Nature Genetics: A Genetic View of Jewish History
- From: "John W Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2008 01:28:46 -0500 (EST)
josh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (amazingly) wrote:-
[moderator's note: I have no idea why John thinks I wrote this
article; I did not. The article in question was written by Jon
Entine (for which see www.abrahamschildren.net) and seemed
reasonably on-topic to me and no more beset with offensive
comment than a lot of other posts here.
To see the original article, you could use the Message-ID header:
Message-ID: <fnvojc$1nuk$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
to locate it. - JAH]
snip<
I had interviewed Harry while preparing the
book. I emailed about his single critical comment in the review... He
wrote back that he thought it could have focused more on the genetics
of Jewish diseases--which just so happens to be the focus of his book,
which those of us writing on this subject are eagerly awaiting.
snip<
JE:-
I think that only the rabid fascist right is "eagerly awaiting" an
empirically falsifiable test as to what a "Jew" is genetically. They will
wait a rather long time because "Jew", along with what man is as a separate
species was thrown out on an empirical basis by Darwin. It appears the penny
has not dropped as to what Darwin proposed: all there is out there are adult
individuals which can only be individually selected within groups isolated
for just an undetermined period of time. The net result: only adult
individuals can be selected and only groups of them can evolve, i.e. NEVER
THE REVERSE.
Who is a Jew?
....
A century ago, popular wisdom held that Jews were a race with a
distinctive build and physiognomy. The New York University physician
and physical anthropologist Maurice Fishberg wrote: "One can pick out
a Jew from among a thousand non-Jews without difficulty." Joseph
Jacobs, a physical anthropologist and folklorist, expanded on this
viewpoint by noting that "The remarkable unity of resemblance among
Jews, even in different climes, seems to imply a common descent." This
concept was embraced by Einstein.
JE:-
Einstein also embraced communism. So much for Einstein as a valid social
theorist....
But amid the tumult of the twentieth
century, in which race science run amok led to the Nazi-led Holocaust
of Jews, new constructs using the discoveries of population genetics
emerged.
JE:-
A Jew can be only separated genetically from a non Jew by deploying
polycentric (self contradictory) population genetics. Bravo, the
mathematicians have done it again....
"All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass,
but he remains...
JE:-
Sounds like Dawkins' notion of immortal genes which were not immortal at all
simply because Dawkins was only referring to mortal gene replicates that can
only exist within different adult bodies (Darwinian monocentric selectees)
with many other quite different genomic genes all of which have a NON
additive (epistatic) dependent fitness, i.e. NOT an additive independent
fitness, even if they can independently segregate.
What is the secret of his immortality?" Entine's
response "good breeding." To trace the patterns of good breeding, he
pays special attention to the discovery of the 'Cohan modal
haplotype,' a Y chromosomal marker defined by a series of
microsatellites that is found in a high proportion of Jewish men who
claim descent from Aaron the Priest, the brother of Exodus leader
Moses.
JE;-
Just maybe, the population geneticists have put the cart before the horse.
Instead of the "Y chromosomal marker defined by a series of microsatellites
that is found in a high proportion of Jewish men" perhaps " a high
proportion of Jewish men" are "defined by a series of microsatellites".
We can never really know because population genetics was and remains
polycentric allowing just contradictory frames of reference. Mathematics is
not a science.
He also pays special attention to the discovery of the BRCA1
185delAG mutation that arose in ancient Palestine and that was
transmitted through Jewish populations and some of their converso
successors.
Does this mutation define Jewishness or does Jewishness define this
mutation? If both, then just nothing at all is being argued except
mathematics.
By drawing on many studies, including some unpublished,
Entine pulls many groups in from the margins of contemporary Judaism,
including the Jewish Communities of India and Ethiopia and the
Hispanic communities of the American Southwest.
JE:-
Ah, the all purpose "get out of jail free card": "the margins of
contemporary Judaism". What the &^%@ is that supposed to mean?
However, there are
many other genetic strands that link Jews--
JE:-
Yes and of course, many genetic strands that ARE supposed Jewish. What we
all want to know is what represents a genetic stand that is definitively not
Jewish? In the everything-is-grey-world of polycentic population genetics
nothing as definite as this can exist. All we are provided with are
increasingly grey mathematically based probabilities.
Entine is no stranger to controversy. His earlier book was Taboo: Why
Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It.
As he and his predecessors in the field of Jewish genetics have
pointed out, the stakes in these genetic discoveries about Jews are
high--a genetic demonstration of Middle Eastern origins that would
favor claims for a Jewish homeland in Israel, glorious lineages with
potential lines of descent from a priest or a king, even a Messianic
line, absolution from Christ-killing, a genetic stake in a long
intellectual tradition of learning and scholarship, and duties and
curses are all on the line.
JE:-
Yes it is just another back to the future disaster waiting in the wings.
This is what happens when falsifiability is deleted from evolutionary theory
by demented mathematicians.
Historically endogamous
Jewish populations are admixing in the melting pot of Israel.
Admixture rates between Jews and non-Jews are high.
JE:-
Shock... horror..how devastatingly "unnatural"...
Heterozygote
testing programs have led to selective mating practices that are
influencing allele frequencies. So, the genetics of Jewish populations
as currently discerned will change.
JE:-
Just one variable calling another variable a convenient (polycentric)
constant
which remains valid in mathematics but utterly invalid within the sciences.
Please refer to Galileo.
For the generation of geneticists who avidly read Richard Goodman's
series of books on Jewish genetics, and its predecessors by Raphael
Patai and Jennifer Patai-Wing, Elisabeth Goldschmidt and Arthur
Mourant, J on Entine's book is a welcome addition. His understanding
of the genetics is limited and uncritical, but his broad, well-
documented sweep of Jewish history will inform even the most
knowledgeable of readers.
JE:-
Do the population geneticists who post here support this as valid science or
do they throw it out as just mathematically based nonsense? Time to make a
stand gentlemen...
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
.
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