Multifaith Mishegaas
- Maybe us Yids should be writing books.
- This just in: Christians complain a lot.
- It turns out everyone is related to this guy Jesus.
- Rabbi Gellman: All dogs go to heaven.
- Why are so many hospitals named after Mount Sinai?
- What would Jesus ride?
Playing the “whos related to Jesus game” has nothing on the old school classic, six degrees of seperation from Kevin Bacon.
“It turns out everyone is related to this guy Jesus. ”
It’s a shame that this excellent article is buried with five other items and hidden under the “Jesus” hook. How about an encore presentation as its own item?
Common ancestry findings are probably our best bet in reducing racism and ethnic strife. Instead of dogma and political correctness, we have a factual and common-sense argument against racial exclusivism. Why not publicize it?
I lifted this from About.com:
“In 1997, Dr. Karl Skorecki, a nephrologist and a top-level researcher at the University of Toronto and the Rambam-Technion Medical Center in Haifa, believed that if today’s Kohanim are the descendants of one man (Aaron HaCohen), then they should have a common set of genetic markers at a higher frequency than the general Jewish population. Skorecki’s study found that a particular marker (YAP-) was detected in 98.5 percent of the Kohanim, and in a significantly lower percentage of non-Kohanim. In addition, researchers found that a particular array of six chromosomal markers, called the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH), was found in 97 of the 106 Kohanim tested. The chances of these findings happening at random is greater than one in 10,000. Thus, recent scientific research has proven a clear genetic relationship among Kohanim and their direct lineage from a common ancestor.”
I have a difficult time squaring these two perspectives. If everyone is descended from an ever-widening circle the farther back one goes, how do we view the whole issue of inheritance? I realize that one answer is that tests like these are only testing for specific, gender-related genetic markers, such as those found on the Y-chromosome, which will only be transmitted through the male line (another example is mitochondrial DNA, which is only transmitted through the female line). Still, it does muddy up the waters considerably.