571: Three Geneticists Respond to the LDS Essay on DNA and the Book of Mormon, and to Apologist Michael Ash
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2015
⏱️ 107 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, three geneticists respond to the LDS Essay "Book of Mormon and DNA Studies," and to Apologist Michael Ash's article entitled "The DNA Challenge to the Book of Mormon that Fizzled." The respondents are as follows:
Jamie Hanis Handy has a B.S. in Zoology and an M.S. in Biological Science Education and Genetics from Brigham Young University. She is the mother of 5, a pianist, a photographer, and a lover of science, truth, and sensibility. Jamie is the author of a recent article entitled "DNA and Mormonism."
Simon Southerton completed a PhD in plant science at the University of Sydney in 1989. For 15 years he worked at CSIRO, Australia’s national research organization, where he 
led its forest genomics team. In 2014, in partnership with his brother Bob, he formed a CSIRO spin off company named Gondwana Genomics. Gondwana provides DNA testing services to tree breeders to enable them to select better trees when they are seedlings. Simon first encountered DNA research on Native Americans and Polynesians in 1998
while serving as a bishop in Brisbane, Australia. In response to Mormon apologetics in 2004 he published Losing a Lost Tribe, which explores the origins of Amerindian and Polynesian DNA and its implications for LDS beliefs arising from the Book of Mormon. Simon is married to Jane who is an English teacher/librarian. They live in Canberra along with their five wonderful offspring. Simon's blog on DNA and Mormonism can be found here.
Eric Fairfield has a Ph.D. in moleular biology from State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is currently
founder and owner of Cognitive Architectures for Learning, a company that understands cell by cell and synapse by synapse what learning and memory are and how to build devices from this knowledge. Eric has also run a number of church courses and seminar series bringing together science and religion. He is the proud father of a female nanotech physicist. He is also a geneticist and biochemist with expertise in genes and their enzymes across many organisms. When there is time, Eric is a swimmer, photographer and chef.
Transcript
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| 0:53.6 | Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host John |
| 0:58.2 | Delin at September 16, 2015. And we are here today to talk about DNA and the |
| 1:05.6 | Book of Mormon. You know, a while back, the LDS Church came out with its essay |
| 1:11.0 | entitled Book of Mormon and DNA Studies and the topic was sort of |
| 1:16.0 | rekindled recently when the famous Michael Ash, the apologist Michael Ash, came |
| 1:21.6 | out with an article in LDS Living Magazine called the DNA Challenge to the |
| 1:26.2 | Book of Mormon that fizzled sort of pronouncing the issue of DNA and the |
| 1:31.8 | Book of Mormon dead, officially dead. It is no longer an issue according to Michael |
| 1:36.5 | Ash, it's a dead issue. So that prompted a little bit of a surge on the |
| 1:42.4 | internet where several people sort of express concern about that framing. And so |
| 1:50.0 | together we've pulled, we pulled together a panel of people with a strong |
| 1:55.1 | genetics background. And we're going to talk about, talk about both the essay and |
| 2:02.3 | Michael Ash's article and what its implications are for the Book of Mormon. So I |
| 2:07.8 | have three panelists with me today. The first is Jamie handy, the second is Simon |
... |
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