Tobin wrote:And don't move the goal posts. DNA evidence is so much garbage. The Lehites were one small group that lived here. And there are plenty of ruins of these ancient civilizations existing in the Americas and we have the Book of Mormon telling us about one of these (among many). Just like the Bible was set in the ancient world, so was the Book of Mormon. And just like the Bible, we have little proof of the existence of ancient Biblical figures and events (Abraham, Moses, splitting the Red Sea and so on) existing today. That DOES NOT mean they did not exist or the event never happened however. It is just more flawed thinking from you.
It's too bad that the Book of Mormon mentions ONLY the Jaredites, Lehites, and Mulekites as comprising the population of the pre-Columbian Americas. The Biblical analogy quickly plummets to the ground when one, you know, reads the Bible. Then we discover that the Bible mentions places that really existed and civilizations that really existed (Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, etc.). We know these peoples and places existed because of evidence extraneous to the Bible. On the other hand, we have absolutely nothing outside of the pages of the Book of Mormon to confirm any of the New World events, places, or peoples discussed therein.
It's also too bad that absence of evidence really is evidence of absence when there would be evidence if the claims were true (if I don't find my car keys in my pocket, I don't need to rely on faith to say they might be there even though I can't see or touch them). The absence of a "Nephite-sized hole" in the pre-Columbian Americas, and the absence of evidence of a vast Hebrew polity influencing other pre-Columbian peoples, is very strong evidence of absence.
I say this for others and not for Tobin himself, of course. Tobin has a tendency to put people on ignore if they are not dazzled by his powerful double tap of "the voices in my head said so" and "you're stupid."
