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Couple of "Human Evolution" Questions (Seriously), If I May...
by AGuest 49 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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TD
Are we still physically evolving (as the "evidence", if true, would logically indicate we would be)?
Humans do their darndest to eliminate the cruelty of natural selection. We care for the weak, and the sick and the mentally incompentent. It's the right thing to do. However this insulates us from the forces that are believed to drive evolution.
Nevertheless, we are evolving, but not in the way that most imagine. Our bodies are getting bigger and our brains are getting smaller. Nobody is entirely sure why.
It's been estimated that William Wallace was 6'-6" tall. (Based on measurments of his armor) At a time when the average man was only five foot even, this would have practically made him a giant. I was at a high school recently and was stunned at how many of the boys were at least 6'-4" to 6'-6" and how many of the girls were at least 6'-0" I'm not short and my daughter is taller than me. Parents have been saying this for multiple generations now. 6'-6" is not unusual today.
It was theorized that better nutrition was responsible for the larger size of humans. It sounded like a reasonable explanation in the 50's and 60's, but it's in doubt now because the children of each generation are still getting taller.
The human brain has been shrinking for the last 20,000 odd years. Our brains are about 10% smaller than those of Cro-Magnon specimens. Again, experts are divided on the exact reason why. Some believe it is the direct result of the protective nature of human society. As human society evolved, exceptional intelligence was no longer needed to survive. Others believe that the brain of modern man is "wired" more efficiently.
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drwtsn32
Humans do their darndest to eliminate the cruelty of natural selection. We care for the weak, and the sick and the mentally incompentent. It's the right thing to do. However this insulates us from the forces that are believed to drive evolution.
Exactly. We are slowing down our own evolution not only because of the above, but also because we can readily adapt to environmental changes (we artificially modify our environment through cooling/heating). In addition, most humans don't stay in small, isolated groups where evolution has a much greater chance of occurring.
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Abaddon
"1. Are we still physically evolving (as the "evidence", if true, would logically indicate we would be)?"
Yes we are; see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzpbDVjO_nw
" b. If so...
(1) HOW, logically, are we still evolving? "
Same way we always did; see below about what evolution IS.
" (2) WHAT, logically, are we involving into? "
There is no set destination for evolution. It doesn't know what it is doing so how human shall evolve is an open discussion. Some genetic trends can be seen. but nothing that would mean H. Sapiens will be anything other than that for a very long time.
"What is/could/must be "next"?"
The only must is based on a combination of various aspects of natural selection; it is a simplification, but what a species evolves into must have more genes from members of that species that are better at passing their genes on than other members of that population.
" (Note, while "next" could involve things like flying or being able to swim underwater without an apparatus, wouldn't the second suggest, logically, a de-volution - i.e., back to the "soup" - and wouldn't, logically, both have to involve some kind of "mating" with another species that can already fly/swim... which I don't deny could occur due to some experiment in a petrie dish but, again, logically, would require intervention by humans, thus, being "artificial" as opposed to natural?)"
So much wrong here; evolution of a species from a terrestrial to aquatic form is not devolution it is evolution. The hippo-like creatures that evolved into whales did not devolve by returning to the water, they evolved to exploit the resources of a particular environment, developing echo-location in the process.
And species rarely acquire major characteristics from genetic transfer from other species. Bacteria do a lot, but dolphins did not get sonar from breeding with bats, or bats wings by mice breeding with birds. Sonar and wings have evolved separately on several occasions as they are biologically possible and survival benefits. However, other hippo-like creatures evolved into hippos, who have characteristics that allow them to survive well in their environment, and some shrew-like creatures became shrews instead of bats, and are just as good in their environment as bats are in theirs.
Finally...
2. If we are still evolving, wouldn't evolving into a species that surpasses the physical body, surpasses being limited by the physical world, its laws and confines... and the requirements and needs of the physical body... be the ultimate station? I mean, logically? Wouldn't evolving to the point where the body doesn't need to eat, sleep, pee, poop, breath air, use apparati to fly, swim, etc., to be limited to a set space... logically, be the ultimate?
Because as far as we know there, there is no selection pressure to acquire such characteristics, and no indication that such would be possible by biological evolution or is even real. Telepathic people don't survive better than non telepathic people, otherwise we would all be telepaths and besides, there's no proof that telepathy exists. Replace 'telepathy' with 'spiritual beings'.
It is nice you are asking constructive questions, but they would be better if you had even the vaguest idea about how evolution works ( as shown by your question about acquiring characteristics by interspecies breeding and devolution ).
And they miss the point; you are accepting Genesis as allegorical accept with regard to human evolution with none evidence to support the differentiation and no need to do so in order to believe in god.
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wobble
Thank you for starting this thread dear Shelby, and thanks to all contributors.
My knowledge of Evolution Science is minimal, and the answers you have all give are so helpful, and I will be able to help others, like my dear wife, who is not disposed to read anything about evolution at present, but has these same questions.
I am sure that she suffers from the wrong idea that Science presents the Evolutinary process as being an Intelligent Designer, it is patently not, it is a reactive process, and those flora and fauna that cannot react and adapt properly die out, leaving something that appears to be designed to survive, but it wasn't designed by some outside intelligence.
We all tend to add to this misunderstanding in the languge we use "Evolution has determined that ....... " " evolution has designed ...." which we know what we mean, but the uninitiated think we are talking about an outside intelligence who decides how to adapt, and has "goals" etc.
Perhaps we need to be more careful how we express ourselves.
Many thanks again to all, this has been most educational !
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ballistic
Just google, Tibetans, blood vessels, altitude sickness, and you will see evolution is alive and well, and it's not in some minor way, the tibetans who have been living at altitude for centuries have evolved huge extra amounts of extra blood vessels to provide extra oxygen to their bodies.
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Abaddon
Good example ballistic. And it allows an illustration of how speciation works.
Tibetians are and will remain humans. There is enough genetic admixture in and out of Tibet to prevent speciation. If Earth's mountains had regions suitable for residence so high it was impossible for a ground level human to go there, and some Tibetains could er many generations gain further altitude adaption to comfortably live there, and then some calamity came about that left Tibetians on an inaccessable high plateau and people at ground level, and no technological means left of bridging the gap, ground level humans and Tibetian humans would stop exchanging genes. Maybe at some point after a very very long time, they would find, when they re-established contact, they were no longer genetically compatible.
That's one way speciation occurs.
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Mad Sweeney
Like the resulting uniqueness of animals in Australia compared to the rest of the planet.