Say hello to your cousins, Donald Trump

MATHEMATICAL studies of genealogy suggest everyone alive probably is related to Mohammed and Henry VIII.
And all of us are 40th cousins, at least, say computer scientists at Dublin City University and statisticians working independently at Yale University in the US.
If the theory is right, Donald Trump and the Muslim refugees are all related. So were Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon. So were Hermann Goering and Mother Teresa, Hitler and Gandhi.
The researchers suppose that the most recent common ancestor of every living person was someone in Europe about 600 years ago.
The theory is that 80 per cent of the population in 1400 were direct ancestors of all of us.
Such is the dense interconnectedness of the human family.
Scientists also believe that particles of air breathed by Cleopatra, Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha still circulate.
Albert Einstein once said a human was part of the whole “called by us universe, a part limited in time and space”.
Martin Luther King Jr said injustice anywhere was a threat to justice everywhere.
“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality — tied to a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one, directly affects all indirectly,” he said.
“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat.”
He’s right, but that does not mean we all believe in the same ways.
The difficulty in interconnectedness is establishing some kind of genuine and lasting brotherhood in a world of religious and cultural pluralism.
In a few decades, Brazil, Nigeria, the Philippines, the Congo and the US are tipped to have 100 million Christians or more. The leading centre of Christianity will be Africa and Latin America..
By 2050, almost 20 of the 25 largest nations will be predominantly or entirely Christian or Muslim. The rest of the world is likely to be a smorgasbord of religions, or devoted to secularism.
And what of Australia? Surely it will be a land where Buddhist and Islamic temples will increasingly share streets with Christian churches. Living in religious isolation will be impossible.
We probably will be encouraged to express non-judgmental attitudes towards other faiths.
The official line may be that all religions are true. But it is more accurate to say most religions contain some elements of truth.
It is not true that God is revealed more or less equally through all religions. There are vastly contrary views of the universe and God in the Koran and the Bible, for instance. Hinduism has a plethora of gods and most branches of Buddhism ignore God.
Former US vice-president Al Gore expressed the problems of plurality when he said the roots of the global environmental crisis reflected the world’s inner spiritual confusion.
“We must heed the lessons of the past to build a better future,” said former Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
“We must speak the truth always, not compromise to spare another’s feelings. But we must also remember always to enhance the humanity of the other.”
Eastern philosopher Ram Das expressed hope amid pluralism.
“Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not,” he said. “Our actions and states of mind matter, because we’re so deeply interconnected.”