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Next Step in Human Evolution
PrivateDonut writes "Where is evolution taking our species? MSNBC has up an article that examines where evolution could take the human race. The gist of it is that no further evolution will occur unless humans can be separated into isolated groups." From the article: "Such ideas may sound like little more than science-fiction plot lines. But trend-watchers point out that we're already wrestling with real-world aspects of future human development, ranging from stem-cell research to the implantation of biocompatible computer chips. The debates are likely to become increasingly divisive once all the scientific implications sink in." Class, please read Transmetropolitan for homework.
Sounds like you consider wanking around at raves 'evolutionary progress.'
Hmm..
Having religious beliefs is fine but when religious beliefs start to affect the real world then that's not fine and unfortunately the best way of stopping that is to try and wipe out religious nonsense whenever it rears its ugly head.
Without religion there is a good chance the pub wouldn't shut half an hour earlier tonight.
I suppose I should protect my karma by saying, "You'll probably mod me down for this...", but I'll skip it.
While certain sects of Christians hold to that viewpoint, it is not true of every such sect. For instance, Catholics believe that the Bible is innerrant in the material that God wanted to reveal, not necessarily in every letter. (He used human instruments to record his word.) For these Christians the question of whether there were tidal effects from the sun stopping under Joshua (I suppose all Christians in your world are flat-earthers and believe the sun revolves around the earth as well) is simply not interesting.
Personally, I think that the fact of evolution has been adequately demonstrated -- that is, that there were once only simple organisms and that more complex organisms came into being. My argument would be about the mechanism. I have yet to hear an argument for natural selection as the only element of evolution that really dealt with its weak points. Those would be (1) point mutations -- one gene, one enzyme -- would take more generations to propagate the macroevolutionary changes we witness in the fossil record than we have and (2) a good fraction of those point mutations are negative (or neutral) mutations -- take a look at your fruit-fly catalog: there are wingless, sepia-colored, white-eyed, eyeless, etc. etc., but very few mutations you could argue as "beneficial", allowing that fly to be selected for. The net result of this is that you need even more generations to get to a positive result.
As a thought experiment, try rolling a die, giving yourself 1 point for an odd number and -1 for an even number. How many rolls do you need to get to a score of 20 (in real life, you need more than 20 good mutations and the good mutations seem less likely than the bad ones, put this is a thought experiment)? Using a Perlscript, I ran a thousand trials and got an average of 222,155.664 "generations" necessary to get a measly 20 positive "mutations" -- that's over three million years just to modify 20 genes in a positive manner. How many species are in man's immediate ancestor tree? How many years has this planet existed? (Admittedly, there are limits to this argument -- I haven't considered cases where more than one mutation takes place in the same generation, but you get the drift.)
In conclusion, speciation by natural selection does occur (at least in a few cases demonstrably -- polar gulls, etc.), but I think there has to be another mechanism in there, and the evolutionary apologists don't seem to be coming up with a hypothesis, while intelligent design apologists are routinely lambasted in the public forum, as though their arguments, which at the very least tries to provide an answer to this.