For the "scientists" here who believe in evolution: what will we evolve into next?

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

Tom of Assisi:

I have never heard of any evolutionist scientist who thinks evolution has stopped. Humans, like all animals and living things, will “continue” to branch off and new species will be formed…I suppose the evolutionists think the newly created post-human specieses will be Christian too (all these random mutations are part of God’s plan one supposes.

As I said, I have heard put forward by some scientists that when a species hits a certain level of intelligence that natural evolution stops becuase the species allows and helps the “unfit” to live and reproduce there by cancelling out natural selection.

This also occurs with the absence of natural predators.

Just look at the duckbill platypus from Australia and other animals from there.

 

[Tom_of_Assisi]

BibleReader:

In Dragons of Eden, Carl Sagan has a pretty interesting statistical chart suggesting that human evolution has indeed ground to a halt. He argues that the brain can’t be enlarged anymore to increase average intelligence, women’s hips can’t be widened anymore to permit birthing of larger brain cases, and brain convolutions can’t be increased anymore to increase the average number of cerebral connections, without generating “dysfunction.”

only if you assume, as the atheist pig Sagan does, that humans MUST get smarter to evolve…but evolution does not necessitate becoming smarter or brain size increasing, but even if it did–look at the micro chip run computers versus the bigger ones from teh 1950s…bigger does not have to mean smarter.

 

[Tom_of_Assisi]

ByzCath:

As I said, I have heard put forward by some scientists that when a species hits a certain level of intelligence that natural evolution stops becuase the species allows and helps the “unfit” to live and reproduce there by cancelling out natural selection.

This also occurs with the absence of natural predators.

Just look at the duckbill platypus from Australia and other animals from there.

fitness has to do with how many offspring an organism has that can reach reproductive age and begin reproducing. An organism is fit if it produces lots of “grandchildren” in other words…

fitness does not imply strength or brute force.

And of course, the greatest threat any species has is from THE OTHER MEMBERS OF ITS OWN SPECIES. Conflist with other animals and predators is often very minimal compared with the intraspecies competition (for mates and food)…

…so I still disagree with you…evolution does not stop

 

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

Tom of Assisi:

fitness has to do with how many offspring an organism has that can reach reproductive age and begin reproducing. An organism is fit if it produces lots of “grandchildren” in other words…

fitness does not imply strength or brute force.

And of course, the greatest threat any species has is from THE OTHER MEMBERS OF ITS OWN SPECIES. Conflist with other animals and predators is often very minimal compared with the intraspecies competition (for mates and food)…

…so I still disagree with you…evolution does not stop

Your not disagreeing with me you are disagreeing with some scientists in the field.

I do not completely buy into evolution.

As evolution is a theory and not a law you will find much disagreement even between those who believe in evolution.

 

[Jadesfire20]

ByzCath:

This is some of what I have read.

I would say that most scientists who believe in strict evolution, without intelligent design, would say that we have evolved to such a state that evolution has stopped.

Evolution is based on the premise of survival of the fittest. Unless we restart the eugenics movement, that is killing or not allowing the “undesirables” to reproduce. Our society allows the “unfit” to survive and reproduce. Man has no natural predator.

This is the goal of many who started the pro-abortion movement.

I heard on EWTN radio a couple of weeks ok that the founder of Planned Parenthood had the goal of reducing the population of the World to one one hundreth of what it is today.

There are two problems I have with evolution.

1. When a species advances, those of the earlier “branch” do not last long, that is both the new speices and the old are not around together for very long, but this did not happen with Neanderthal man was contemporary with Cro-Magnon man much longer than the evolution theories say he should have been.
2. Most, if not all, mutation seems to be detrimental to the individual not advantageous.

Now I am not sure if I am an “old world” believer as carbon dating has shown to be wrong in the past in certain instances, but if evolution is true it is only though intelligent design, that is God is behind it all.

Hi Byz,

Evolution is essentially a change in the genetic makeup of a population.

First I need to define a term otherwise this will be hard to explain!

I’m sure everyone knows what a gene is. A gene generally has one or more “versions” of itself; this is called an allele.

In any given population you will have many genes with many alleles that occur at at certain frequencies. Many times just by random chance this frequency will change, but the organisms in this population will not undergo some dramatic change. Thus just because you don’t have, let’s say humans, “evolving into” something else doesn’t mean that we aren’t evolving. Unless of course there are certain alleles which are beneficial in a specific environment, in which case those would be selected for. This can occur in human populations. For example, the mutant hemoglobin allele that causes sickle-cell anemia still occurs at high frequency in africa because when present in one copy it confers resistance to malaria, so it gets propagated in the population. However when present in two copies it causes sickle-cell disease This high frequency would not occur in the US because malaria is not an issue anymore.

However considering the significant difference in the number of children produced by religious and non religious people, maybe natural selection is working!

Also most mutations are silent (i.e. they have no effect), not harmful

 

[Ghosty]

1. When a species advances, those of the earlier “branch” do not last long, that is both the new speices and the old are not around together for very long, but this did not happen with Neanderthal man was contemporary with Cro-Magnon man much longer than the evolution theories say he should have been.

Neanderthal is not the predecessor of Homo Sapian (Cro-Magnon), but rather a contemporary branch, possibly even of the same species. Neanderthals were a “cousin” that evolved at approximately the same time, but in much colder regions. Neanderthals didn’t evolve into Cro-Magnon, though there are theories that they may not have been a seperate species, and infact intermarried with Cro-Magnon as they moved north.

Neanderthals were in no way “less advanced” than Cro-Magnon near as we can tell. They had art, they buried their dead, and they even had larger brains on average. They were simply heavily adapted to ice age environments, and their features were no longer an asset as the planet warmed.

 

[JLove]

Jadesfire20:

Hi Byz,

Evolution is essentially a change in the genetic makeup of a population.

First I need to define a term otherwise this will be hard to explain!

I’m sure everyone knows what a gene is. A gene generally has one or more “versions” of itself; this is called an allele.

In any given population you will have many genes with many alleles that occur at at certain frequencies. Many times just by random chance this frequency will change, but the organisms in this population will not undergo some dramatic change. Thus just because you don’t have, let’s say humans, “evolving into” something else doesn’t mean that we aren’t evolving. Unless of course there are certain alleles which are beneficial in a specific environment, in which case those would be selected for. This can occur in human populations. For example, the mutant hemoglobin allele that causes sickle-cell anemia still occurs at high frequency in africa because when present in one copy it confers resistance to malaria, so it gets propagated in the population. However when present in two copies it causes sickle-cell disease This high frequency would not occur in the US because malaria is not an issue anymore.

However considering the significant difference in the number of children produced by religious and non religious people, maybe natural selection is working!

Also most mutations are silent (i.e. they have no effect), not harmful

Wouldn’t that be adaptation and not evolution?

 

[Ghosty]

Wouldn’t that be adaptation and not evolution?

That’s exactly what evolution is. It’s absolutely nothing more than adaptation of traits over subsequent generations.

 

[JimO]

Ghosty:

That’s exactly what evolution is. It’s absolutely nothing more than adaptation of traits over subsequent generations.

That is why, if you hold to the human evolutionary theory, we should actually get weaker as a species.

Why? Through scientific and medical advances, we have eliminated many of the phenomena that are purported to force “adaptation” and “beneficial mutation.”

We risk becoming pale, weak, frail, skinny little hairless guys with big heads and huge eyes…oops…sounds like our “friends” from outer space.

 

[Kevin_Walker]

The Vatican also believes in evolution.

 

[JimO]

Kevin Walker:

The Vatican also believes in evolution.

It was my understanding that the Church does not agree or disagree with evolution, but that it is not contrary to the faith to investigate the theory of evolution.

Besides, the term “evolution” is a broad “catch all” for a group of theories, some of which have more supporting evidence than others.

I’m not a strict Creationist myself and I, frankly, see no conflict between Scripture and science on the whole issue of the creation of the world.

 

[Kevin_Walker]

JimO:

It was my understanding that the Church does not agree or disagree with evolution, but that it is not contrary to the faith to investigate the theory of evolution.

Besides, the term “evolution” is a broad “catch all” for a group of theories, some of which have more supporting evidence than others.

I’m not a strict Creationist myself and I, frankly, see no conflict between Scripture and science on the whole issue of the creation of the world.

The Vatican embraces evolution while frowning on ‘Darwinism’.

 

[space_ghost]

hopefully kinder people then we are now…

 

[JimO]

Kevin Walker:

The Vatican embraces evolution while frowning on ‘Darwinism’.

I guess I’m having trouble with the terms “believes in” or “embraces”. I know of no such endorsement of evolution by the Church, but I certainly could be wrong.

 

[Maranatha]

According to the theory of evolution, which I agree is probably, mostly, correct, the better question would be:

What natural event will cause the next mass extension of humans.

If a calamity cases all humans except Asians to die, the human race would evolve to be Asian.

If an asteroid hits earth and kills all except those resilient to a global winter, then the human race would evolve to have a higher resistance to cold.

Alternatively, if a large space ship was sent on a mission to find another earth-like planet and they returned 10,000 years from now. The humans that remained and humans that returned would have adapted to their respective environments.

 

[Bobby_Jim]

BibleReader:

In Dragons of Eden, Carl Sagan has a pretty interesting statistical chart suggesting that human evolution has indeed ground to a halt. He argues that the brain can’t be enlarged anymore to increase average intelligence, women’s hips can’t be widened anymore to permit birthing of larger brain cases, and brain convolutions can’t be increased anymore to increase the average number of cerebral connections, without generating “dysfunction.”

sounds to me like what they were saying about computers in the 1950s… although there were those visionaries that predicted that in the 1980s computers would be 10 times bigger, twice as fast, and so expensive that only the 5 richest kings of Europe would be able to afford them!

 

[Jadesfire20]

Ghosty:

That’s exactly what evolution is. It’s absolutely nothing more than adaptation of traits over subsequent generations.

Adaptation is more the result of evolution. Evolution is just change. There are various ways this change can occur. What I described in my previous post is called genetic drift. What people refer to as “Darwinism” is evolution by natural selection. Natural selection acts retroactively: the change in the population is not seen in the generation that experienced the selection, but in the subsequent generation. Animals that have traits that allow them to survive selection will reproduce and if those traits have a genetic basis, pass them on to the next generation, while the others will not do as well. If the selective pressure is strong enough the genetic makeup of the population can change drastically in one generation. That is what leads to adaptation; it is not the generation experiencing selection changing themselves to “adapt” to environmental changes, lack of food, etc. In its strict sense, natural selection does not have a specific “goal” in mind, which is why its incorrect to say that something “evolves” into something else.

 

[Tom_of_Assisi]

space ghost:

hopefully kinder people then we are now…

see option 5 above…kinder and gentler :tiphat:

 

[Tom_of_Assisi]

Atheistic scientists are quick to point out that humans are just one species of animal on the planet–not necessarily any different in any important way from any other animal or even plants for that matter–we’re just a little smarter that’s all–nothin’ really special about us.

Many Catholics seem to embrace the view of humans evolving from pond scum through invertabrates, fish, amphibians, and mammels. Science teaches that the evolution of populations **never stops **(except for extinction)…so in another few million years how many species of post-humans will there be? and what will they be like?

Of course evolutionary minded Catholics are free to imagine God as the cause of the RANDOM genetic changes and specific environmental interchanges…but even if we are going to pretend that God causes all evolution or authored the evolutionary laws…it still won’t stop…there will be several post-human species…thoughts on what God might make them be…?

 

[Ghosty]

That is why, if you hold to the human evolutionary theory, we should actually get weaker as a species.

This is already the case in regards to our immune systems in first world countries. We are substantially more vulnerable to illnesses than we were even 100 years ago. This has less to do with genetic drift, however, and more to do with exposure, but it is still a factor that is creeping up.

That is what leads to adaptation; it is not the generation experiencing selection changing themselves to “adapt” to environmental changes, lack of food, etc. In its strict sense, natural selection does not have a specific “goal” in mind, which is why its incorrect to say that something “evolves” into something else.

It’s my understanding that this is no longer considered to be the case. One of the biggest flaws in Darwinian natural selection is that most changes that would occur naturally in a genetic drift simply can’t affect the outcome of breeding given the relatively rapid environmental changes that occur. Animal genes do infact seem to respond to environmental changes “intentionally”, at least in some cases. Natural selection or mutation has to have occured at some point in the animal’s genetic history for it to have the proper “stored genes” to respond, but living things do seem to have a “direction” with evolution, just as we have definate direction on an individual cellular level in response to environmental changes.

Remember, our cells do absolutely respond to environmental pressures. Our cells are also the center for genetic coding and recombination. It only stands to reason that cells can respond to environmental pressures on a genetic level, at least in some cases.