To Blake: Obviously you have a large emotional stake in the bible issue, so I will not comment further. You have not substantially addressed my points, merely reiterating that you are right, I am wrong, and that no other interpretation than yours is correct. There is no point in continuing this debate.
I too would like a reference for that claim. Particularly WRT Europe. Consider the play Cyrano de Bergerac. Cyrano has a deep romantic interest in his cousin, and Cyrano is characterized as a man of the highest honor. Frenchmen now would consider Cyrano to be worthy of snickering about?
I seem to remember that the native Hawaiians practiced inbreeding within “royal” families in order to create “superior” individuals. Anyone know if this has a factual basis? While trying, unsuccessfully, to verify this in Wikipedia I found reference to incestual marriages in the royal dynasties of ancient Egypt.
On a gene-by-gene basis, the probability is 1 in 4 that an offspring will exhibit the recessive trait if both parents exhibit the dominant trait. Remember that in real life the situation is more complex; more than one gene may be involved in a phenotypic trait.
Oh what a load of rubbish. I addressed evey point you made fully and with references. You on the other hand have refused to answer my questions even when I asked them several times.
I have no emotional stake in the Bible since I am neither Christian nor Jew. My frustration, Sleel, comes form your blinding ignorance of all the matters you insist on posting about. For example:
Your belief that all Jewish marriage laws are found in one book.
Your inability to accept that god strikes women barren for incest even though a passage had already been presented that says exactly that.
Your inability to understand the difference between describing an event and condining it.
Your baseless claims that most Europeans snicker at cousin marriages.
Your inability to comprehend the references you yourself presented.
I agree on one point though. It is futile to continue this. You are being wilfully ignorant on the issue. We can cure people of ignorance but when people are wilfully ignorant as you are there is nothing that can be done.
No, the probability is much lower than that.
If both parents exhibit a dominant trait they may be either homozygous or heterozygous. In high school genteics terms the parents could be either Xx or XX. If either parent is homozygous then the probability of the offspring exhibiting a recessive trait is zero. Only for heterozygous pairings is there any chance at all of the offspring exhibiting a recessive trait. Assuming that all genes are randomly distributed heterozygous pairings will only occur one in every four marriages and only one in ever four offspring of such pairings will exhibit a recessive tarit.
IOW On a gene-by-gene basis, the probability is 1 in 16 that an offspring will exhibit the recessive trait if both parents exhibit the dominant trait