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Is Evolution Over In Humans?
BrianGa writes: "Is evolution over? Are current humans the final version? This
article presents a number of interesting theories, including the theory that
'Our species has reached its biological pinnacle and is no longer capable
of changing.' Professor Steve Jones believes this, in part, because
'human populations are now being constantly mixed, again producing a
blending that blocks evolutionary change.'"
I think with modern medicine, only *really* bad gene combinations get selected out. The only way for humans to really evolve is through genetic engineering. It's the natural progression of evolution! It is our density!
-If
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
Odd, I thought it was blending, and the subsequent mixing of genes (variation) that was the basis of evolution.
You also need a "survival of the fittest" rule, that's what we lost in our modern society.
Machines will take over pretty soon. Get over it.
That I've ever heard of.
Variation is the subject for Human Change and Progression. Why doesn't "Professor" Jones look at something like, say, Malaria in relation to Sickle-Cell genes, or other diseases or climates and how they effect populations?
Since the entire world doesn't operate on a level where we can completely control our environment, there's no way to be sure if evolution is truly over. Then again, in Biology and Psychology classes, it HAS been noted that we are the only species on the planet that currently effects its own evolutionary change.
I just hope we can all come to the better conclusion that evolution isn't nearly over. We're still a changing species - but we're looking at ourselves in a relatively small time window. Modern society in comparison to evolution is a silly idea. The window isn't large enough to fit 'evolution' in.
How many of us would be around if it weren't for modern technology/medicine? Personally, I'm blind as a bat without my glasses, have plastic teeth as my real ones never came in and I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. If we were still under the evolutionary pressures that were normal for most of our specie's history, I'd be toast.
Look around sometime and notice how many people are wearing glasses or contacts. I'd bet that as little as 200 years ago the numbers were less than 10% of what we have now. I always picture this as the distribution of eyesight in the population widening as the evolutionary pressure to keep eyesight good is taken away. I.e., you don't die any more if you need glasses.
Whether this means we've stopped evolving or not is a bit of a semantic game. Even the word "devolving" is a loaded term, as it implies that there is some upward path that evolution is following. Sharks have been stable for millions of years and haven't really evolved in that time. However, this doesn't mean that evolution has stopped for them. They've just reached a "local minimum" in the evolutionary fitness phase space. You can bet that if something drastic changed they would start changing again right away.
I'll stop rambling after one more thought. As Richard Dawkins has said so well and so often, evolution is a subtle process and it's very easy to make the mistake of anthropomorphizing it into something with a goal. It seems to me that that's what the authors of this article have done.
Either that or they've just stated the obvious.
Brant
Humans could change over thousands or millions of years to be to be smallpox resistant... Or we could apply our own intelligence to wipe out smallpox with vaccines. The former is clearly evolution. Is the latter? Is species improvment still evolution when changes directed by the evolved intelligence dominate the random mutations?
For a while I was worried that humans were defeating evolution. Diseases like diabetes can't be cured, but we can treat them, thereby increasing the number of kids born to people with diabetes. The natural selection against childhood diabetes is defeated. On the other hand, we may one day cure diabetes with gene therapy. Maybe that is how humans will evolve in the future.
According to Darwin himself, natural selection only occurs when there is a "struggle for existence." If there is a scarcity of resources (or other obstacle) that makes it impossible for every member of a species to survive, those with certain "fitter" genetic traits will have a distinct advantage. On the other hand, if nearly every member can survive and reproduce as it is, there is no reason for those traits to be favored.
Humans are not presently in a "struggle for existence" -- most people can survive and procreate without much trouble, irrespective of their genetics. (Those who do struggle mostly do so because of political, social, and economic factors, not genetic disadvantages.) However, this could change quite quickly if some massively disruptive event (drought, famine, epidemic, intergalactic war, etc.) were to make it difficult for humans to survive without superior genetics.
In fact, Stephen Jay Gould's theory of Punctuated Equilibrium suggests that most species evolve this way: long periods of stasis, occasionally "punctuated" by rapid change over a small number of generations.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Sex appeal is the only force left with respect to the evolution of human beings. We're far too smart to be influenced by anything less barring a catastrophic environmental change.
Evolution is alive, and it favors:
1. horny
2. too stupid to use birth control
3. likes to get drunk at parties
4. lazy (no job) -- more time to reproduce
5. likely to rape, or not resist rape
6. can't see consequences of actions
7. too passive, fearful, or religous to abort
8. physically attractive
9. those who can convince someone into bed
Social programs ensure that the offspring
survive. Bimbos and jocks will multiply,
while nerds and career-addicts will die out.
Really, it is apparent we haven't just ceased to evolve, we are now de-evolving. Our own medicine will make us frail, and be our downfall.
Things that kept the gene pool pure in the past are no longer problems. A man with a low sperm count and a woman who would be considered infertile thirty years ago are now able to have quituplets. A child who manifests cancer at the age of eight can receive treatment, then pass on his genes later in life.
Our own medicine - which we like to think makes us strong - is making us weak. The process of natural selection can no longer take place. We have, to a certain extent, defeated death.
But death has a surprise for us. It's still there, stronger than ever. It's just biding its time.
± 29 dB
First of I'd like to say that the human design defies evolution entirely.
Evolution does not produce creatures like humans in the first place. They are always perfected to inhabit a particular environment. However, humans are designed such that they are just as adept swinging from trees as they are walking on the ground. Humans can be carnivores or herbivores, predator ar prey, etc. In fact, we have the eyes of a predator, but no claws or other weapon to take advantage of those instincts.
I could think of a million more examples of our contradictory design, as can you as well.
All this doesn't even mention the fact that there has never been a single bit of evidence in favor of evolution, and there is acutally enough solid evidence to shoot down the theory. But in current fasion, the worldd is getting dumber and more cattle-like all the time, so very few individuals think of the obvious, and here we are with stagnating ideas, and societies of people all living in the world they've created in their own minds.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
on the bottom of
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-089.htm
you'll find the following text.
We believe God has raised up ICR to spearhead
Biblical Christianity's defense against the
godless dogma of evolutionary humanism. Only by
showing the scientific bankruptcy of evolution,
while exalting Christ and the Bible, will
Christians be successful in "the pulling down of
strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every
high thing that exalteth itself against the
knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ" (II
Corinthians10:4,5).
I'm not saying this makes any of the text's claims
false, but I'll certainly reread with many grains
of salt.
b
What f*ing box!?!?
>> So yes, there will be change there all right
>> - but only where the forces of evolution
>>are not being suppressed.'
Does this mean I have to abandon city life and go live in the woods?
just to make my children more agile or smart?
>>If people start to live to 150
I certainly don't want to live for 150 years. because once you get to
50+ years, you lose your youth, strength, beauty, etc...
So am I supposed to live for an additional 100 years being and old man?
What we want is a prolonged youth.
Of course, the problem with this guy's (the article) opinions is that it does smak of segregation and other asty thoughts, but he should be given a fair consideration
To be perfectly fair, I don't believe he stated his opinions on whether evolutionary theory not applying to western civilization was good or bad. He may have opinions on this, but they weren't in the article. All that was in there was an observation that Darwin's basic rules don't seem to apply any longer due to a variety of reasons.
I may not agree with the conclusions personally, but I can't assign anything more sinister than a difference of opinion to the notion that evolution has effectively been turned off.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Evolution is due to things that kill us before we reproduce, so we're all evolving into better drivers.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Sorry-- social darwinism was proved wrong long ago. The idea that our social "success" equates with biological "success" is the one of the most arrogant bastardisations of science in the last two hundred years, right up with the idea that blacks are inferior to whites. (Oddly enough, the two ideas are linked-- that was social darwinism before there was darwinism, and the arguments used to "prove" that were similar the the ones you just used to "prove" poor people are somehow inferior to rich people.)
Just because someone is poor does not make them genetically stupid, or genetically less-likely to survive.
Remember, biological success has to do with living long enough to breed a replacement population. It doesn't have anything to do with the size of your paycheck. The more times you pass on your genes, the more successful those genes are.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I agree with the article, that in under-developed countries, where the infant mortality rate is still very high, evolution is still a force.
This has very interesting possibibilities. It might mean a better human will come from the 3rd world. After all, competition for resources, at a primitive level, still goes on there. A mutation that would allow for an edge in that competition would certainly be interesting!
The question is, how long will there be a 3rd world? My guess is for some time, but probably not enough time for evolution to have a great effect. Capitalist 1st world societies will continue to elevate 3rd world countries MERELY for their cheap labor. Over time, these countries will accumulate wealth and thus leave the 3rd world. Then, the next 3rd world will be sought for their cheap labor... round and round we go.
My theory is that human beings have evolved to a point where our purpose is to create new technologies. It is through these technologies that we then evolve by ways of integration and extention of our abilities. Let me elaborate.
/. about 2 years ago of a psychologist who believed we would eventually become fully mental beings, placing our bodies in containers that only supported life functions as a back up.
Human existence has been saturated with invention. We invent technologies for the purpose of accomplishing various tasks (as some other animals have evolved to do). From the very first drum to the human genome project, we have been dedicated to creating things to enhance our lives.
As technology increases, we will slowly integrate it more and more with ourselves. We've already begun to witness this trend. Computers, once placed in huge rooms are now held in our back pockets. Now we're looking towards wearable computers and systems that act as personal assistants. Our media looks to a future where technology is actually a part of a human being. Brain jacks? Cybernetic enhancements? These things are shown with cons, obviously, but also with pros (brain augmentation in GitS, mass storage in Johny Mnemonic, instantenous learning in the Matrix, etc...).
In light of this, I would not say that human evolution has ceased. On the contrary, I would say it is rapidly increasing. We've been slowly abandoning biological evolution in favor of something that we can control and manipulate. We have been evolving through our technology and this pace will only increase. Probably in a manor very similar to Clarke's vision in the 2001-3001 series (eventually evolving our minds away from physical bodies) and probably not unlike the Borg (note we already replace human parts with mechanical parts - hips, hearts...). I remember even a story posted on
Thoughts? Ideas? Disagreements?
Why bother.
There are many examples of how we are not perfectly adapted to our environment. We have changed it so much in the past 400 years that there is no way our genetics could have changed that much. The easiest example is diet. Humans crave fats and sugars because those sources of food used to be difficult to find and very valuable. Now they are plentiful, but we still crave them. This can be regulated by our brains just fine, but given a lot of time, our genetics would fall back in line too.
And. The fossil record shows that we've been evolving at a breakneck pace up until now. Eventually our population will stop expanding so fast, and selection will start again in earnest.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Well, I haven't read the article, and I probably should, but there is one main reason why I think humans are done evolving. We have reached a stage where we identify and correct even the slightest anomalies in our offspring; this will become even more of a factor as we delve into genetic engineering even more. This really breaks Darwin's model for evolution because we are eliminating the ability for our offspring to surpass us.
Now, if there is some global event that drastically changes the lifestyle of humans, maybe then evolution would take place, or something more subtle could probably happen as well.
Suppose there is some really bad virus out there that wipes out 90% of the human race, the 10% left just so happened to have a mutation that allowed them to fend off that virus, well that would be evolution, just not anything people would notice by looking at these new humans.
In general, unless something drastic happens, we are done.
It's too bad, but the scientific case for creation is just as strong and viable as the scientific case for evolution. It's *all* in how you interpret the evidence.
Evolution is purely inductive reasoning, first there was the theory, then came the search for the evidence to prove it. Creation is also inductive. The differences between the two are purely a matter of how the evidence is interpreted.
For instance, how do we know that the fossil record we discover of the dinosaurs is not the evidential remains of the Creator's various stages of experimentation in creating human life (and otherwise) in all of antiquity? It's speculated that an asteroid caused most if not all major extinctions of life in that period. An asteroid or planetoid striking the earth is itself an extraterrestrial event. Is it so farfetched to imagine that a power and intelligence capapble of creating biology on the scale that we see around us deliberately caused that extinction in that manner--so as to proceed to "phase II", if you will, of the Creator's plan for human life on earth?
Personally, I see nothing in the fossil record, or otherwise, which contradicts direct creation of life on this planet by a superior intelligence and power. Others view the same exact evidence and see it as direct contradiction to Creationism. Again, it's all in how you interpret the record and the evidence--NOT in the record or the evidence itself.
I heard this once and have never forgotten it (as it isn't original to me):
"How likely in your mind is it that you could turn your back on a junkyard and walk away, only to return four billion years later to find a fully fueled 747 jet aircraft sitting on a runway, it's engines throttled up and ready for take off?"
This pretty much exactly explains the theory of chance evolution--that "time" does all things, including the creation of human life out of inert and dead materials. The amazing thing is is that one human being is infinitely more complex than a 747 (which is actually fairly crude by comparison) yet the same scientists who "believe" in the chance evolution of human life would scoff at the notion of an evolved 747.
So what I really think is this: the scientist who rejects the idea of intelligent creation is simply trying to create his own religion in which he himself is God. A truely objective agnostic will say: "The evidence can be interpreted either way." A man of faith will say: "The record for Creation is as clear as a bell."
It's all in how you interpret the evidence.
I never heard such nonsense in my life, fresh vegetables are among the cheapest (and healthiest) foods in any western country. Obesity is the result, not the cause, of people being either too careless or too indulging to take care of themselves by feeding themselves properly.
:) ) less clueless
What's more, by giving it a medical context, people are being portrayed as victims / patients, thus freeing them from all responsibility and making them helpless indeed.
Making this into a conspiracy theory doesn't help them. The food industry gives people what they ask for, not what is bad for them. They even stuff extra vitamins in "bad" food just to stop ppl with no clue what to eat from starving. Wealthier ppl generally have a better education and therefore (sometimes only slightly
98% of fat people have no medical cause for their obesity, just lousy selfcontrol. I have no problems with fat people, but saying that they cannot be held responsible for their situation is insulting to them and to us all.
I only have one last thought on your comment, because this kind of thinking seems to be everywhere:
Why can't Americans take responsibility for their own actions or even accept the realities of life ? Is it just that it is more profitable to blame someone (else) so you have a shot at sueing them ?
This is common knowledge any more. Start with this one.
It focuses mainly on education, but my position is, anyone of reasonable intelligence will not be stupid due to lack of education. They are smart enough to figure out how to avail themselves of educational opportunities despite the socio-economic class of their parents. The reverse, however, is not true, as you point out. A stupid spoiled brat who has wealthy parents will most likely get plenty of the best education available, graduate, and still be stupid.
There is also this one too.We got this thing called the internet. Doesn't take much intelligence to plug in some good keywords and find a whole raft of information on this topic...
btw, why are you so anal about the word "stupid" anyway. Do you prefer a more P.C. term which basically says the same thing?
I used to be a strong proponent of individual responsibility as the answer to all things, until I saw somebody make some seemingly small changes at work that eliminated long-standing problems.
Suddenly I saw the same pattern everywhere. When "most people" have a problem adhering to some rule or behavior, it's almost always because there's something in the environment or the rules that make compliance difficult or impossible.
We definitely see this pattern here. It's easy to say that adults should eat better and get more exercise. It becomes a bit more problematic when you hit the fact that the amount of free time available is much less today than a generation ago - far more hours at work, more hours doing household chores (larger houses and more possessions more than offseting labor-saving devices), etc. It becomes impossible when you hit the practical difficulties of arranging childcare, etc.
The situation is even worse with kids. A generation ago schools offered nutritional, albeit instititutional, cooking. Soda and candy machines were rare. PE classes mandatory, extracurricular sports and scouting common. Today schools have junk food in and outside of cafeterias. Many are eliminating all sports, and even PE class.
Some kids have external resources available... but anyone who expects more than a handful of teenagers to get up 30 minutes early every day so they can run through a calesthenics program before school (assuming they can get time in the shower, etc.) is crazy. This is a program that has to be solved as a society, not wagging a finger at the individual.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Well, you certainly wrote a lot of words and said very little. Your challenge at the end is worthy of checking out - it will indeed help advance or hinder the creationist position. If you could find out too that would be helpful, but it's probably hard to find out until the genome project is more complete?
e so urces/sciencedef.html
Anyway, what is science?
http://www.csicop.org/youngskeptics/education/r
This gives a good description. Dictionaries have small explanations, so consult something that deals with the issues properly.
Your first point is merely insults.
second point: Indeed, ICR is biased, but so is science by those who support macro-evolution, and I have seen my fair share of it. Faith in God is not blind but based on solid evidence, and you are a fool if you think that there is no God merely because you have seen no convincing evidence for it. The best you can say is that you have not seen evidence to believe in God, just the same as you can say there is no evidence of life on other planets - but you can make guesses about it.
Of course, I believe that the existence of God can be proven.
Third point: see above.
Fourth point: Science is NOT about good explanations, that is philosophy. See webpage above. Also, natural selection fits perfectly with the creationist model - it is logical and verifiable.
Fifth: Like I said, the acid spit was an extreme example. In reality a majority of mutations are harmless/harmful (around 99% I believe), so for something to actually develop some useful mutation would take a long time - and here we talk about dominant genes. You still have failed to adress the problem of recessive genes - I wonder why?
Stop beating around the bush and answer my challenge if you can.