Perhaps it is the rain outside or just my nearly being 73 years of age, but I have thought a lot about this idea I am about to put to paper.
Religion has played an enormous role in my life and continues to do so. But I no longer attend Church in a frequent manner as I once did (weekly). My reasons for doing so are many and they are not actually excuses but more that I want to see my Church (Anglican) become something that is not going to happen in my lifetime. There is nothing that I can do to encourage my Church to become as I would really like to see it. I want to continue to give to my Church (and I do tithe monetarily) but I have decided that I will transcribe the Church documents and that has become my commitment the past ten years.
Religion has been one of the strongest influences on society and not just for the last 2000 plus years. The Religion of our forefathers stretches way back into the time before Jesus Christ became the voice and the image of the Christian Church. Judaism dates back six thousand and more years and that is the Foundation of our Christian Church. At least that is what I believe.
The Ten Commandments have been the driving force of our Society and how it goes. But the number of people who think religion; who practice religion is dwindling. But the need for the rule of law continues in our society. How best to continue this rule of law when the logic behind some of the laws is beginning to dim and be less apparent in a more secular world?
As Ancestry approached and went past the ten million mark for number of kits processed and the other testing agencies FT DNA, My Heritage, Living DNA and 23 and Me (being the ones of which I am most familiar) are also being well used by testers, I began to wonder where will this rush for testing take us? GedMatch (a great program that I also use) was utilized in the search for an individual who had murdered a number of people and a successful match made with that person now being incarcerated awaiting trial. Without GedMatch this might not have happened.
Could it be that waiting in the wings is a tool that will help to motivate people to stick more tightly to the rule of law as our religious devotion once did? DNA of every living soul on earth would provide law enforcement agencies with a tool that could quickly identify people who have been abused by crime and no longer able to provide that detail to law enforcement. To me that is a definite plus, no more Jane Doe or John Doe waiting to be identified. On the side of the rule of law, finding the guilty would be considerably easier. Individuals would think twice about the commission of a crime; not leaving some trace of one's DNA is very very difficult. Fingerprinting once served such information but it was very limited compared to one's DNA.
The databases are still small but each country requiring the DNA of every infant born within their borders would soon supply all of that information to law enforcement agencies. It would not cripple this fantastic new industry for genealogists as the DNA Bank for law enforcement purposes would be a separate entity. Are there possible abuses? Yes there are potential abuses. The control of such information needs to be strictly monitored and access limited. Who should control such information? There I am still in thinking mode. Dictatorships do not really obey the rule of human law; they have their own agenda and it tends to be basically self-centered and not people-centered.
My thoughts on this cloudy rainy day as I start to feel more used to my new surroundings on the second floor overlooking the gardens instead of down in the basement where I had the TV News on all of my working time keeping me current with world affairs.
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