Because you asked for it, cards go on the table now.
I find the opening statement here to be entertaining and thought provoking. My replies however were loaded with sarcasm. This was mainly due to the fact that I did not take the article seriously as it is not clear how much of the the variables involved in mankind's evolution allow for the production of specific beneficial traits in response to environmental signals VS genetic predisposition.
Okay, this first statement is good. Natural selection vs Genetic drift (that is, what amount of genetic evolution is due to direct enviromental selection for beneficial traits and what is due to stocastic selection, basically random combinations of traits in a population) is actually a valid debate in evolutionary biology today. Very high profile. Lots of math. I really barely understand the data myself.
I do not deny that biological organisms genetically adapt. This, to me is a self evident truth that can easilly be understood by viewing a single life cycle of birth, growth, deterioration and death with further evidence backed by genetic mutations and cancers.
Here is where you get off track. Organisms do not adapt. Naturally, the genetics of an individual are fixed over a lifetime (lets leave out horizontal gene transfer for the moment). Evolution in the biological and genetic sense occurs on the population level, that is, it is the change in genetics of a population as effected by enviromenal and drift over time. Mutations are mearly changes in phenotypic traits due to genotypic combinations, and they are not something that just arises in a person life, they are passed from parents to offspring. Cancer, while people maybe more subseptable to it due to genetic traits, it doesn't necessarily have any connection to genetic predisposition. When you say adaptation in this paragraph, you mean behavioral, which is an entirely different subject than what I am talking about.
To help explain the sarcasm I used I will share with you a bit of my background on the subject.
I spend 40 hours on duty at an institution of higher education. one of the departments in my wing is the Biology labs and as such I frequently interact with the proffessors there. As one might infer, evolution is a hotly debated topic even among proffessors, especially so among biology proffessors.
A campus wide survey showed that 39% of the faculty believed that human life has existed in present form only(it's a lineral college so this doesn't surprise me). 26% believed in various forms of evolution (be it guided, natural or otherwise) and the rest (35%)were unwilling to commit to any sort of answer.
Science isn't based upon public opinion though. Its not based upon opinion at all. Its based on evidence, and for evolution, the evidence has become so obvious that I have no real sympathy for those who would flail against it.
My problem with so many evolutionary arguments is that is simply not clear how intelligence and environmental factors correllate to what is and is not favorable.
By this I mean that when bubba IQ 65 shoots a dear this does not indicate superiority, it simply proves that he shot a deer. In all likelihood even taking into account theories of collective unconscious and memes if bubba had not been taught how to use a weapon and how to hunt he very likely would not survive independantly in the wild.
Evolution isn't about what could be. Its about what works, and has worked. If things didn't work, they wouldn't be around today; the very reason that humans exist today is because they can survive and reproduce to the next generation. All other ideas about this are purely philosophical.
Humans have come to thrive on the surface for various reasons.
One of the major contributing factors is superior methods of communication. From language, writing, printing press, radio, telephone and televesion and internet; mankind has allowed for samples of the species to have more accessability to information and thus allowed otherwise weaker members of the species to thrive.
And for the moment that has worked. Those individuals are fit enough to survive and reproduce. Under previous conditions things may have been different, but evolution doesn't take into account previous conditions. Only the present.
This really throws a monkey wrench in the whole darwinian paradigm of survival of the fittest as well many attitudes of human superiority as humans consider themselves at the top of the food chain.
No it doesn't throw the monkey wrench into survival of the fittest. Those individuals who can survive under the conditions too. Seeing as the conditions include modern medical systems and the like, more individuals survive to adulthood to reproduce. Thats all a mesure of fitness is: the ability of an individual to survive to adulthood and reproduce. If they can reproduce, they are fit. If their ofspring don't survive to reproduction, they end up being unfit, and do not reproduce. No more to it than that.
Also, biology doesn't deal in the whole philosophical question of superior and inferior. If we want to talk about newer or younger forms of life, meaning those that have greater complexity of systems or newer morphology, we used the word derived. A statement could be something like "a human is a more derived form than a mollusk", which is a true.
This is further backed by studies that low income and low education families reproduce in greater numbers than high income and high education families.
This is not a trend, this is a by far the law.
Further, ancient texts of Plato are beyond the innitial grasp of many moderately educated and even some well educated portions of the human population, though like a dog, if you beat the lesson in long enough it will eventually stick.
When i said "I don't believe in evolution" what my sarcasm was really communicating is "I don't think humans have gotten any smarter, and being at what we percieve as the top of the food chain does not make us superior."
Okay, theres your problem. Evolution is merely change over time. It doesn't have to mean smarter, it doesn't have to mean bigger, it doesn't have to mean more complex. Processes can be evolved to simplify. If there is no need for greater intelligence, then it won't be selected for. Though I would say that intelligence is as much a factor of your childhood as it is your genetics. You don't have to believe humans have increased in intelligence over the last 3000 years to know that evolution is real. In fact, I would tell you that evolution in such a large and diffuse population as humans have is going to be very slow. You aren't going to see much general change over even 10,000 years. Now, you get an isolated population with a founder effect, THEN you'll start to see some change pretty quickly, both by natural selection and genetic drift. The galapagos finches are prime examples of this.
In this fashion if you were to ask a bacteria in the mariana trench it would probably tell you it was the supreme species. In it's world it is all it percieves. Indeed humans cannot survive (naturally) there, or even breathe under water (naturally).
No offence, this statement is ridiculous. Asking a bacteria if it was the supreme species in its relm....*sigh*
Still, I can make something of this. Its true, humans cannot survive in the mariana trench. We don't have to. Its not our environ. We didn't evolve there, we are not naturally adapted to that situation. So, compairing the two is moot.
This is offset however, by the fact that those same bacteria could not survive under the sets of gravity we are accustom to. Which is more resiliant then? Niether.
Each is suited to their own environ. They are obviously fit enough, or they wouldn't be around.
Instead they are both suited to their environments and niether is superior. This is why when bubba shoots a deer, or even when an educated man shoots a deer he is not establishing anything more than primal dominance, not intellectual superiority.
What is with this superiority stuff? Really, it has no place in biology.
To do so he would have to become a deer and be a better deer than the one he killed. This is unlikely as the deer has more experience at being what it is.
Another ridiculous statement. I'm sorry, it just is.
If that isn't enough to convince you that nothing is superior to anything else, refer to the second law of thermodynamics.
If you dissagree, post superior factual data and I will admit to being wrong if you sway my opinions.
Ambassador KLOK KAOS
Im gonna give you a link to something I wrote, and you can decide for yourself if I believe in human superiority or not.
http://pseudobuddhaodiscordopastafarian.blogspot.com/search?q=The+process+of+sustainingThanks for listening.
