If evolution is our origin, where will we end up?

If evolution is how we got here, where will it lead? will we eventually become "god", would that be the last stage of evolution?

I suppose that would depend on what you call "god". Evolution doesn't "necessarily" lead to more advanced steps, though this may often be the case. I suppose it would depend mostly on what changes end up being advantageous to us that stick around. In the current state of affairs, I'm thinking we'll need to adapt some serious skin resistance and lung filtration to deal with the pollution, depletion of the ozone, and soon-to-come nuclear fallout. But hey, we'll probably just wipe ourselves off the planet first .

Yeh i dont think we could adapt that quickly, lol. Is there a rate at which evolution occurs, i realise it can take millions of years, but how quickly can an organism evolve, and is there any proof of it. And also if a population all acquires the same learned behaviour and passed that onto their children is that evolution, or is evolution only changes in genes.p.s. just point out if none of my statements have any merit, lol. I am only young, and lacking information.

I am moving it to "Human Origins" though I should move it to PNT for clean up. It would not normally qualify as an adequate opening post but as a newbie you get a break.ABEOk I changed my mind it is not dealing with origins.This message has been edited by AdminNosy, 08-12-2005 10:40 AM

Thread moved here from the Coffee House forum.

The path of evolution in the future cannot be predicted. One of innumerable sources for support is chaos theory. In sum, that says that tiny changes now can produce huge and totally unpredicted changes in the future.As to will we evolve into god, what is your definition of god? If it includes immortality and omnipotence, the answer is clearly no.

Its my opinion that were not going anywhere. I don't think we can expect much change in humans, especially on the physical trait level. I just think that natural selection has too little of an affect on humans to have any noticable change, because of the way we have taken matters into our own hands. Its like we've stopped evolving, we've stopped our own evolution. Now I have to type that I realize that the frequencies of our alleles will continue to change so technically we can never stop evolving. But, in response to: I would have to say it leading us nowhere, we are in the last stage now.

I realize how easy it is, living in Western civilization, to assume that the quality of life you enjoy represents the experience of the vast majority of humans currently alive.Nothing could be farther from the truth. Sadly, for most human beings, lethal selection is very, very much at work.And it's ludicrous to suggest even just among us Westerners that there's no selection. I don't know anything about your private life but I assume that, like me, you actually have to convince women to have sex with you. You can't just control their minds and make them do it. Thus, mate selection is still very much in operation for both of us; indeed, for every human being.Selection is very, very much still at work in the human race.

I think some examples or answers would help me see why this is true, and why this is evolving us on a noticable level.Is the lethal selection natural? or man-made(caused)?Most?, like what percent are we talkin....of those, how many had reproduced?Are you talking about the tons of kids starving to death in africa? I just don't see it that way. Pretty much everyone is getting laid. Plus we have contraceptions, so it's not so much about just getting laid, you have to raise a kid to pass on the genes.How much sexual selection do you think is involved in who people are having kids with?It just doesn't seem like that much to me. I think people who choose to have kids are choosing their partner for reasons other than physical attraction. The ones based on physical attraction seem to be the unplanned pregnancies.I have more to say but don't have the time, I have to leave it here.

Worldwide, the top causes of death are:Starvation
Heart Disease
Strokeand an assortment of diseases.Pregnancy is the leading cause of death among young women under the age of 15.These fatal conditions do not attack randomly, but differentially. They're not accidents or forces of nature. They're conditions to which the content of your heritable genes will play a role in regards to whether or not you die from them.That's selection. Is it evolving us? It's certainly having an effect. Of course, most people have already reproduced by the time they succumb to heart disease or strokes; thus it might be more effective to examine the top causes of death for minors:Diarrhoea
Pneumonia
Measles
Malaria
HIV/AIDS
and, of course, malnutrition.Since these conditions, again, represent physical aliments that genetics can influence, and they eliminate humans who have not bred, this represents selection. Well, yeah. Starvation is a selective pressure in every environment and in every species. It's well-known as a density-depended selective factor. Right, but not everybody is getting laid with everybody. You're not getting laid with Pamela Anderson (as a stand-in for persons with highly desirable physical traits) and neither am I. Even if you had the opportunity to ask her she'd tell you "no."That's mate choice, and that's sexual selection. Your genes only get to combine with the genes of certain people (generally, people much like yourself in regards to the "quality" of their genes.) Unless you're having kids with literally everyone, it's all sexual selection. You selected a mate, and she selected you. It wasn't at all random. You had certain characteristics you were looking for, and so did she. You chose from a pool of avaliable mates - unless you two were the only people on a deserted island - and so did she.Choice. Aka selection. Oh, sure. Like, access to resources. Or temperment (which has a heritable component.) Or likehood of conception/successful pregnancy ("wide, childbearing hips"). Or body symmetry representing a lack of disease or crippling disfigurement. There's a significant likelyhood, based on studies of what we find attractive, that you chose a mate based on how similar her immune system was to yours - but not too similar (because then she might be your sister.)You didn't chose a mate at random, and neither did your mate. You look for stuff in a mate and so do your mates. Some of that is heritable and some isn't. But it's all selection.

While I agree with Frog's statements, there are some mitigating factors at work in modern human populations that reduce the effectiveness of normal natural selection.The rate of change in the modern world outpaces the rate of mutation.Yes, the rate of change in the West is much faster than it is in, say, sub-saharan Africa, but overall, the amount life everywhere has changed in the last 500 years is far greater than the amount of change that took place in the 5000 years before that.Additionally, humanity is insane. Being slightly better able to survive drought might be selected for, but a better adaptation would be immunity to ethnic cleansing.However, the light has not gone out on human evolution -Here are some things to look for in the future:
Immunity to mercury poisoning
Immunity to solar radiationYou feel me?

I agree that changes will occur.Do you think there will be noticable changes to our phenotype? I agree we will be affected, but like I said:

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I just think that natural selection has too little of an affect on humans to have any noticable change

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What changes in the phenotype would you expect from this selective factor? What about the genotype? Well, if you look at it that way then sure. Thats not how I've come to understand sexual selection. Right, but its all selection thats gonna have no noticable affect on us, how could it?

Well, there already have been. We have increasingly smaller teeth and jaws because we're adapting to cooked food. There's a new version of the sickle-cell gene that delivers the resistance to malaria without the associated anemia. Smaller bodies, retention of water, adaptations that improve survivability to malnutrition. Resistance to various diseases. Selection isn't always about who breeds and who doesn't; remember that we reproduce sexually and that your phenotype depends on genetic contributions from two individuals. The survivability of your genes very much depends on your mate choice, because her crap genes could spell the death of your mutual child (and there goes your genes, too.)It's sexual selection, as far as I can see. It's about non-random changes in allele frequency and mate choice has an influence on that. How so? Non-random mate choice has a non-random influence on allele frequencies. That exerts a phenotypic effect.If you're looking for really spectacular examples of phenotypical change, there's really not much I'm going to be able to show you. Generational time of, what, 20 years or so? Takes a long time for that sort of change, and how long have any human beings existed in an industrial society? Less than 10 generations maybe?

This makes sense, but only if we stay around for quite a while longer... We have a "civilisation" for about 5000 years, and genetic manipulation for less than 50 years. In order to have ANY significant impact on the "natural" course of evolution, I would say we need to stay around at least a couple of 100.000s of years. Otherwise all and everything we ever achieved ends up compressed into a 5mm geological layer, lol. Not even worth mentioning in evolution-textbooks of AD 50.000.000 !Next question: how likely is it that we keep it up for that long... ;-)

One thing you need to keep in mind about evolution. Evolution is one of those things that has no predetermined direction before it happens but would look like it was predetermined once someone look at it backward.Say that you decide to fly to D.C. with some friends for a short tour. Your friends decided to visit someone they knew and you decided to go to the Lincoln Memorial. It just happens that you bump into a beautiful girl while you're at the Lincoln Memorial. You apologize to her and introduce yourself. She introduces herself and the next thing you know you two are having a nice conversation with each other. 7 months later you marry that girl.How about this. Last minute decision and you end up driving with your family to California. You never intended to go but the day before you thought it'd be fun. While in California, you go to the beach with the family and you meet a girl there. A year later you marry that same girl.These stories sound fantastic, don't they? The question is were these events planned out so that these two young men would meet the girls of their dreams thousands of miles from their homes or were these pure coincidences?By the way, one's my cousin and the other is my brother.Evolution is somewhat like that if you have a bit of imagination. Before you get there, it's not predetermined. However, once you're there looking backward everything seemed to have a purpose.