Living beings evolve to adapt, usually out of necessity.

eg. Predator developed stereoptic vision, while prey do not possess them, they have wider angle of view to ensure predators don't get an easy jump on them.

Human evolved through the ages as well, but now we seems to take the equation out through technology.

When we need to see better at night, we have IR lenses, when we need to communicate, we reach for our cellphone, when we need to go about places faster, instead of walking or running faster, we use vehicle to commute.

Has the human species reached the end of evolution, be it natural or hindered by technologies? or will humans evolves into other form? If you think we still have room for improvement, what do you think human will look like in the future?

Note : Biological evolution, meaning not involving technology.

This post has been edited by wKkaY: Jun 20 2009, 03:43 PM

Mechanical enhancement aren't evolution. We're talking about biological evolution.

Some scientist theorized that every living being on earth share a common sequence of gene, not all of our genes but a one or maybe more segment. Wouldn't that be a good proof that we're all descendant from a 'prime' living being? The only way to have same copies of gene naturally is through mitosis and biological reproduction.

Natural selection is actually what created modern human. eg. Neanderthal was eliminated in the selection process ages ago.

Human specie is actually young compared to many other species in the world. Say about 200000 years old. Evolutions can take millions of years so is it true to say that we're not evolving? 200000 years in millions is like a mere blink of an eye.

Proto-human probably existed, but the difference from us is so minute that we can't tell them apart. Maybe we have more body hair than we do now? We don't know. It'll still be a while before we can see a huge distinct difference in humans of the past and future.

Evolution of a species don't always go in a single direction. They will branch out to adapt so it's very hard for a single species to go extinct due to a 'bad' evolution.

Take human wardrobe as analogy, human migrating to live closer to the equator will wear less while those living in the north pole will wear thick clothing.

tl:dr

I hate to say anti-religion comments but I guess the room for tolerance has been filled up.

You first said God created human, then you continue to say second generation human are created through biology(irony, science at work!). Wouldn't an 'al-mighty' creator figured out everything and just create 6 billion human that are immortal? It's so much easier than going through life and death.

So who created Mr.'al-mighty' then? Since judging by what you're trying to say every creation has a al mighty 'creator' behind them. So who's the creator of Mr.'al-mighty'? al-al-mighty?

We are talking about potential human EVOLUTION from the present and we're not debating whether human's has a religious or scientific origin. We're discussing the theory of evolution as a whole and whether human have to abide by such law or has technology hindered any potential for human evolution. When the thread say Evolution, it's obvious I am not putting religious discussion into here as proven by your hardline stand that evolution do not exist in religious point of view. Your religious comments IS NOT contributing any scientific discussion to this thread at all.

This post has been edited by SeaGates: Jun 21 2009, 09:08 PM

Genetic mutation plays a big role in evolution. Theory of natural selection is that if these mutation serves as a factor of survival, it's more likely these 'mutants' survive longer than others pass the gene down and replace the previous variants. Mutation do not happen only because of pollution/radiation/man made factors. It does happen naturally(rare but it does happen), and mutation is not always something significant like growing a tail over a single gestation period.

The reason for a huge gap in evolution has been explained in previous posts. To condense everything into one sentence. It's hard to spot difference in short period when gradual evolution through millions of years. Just imagine you have a 300 liter water tank, and every day you take one DROP of water out of it, you won't notice any obvious change in the water level even if you observe it everyday but you realized how much difference there is when you extracted half the tank of water out(when you compare it to the FULL tank)

Why do I have to cater the need of 'religious' comments here? I created this thread not in RWI, but in SCIENCE lab.

Mutation is part of what drives evolution. It's somewhat like a 'Advance to Go' card where they took a shortcut in time. Mutation however has a more random probability and the changes are not often due to necessity.

Mutation is still bound by biological limitation. While it's possible to use cell from other animal and transplant into human. It's not likely that genes from other species will be mixed into human gene pool easily because body's natural immune system will reject the particular organ.

Be a bit realistic on mutation though, mutation won't allow you to manipulate metal object, fire or ice

Taking the form of the 'greys' is one of the plausible direction but...

What if human evolves to improve as a whole?

People are getting taller, running faster, smarter etc. We might end up getting scaled up in size but still looking the same.

We're talking about evolution. Cybernetics falls under engineering and it's not counted as evolution.

That's why I brought up the subject of technology hindering evolution. Are we disturbing the process of evolution through out over reliance of technologies?

Scientist will never find a missing links. It took us millions of years to evolve, you won't see something like a big distinct leap from our primal ancestor to modern human.

It was also discussed earlier that, we share the same ancestor as other primate, doesn't mean we evolved from apes. We just branched out and evolved together.

Wouldn't that fit into the law of evolution where fittest survive to pass on the better gene?