This article exposes the problem all religions have when they claim their teachings come directly from God. Sooner or later those beliefs will conflict with the facts. The Catholics belief in the flat earth and the sun revolving around the earth created problems for them hundreds of years ago. The Mormons were in a better position, their religion was relatively young dating back to the 1800's. It had the additional advantage of claiming to receive ongoing revelations making it easy enough to solve conflicts with new wisdom from on high. But even that was not enough as the problem science created for them with DNA analysis.

For Mormons, the lack of discernible Hebrew blood in Native Americans is no minor collision between faith and science. It burrows into the historical foundations of the Book of Mormon, a 175-year-old transcription that the church regards as literal and without error.

For those outside the faith, the depth of the church's dilemma can be explained this way: Imagine if DNA evidence revealed that the Pilgrims didn't sail from Europe to escape religious persecution but rather were part of a migration from Iceland — and that U.S. history books were wrong.