What bothers me about the evolution of Man

This seems like a pretty contentious point to simply treat as a given. Care to provide some rationale for the claim that natural selection has stopped operating on humans?I know that Steve Jones has been making arguments along these lines for the past decade or more but those themselves have been highly tendentious.Certainly there is a case to be made that modern technological advances have alleviated certain selective pressures, particularly in the west. You are putting the point where natural selection stopped operating much further back, by thousands of years (possibly hundreds of thousands), so I'd be interested in what the evidence is supporting this claim.TTFN,WK

I think Mr. Jack and sfs have raised the main counter points to your argument that I would have made, principally the fact that there is considerable evidence of selective pressures on human populations shaping their evolution in the last few centuries and that a large expanding population does not prevent evolution according to any current model of population genetics, although it will reduce the likelihood of fixation as sfs suggests.I'd also like to point out that apart from the theoretical issues the more factual claims you make are also highly dubious. While we may be seeing a reduction in certain selective pressures in the west in 'today's society' these have not been the situation pertaining for the preceding 2000 years, perhaps a case could be made at the outside for a couple of centuries. Further these conditions do not pertain in a very large proportion of the modern world either where survival is still very much a competitive struggle.Certainly the idea the 'the weakest are surviving' seems highly suspicious in evolutionary terms unless you are claiming that there is no longer any child mortality to go along with the equally specious necessary corollary that everyone can now reproduce.Also your argument about Einstein and Hawking seems to be based on a very naive concept of what constitutes fitness. Your own argument in fact seems to directly admit that natural selection is still in operation but that what an evolutionary perspective on natural selection considers the most fit (the less intelligent person who gives rise to many more descendents) does not comport with your own idea of who should be considered fittest (Einstein and Hawking).You seem to be saying in one sentence that there is no selection and then in the very next to be admitting that in fact natural selection is still in operation. To be honest your point is unclear, you seem to be saying that Einstein and Hawking are the result of a relaxation of selection and presumably therefore you consider them less fit and you go on to assure us that there are more fecund/reproductively successful people out there, the very core of the mechanism by which selection operates.So what is it? Do you consider reproductive success a key element of fitness? Do you think there is no differential reproductive success in humans today or that if it exists it is independent of genetics?Perhaps a more cogent example if you were putting forward Einstein and Hawking as less fit would have been to point out that both of them had several children. Of course I'm not sure what your rationale for considering them to be examples of those that selection would naturally weed out before reproduction is. Even in the case of Hawking his motor neurone disease didn't really strike until he was in his 20's, certainly old enough to have reproduced.TTFN,WK

Do those quotation marks actually mean you are quoting someone, presumably Dawkins or Crick, or are they just there to give the impression that you are? That quote you just gave us is substantially different from the previous quote you provided, which didn't have the word 'random' in it once.TTFN,WK

Yes thank goodness we can at last see the back of that ludicrous bloated strawman that no-one in the world has ever suggested to be the case. If only the same could be said of your hollow plaintive cries, spreading from thread to thread, that we should pay attention to your nonsensical assertions.TTFN,WK