and that theology is not only plenty weird, but a major part of it has been decisively disproven by modern genetics, archaeology, and linguistics. (One of my theories, which is mine, is that the closer in time to the present day a theology arose, the weirder it looks. Really, Mormon theology is no weirder than Christian or Hindu theology, and Scientology seems ridiculous largely because we were alive when it was made up.)

An important part of Mormon theology is the contention that the ancestors of Native Americans were in fact Israelites who migrated to the Americas from the Middle East about 2,600 years ago in the form of two tribes: the Nephites and the Lamanites.  About a millennium later, their descendants had a big war, with the Lamanites wiping out every Nephite but one. That survivor was Moroni, who helped write the book of Mormon, buried the golden plates in upstate New York, and then reappeared as an angel in 1827 to tell Joseph Smith where the plates were. (These, supposedly written in a hieroglypic language, were read by Smith using “peepstones” and gazing into a hat, as lampooned in the video below.) The Lamanites, by the way, had been cursed by God because they ignored prophetic teachings. Their curse was to become dark-skinned, or, as the Book of Mormon says, God “did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.” That’s one of the reasons why, until 1978, blacks weren’t allowed to be lay priests in the Mormon church. A convenient and timely “revelation” by Mormon elders—the church was expanding into South America—did away with that policy.

But science shows that the Middle Eastern origin of Native Americans is a total fiction (duhhh!). The data are clear: Native Americans, and all native peoples in the New World, descended from east Asians who migrated over the Bering Strait about 15,000—not 2,600—years ago.  This comes not only from dating of settlements, but from other archaeological, linguistic, and genetic evidence.  Native American languages are more similar to Siberian ones than to Hebrew, and the genetics is dispositive: Native Americans from throughout the New World show a close genetic affinity to east Asians, and are far more genetically removed from inhabitants of the Middle East.

Mormon accommodationists have tried the usual tactics, including moving the migration from the Middle East to Central America (that doesn’t work, because Central American are also closely related to East Asians), or positing interbreeding of the “Israeli” Native Americans with others, an interbreeding that effaced their Hebrew ancestry. That doesn’t seem likely, either.

As far as I know, the Mormon Church still supports the fiction of the Book of Mormon, and can’t even admit that the “Middle East” migration was fictional. And it would be hard to make that into a metaphor! (By the way, the Book of Mormon also claims that Jesus visited North America.)

But enough Mormon theology. The latest Mr. Deity, a good one, shows how the whole fraudulent beginning of the church took place, including the fabled hat. The last few minutes of the video are an interesting disquisition on skepticism.