Replies

Rudder said: Nope. It's still selective pressure and selection, no matter who or what changes the environment. And we human beings are no less "natural" than any other organism on the planet.

Actually, "natural selection" means the "best" mutations survive. So while man in certainly natural, human intervention is unnatural select as it allows genes to survive that are not among the best.

Arthur McGowan said: Since medicine has made ANY difference to survival only since 1920, and a great difference only since about 1940, that leaves more than 10,000 years of civilization in which crowding, new diseases, etc., have introduced greater natural selection effects, not less.

I did wonder about this. Certainly the most short circuiting of natural selection has been in the last 100 years or so. But in that case the story should have been that human evolution WAS faster than previously thought. [BTW, even 100 years ago, people with a genetic disposition to take risks that would lead to say the loss of a limb were able to live when they would not likely have lived long nor reproduced as much in raw nature.]

From many - one. said: That apparent short circuiting also allows mutations to survive that may weaken the individual in some areas, yet strengthen them in others. IOW the gene pool is getting bigger.

Actually, I pointed out decades ago to a leftist environmental economist, if maximizing genes is your greatest value, nuclear power plant accidents if not nuclear war are great events as they create more genes. [It was his highest value and he did not care for this point.] But natural selection and evolution are NOT about maximizing the number of genes out there. Evolution is about natural selection and evolution allowing organisms to adapt to their environment that might even be changing.

I have no problem with evolving traits in organisms. I have no problem with the mechanism of natural selection. I am neutral in this debate. But as I said, if as the mechanism, natural selection, is being short-circuited, change in mankind, ie evolution, has sped up, someone has some explaining to do and really needs a new theory or mechanism or both.