Has evolution stopped?

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Evolution as is commonly known has ended. People these days don't die because they are slow or weak or stupid. Humanity is too widespread and interconnected to ever develop into another species in our current situation, as drastic evolution usually occurs due to isolation and environmental pressure.

What will come in the future will be self-evolution. We will design ourselves better and possibly merge with other technologies. I also believe we will conquer death in 200-500 years. I wish I could be around to see it.

[Borodog]

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I also believe we will conquer death in 200-500 years. I wish I could be around to see it.

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I think your estimate is far too pessimistic. I place the over-under at 50 years, with an excellent chance of it being as little as 20.

[RJT]

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Please...I'd like to try and have a nice thread going that isn't wrought with insults, sarcasm and religion-bashing.

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Here we go again. I was merely trying to make a simple joke. The joke was intended to make fun of those us who make less than intelligent statements (I do not include your OP here).

It is you who just brought Religion to this thread with your reply to my post.

I had realized that it is verboten to have Faith on this forum. Now I know humor is forbidden too (maybe it is just bad humor that is frowned upon.).

Boy, I’d hate to be a black-comedian-believer here. Wonder what conclusions one would jump to with my posts if I were one. (Oops, that might have been a bit too light hearted.)

Oh, and by the way I already got scolded a while back from evolutionist on this forum for suggesting not the same point as you make, but a similar comment (question I posed) regarding evolution.

Hope you have better luck with the MSP gendarme with this OP than I did.

[benkahuna]

Evolution has not stopped.

There are just sexual and social selection factors that might make otherwise evolutionarily unfit people more likely to reproduce.

Nature wins, every time.

[Darryl_P]

Well said. Scary part is that more and more of the unfit types will continue feeding off less and less of the fit types. I see excrement proceeding towards a ventilating device here.

Evolution, by many theories, has many periods of relatively quick adaptation periods and periods of less adaptation (relatively steady-state). Our window in time is so short that making proclamations like "evolution has stopped" is unfounded. There is always natural selection in some manner (we don't mate and reproduce by an even random distribution). Also, who knows what cataclysmic event may occur that results in a more pronounced evolutionary period (all-out nuclear war might be such an event).

[BigSoonerFan]

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I also believe we will conquer death in 200-500 years. I wish I could be around to see it.

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I think your estimate is far too pessimistic. I place the over-under at 50 years, with an excellent chance of it being as little as 20.

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Wow, maybe I should change my diet.

Are humans still evolving? Here's what the straight dope says: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_047.html

[Rduke55]

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It may just be that given the rapidity of progress in society, technology and medicine, evolution occurs at a rate too slowly by comparison to be observable, or even to matter anymore.

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Evolution almost always happens at a rate too slow to be observable.

[Rduke55]

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Evolution as is commonly known has ended. People these days don't die because they are slow or weak or stupid.

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"Survival of the fittest" is only one simplified part of evolution.