You lost all potential credibility of your argument when you said: "Well, from a Biblical standpoint, this is indeed true. We are all related as descending posterity of the prophet Noah..."

As a newcomer to DNA I have found this discussion quite interesting. It is quite apparent that Thomas Tinney appears to have no clue what he's talking about. He creates straw people to knock down and then tries to apply it to real people. While I do not know as much about DNA as others in this discussion do, I do know that using DNA as a tool to assist in doing genealogy has greatly improved since I first heard about it around 2004 or so. I stress the word tool because that is all DNA is. I'm using it as a tool to, as Nathan put it, "confirm and find new relatives rather than for ethnicity purposes." Is DNA flawed, that is not perfect? Of course it is. As has been pointed out no way of doing genealogy is without it's flaws as Mr. Tinney, being a professional genealogist, should know. We have just had a brief discussion about Dudo, who is of questionable value to genealogists, although he is a primary source from early medieval times. Official documents have been known to occasionally contain errors. We use a variety of tools. including DNA, to help us with genealogy to try to catch errors and to construct as a good a genealogy as we can. Peter D. A. Warwick

On Thursday, June 2, 2016 at 4:47:56 PM UTC-7, Matthew Langley wrote: > You lost all potential credibility of your argument when you said: > > "Well, from a Biblical standpoint, this is indeed true. We are all related as descending posterity of the prophet Noah..." ------------------- REPLY: I believe you have a distorted perception. "Isaac Newton’s discoveries were so numerous and varied that many consider him to be the father of modern science." . . . "Newton was knighted in 1705 and upon his death in 1727 was the first scientist given the honor of burial in Westminster Abbey." http://www.who2.com/bio/sir-isaac-newton/ Newton's study of biblical chronology did not make him less credible. Newton and Leibniz both invented calculus, which includes "limits, functions, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series." Unfortunately, there is no way to invent a genetic genealogy mapping calculus, that can consistently and accurately close the uncertainty gaps between DNA sample inference points and professionally established pedigree node points. It is all a matter of biased conjecture, as you have so eloquently demonstrated by your above comment. As far as medieval records go, followers of John Wycliffe "undertook the first complete English translations of the Christian scriptures in the 14th century." I, however, use the KJV, though I know of some who consider the German a better translation. From a professional genealogical research specialist standpoint, I can state I have read the said Bible from cover to cover, verbally, out-loud, a study undertaken from childhood, which expanded later into all world religious beliefs in various library settings in the United States. Reading out-loud all names in the pedigrees, and in comparison with the textual thrust of ideas presented therein, led me to the conclusion, (with a study of family behaviors and historical events, plus parallel artifacts discovered), that it was indeed historical, and in particular, a handed down record. Biblical text is a family centric written ancestry; not contrived, postulated, and not DNA comic fantasy. On the other hand, as mentioned heretofore, for which I am most hotly contested: I think DNA research applications for genealogical research are directly related and equivalent to fingerprinting. [Even identical twins (who share their DNA) do not have identical fingerprints.] It is all a matter of assigning a degree of confidence. [Since the early 20th century, fingerprint detection and analysis has been one of the most common and important forms of crime scene forensic investigation. More crimes have been solved with fingerprint evidence than for any other reason.] Dermatoglyphics is the science by which we can [determine whether these impressions could have come from the same individual. The flexibility of friction ridge skin means that no two finger or palm prints are ever exactly alike in every detail; even two impressions recorded immediately after each other from the same hand may be slightly different.] So if we want an ancestry background check, we should gather all the family fingerprints and put them all together and compare them, both for the father's side and the mother's side. Then, with the same degree of confidence of determining DNA "matches", we should be able to directly trace back all our ancestry. Yes, No, Maybe? Biometric [identification utilizing a physical attribute that is unique to every human] includes [iris recognition, the use of dental records in forensic dentistry, the tongue and DNA profiling, also known as genetic fingerprinting.] The problem I have with all of this is the logic behind the big story, because I am told that DNA is the "engine" that creates all of this unique identification in every human being. That, however, says to me, that over generations of time, every person, father, son, mother daughter, brother, sister, relative, each had a former DNA "engine" creator that produced another individual that in and of itself, starts off life with its own altered DNA "record"(it must be so to produce individuality); this then produces other altered DNA "records" in its posterity. So, the issue is not with the continuous replication process which is so nicely discussed exactingly in family history DNA related venues, it is with the very fact that everyone who is a human being is individually genetically altered. And unless you can trace genealogy created patterns in fingerprints, iris recognition, or some other form of biometric identification, you certainly cannot with confidence, trace back with any degree of certainty, unique DNA profiling, which ever so minutely changes from one person to another, over all generations of time. This is of course my own personal opinion on the matter, fortified by my own experience of seeing enthusiastic DNA potential "matches" that are in professional research, directly contradicted by written record sources. http://www.academic-genealogy.com/medicalhealthgenealogygenetics.htm#Genetics