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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.'"
Odd, I thought it was blending, and the subsequent mixing of genes (variation) that was the basis of evolution.
--My purpose set, my will defined. Caress the air, embrace the skies.
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!
Biological evolution is probably over; after all, we are quite well adapted to our environment; there might be some genetic drift, but it won't be noticed in a couple million years.
However, humankind is being used as a vehicle for memetic evolution; ideas evolve, reproduce, and flow from one mind to another; and it does not seem like this is going to stop. Ever.
It's just a BloJJ
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.
Since this century already seems to be the bad-anime-cliche century, I am assuming that sometime around the year of 2015, humanity will go through a forced evoloution planned by an old German man, and involving angels, genetic engineering, nuclear explosions and gigantic biorobots dropping out of 500 foot wide stealth bombers.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
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
I know it's hard to imagine evolutionary time, where things require a few hundred thousand years to be relevant, but really this assertion that we have stopped evolving is so much crap.
Modern medicine and sanitation are pretty much developments of the last two thousand years (the Romans had pretty elaborate sewer and aqueduct systems), while speedy air and land travel has only been around for a hundred years. These really only register as a blip on the scale of evolutionary time. During this blip, we are doing well and reunited as a species (reproductively speaking). This by itself is not significant enough to alter our rate of evolution. Subpopulations of many species go through these cycles and are still "actively evolving". More significantly, the incredible technological changes we are generating in such short order will have an unpredictable impact on the environment around us and thus our own survival. We may think that our lives are becoming more stable, but this does not come without alteration to the world around us.
While it may seem that we are conquering nature, we are doing nothing less than ensuring the struggle of nature continues.
-- "Sucks to your ass-mar"
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.
Evolution is dynamic process, where those most adapted to the environment tend to have more offrspirng than those less adapted. I'm sad to see that many people (including most journalists) still seem to think about evolution as a linear process, where a species becomes more and more adapted striving for perfection.
Has our environment changed? Well, humans are still adapted to live on the savannah. We are adapted to socially depend on a large extended family.
In genetic time, humans recently started farming, and even more recently started living in citites. We are subjected to an entire new environment: the indoors. We are living very close to lots of strangers. Still, we react to modern life as hunters/gatherers. Think of stress, road rage, people being burned out by 30.
Evolution works on all living organisms all the time. Maybe other factors are more important than genetics, in determining the number of offspring a human has. It is easier to imagine that those less (genetically) adapted tend to have fewer children. Those burned out from work by the time they're 30 probably have less energy for having a family than those who have the genetics (and social life) to cope with stress.
And for a good read about evolution that clears up a lot of popular misunderstandings about what evolution is and isn't I can really recommend Richard Dawkins.
I read the article just becase I don't like to reply without giving the benefit of the doubt.. but in this case it was a waste of time.
QUOTE: 'Things have simply stopped getting better, or worse, for our species.'
Then the Atomic Scientists wouldn't have a Doomsday Clock. And we wouldn't be worried about destroying our coastal cities with rising tides.
The article is only saved by Stringer who says the obvious, that 'Evolution goes on all the time. You don't have to intervene. It is just that it is highly unpredictable.'
I'd say that any mind that thinks evolution is over, is destined to become roadkill due to 'evolutionary' causes.
In our near future we have the prospect of mutations spreading which fight against aids, tropical diseases spreading north, and resistance to biowarefare or radiation. Somewhere along the way we will likely have changes in populations due to great artificial genes which can be passed on. Robotics and other technologies will enhance humans at some pace or another, there seems little doubt of that or you can read Hans Moravec if you are still unsure about that. We will have plenty of stresses on our populations and our genes, no worries about that. Homo Sap's going to have to advance a heck of a lot more for that.
The problem with a guy like Jones is that when people start to base strategies or policies on such delusions, we all lose out. Do you think we are losing no great artistic or scientific minds in the African tragedy of AIDS? Does it really matter if the makeup of populations change by one outliving the other, or being more procreative, or eating better, or what if they just ethnically cleanse, water war, bomb, poison, or otherwise do each other in? And are we all so homogenous now? I'd rather not consider myself as the least common denominator.
I think the battles of evolution require a lot of creative thinking to elucidate if you are thinking about your own time, and even then all bets are off. If anything evolution will accelerate as we become able to modify/improve our genes more quickly than the natural rate. And lots more people in the world will gain the means to exterminate those with genes they dislike. Finally, Natural Selection is always in operation. You can't turn it off just because increased mobility makes it difficult to measure.
Evolution is sort of like a saying of Buckaroo Banzai's: Just remember, wherever you go, there you are.
(Deus) Human beings may not evolve any longer. Human's incidence of cancer is by far lower than other animal. There is a theory that human being is already a neoteny, and never evolve more. If it is true, what a stupid animal they became. They forgot the force which operate themselves, and they are only satisfying their desire. Don't you think they are worthless? Human being is only so much. But, You don't have to remain such a miserable human being. Now, human beings only created the exit.
(Lain) What is it?
(Deus) Network. It's wired, Lain.
(Lain) Who are you?
(Deus) I'm God.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
The real problem here is a lack of natural selection. Stupid people just don't get eaten by predators, because we invent means to defend them (and for them to defend themselves).
As such, I advocate a campaign of thinning the herd every once in a while.
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.
I took a look around. Here's some evidence for the statement google turned up: an (extremist?) article from Earth Policy Institute.
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
Who cares if we're not evolving? For the most part, we've moved past evolution. Evolution cures diseases in a population over hundreds of years. Humanity has cured many of the diseases that it has set its sights on in less than a tenth of the time. The same goes for physical abilities. The fastest mammal on Earth isn't the cheetah, it's the human, which rides in cars at much faster speeds and rides in planes at even faster speeds than that. The same goes for the most physically powerful. Large felines may have sharp claws, but we have nuclear weaponry. An armadillo has a thick hide, but we have kevlar, ceramic, and now artificial spider silk. Humanity has moved past evolution and into something new and unique. This is something that all of those scientists fail to realize. We've evolved to the point where we are, in many ways, the masters of our destinies.
William S Burroughs once said, "Evolution did not come to a reverent halt with homo sapiens." He believed that the human species as is was doomed, and that to survive at all we needed to get into space. His vision of space-faring was different from the popular one - he imagined that humans would undergo radical biological alterations, to become creatures more adapted to the environment of space travel.
This is a pretty common theme in science fiction, from Brave New World forward (perhaps even before) - specialized "models" of human for specific tasks.
Frank Herbert (e.g. in Destination Void) imagined that space travel would first be done by clones. Herbert's future got around the knotty personal identity issues with clones by simply declaring them non-human. Clones were literally chunks of flesh owned by humans or corporations, and there were few restrictions on how they were treated. (Note that Herbert was not at all advocating this attitude, just speculating that it might become dominant.) So the first space travellers were clones, but only because they were disposable.
I agree with Burroughs (and so many others) that we need to get off this rock if we're to have any long-term future. The biologic alteration route is an interesting one - purposeful evolution. This is an exciting time to be alive.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
While I haven't actually read the article, I've thought about this question before and I too believe human evolution is over. Or to be more precise, evolution for the better is over.
The mechanism of evolution, natural selection, no longer work on the human population. You no longer have to count on good genes to ensure lots of offsprings. In fact, there is a universal phenomenum where the likely number of offsprings you have is inversely proportional to your level of education.
The more successful you are, the less offsprings you'll have! That is working completely against evolution.
From a more physical point of view, with modern medicine, you can have otherwise crippling hereditary problems and still live to adulthood and have children. This works against evolution too.
Before people start flaming me, I just want to say that I'm not suggesting we should let people with treatable genetic diseases die instead, or that we should not allow them to have offsprings! I'm merely stating that these things work against evolution and that is why I believe human evolution is over.
Take myself for example. I was brought into this world by c-section. There was no way my mother who weighed under 100 lbs before she got pregnant could have delivered a 10-lb baby naturally. Thanks to modern medicine, my mother and I survived. My mother had my sister 4 years later, also with assistance (vacuum). Now the chances that I'll give my wife a big baby maybe higher than normal. There, an example of a bad physical trait that survived due to technology.
This is not only total nonsense, it is state sponsored racism.
....
Take this for example
In addition, human populations are now being constantly mixed, again producing a blending that blocks evolutionary change. This increased mixing can be gauged by calculating the number of miles between a person's birthplace and his or her partner's, then between their parents' birthplaces, and finally, between their grandparents'.
In virtually every case, you will find that the number of miles drops dramatically the more that you head back into the past. Now people are going to universities and colleges where they meet and marry people from other continents. A generation ago, men and women rarely mated with anyone from a different town or city. Hence, the blending of our genes which will soon produce a uniformly brown-skinned population. Apart from that, there will be little change in the species.
Not only is this totally racist and white supremist horseshit, it is completely wrong.
Whatever qualification Prof. Steve Jones holds, he should probably take down his degree and wipe his arse with it, as it has turned out that is all it's good for.
Evolution works by trying combinations. When one particular combination hits exactly right for the current conditions at the current moment in time the result is a sudden and exponential success.
For example, let's imagine, that a certain blend of genes, from mixing certain groups of people who individually have strong immunity to different types of disease, produces children with an immune system that is 1-3 orders of magnitude stronger than anyone else.
These children will almost never get sick. Their brain development will be on average, much better, because they are never weakened by childhood diseases.
As they get older, they never visit conventional doctors, work harder and longer than the rest of the population without succumbing to the hundreds of different bacteria and virii that puts the rest of the population out of productive work 1-4 weeks of the year.
They will be less of a drain on society, as people in modern society are a much greater burden on the public purse at the end of their life (in Western Socialist countries, up to 50% of public health care is spent on the last 5 years of people's lives).
They will be productive for longer, creating wealth to a much greater age.
And with all this greater health, and wealth, and energy, they will produce A LOT MORE CHILDREN than the average person.
Modern medicine knows no cure for the COMMON COLD!! How many more diseases are we completely at a loss to stop right now?? Can you imagine a cold strain escaping from Shanghai, or Calcutta?
The people living in those cities are the survivors. Every year simple diseases kill people in the developing world. The local population builds a resistance. The disease mutates and kills again. The local population builds more resistance. And so on and so forth.
Westerners, living in their sterile and hygenic conditions, eating denatured food full of salt, fat and sugar, won't have any resistance to these viscious new cold strains.
This is an evolutionary event just waiting to happen.
>>
I am the director, and this is my movie
Face it, the human race is too high tech for evolution. We can no longer evolve naturally (allthough I am not ruling out evolution through genetic engineering or other such means) because we are able to remedy nearly all of our faults.
You see, if a fish was born in the ocean with a negative genetic defect, there is nothing to save it. It will soon be killed by a predator. We all know Darwin's Theory, so I'll move on. What differentiates us from that fish (or rather, species of fish), is we have been able to learn about, and treat, most any problem that affects our race. When a baby is sick or born with a disorder (assuming proper healthcare is available), we are able to do quite a bit to help her. We have created various medicines and treatments for most and disease. Even people with mental retardation can live a fairly normal life because care is available to them. If an ape was born mentally retarded, most likely it would die within a short period of time because it simply can't take care of itself. Since we as humans can overcome these obstacles, no longer does the "survival of the fittest" axiom apply.
Our gene codebase will still contain errors, and now there is virtually no natural way to wipe them out. And because of the immense population, a positive genetic defect (say, one that would make us 10x smarter) would take centuries, if not millennia to propagate.
Sure we will all be different in most respects, but radical changes are no longer possible. Also, as sick as it sounds to us Americans (well, most Americans), incest is a primary method of diversifying and strenghtening the gene pool. Dog breeders take advantage of this, but most of the world does not (including me). So basically, our natural evolution has run out, and it is up to us to continue it through science. It might be hard for some people to swallow, but genetic engineering and gene replacement is probably the only way to keep our species evolving.
These are just my thoughs, and I'm sure I may be wrong about something. Any comments? I sure would like to hear what others have to think.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
Evolution envolves billions of years, and the evolution theory still needs to explain _how_ do the evolution is done (cf Lamarck vs Darwin or another). It would be mandatory to find out how it works prior to yell "it stopped! it stopped!"
:
By the way the article itself finishes discreting its main thesis
'Evolution goes on all the time. You don't have to intervene. It is just that it is highly unpredictable. For example, brain size has decreased over the past 10,000 years
AIDS is disappearing, smallpox is dead, anthrax is nothing to worry about, ebola - isolated, bubonic plague - gone, etc.
Actually alot of these diseases are evolving very rapidly. As in resistance to antibiotics and antivirals is a very new phenomena in terms of human pathogens.
Either we will have to develop new technologies to deal with this, or evolve our immune system to deal with this. Or start dying from infections in our twenties again, like the good old days.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
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.
Rubbish. This is utterly rubbish. Sure, we're not growing a third arm within the lifetime of this person, but evolution is most certainly occuring. It just takes a long time and it's something we would never notice without historical data.
I will tell you one interesting fact though - we have this old house - built around 1829 and the handrails around the landing with the stairs are really low. People back then were generally smaller. There's one thing I can think of.
Now, I asked this question once of someone too. But his answer was just the opposite. He thought we were evolving faster than normal because we could better our own environment to that point ourselves. Medicine, more or less our discoveries, are prolonging our "natural" course of life and life-events right now. That that has changed.
I was under the impression that it was the commonly held theory among anthropologists et al. that the advent of civilisation in a species would bring about the halting of evolution for said species, as the society acts to defend all members thereof, not just the 'fittest' (note how eugenics is regarded as a most disgusting topic for many/most, for example). Or is this something that I'm just completely wrong on? :-)
James F.
You need all of these things for evolution (defined as changing frequencies of alleles) to stop:
(an allele is one varient of a gene, like some people have the blue eye allele, some have brown eye allele, while almost all of us have the genes for eye).
1. random mating (i.e. people will randoming mate with any other person)
2. constant sized society (no one leaves or enter, everytime someone is born, someone dies)
3. large society (a group of 50 people, even isolated, will still evolve, while a group of 5000, if the rest of these condistions are met, wont)
4. No selective pressure (favoring one type of allele vs. another)
These were all learned in a basic biology class, btw.
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
The scientists who suggest this are just being impatient and have forgoten the basic fact that evolution takes a long time. It seems that what they set out to do was view visible changes that can be called evolution and then found none. In order to make their work seem justified they decided to come to the conclusion that evolution has stopped and they are no longer failures for not finding anything but heroes for discovering this "fact".
I feel compelled to put my $1.99+TAX in on this. We have reached an evolutionary slow down in humans, especially in first world countries. There are a couple reasons.
/.'ers wear glasses? *sheepishly raises hand* Quite a few, eh? Now just imagine if there was no technology to correct bad vision. Nature would select against those with poor eyesight and eventually new generations wouldn't have so many eyesight woes.
One is hospitals. Instead of people dying from ailments that used to be life threatening, now they are living to have children. Things that would have been eliminated by genetics are being passed on.
Another factor is technology. How many of my fellow
The last factor I can think of right now would be welfare programs. Some (some being the operative word) of the people receiving aid may have undesirable genetic traits that put them in the position they are in (mental instability, drug problems, etc).
Once again, just my $2.79+TAX.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
After all with the way we are destroying this planet and each other we will not have time to evolve.
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
On Wednesday I became a father for the first time. It's a great feeling to have our new daughter Sarah, but to keep on topic with this thread as a process I have to say that birth is rubbish. Anything that causes that much pain for the mother is just plain wrong, and humans could do with a fair amount of evolving to try and get that bit right.
For those who don't know, the reason that childbirth is even worse in humans than for most other creatures is that our brains have out evolved our bodies. A human baby essentially comes out of the womb a year too early - it is incapable of doing anything for itself, whereas if you look at the young of many other creatures they're up and walking in about in a few hours.
The reason ours arrive early is because any later and the head would be unable to fit through the pelvic area. The head is so large in order to contain our brain, which is freakishly large compared to the rest of nature (Yes - even in RIAA employees).
The upshot? Our bodies can no longer cope with the enlarged brain, and so we have to deliver early. Now, some really useful evolution would be if we could evolve to cope better with this. I imagine that eventually we will.
Of course, an interesting counter-argument would be that we already have evolved to cope better - we evolved to the level where we devised painkillers...
Cheers,
Ian
Wouldn't a constant blending and mixing create new genetic mutations which would eventually due to dominant and common alleles lead to new species and sub-species? I think that claiming that we have reached our 'evolutional pinacle' is also kind of an elitist thing to say... It's almost like your saying your better than everybody else, and that you are the creation of millions of years of evolution and that nothing is above you...
Odd, in the end you'll still end up being worm food...
The author also says that if you want to see a utopia, look around, this is it... The idea of a utopian society is one that's perfect. Saying that we have reached a utopia based on species isn't that great an idea. A utopida is multi-faceted. My idea of a utopia is different than yours. Personally I would feel very very scared in a utopia, a place where everyone shared the same ideas as me. It might be nice for a while, but it would get old REAL fast... Humans thrive on conflict... We need it...
The article also states that humans should have logically constantly become larger and stronger, however this is not logical. Think about it, if you go from being a hunter-gather to being a farmer and start and agri-society where you grow your food and raise your meat then you don't need the same muscles you used to. Eventually those muscles begin to deteriorate over generations and they become useless.... They become non-existent, or non-functional...
This author seems to factor that evolution is only created through 'selective breeding'. I guess he has not accepted the fact that even though humans don't ALL mate for life, that many do, and that people do look for certain TRAITS or should I say SELECTIVE traits that they find important in their 'mates'. These traits that someone looks for tend to be instilled in ones offspring, hence that offspring looks for similar traits in their spouse... A selective breeding process...
I think that we are not at all at a standstill in evolution, no, as long as the physical enviroment that we live in continues to evolve, and as well as the social enviroment continues to change, the human race will continue to evolve... Perhaps not at an incredibly fast rate, and surely not enough that a single person would notice in their lifetime, but certainly, we will continue to evolve, even if it is eventually into something that is more vulnerable to one form of death then another...
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
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.
The idea of Star Trek economy (a.k.a. communism) is that nobody cares if *you* fly to stars to trade, or just sleep under a palm tree. Infinite energy resources and replicators allow anyone to have anything, within reason.
The question is: how many people, on average, will choose to work and how many will choose to do nothing? I think it does not matter. All the science and technology is driven by personal interest (of scientists and engineers), curiosity, joy of discovery, and they will work regardless of salary (that's how it is even now). The rest (workers, machinists etc.) can sleep, they do not advance anything, and their functions can be easily replaced by robots.
But even the laziest person on the planet can not do nothing for his entire life! It would be too boring. People will be always doing something. My personal expectation is that they will be bombing each other, though...
A basic interview at Imperial College, London is here.
Then again, his father invented Jif! (It's in the text of the interview.)
Funny thing is, he catapulted to fame by trying to update Darwin, not argue the theories were bollocks.
Self-promoting twat.
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
First I would be dishonerd if I did not state at this point that I am numb from the fremented liqueds of at least 3 differant plant matters.
Second evolution in humans is going backwords. Not just standing still.
In nature those with the strongest traits toward survivel bread an move on. In humans it is now ver y differant as will be seen in my followintg argument.
How many of you wear glasses?
How many of you have bread with a person who does not cut the evolutionary mustard, ie some one on prozac. How many of you have traits that you feel are not a benifit to mankind long turm like a slow matabilism or some other imbalance in the body or mine?
There are many. And the mumbers only get higher our side of the geek comunity where people bread almost indascrimanitly with people who are _the_weakest_link_.
The human body is known to contain 3000 to 5000 ganetic disorders and illnesses. The adverage indavidual holds the genes for about 3 of them. Most of these are not known to the holder and they will bread with someone else who holds the same ill gene. The child of such a union will be positive for and manifest the illness. Will this stop them from breading? No. I have seen people breading with all sorts of undisirable types with blatant genetic errors only to produce progany that are even more unequiped to contribute to the forward movement of the human gene pool.
Submitted with out spell checking or homonym checking for the reason stated at top and in conjunction with using a broweser that does not suport an external editor, ie links.
Ascii artist &
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
While I don't agree that Evolution has stopped for us, it has certainly slowed down. But it might be rather interesting to see what happens if, one day, Humanity starts leaving Earth and inhabiting other planets. Only then might evolution return in a bigger style, since then human beings will be more or less separated into different groups again and have to live under rather different circumstances. (kinda reminds me of White Mars by Brian Aldiss)
Similar processes led to the evolution of mankind, but this has now
stopped because virtually everybody's genes are making it to the next generation, not only those who are best adapted to their environment
Horsefeathers. Even if very few people succumb to disease these days, that doesn't mean that everybody's genes make it to the next generation. The fact is that some people have traits that make them more likely to successfully reproduce, while other people's traits make them less likely to (hi, Slashdotters
On the plus side, this means that the future will likely have fewer geeks, and more promiscuous women....
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I think people will always be in some sort of evolution.
:)
`
Maybe the next step of evolution is the fact that we alter ourselves to get to a level of higher fitness. (autopoeisis or what's it called?).
Or with other words: "Oh no! The borg are coming"
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!?!?
"This elephant though, like the one with the missing tail gene does not express it, and natural selection does not come into play. 5 generations down the track, two close relatives have a child with this super spit power. Unfortunately, because of the second fact I listed above, this child also has a missing tail, one leg that can't move properly, a reduced brain size, and a bad back meaning it has difficulty feeding in hard to reach places. The problem here is that along with the beneficial mutation there came a host of harmful mutations."
This is an interesting concept mind you but as usualy happens when people have a counter argument to something fairly complicated you sometimes miss fairly obvious mistakes. For one your concept of mutations is driving how you evaluate evolution. Elephants don't suddenly evolve the ability to spit acid and therefore have some sort of evolutionary advantage. In fact the reality is in this case unless the elephant was in a highly isolated enviroment the mutation would get blended into the gene pool as background noise and never remanifest EVER. That kind of mutation is far too severe to really take hold at all. The community would have to be so isolated that inbreeding would kill them off almost. To understand evolution you have to really really concentrate on the time scale involved. As we are short lived beings this is sometimes hard for us to concieve.
For example one of the favorite arguments against evolution is flying. How could anything ever evolve something so complex by just mere natural selection. They think "gee how could such a complext mutation happen no matter how much randomness was applied". The answer is quite simple. We in fact know now the highly likely reason why beings evolved the ability to fly. There is a bug (forget what its called sorry) that skates on water. It uses its extreme light weight (note how low weight is important to flying beings) to float ontop of water without breaking its surface. To move around it kind of hops and skates along the water with its long almost flight capable wings. Scientist took these bugs and did studies on them. They cut the wings smaller and smaller till they were practically nubs and the bugs could STILL jerk around quick as heck with them. They did a documentary on it even the video was quite interesting. Obviously the amount of time it takes for a water organism to evolve into something that floats on the water is astronomical and then who knows how long it goes from floating to skating to jumping and finally flying. It's almost inconceivable but when laid out its obvious to see how it works. Thats how evolution is though unless you know what happened its just almost impossible to imagine how BIG changes happened.
So in conclusion while I it's good to question scientific concepts I think your arguments are fairly uninformed here. "Macro-evolution" as you put it just dosn't even exist. It's a word created by people who can't comprehened that small changes are all that are required to reach huge differences in gentic diversity.
I dont want to ruffle religious feathers but perhaps evidence for your creation theories would be more proper? I've noticed religious people tend to try and discount other concepts instead of promoting their own. Usually they believe that if everything else is discounted then creation must simply be how things happened. This is a futile goal because if you did convince people that evolution isn't true they'd no sooner believe in "creation" than they did before. They'd just go searching for another solution with founding in the physical laws which they can observe. In something like this the observable laws of the universe are the status quo. You'd have to first determine exactly what every law of the universe is then point out how they don't explain EVERYTHING for you to have proof. Even then though the point of faith is to believe without proof though isnt it?
Jartan
While I think there is some point to the article I think the conclusions reached by Prof. Jones are a bit off. The whole survival of the fittest concept comes from an uncivilized and untamed natural world. You survived because you ran fast or had poisonous fangs or defensive quills or the ability to hunt in groups. Civilization puts an end to much of the struggle of the human condition (as the article mentions by quoting Peter Ward). You don't need to run fast or be strong in order to eat. With developments in medicine you don't need to be particularly strong in order to survive illness, genetic or otherwise. I'd even say modern people have more immunities than all of our forebearers combined. I think in many ways we have stopped developing as a species. Maybe in a million years we'll have fewer toes and longer fingers (our fingers will tend towards dexterity and we don't need the number of toes we have to walk upright as we do) but we are pretty stagnant.
The conclusion doctor Jones comes up with is we are the best result of natural selection. That is complete crap. We've got far too many genetic problems to be considered the best result of natural selection. Pick any detrimental attribute you can think of and picture a hunter gatherer with that trait. Do you think he'd survive long enough to have kids? It is highly doubtful. All of us four eyed slashdotters would be a mid-afternoon snack if it weren't for a civilized society. Concluding we've reached evolutionary stagnation because there are less adolecent and pre-adolecent deaths in London is pretty dumb. Our kids haven't become any better since 1890, we just no longer put them in factories and actually have cures for childhood diseases besides heavy prayer sessions and burning incense. Monkeys carrying HIV and not being affected by it is a similarly bad conclusion drawn from a dumb case. Chimpanzees don't have an anti-HIV gene, they have enough genetic descrepancy not to be affect by the HUMAN imunodeficiency virus. Humans in Africa in a thousand years won't have a anti-HIV gene any more than Chimpanzees have one today. Anyone left alive in Africa will be those who learned from the mistakes of the peers and practiced safe sex even if their religion or tradition forbode it.
I think this also brings into question: where do biologists learn math? If you look at statistics or studies done by any number of biologists you see REALLY fuzzy conclusions based on some really fuzzy logic and even fuzzier math. To put it into slashdot perspective, imagine somebody does benchmarking of Linux and Windows. They run web server tests using Linux 2.0 on a single processor serving 100 client machines connected to the server with a second hand D-Link hub serving out dynamically generated pages while comparing it to a Windows2k Advanced Server box with four processors connected to 25 client machines connected to the server by a cost-equals-the-GNP-of-a-small-nation router using gold plated Cat-5 cabling serving static web pages. The Windows computer beats the shit out of the Linux system (like...Netcraft) and it is concluded that Windows is superior in every way to Linux. Slashdotters would blow a collective gasket. That is the accuracy with which most biological studies are conducted. If you think I'm full of shit, you can pass a sugar pill through clinical trials and sell it as a anti-anything pill.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
When you look at slashdot editors....
-Shaunak.
Evolution has not stopped. Certainly the enviornment, or fitness plane, that human's inhabit has changed, and changed radically, but this merely changes the constraints that determine who dies and who lives.
For example. Modern science now allows women with unnaturally narrow hips to survive child birth (Cesaerian Section). This allows a new set of genetic material to be passed down through the generations - perhaps there are some other beneficial adaptations that are associated with narrow hips.
There are many other examples. Just because modern science allows some new sets of genes to replicate themselves - does not mean evolution has stopped - merely that different selective pressures can now come into play.
Think about it. Evolution (sorry to anthropomorphize here) is now free to play with a lot more vairables than it had before. For example. Since we can deliver almost any baby now, will there be a trend towards bigger babies, since the added drain on resources will no longer hurt the mother's chances of survival - even a 16lbs could be delivered via C section. Will bigger babies have a head start - start talking early, have bigger brains?
There are myriad other examples of this line of thinking.
Evolution CAN'T stop.
-josh
I think one of the key points in our own "evolution" was the awareness of evolution as constant change, and more importantly the ability for us to consciously choose what features we wanted to encourage or discourage.
:)
This is a double-edged sword, as evolution now is no longer the realm of instinct, but of consciuous decision, but at the same time its effect is diluted, by the ability to "mimic" what is seen as desirable, evolutionary or otherwise. For instance, an evolutionary instinct to encourage males mating with blond-haired, blue-eyed large-breasted women is diluted in a practical sense by hair dye, coloured contacts and silicon implants.
People who alter themselves to fit our instinct are promoting "false" or "substandard" genes, which in turn means less[1] people for the next generation with desirable features.
Fross
[1] or, at least on average the same, which would be an evolutionary step of zero
Whatever qualification Prof. Steve Jones holds, he should probably take down his degree and wipe his arse with it, as it has turned out that is all it's good for.
/. shouting down the efforts of someone they disagree with with an infantile remark.
Yet another example of someone on
For your information Professor Steve Jones is arguably the world's top geneticist. He's spent practically his entire career on the subject and is perhaps to genetics what Albert Einstein is to
relativity.
To say that his opinions are highly respected in the scientific community is an understatement - you'd have more luck finding a kid that hates candy than you would a serious scientist that was as dismissive of Prof. Jones's arguments as you appear to be.
Perhaps you have a professional interest in genetics yourself? A doctorate then? A degree perhaps? No, I didn't think so.
Yours seems to be a typical knee-jerk reaction. "Hey, I don't understand/like the idea of what this guy is saying so I'll bash/ridicule him." Very mature.
Perhaps, just perhaps, Prof. Jones, being a sensible scientist - the kind that looks at all avenues and approaches, accepting of all ideas and dismissive of none - looks at all the arguments before reaching his conclusions, whatever they may be.
Who knows, perhaps he looked at all the evidence - even the stuff you've put forward - before commiting his ideas to the scrutiny of the scientific community via a paper or a journal.
Perhaps he's right. Perhaps he's wrong. Scientists aren't always as arrogant as you seem to be - they don't claim to have all the answers but they damn well try to look for some.
It seems to me that Prof. Jones isn't defining some set-in-stone law here. He's only putting forward a theory.
Perhaps you'd be more confortable if scientist's didn't theorise? If Newton hadn't thought about gravity, Darwin about evolution or Einstein about the speed of light?
Science (and mankind in general) is progressed as much by taking an idea, working with it and finding out that it's wrong, coming up with a new idea that matches new emperical data, working with that, etc, as it is by someone pulling the right answers out of a hat first time.
Prof. Jones might be wrong. He might be right. Or, he might be somewhere in between. But if we take your approach to science we'll never find out.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
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.
A Brief History of the Evolution and Creation Science Conflict
Many claims of evidence against evolution are in reality pseudo-science, and are easily refuted.
Six Flood Arguments Creationists Can't Answer
Is Creationism a viable scientific hypothesis ?
Finally someone who understands, this is a brilliant post yet you didn't get modded up. I always said that suffering is a necessary thing. Some people laugh at me when I say that. I believe that life is well planned and everything that exists exists for a reason. Turns out that our creator is pretty damn smart.
Every once in a while some scientist likes to say something like "Ok, that's it, we know pretty much all there is to know, the rest is just a matter of filling in the details." Looks like some biologists got jealous, and decided to jump on that bandwagon but in terms of evolution.
I'd say that modern humans have certainly reduced evolutionary forces, by insulating themselves from some aspects of their environment (by setting up artificial climates, via long-range transportation of food, and through modern medicine). But we haven't removed evolutionary pressures completely. And it only takes a very little bit of selection to affect things over long periods of time. We do still have mutation, we do still have genetic variation (and in fact, I'd say genetic variation at any particular location is increasing, because there is more mixing), and we do still have some selection. Those are the requirements of evolution. (OK, mutation isn't even strictly necessary, but it prevents things from getting fixed for a particular allele due to genetic drift, so it's nice to have around.)
The mixing may reduce the amount of adaptation to local conditions that happens, but I don't think that's too big a problem.
The creationists have come a long way since they simply asserted the world was created in seven days. Now, they at least cite the theories and evidence of the Darwinism as the basis for their beliefs.
Unfortunately, they are still not very good at it. This writer contends that evolution is "illogical and impossible" if he can refute one part of the theory that has to do with the role of mutation in natural selection.
At the same time he conceeds that large sections of the theory of evolution are true, namely what he calls "micro-evolution" and the role of natural selection in eliminating harmful mutations.
It would seem that the existence of God now depends on role of recessive genes in transmitting mutations. Given the size of the thesis, you'd expect more evidence for the existence of God than that.
Evolution is an emergent property of reproduction. It is unstoppable, unless you stop sexual reproduction. Neither society nor mixing will stop exolution, you merely change the environment and the rates of sharing genetic material. New traits will emerge in the long term, those may have nothing to do with fitness in the classic sense.
Spiritually/socially/memetically, (i think its all the same... evolution of the way we think/act/treat others) still has alot of evolving to do. I think we'll only be truly evolved when we realize that all humans are worth protecting, not just our friends/neighbors.
Memes are interesting and they appear to be viral - easily transfered from one to the other, constantly evolving and changing and becoming more complex. Just like there is a technique to remove viruses (eat healthy, have strong immune system) there is a technique that can be used to remove memes from your mind. Intellectually it is very simple - do not react to them. Actually it is hard to implement.
Thats why 10 day course have been established throughout the world that can give an opportunity to practice not responding to your memes. Check out Vipassana Meditation for more details.
Vipasanna meditation "aims for the total eradication of mental impurities and the resultant highest happiness of full liberation."
Need a website host? Try out http://WebQualityHost.net
that's right. in mesopotamia or sumeria. the first guy who took a couple of sticks and bound them together in such a way that he was able to plow his field and his neighbors' fields all in one day - his was the last generation (at least, of sumerians) to be influenced exclusively by natural selection.
ever since, evolution has been tempered by scientific advancement.
why? food surplus. when you have a better way to plow your fields, you can take some extra time to work out how to store food, to build better houses against the elements, lord your power over your neighbors, build better weapons, and find all kinds of new ways to kill your starving enemies.
our species is certainly still evolving, which is to say changing genetically, but not by natural selection alone. natural selection would tend towards people who are better at surviving famines and the elements, resistant to diseases and all the other natural forces that tend to kill people before they can reproduce.
there's no direction to our evolution now, as there was when our species was young, and intelligence was the most important - but not the only - selective factor. then, it was important to be able to recognize danger, potential food, potential shelter, etc. those people got to reproduce, because they survived long enough to and could supply their offspring with food.
today, everyone gets to reproduce, even the people i would argue shouldn't be allowed to - because they can't provide for their own children to the age where they can reproduce. these are people who give up their children to adoption, have them taken away by social services for just that reason, or rely exclusively upon handouts from others to get by. the intelligence test for survival these days is in finding the generous people (or filling out the government forms) to hit up for money.
in fact, our most intelligent and genetically viable people are the same ones who tend not to have children, or who have only the one or two they know they can sustain. careers and full-time obligations make it possible to provide for more children, but also make it very difficult to actually raise them. such in the irony of modern evolutionary forces.
and then there are those people who nature and selection have denied children. infertile couples, sterile men and women who have children despite nature and the lot they were given at birth, because they can afford to pay a doctor to pump them full of drugs and inject their artificially fertilized eggs. natural selection denies them a chance to reproduce, but technology smacks nature in the face with a petri dish full of zygotes.
so, it's not toward a more intelligent species that we're still evolving, but toward a more technologically dependent, more socially dependent species. it may be, eventually, that here in the "west" we can't reproduce without technology's assistance. it's getting to that point - partly because people see it as their right and privelege to reproduce if they can afford to (which it is, to some extent) - mostly because of the modern technology we already rely on, which is the very thing making them infertile or allowing them to survive longer than nature would have, but with the inability to reproduce.
i wonder how much longer it will be that we in the west, dependent as we are on technology even to get erections (yes, viagra, too, is to blame) won't be able to reproduce with the indigenous peoples, like those in australia, africa and south america, who have had no contact with the technodependent west. we are on our way to becoming a new human species, if that is the eventual outcome. don't tell me evolution is finished, just say nature's done with us what she will, and we are guiding our own evolution - for good or for ill.
quite a ramble, but it's how i feel, and have felt for a long time. we stopped really evolving as soon as we could feed those of us that would otherwise have starved.
more on evolution (moron evolution).
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
TB didn't kill most native americans, smallpox did.
all that might be true if everyone that was having kids was doing so because they were smart enough to see they could afford to and managed their time and work properly. but then, what do you say about all the people who rely on welfare and handouts, and continue to reproduce in inverse proportion to their capacity to support offspring.
and then there are those whose religion, and not their careers, guide their contraceptive and reproductive decisions. there's a reason there will always be mormons and catholics...
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
you reminded me of a great paradox i pondered once.
consider catholics. a good catholic uses no contraception, has more kids. bad catholics don't have big families, because they find it necessary to have sex and not have kids. good catholics have lots of kids. the best catholics, however, have no kids, because they're priests and nuns.
following this, we're evolving towards more and better catholics (and mormons, for that matter, but they screw up the equations), since they tend to outproduce protestants. eventually, though, all reproduction will stop, because a whole generation will become monks, priests and nuns.
then, as a species, we're screwed.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
I sometimes think about this and come up with the conclusion of "No, that is probably not true..."
First off, look at how long we have been running about on the earth - a couple hundred thousand years maybe? Those large dinosaur things lived 65 million years ago, and it took that long for us to come about. I am sure in another 65 million years something more can happen to us. Just because the human perception of time is so slow doesn't mean change doesn't happen.
This can be compared to technological evolution too. Every once and a while I think "What more could we possibly come up with technology-wise? It seems like we have come up with everything." However, I doubt people in the 1500s could have thought "Oh, I bet some day people will be using transistors to build 'computers' that will be used to run data bases holding lots and lots of email addresses to be used for mass-mailing!" No, I am going to guess that at that time people could have looked around and thought "Yup, this is as far as we can get. Everything has been figured out."
So I am going to guess that there is plenty more evolving we can do. If nothing else, we can at least get rid of wisdom teeth and apendices. Of course, I won't be around in 500,000 years when that has happened, though, so it doesn't really concern me in the end...
Posted from the wireless couch.
A transvestite is a person who prefers to wear the clothing of the opposite sex, but is no different to any other human. A hermaphrodite is a person born with both male and female organs, and these people are exceedingly rare (and usually sorted out by surgery very early on).
evolution is never over. But it works a lot faster in small isolated populations.
When we get into space we will have far flung colonies spread out over the entire solar system, with small groups of people who are going to have very limited contact with the rest of humanity for generations. The radiation levels will be much higher than normal. Gravity is going to be much lower. Foods will be different than on Earth.
We are going to see some very strange cults, and strange mutations as we move into space. It would be interesting to explore the possiblities in a story about someone who has to take supplies off to a lot of remote outposts.
And as far as machines replacing humans, hardly. This reminds me a lot of the outlandish claims that we would be able to predict the weather for years in advance back in the 1950's. We are still lucky to have an accurate 5 day forcast. And just this winter they failed to forcast a storm that put down 6 inches of snow across the entire NW of the US.
I predict that we will be lucky to have machines as smart as a rat in my lifetime and that my great grand children will not meet an artificial intelligence as smart as they are. We will see expert systems being used in things like medicine and law and other narrowly defined areas of human knowledge, but those will be idiot savants that are totally useless outside their area of expertise.
We will move to a new economy that is totally alien to what we have now. Capitalism and communism are rapidly becoming as meaningless as talking about things in terms of divine right and fiefal duties. It can either be a paradise, or a new dark age, I am not sure which will happen yet.
The simple fact is that most peoples in the world live pretty much the same way that they have lived since history began to be recorded. They use animals to farm for food. I doubt that this will change in the next 1000 years.
Sadly the overlords of these peasants _do_ have access to the most advanced technologies... How much chance does a farmer have against a MiG23? Or against a squad of soldiers armed with AK 47's? Not much. And even if we do have AI robots, those robots will answer to the overlords too.
-- Never make a general statement.
Only uncivilised countries like the US base their medical system on how much people can afford.
Well, they just couldnt have children of their own. They could still marry. Wether or not they would want to is another story.
by allowing natural selection. We keep saving the lives of those who are "not fit". Yes it would be absolutely horrible if we didn't, and I'm not saying we should let everyone in the hospital die. But if you want evolution to continue, we have to have to have natural selection. Medical technology defeats natural selection.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
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.
Oooooh ohhhhhh Ahhhhhhhhh ahhhhh!
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Evolution occurs because of DNA mutation--which happens all the time--but that mutation must be viable and offer some benefit for the recipient.
For example, humanoid bipeds that were born with less hair didn't get as hot on the savannah, and were (presumably) able to run further and longer. This would indirectly mean that those beasts could get more food and survive easier. More food = more babies and the trait is passed to future generations.
Another example of something that we are losing is the appendix (burst appendix = death; no appendix = no burst appendix = no death from that cause). The process happens so slowly because those with the evolutionary trait (in this case an absent appendix) must outbreed those who don't have the trait.
In the case of the appendix, modern science is messing with the evolutionary machine, but there are some things that will continue to evolve:
- Cancer resistance
- Virus (AIDS) resistance
- Ability to function in more stressful environment
- SIDS resistance
- Pollution resistance
So the bottom line is that any crackpot can say evolution is dead, but without understanding the thousands and possibly millions of years required for evolution to do its work, we can pretend the crackpots of the world, who rage against the windmills, are correct. It doesn't matter; we'll be long since turned to dust by the time we humans evolve again. And we will.Yeah, right.
No further need for improvement. Top of the world, ma!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Sure we're still evolving - the only way we'd STOP evolving would be is every group of humans on the planet we're reproducing at the same rate, which is untrue now, and surely will be untrue for ever.
Remember that evolution doesn't mean advance or get better, but simply change, and that the evolutionary winners are simply those that leave behind more offspring.
Currently the segements of the global population that are outbreeding the others are the poorer ones like India (or even the welfare segment in more developed countries), so it seems that at an evolutionary level the ability to accumulate wealth is a bad thing, and that the genetics of poorer countries and maybe even lower IQ welfare segment are the current evolutionary direction.
It is also noticeable that those who meet this criteria of social success have a higher mean IQ than those who do not. Anecdotally, I would observe that they also tend to have fewer congenital health problems.
So is the higher IQ a cause or an effect of having money?
There are a number of things that need to happen in the first several years of a child's life for that child to develop 'optimally' (note scare quotes, as optimally is not defined).
First during pregnancy no alcohol, no smoking, no drugs are allowed and good medical care as well as a balanced and sufficient diet are required.
Second during the first several years the child needs proper diet and medical care and a loving and stimulating environment.
Third during the years leading up to adolescence the child needs a proper diet, good medical care, a supportive and stimulating environment, and a proper learning environment (examples: good schools, libraries, access to a computer, etc.).
There is some component of IQ that is genetic. But even if IQ is 100% genetic if the child doesn't have the proper environment the genes will not have a chance to express themselves fully. As an extreme example of this, consider a plant seed. The seed holds all the genetic potential for a full grown plant. But if that seed falls on a concrete parking lot then none of that genetic potential will be expressed.
It is the same with humans. Unless the proper requirements for development are made available to the child it will not develop optimally.
Is it any wonder then that socially sucessful people tend to have socially successful children? Or that the socially successful have higher IQs?
Also note that having money means having regular access to heath care. For most successful people visiting a doctor is not an issue. For people with out medical insurance (i.e. the non successful) visits to a doctor can be very expensive. If the choice is between feeding the kids and visiting a doctor the kids usually win. Thus any real problems are not diagnosed promptly. And prompt diagnosis is usually crucial to successful treatment. So agian, is it any surprise that the successful have fewer health problems?
Steve M
Quantitatively, I've heard that IQ tests have had to be recentered about 3 points per decade, for about the last 100 years.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
i believe the point he was trying to make is that if people with "inferior" (inferior only because they retard the progression of the species) genetics are able to reproduce, they will in turn propagate their inferior genes. in the past, before modern medical breakthroughs, people with inferior genetics were either rendered sterile, or died off before they had a chance to propagate their genes.
-c
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
Perhaps that's the future of evolution, a world of people genetically predisposed towards Catholicism...
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Remember... 'Survial of the Fittest' doesn't mean survial of the smartest, or survival of the pleasent. That welfare family down the streat with eight bastard children is more 'fitted' to it's environemnt than the nice couple with two well behaved children.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Either that or we'll all start devolving into lawyers and politicians (Greyfox's theory of devolution.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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.
By your logic, you could say that the teeth and claws of tigers whch we think makes them strong actually makes them weak. Our medicine is our strength and it will not suddenly vanish some day. Our medicine is the very thing that will help us control our own evolution.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Although the parent is somewhat tongue in cheek, several of these are valid points.
In addition, realize that our immune systems are constantly under very strong selective pressure to be better able to respond to pandemic infectious diseases.
For example, we are all descended from those people whose immune systems were better able to cope with influenza. Remember, more people died in the 1919 Flu pandemic than in all the battles of World War I.
There are, or course, other examples. We are currently under strong selective pressure that favors those whose T cells do not have binding sites for HIV.
So, evolution most definitely continues, it's just that it isn't usually selecting for traits that are visible to the naked eye.
Evolution is going towards genes that favour a large amount of children.
Close but not quite that simple.
Evolution is about differential genetic success. That is, it is about getting your genes into future generations.
There are two main strategies for this. One is to have as many offspring as possible and invest minimal care in any one of them. You flood the world with offspring in the hope that some will survive. But the loss of any particular offspring is no big deal. Think salmon spawning.
The second main strategy is to have fewer offspring but to invest highly in their successful maturation to child bearing age. Think humans.
Now the key to success in the second model is getting your few children to the point where they can have children. For most of humankind's existance bringing up kids was a perilous endevour, with many children dieing well before reaching child bearing age. Thus an effective evolutionary strategy would be to have large families, increasing the odds that one or more children would make it to child bearing age.
Note that the parents didn't thnk in these terms. But the families that had a lot of kids left more offspring then the ones that didn't.
But there is a second pressure on these families. That is the ability to raise all these kids. It takes money to raise a kid. So the optimal family size is the one where you not only have kids that survive to have grand kids, but where you also provide that kids with the best chance of future economic success. (Survival of the fittest and struggle for existance are economic statements. The individuals struggle for limited resources (food, mates, etc.), they do not engage in combat against each other.)
In times when life didn't offer many career choices, most people were born on a farm and died on a farm, as long as you were strong and healthy you had the same chance as anyone else to succeed.
But in times where career choices are myraid the economic calculations become somewhat more involved. One example, those with a college degree tend to make more money (they are more economically successful) then those without. College can be expensive. Thus there is pressure to have fewer children.
Combine this with the fact that in the developed nations it is no longer difficult to raise a child to child bearing age. Thus a successful evolutionary strategy is to have a minimal number of childern and invest heavily in them. Which is what we are seeing today.
Steve M
How do they "retard the progression of the species?" I do not see evolution as a teleological process. It concerns what works now against current threats to survival. What is this progress you claim exists? Where is it leading?
If their genes are so inferior, how do they manage to reproduce? Genes that allow an individual to reproduce successfully are good genes. They worked. The proof is the offspring. Genes are not inferior because somebody thinks so or because they were not good a thousand years ago. Evolution is about survival and reproduction. If an individual with a certain genetic composition survives and reproduces, the individual is successful. His or her genes are successful.
Evolution is descriptive, not prescriptive. It does not tell us what to become or what is good. It tells us that populations have varied individuals and that some individuals will prosper and multiply while others whither and die. We may have changed the selection pressures on us. I can guarantee you, however, that we have not changed or stopped evolution. Why? Evolution is simply what happens when individuals try to survive and reproduce. If the environment changes, the sets of successful individuals and genes will change. Evolution will happen. Evolution is an encompassing idea of what happens in biological populations.
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.
Most people seem to have forgotten that many things can drive evolution. Survival skills are obviously the most important, but once a population is stable then sexual selection can dominate.
If it's under control, you'll get lucky with makeup and hairpieces. (E.g., one experiment involved clipping the tail feathers of one male (loser) and taping the clipped feathers to the end of another male's tail (stud))
If it's out of control you get peacocks.
And if it's been taken over by humans with nothing better to do, you get show animals - pidgeons and dogs seem to have it worst. Natural selection would never breed large canine species guaranteed to have hip problems, and the things done to pidgeons are unmentionable.
Historically, much of the recent difference in first-world reproductive rates were due to social issues - specifically the willingness to use birth control, which in turn is related to whether the couple were observant Catholics.
But now this may be changing - the breeders are the ones who start early. If you get knocked up for the first time by the age of 15, you'll have lots of kids. And if you wait until after 25, you'll rarely have 3 or more kids.
And that means we would be selecting our species according to whatever young teen girls find sexually attractive. Scary - almost Karmic revenge for what we've done to other species.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Before anyone takes the creationist ideas too seriously (I personally believe them to be nothing but pseudo-science) you should read up on some background.
Nothing disproves evolution more than the fact that creationists' arguments have not evolved with the times are are so weak they could not possibly have survived in a Darwinian world.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
if you have a genetic condition which renders you effectively sterile, but you can have children if you go through a doctor to do so, then you are passing on genes that could end up requiring your offspring to rely on a doctor for reproduction as well.
this would allow inferior genes to propagate. they ARE inferior because they rely on a roundabout method for their propagation, as opposed to just having a good ol' fashioned rogering. when many people are having sex, they're not thinking "damn, i could sure go for having children, lets go have some sex." they're thinking "damn, i could sure go for some sex. lets go have some sex." however, people don't go hanging around fertility clinics to get their jollies (well, most people don't.) therefore, the "have sex to reproduce" gene will more likely surpass the "go to doctor to aid reproduction" gene. however, when we muddle around in genetic matters and make it easier and easier to rely on doctors and technology to have children, we are pretty well aiding the propagation of inferior genes and retarding evolutionary progress.
i'm not saying that we're going to wipe out our species or anything, i'm just saying that we definitely are making an impact (even if just a small one) in the evolutionary progress of our species.
-c
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
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.
The authors of the article totally miss the point of evolution. They operate under the mistaken conceit that the purpose of evolution and all existence is to create the "perfect" organism, i.e. man. It is not. The universe doesn't give a crap about us, and that's reality. Evolution is our word for a process that we observe in nature whereby a multitude of species appear and disappear over time. They differentiate themselves from each other and the ones that are better matched to the current conditions or better able to adapt to changing conditions survive while others don't. The mistake that people always make is to assume that their is some intelligent motive behind this process, that their is some "end goal" in view from the beginning. There is not.
Humans are not exempt from the "laws" of nature. Just because we have the hubris to believe that we can "control" our environment, we are not exempt from the laws of survival no more than we are exempt from the laws of gravity, aerodynamics, and thermodynamics.
The real danger is not that we become exempt from evolution, because we will not. The real danger is that we drive our species into extinction by spreading our "Western" lifestyle throughout the world.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
You make the erroneous assumption - common in the 19th Century and among Christian findamentalists - that evolution is progressive and "going somewhere." This is an essential fallacy. Evolutionary processes are immediate, effecting birth rates among the carriers of traits effected by any of many selective processes. Evolution does not progress and the successful breeders in one generation may be the failures in a another genration as fitness landscapes alter through time. The giant panda is a good example of a species isolated on a fitness peak from which it is unlikely to move without becoming extinct. The presence of these "weaknesses" that you say modern medicine is causing means that selective effects have a broader canvas and more traits with which to work. Far from becoming "weak" this fact increases potential human evolutionary adaptibility.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Although I think your logic is flawed, I thank you for posting this. The moderation of your comment is disappointing -- comments like this are exactly the reason I try (unsuccessfully -- rock on, slash!) to turn off negative moderation. Even if your comment were a troll (which it isn't, if your previous posts are a guide), this would still be a worthwhile discussion to be had.
> Harmful mutations far outnumber beneficial
> mutations
No, relatively meaningless mutation far outnumber both of these. Look at the people around you. Most of their differences are minor -- different hair, different complection, some are a little stronger, some shorter, some smarter. Everyone has lots of little, largely meaningless variations. (These can be both recessive or dominant traits.) Relatively rare is the person with a deeply serious genetic variation, good or bad.
> Evolution is impossible as beneficial recessive
> mutations could never have arisen.
This isn't how evolution works. Keep in mind that every population has a good deal of variety in it. When that population is put under stress (say, there's a flood and all the short people die), individuals whose genetic traits give them an advantage for dealing with that specific stress have a better chance of survival.
> Natural selection requires a genetic mutation
> to express itself in order for the selection to
> work
No, no, no. Evolution doesn't take place when an organism inherits some magical mutation, which allows him to eat more, which is somehow magically linked with having more children. Evolution is the result of stress on a large and diverse population -- limited resources, predators, oil spills, et cetera. When that stress occurs, the various weird traits that had always been occuring (different hair, different skin, whatever) give some of those organisms a better chance.
> We have evidence that close relations have
> cumulatively worse of children than average
> partners.
Again, this is a too-shallow analysis of complex systems. Your model (that any one beneficial trait is virtually always accompanied by at least one harmful trait) ignores the way these systems actually behave. Traits are meaningless until stress is put on the population, thus there is little correllation between them.
Anyway, there's a counter-argument; post up what you think its flaws are. Hopefully the moderators will de-lodge their heads from their collective asses, shake their heads vigorously, and mod your post back up.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
I see the error in your thinking.
"they ARE inferior because they rely on a roundabout method for their propagation"
What is inferior about the reliance? If fertility clinics and old-fashioned sex are both available and effective, what difference does it make which one someone chooses? Either way, offspring are produced, and the offspring carry the genes. Evolution is about offspring and inheritance, not about your ideas of what is natural.
If both genetic conditions allow one to reproduce, what is the evolotionary difference? How does it impact survival? We don't live a hundred years ago, so don't worry about who would have survived and reproduced a hundred years ago. Evolutionary pressures change with time. It's inherent. You have some claim about the disadvantage to survival and reproduction, yet you admit that these people can survive and reproduce. Survival and reproduction are the keys, not your ideas about what is inferior. If one method works about as well as the other, how is one so vastly superior to the other?
Shed your ideas about what is better than what. Look at what is and what works.
My first guess would be physical beauty, but I've seen a lot of ugly parents out there, so I'd be wrong.
I belive, however, there's a big difference between death by old age or cancer versus some large-scale epidemic. I think it's humanity's duty to help in situations like this. We should always take notice when something like this affects the population and threatens cultures.
This is neither here nor there (as in, it doesn't address my original comment or your reply), but it warrants saying.
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"98% of fat people have no medical cause for their obesity, just lousy selfcontrol."
Don't be so sure of that. Why don't you examine the eating habits of thin and average people sometime? There are lots of people like me who eat everything they want and their bodies maintain the same equlibrium weight. People like that would be disadvantaged in starvation conditions, but they're the lucky ones with our abundance of food. So if you think it's normal for bodies to store every excess calorie, and people like me are just lucky, then yes, obesity is the person's own fault.
Or will modern medicine and modern human culture prevent this, by viewing the improvement as a monstrosity, and trying to eradicate it? If you thought racism was bad, think about speciesism. Wars between the 10-digits and 16-digits, etc etc. "You don't have to treat them with human dignity; they aren't even human!"
Will we allow ourselves to evolve? Seeing how badly humanity has dealt with other stressful events in history, I really think not.
(I'm not claiming that having 16 fingers is an improvement -- it's just an example)
Say that in the future people will do better with 6 fingers on each hand (5+thumb?). What happens when a child is born with 6 fingers? 1 is cut off! My friend in high school said they were born with 6 fingers and had 1 cut off. OK, they may have been lying...
Lots of people die in wars. Ppl able to participate in wars have to be fit (to a certain standard).
Same for firefighters and other rescue workers.
They risk their lives more than the rest of us.
So wouldn't it be true that the strong take risky jobs, and are more likely to be killed overall?
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.
they might eventually have to raise the rim another foot or so.
According to lots of "old-timers" they should have raised the rim about 10 years ago. The sport itself evolves along with our expectations of it. Sports are not played the same way they used to be. The tactics and techniques that a player from 20 years ago would utilize would be useless in a modern game.
Another thing about basketball that evolves: their shorts. Initially it seems like the old style shorts would be less restrictive and hence more effective. Perhaps longer shorts are more evolutionarily fit. Perhaps they mask the players leg movements better or distract the eye of opponents. Or perhaps they are more intimidating to opponents because they are wearing a style reminiscent of urban street wear. In another 20 years the players will all be wearing wide legged pants.
The truth is more important than the facts.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
----As I guessed people have misunderstood and misinterpreted what I have said. Later, if it's worth it, I'll come respond to some of what has been said.---
Some of them are pretty over the top. But this post does a pretty fair job of responding to you, so I'll hold off on that score.
---Anyone who says that creation is unscientific has not considered the issues properly.---
You just got through saying that it WASN'T science... But anyway, I think I have. Creationism rarely tries to present any actual evidence in accordance with its own theory: mostly it simply tries to knock down evolution. Which is fine, but the problem is that evolutionary scientists seem to do a much better job at pointing out (and correcting) flaws in evolution than do creationists, whose arguments generally seem based on misconceptions, either willful or deliberate, and a whole host of just plain bad science. Evolution is science: it does all the things science is supposed to do. I don't know what else we could say on the subject: your position is just so left field from what any philosophy of science person would tell you that I doubt it will do any good to argue with it.
Creationism COULD be a science, but there seems to be only a pitful lack of evidence to support it's wildly diverse theories and predictions, so it would have a hard time of things.
---We all know that in a computer program a small random change is far more likely to cause an error than it is to improve a program.---
Unfortunately, genetic code is not like program code. Program code is more like a blueprint, while genetic code is more like a recipe. Changing a line of program code could break your program, since that directly affects its functioning. But this is not quite so in genetics, where DNA codes for more general and redudant _mechanisms_ to construct an organism, not piece by piece the actual organism itself.
Here's some problems with the theory of evolution:
u ments.htm for more reasons
1. There is no physical evidence
2. It doesn't explain the origin of dimensions
3. The Big Bang theory doesn't explain the origin of the large mass of exploding matter
4. None of the measurement methods are anywhere near accurate
5. Why would creatures evolve to sexually reproduce instead of just copying themselves?
6. If the big bang sent matter flying in all directions, then the formation of planets and solar systems would not work because of the inability for the matter to slow down in space and generate orbital patterns. If other bodies became attracted by gravity to other bodies, then a thrust force would be needed to create an orbit; instead they would collide.
7. Since the moon is slowly moving away from the Earth, then 3 billion years ago the moon would have been inside the earth.
8. How did the sun start a massive fusion reaction all by itself and why didn't the other planets start their own also?
9. Darwin was originally a Christian, who became too analytical and fell away from his faith, thus creating his own 'creationist' theory. But, before he died, he declared his theory as false and went back to his original Christian faith.
10. If humans evolved from monkeys, then why do monkeys still exist?
11. Why haven't scientists been able to pinpoint where the human subconscious is located in the brain? (the reason is that it's not in the brain, it's in the spirit, which is a 4-dimensional object)
12. Something cannot be created out of nothing
13. Where did the explosive compounds come from that made the large amount of matter from the big bang explode? What ignited them?
14. Anybody knows that when you burn paper that you end up with carbon soot. Explosions cannot create things; they destroy things.
15. Why are there many languages? If people evolved, wouldn't they all communicate the same? Why would they want segregation?
16. What's the purpose of life if people just die and then that's it?
17. Life itself is not a physical object; if people evolved they would be able to create life with their bare hands.
18. Who or what created mathematics?
19. Who or what created the laws of physics?
Some easy facts:
The world is approximately 7000 years old
Dinosaurs never existed; the fossils found are from animals that died from the flood
Evolution. The ignorant's excuse for everything.
Visit a site I found, http://www.geocities.com/evononsense/creation_arg
I am a born again Christian who has seen and read proof that God created the world and all the people in it. Not just from the Bible, but even in modern science such as physics. The truth and facts are all layed out plain as day, but since the majority of the world, including the US is not Christian, that makes most people ignorant fools.
Ignorance is bliss.
#Secret Windows Source Code, in MS C% - if (uptime >= "24 hours") then bsod() else print "Windows License Violation!"
Medicine isn't everything. A recent NYTimes article on the AIDS virus suggests that similar viruses have evolved with their hosts so that the virus itself is less virulent. Human evolution due to viruses, which are generally untreatable, will continue.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
First of all, I'm not following the "longer lifespan" logic. You've labeled a group who favors physical health more to die first? I don't really think that the age of puberty really determines the age of death.
Also you're saying all the cheerleaders and jocks are stupid, or all of the geeks aren't horny, and none of them are stupid, and that none of them are going to act upon their desires to mate? Its a difficult conclusion to draw.
I've personally seen it go all ways. There was a girl in all of my gifted classes in high school who was quite a knock-out, and a cheerleader to boot. Another similarly beutiful, intelligent girl was on the track team. She became saludictorian. Knowing both of their personalities from having been in most of their classes for four years, I know they place more importance on brains than braun.
There where a few guys who fell into the third category, but not as many. What happened more often was a dichotomy in a single family. I have a friend who is going into computer engineering right now, and is quite a scholar, while his brother is a weight lifter, it seems, first and foremost. My family is another perfect example of this - one of my siblings has great physical skill, but not as much mental, I'm the true geek, and a third sibling is sort of in between.
Many people favor a balance of intelligence and physical skill. Perhaps there are other things that are genetically dichotomized, but I don't really think this is one of them. For myself, I don't see marrying (mating) with someone who can't sing, but otherwise, I wouldn't really mind marrying an idiot.
Musical intelligence is what I value in others, though I have other intelligences myself.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!