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The original was posted on /r/exmormon by /u/Simon_in_Oz on 2025-08-03 03:48:08+00:00.
Mormon apologetic responses to the exposure of the Book of Mormon in the face of DNA evidence fall into two broad groups. There's the traditional, BYU-approved and quietly church-funded camp typified by FAIR and Scripture Central, and there's the fundamentalist, BYU-shunned and church-tolerated camp of Heartlanders (Rodney Meldrum), who are funded by gullible older Mormons. The essential difference between the two camps is whether or not they accept creationism. They are either anti-creationists (BYU) or creationists (Heartlanders). And by no coincidence, they are either pro-evolution (BYU) or anti-evolution (Heartlanders) because that's the boogeyman that creationists fear most.
In another post I have looked at why BYU-aligned BoM apologists are anti-creationists and their apologetic responses to the absence of Lehi's DNA in Indigenous American populations. https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/1mfh8cm/simon//_southerton//_responds//_to//_byualigned//_fair//_and/?utm%5C%5C_source=share&utm%5C%5C_medium=web3x&utm%5C%5C_name=web3xcss&utm%5C%5C_term=1&utm%5C%5C_content=share%5C%5C_button.
Here I would like to respond to the claims of Rodney Meldrum and his Heartland mates.
The Heartlanders
Most Mormons do not work at BYU and very few of them have scientific training in the biological and earth sciences. Many still hold creationist beliefs because you can talk openly about them at church and not face any pushback. The anti-creationist views of BYU-aligned DNA apologists are very confronting to people holding fundamentalist beliefs. The emergence of a grass roots creationist backlash was inevitable and around 2007 it congealed in the form of Rodney Meldrum' and his Heartland model.
For almost 20 years, Rodney Meldrum, a scientifically illiterate charlatan, has been claiming there is DNA evidence right under everyone’s noses. Meldrum’s entire Heartland charade is built on a single fraudulent claim; that Native American maternal X lineages (X2a) were brought to the Americas by Lehi’s family in 600 BC. This claim is false. The X2a lineage has not been found in the Middle East. There isn’t a single research scientist trained in human genetics (there are thousands) who believes the X2a lineage arrived in the Americas this recently. It is a widely accepted fact it arrived in the Americas over 15,000 years ago. The author of the Church's DNA essay, Ugo Perego, is one of them.
Twice a year thousands of mostly retired Mormons gather together for a Heartland festival of junk science. Having been assured all their lives that scientific evidence supports the ancient migration of Hebrews to the Americas, as described in the Book of Mormon, these folk are desperate to buy Meldrum’s snake oil. Meldrum’s errors have been pointed out to him repeatedly, by me, LDS apologists at BYU including Ugo Perego, and even mainstream scientists. But he is making so much money from his fraudulent claims he is now incapable of admitting he could be wrong.
Nothing makes a person more immune to facts than having their income reliant on ignoring them.
Heartland is built on Creationism
Meldrum’s inability to accept the scientific consensus is due to his fixed young earth creationist views. He believes we all descend from Noah and his family, who survived a literal global flood 4,500-years-ago, and ultimately from Adam and Eve, who lived 6,000 years ago. The earliest possible arrival time in the Americas, according to Meldrum, must be after the waters of the flood receded. Because of these fixed views, he will never accept the fact that humans have lived in the Americas for over 15,000 years.
To bolster his credibility, Rodney Meldrum claims to have been the lead scientific researcher on a university-level scientific textbook. The truth is that he spent several years photocopying scientific papers for Dean Sessions, a delusional BYU graduate and author of the Universal Model. Sessions believes the foundations of mainstream science are fundamentally wrong, and that single handedly he has discovered a host of new scientific laws and principles that just so happen to support the beliefs of young earth creationists. These are Session’s own words from the introduction to the Universal Model three-volume set.
The Universal Model includes the introduction of more natural law and scientific truth in these three volumes than in any other scientific work ever published. Its ultimate purpose is to lift humanity by fostering understanding and promoting the comprehension of Nature. The UM does so by restoring truth and order in science, and by establishing new natural law. - Dean Sessions
The Universal Model is a textbook (pardon the pun) example of motivated reasoning. Like Meldrum, Dean Sessions is a young earth creationist and his thousands of pages of junk science are aimed at buttressing his beliefs. To save you wasting your money and time here are the main take aways from the Universal Model: the water required for the flood is found in the core of the earth; fossils can be created in a matter of days rather than millions of years; all scientific dating methods are wildly inaccurate; and evolution is false. In other words, the entire global scientific community, including hundreds of Mormon scientists at “the Lord’s University” have been entirely deceived and God has chosen Dean Sessions to restore to the earth the largest instalment of scientific truth in history. But lets not forget, that Rodney Meldrum's Heartland model is built on Session's Universal Model pseudoscience.
RODNEY MELDRUM’S HEARTLAND MODEL IS BUILT ON THE FOUNDATION OF DEAN SESSION’S CREATIONIST UNIVERSAL MODEL.
Kennewick Man exposed Heartland lies
Kennewick Man, or The Ancient One, is the name given to a near complete ancient skeleton that washed out of the banks of the Columbia River near Kennewick Washington in 1996. The skeleton was remarkably well preserved and has been subjected to more intensive scientific analysis than the remains of any other ancient American. When Kennewick Man’s DNA was published in 2015 he created the single greatest challenge to Rodney Meldrum’s dodgy Heartland claims. As fate would have it, Kennewick Man possessed the most ancestral form of all the maternal X2a lineages discovered in the Americas. The other problem was that he was almost 9,000-years old. If the facts scientists discovered about Kennewick Man are reliable, Rodney Meldrum’s creationist beliefs and his Heartland X lineage claims are demonstrably false.
The scientific case against Meldrum is as strong as it gets. Five independent and confirmatory lines of evidence prove beyond doubt that Kennewick Man was a Native American who lived thousands of years before the Book of Mormon period began:
- Twelve radiocarbon tests of his well-preserved bone collagen (the gold standard) yielded dates around 9,000 years ago.
- A primitive spear point embedded in his hip bone is between 7,500 and 12,000 years old.
- His nuclear genome is similar to the genomes of nearby Native Americans and carried no semitic or Middle Eastern DNA.
- He possesses an ancestral version of the maternal X2a lineage from which all Native American X2a lineages descend.
- Carbon and Nitrogen isotope analysis of his bones proved he was a hunter gatherer and lived at least 5,000-years-ago, well before human (i.e. Nephite) settlements based on plant and animal domestication had arisen.
The responsibility of defending the Heartland lies in the face of Kennewick Man has fallen upon David Read, a patent attorney with no scientific training, and fixed creationist beliefs. Read has attacked the scientific community’s interpretation of the scientific evidence gleaned from Kennewick Man's bones. In his book Face of a Nephite, Read lays out his case against the scientific experts who analysed Kennewick Man first hand. A team of about 50 of America’s leading forensic anthropologists studied the skeleton for several years. Read boasts that his “more complete analysis of the carbon dating for Kennewick Man shows that his correct age is within Book of Mormon timeframes”.
Read's response to Kennewick Man mirrors the conceit of Rodney Meldrum and Dean Sessions. Read made numerous foolish errors as he cherry-picked for evidence that fitted his creationist conclusions. Most of his errors relate to his misunderstanding of carbon dating.
Kennewick Man was extremely well preserved and scientists were able to purify collagen, a carbon-containing protein, from several of his bones. The only possible origin of the biologically complex collagen protein is Kennewick Man. Twelve independent radiocarbon tests on collagen isolated from several different bones revealed they were almost 9,000-year-old. Carbon-dating evidence does not get any more reliable.
Purely out of curiosity, the scientists also carbon-dated calcium carbonates associated with the bones. Bones and other organic objects that are buried deep in the ground for a very long time frequently become contaminated with carbon that washes down the soil profile. Rainwater carries dissolved carbon dioxide in the form of carbonic acid. As rainwater travels down...
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