The Mormon Church Is Building a Family Tree of the Entire Human Race

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119785/extensive-mormon-genealogy-offers-limited-vision-history

by luu • 12 years ago

40 54 12 years ago

tokenadult• 12 years ago

The correction at the bottom of the article doesn't inspire confidence in the author's fact-checking. I wonder what an expert reviewer would think of the rest of the book. The last book I encountered with such a broad theme about human genetics was panned by all expert reviewers.

lukeholder• 12 years ago

The LDS church is doing massive amounts of work in preserving historical records. Here is a cool video about the process https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFPo5BSS_AA

akbar5013• 12 years ago

The LDS church is doing massive amounts of work in preserving historical records.

Definitely. I think this is an area where LDS could do better PR.

djloche• 12 years ago

The preservation of and digitization of records is probably more important than the family tree project.

So many records are completely lost/destroyed during wars over the years, hopefully having proper copies/backups made during this relative lull will prove effective.

thret2• 12 years ago

It all sounds good until you get to the part where they don't include same sex couples. This is why a non-religious entity should oversee the project.

I imagine a family tree for our entire species that also included DNA would be medically quite useful. Some day, perhaps.

CaveTech• 12 years ago

Serious question: Do same sex couples really contribute to the worlds family tree? Technically their gene pool ends when that decision is made.

aaronbrethorst2• 12 years ago

Sure. See http://itsconceivablenow.com/surrogacy/ and https://www.pacrepro.com for two random selections made from 20 seconds consulting Google.

zck• 12 years ago

If someone doesn't have a child, are they not part of a family tree? They have no descendants, but certainly are part of a family.

akbar5013• 12 years ago

Good question. Yes, same sex couples do contribute to the world's family tree.

I don't know of about all possibilities, but the following are examples I know of personally.

1.) One of my friends has a daughter. He came from a very conservative family, married, had a child, then finally had a conversation with his wife explaining his situation. He's gay, in a relationship and has contributed to the world's family tree.

2.) Lesbian couple. Both wanted kids, so a friend of theirs (straight) contributed sperm. So, one of the partners has definitely contributed to the world's family tree.

rmc7• 12 years ago

Adoption, children from previous marriage, artifical insemination and trans people are situtations where the family tree continues.

Family trees also work sideways. If someone's brother marries a man, then that other man is the uncle to that person's children.

patio11• 12 years ago

Much like criticisms of the Catholic healthcare system for choices involved with starting and ending lives, I'd imagine the Mormons think "I can't help but noticing that we had to put in a hundred years of work before we had something impressive enough to justify your criticism, but if you want to replicate it to nose tweak us, I suppose that's going to be an educational experience all around."

ggreer• 12 years ago

At some point, a set of beliefs is so harmful that it would be borderline-unethical not to criticize them. Would you have made a similar comment if the Church of Latter-day Saints refused to recognize mixed-race marriages? In case you didn't know, such racism was LDS dogma until 1978.

This project is impressive in its comprehensiveness, and I'm glad an organization has undertaken it. Still, the discriminatory, homophobic dogmas of the LDS church cannot be ignored, and criticism of these beliefs should not be discouraged. Only through discourse can they be challenged and obsoleted. The sooner that happens, the better.

thret2• 12 years ago

I just think a comprehensive genealogy is important enough that it should be managed without bias or discrimination.

I wouldn't criticise the Catholic healthcare system, it has helped too many people for that.

pchristensen• 12 years ago

Educational experience, to say the least! Reminds me of when people found out Google was driving every mile of street in the world, or manually scanning every book everywhere.

"Today the Church has 220 data-gathering teams in forty-five countries that are making digital copies of new records. They are also converting 2.4 million microfilm records into a digital format. The LDS drove microfilm technology in the twentieth century, and today it is a leader in digital data storage. Its digital camera operators photograph records and get those images online within two days, and then an enormous army—that is to say, hundreds of thousands—of volunteers index the files and make them searchable. The Mormons were crowdsourcing long before the word was invented."

vidarh3• 12 years ago

Keep in mind that the Mormon's church has a very specific intent for this: The baptism of your ancestors.

For them, recording a same-sex couple - disregarding that they don't agree with it - serves no purpose.

So their project certainly is no replacement for a secular genealogical database, but it is still a fantastic source of data (my very-much atheist dad made extensive use of their services - he was able to get microfilm copies of Norwegian church books sent from Utah to the Mormon church in Oslo with much less effort than getting hold of copies of the records in Norway - in most cases the alternative would be to travel around the country to visit the specific churches and go through the actual paper copies)

barking• 12 years ago

Your comment just made me realise that family trees are going to become a lot more complicated in the future with same sex couples, sperm/egg donors, surrogacy etc.

Also makes me wonder how an adopted person constructs a family tree.

aaronbrethorst2• 12 years ago

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/05/16/dna-site-...

joshdance4• 12 years ago

Seems that religious entities are the only ones who care enough to try such a project. I am not aware of any other large scale family history project.

wglb• 12 years ago

It all sounds good until you get to the part where they don't include same sex couples

It wouldn't at all surprise me that this eventually changes. If you look at the history, you will notice that their beliefs have changed in several significant ways over their history.

As a side note, since my ancestors came to America in the 1850s, there has been at least one person in each generation that is very interested in family history. The effort got a boost when my uncle became Mormon shortly after he started his family. (An event not without controversy in the family.) The resources available for genealogy research as a result of this work are quite staggering.

austenallred• 12 years ago

For those that are curious, here is an image of the vault the article refers to, taken by my uncle earlier today: http://imgur.com/w6Jqku4 As you can see, it's currently under construction. The vault was created to withstand earthquakes, nuclear strikes, and various other sorts of natural disasters.

My uncle works for a company that creates archives of newspapers and licenses them to libraries, universities, etc. They had purchased the rights to millions of newspapers dating back to the civil war, but lacked the manpower to convert all of the microfiche into digital copies, and in turn have those digital copies indexed. The Mormon Church provides a massive labor force of people who are now digitizing the content for free, simultaneously making those records available to the public who hold subscriptions to that particular service and making them available for free to members of the Mormon Church. Through deals like this and over hundreds of years the Church has built the most impressive family history library known to mankind.

As a Mormon, I was required to know and research family history growing up, and am encouraged frequently to do so now. I just finished beta testing an iOS app called "family search" that the Church is building, allowing anyone to add pictures, video, stories, etc. of their ancestors. In doing so you run into people you are related to who are doing the same work, and learn thing about your roots you never would have known. It's fascinating, though I'm by no means a family history buff.

cb18• 12 years ago

Hundreds of years? Do you know when mormonism was started?

ljoshua2• 12 years ago

I would guess austenallred was probably referring to the hundreds of years of records being recorded. And for the record, the LDS Church was officially founded in 1830, making it 184 years old.

IvyMike• 12 years ago

Someone here probably knows, but two questions immediately spring to mind.

1) Was there any bowdlerization of the records--any attempt to cover up scandalous lineages that are or were at one time against Mormon norms? (For example, interracial relationships prior to 1978)

2) Are they able to handle cyclical family trees, such as described in this famous stack overflow question: http://stackoverflow.com/q/6163683/67591

bostik• 12 years ago

Are they able to handle cyclical family trees

Heh, this reminds me of an assignment in a Finnish university. A second-year programming course requires to build a family tree parser with the appropriate data structure design.

The tests are automated: students upload their sources through a web form, the backend builds the code and feeds it a number of test cases. The trick is that the inputs are not provided ahead of time. Once a test set fails, the student is provided with the input(s) that broke their submission. A student can submit their code at most four times, and a failure to pass the tests also means a failed course.

One of the inputs is the family tree of the Egyptian Pharaohs.

rmc7• 12 years ago

2) Are they able to handle cyclical family trees, such as described in this famous stack overflow question: http://stackoverflow.com/q/6163683/67591*

Their current software spec for GEDCOM can't even handle same-sex marriage.

GEDCOM is rapidly becoming a poor choice for reflecting current reality.

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spindritf2• 12 years ago

It's discussed below[1]. AFAIK people of the same sex cannot have a biological descendant of both so it's inconsequential here. A more pertinent complaint is the one you cut out: incest.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8469570

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tfinniga4• 12 years ago

Gedcom is pretty much deprecated. The currently supported method is working directly on the common data, either using the web app or using their api.

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tfinniga4• 12 years ago

1. They take any information that is submitted, but it's not automatically merged into a single 'correct' version. The system keeps track of the original submissions and what the sources are, including reference information, source images, etc. if they are submitted.

You can merge records together into a single individual, but that individual can be split again. As you might expect, there are some family trees where people are constantly fighting over the actual events. It's a bit like wikipedia in that way.

2. Yes, they allow very free-form data in the tree. In previous incarnations they used to try to merge everything together into a single 'true' version of events. Since they now just keep everything, they will try to provide a coherent view of the data, but underneath it's all just individual items of data in a massive database.

Previously, the only goal of the mormon church's genealogy efforts was to perform ordinances in biological relationships - biological parents to child, biological parents to each other. That also matched up with the nuclear family structure of the 50s which the church is also in favor of, so the concepts got a bit mixed.

I'm not involved in the project, but my guess is that their current goal is to make their system the single clearinghouse for all genealogical data. If everyone is using it, then the mormon church will always have access to all the data it needs for the ordinances. Merging different databases is a massive pain, it's much simpler to record everything in the same place. Other people will only use this system if it's flexible enough to meet their needs, so I think that's why it's more flexible now.

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joshdance4• 12 years ago

In answer to 1.) The LDS Church doesn't try to make an 'official' record. They store everything. So people are editing, linking, removing links all the time. The Church just stores it all.

As to 2. That is a super interesting question, I have no idea.

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kristopolous• 12 years ago

I am really curious if they are going to try to bridge the biblical narrative to the historical record somehow. I imagine a lot of acrobatics would have to be done to tie the two together ... since um, you know ...

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tfinniga4• 12 years ago

Yeah, all that's been done for a long time, way before the Mormons.

I think it's mostly been done by eager genealogists paid by rich noblemen and kings to trace their lineage back to Adam. If you can find your relationship to royalty, then you can usually find a path back to Adam.

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joshdance4• 12 years ago

People try to bridge the narratives all the time. The Church doesn't try to, the just provide as many records as they can. I was exploring the FamilySearch.org site one day and kept going as far back as I could. I got to Adam which means that someone had linked everything back. A lot of time individuals will find themselves on a royal line which goes back pretty far, and then jump to the Bible somehow. And it seems like everything goes thru Charlemagne. :)

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rmc7• 12 years ago

I doubt it'd be a problem. Human records don't go back that far. Even presuming a "earth is 6000 years old" case, I don't think there are many records from back then.

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72deluxe2• 12 years ago

Interesting. Did you know that the Mormons baptise people multiple times in the name of dead people? It's based on a misinterpretation of 1 Cor 15:29 I believe (that verse is referring to being spiritually dead). They buy up records of dead people and baptise new members multiple times using the names of the people on the registers. I often wonder if this contributes to the count of members? Can anyone enlighten me?

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vidarh3• 12 years ago

The reason for this is that they believe that only those who are baptised goes to heaven.

But at the same time, they believe that you can effectively baptise your ancestors this way, and that if said ancestors soul accepts the baptism, that's a route to heaven.

So it's not "baptising new members multiple times". It is baptising new members and their ancestors, with the member being a "stand in". They still only have one new member - they obviously have no way of knowing if the ancestors accepted the baptism, and either way they're still dead.

Genealogy basically becomes a route to saving the souls of your ancestors.

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tfinniga4• 12 years ago

I often wonder if this contributes to the count of members? Can anyone enlighten me?

No, the baptisms for the dead are not included in the count of members. You have to be living and baptised to be counted, and either die or formally request name removal to be removed.

As far as inaccuracy goes, there are lots of people who don't attend and many who don't self-identify as Mormon counted in the membership rolls. I'd guess active mormons are probably somewhere between 1/4 to 1/2 of what's reported.

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72deluxe2• 12 years ago

Ah OK thanks.

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ljoshua2• 12 years ago

Since the membership count was already answered (no, membership count is based strictly on those living), I'll offer a quick comment on the other half of your question.

From a scriptural sense, the practice is actually based on the concept of modern revelation, where we believe that God has revealed the practice and how it works through modern-day prophets, as was done in the past. The Corinthians scripture ("misinterpretation" is rather open to interpretation) is used simply to point out an instance where it was probably practiced in the churches at the time of Paul.

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joshdance4• 12 years ago

This is a good short article. http://www.mormon.org/faq/baptism-for-the-dead

A living Mormon is baptized in the name of the dead person. This is only done once for a deceased person, which is one of the reasons for the huge record keeping project. The deceased who are baptized are not added the Church roles. Mormons believe that the deceased has the choice to accept or reject the baptism. I am a Mormon, so feel free to ask me any other questions you have.

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1ris• 12 years ago

And now just image a world where these records where forgotten or never created: The holocaust could not have happened. I really don't like collection of data, and especially not this kind of data.

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The Mormon Church Is Building a Family Tree of the Entire Human Race

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