Have we halted our own Evolution?

But surely 'natural selection' then ceases to operate?Taking the example of my asthma... is it the case that ordinarily, the genes which cause my asthma would have dissappeared from my families bloodline, but as it is, it's still here and thriving, and my kids will likely inherit these genes.edit: Hmmm ok I should stop using the words..'cease' or 'halt'This message has been edited by Creavolution, 03-20-2006 10:35 AM

Two points. If Natural Selection were to cease operating then the result would be greater variability, not less.Second, Natural Selection changes constantly. While we might inlarge the mesh to allow more humans through, or even rescue critters that might have gone extinct, we cannot remove Natural Selection. The next time a half mile wide chunk of rock smacks down, there will be selection. Global Warming will bring on selection. The next pandemic will bring on selection.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Last week, near me, 3 teens were killed in a single car crash. It seems sure that speed was involved (and probably alcohol). The adaptation of risk taking that may have helped feed paleolithic hunters may now be being selected against.Selection may be hard to see when you are surrounded by the trees. It may also be less apparent in a huge population but don't be so sure it is not there.

And any asthma genes stick around because we have lessened their selective impact. This is biodiversity, which is evolutionary. I can't think of one off the top of my head, but if the environment was to change in a way that would favour asthmatics (hot and humid?), then the human race grows stronger.I agree with you – our evolutionary bush is allowed to grow more wildly than it might otherwise. It is being tended to by a topiarist of sorts, but his tools have been slightly blunted (perhaps by an acidic secretion).To keep the metaphor rolling, the topiarist is inevitably going to keep coming back with newer and better tools, and 'select' only the 'fittest' parts of the bush to survive. That'll probably happen when our population stops growing, or if someone decides to do the job of the topiarist themselves.

Yes, I'm beginning to realise how badly phrased the OP was. I should not have used the words "halted" or "Ceased" or anything like them.

It seems to me that many people aren't aware of the Hardy-Weingberg equation and theorem. The equation is used to measure evolutionary change by the change in allele frequencies in a population. It can handle several allele expressions, not just the black-white scenario Mendel did with peas.The theorem states what conditions must be met for no evolution to occur.
1) An infinately large population
2) No differential migration
3) No mutations
4) No preferential mating (in sexually reproducing organisms)
5) And finally, No natural selectionAll conditions must be met, or else the population is not in equilibrium. As far as I can tell, we are not in equilibrium.

Personally, I do not know the future. I don't think that any human does...including, oddly enough, Jesus Himself. If we suspend our knowledge and belief for a moment, it still may not be for us to know the absolute times and dates that any given event in the future may happen. There are some things that may never be known.That never stops us from trying to know the times and dates, however!

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Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil. --Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

humans will never evolve. Unless we evolve within the next 1000 years, i believe we will see genetic engineering and/or mechanical hybrids.As far as evolution only our brains will need to increase in volume which will most likely be offset by the use of computer memory or power to hold our intelligence.I say this because there is a limit to how much glycogen can be absored by a human to feed the brain, let alone a super massive one. Let alone the implications of a women having hips large enough to carry the foetus with the brain.Also, computers and electronic seem to be only thing small enough and power-less (energy wise) enough to be able to hold our intelligence, memory etc.In medicine we could make ourselves immortal, yet the implications of that is that the human brain has only a finite amount of memory (try remembering what you had for breakfast on 30th may 1994). So computer memory will be the only thing to keep us 'sane'.Anyways, i understand my theory is based on a anarchist universe where i assume no laws will exist to place limits on humans.

Cream of wheat. The thing is, these medical miracles might make some immortal, but natural selection is still fully operational on almost all of the human race, unfortunately. And beyond that, everyone is subject to sexual selection.Reports of the demise of human evolution have been greatly exaggerated. For instance a recent mutation to the hemoglobin confers malaria resistance without anemic side-effects in a small population in Africa.

true,yet evolution is moving fast enough for any true noticible difference, for say, the next 200 years when will no longer need strong immunities to something like malaria.We are all subject to sexual selection, but do you think that in the ever increasingly competitive world that the gentically 'ugly' will be weeded out? perhaps in the future (speculation of course), we will see people bred to be beutiful and physically fit

Well, we've already been bred to have the largest penises in the primate kingdom.

what do you mean 'we' are you talking about my family or yours? jk. does this mean that black women are more sexual than white, with the notion black people inherited larger police batons? jk

Just for the sake of speculation, what do you see the human animal evolving into in...say...5000 more years?

Morphologically, we haven't changed all that much in the last, say, 200 000 years. i don't expect 5000 years to make that much of a difference.The real question would be, however, whether or not we are still here in 5000 years. I'd say we'd be extinct in under 1000 years, barring colonization of the moon and other planets.

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"The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell." - St. Augustine

Morphologically? IF we became extinct, only the speculative ego-centrism of the human animal can imagine a universe going on its merry way without us and yet somehow stubbornly refusing to believe that God sent His one and only Son to save us. Yes....we are that special and paradoxically that needy!This message has been edited by Phat, 03-27-2006 04:43 AM