Evolution...

I have been debating with Bijoy- my room mate in Trivandrum- about the human nature, morality, God, and about teh role of evolution. Being a orthodox christian (Pentecost), he wont agree to the theory of evolution. He's has been brought up like that. He has been taught that God made the human being from his spine. Everyday during food, we argue a lot. May be mostly its me who start and end the debates. Rajesh Pulincunnoo and Appu may also join me. Its tiem we study the evolutionary process scientifically.
Evolution is a necessary one in all fields. Language, morality, culture, love, teh way we communicate, genes, fashion etc., always evolve. Without evolution nothing can survive. Yesterdays immorality becomes today's morality.

I was listening to a newscast the other day that mentioned fertility drugs, and that got me to thinking - and that can be pretty dangerous in itself.

There's proof all around us that life adapts. Just look at all the stories about new drug-resistant strains of bacteria. You treat a bacterial infection with cypro or some other drug, and you kill 99.99% of all the bacteria causing that infection. The remaining 0.01% survive and pass on their genes to the next generation. Then perhaps only 99% are killed the next time you treat them, then 90%. Clearly the resistant bacteria pass on their genes. You do it long enough and you end up with population that's 100% resistant to the drug. Now, in this case, since bacteria reproduce asexually, you don't get the mixing of genes that you do with sexual reproduction.

Creationists will argue - what's your point? You clearly don't have a new species of bacteria here. And what does that have to do with fertility drugs? I'll get to the point.

Look at dogs. Interbreeding with wolves resulting in fertile offspring proves they're the same species. DNA and gene analysis show that the modern dog was split off from the wolf, by man about 12,000 to 15,000 years ago. It seems there just hasn't been enough time for the species to split into two distinct species. After all, that's only been 12,000 generations or so.

Now, I'm no biologist, but I was thinking that perhaps the reason that fertility drugs are required for certain human couples to get pregnant is that they're not exactly biologically compatible. I know that in the vast number of infertility cases, it's either the male or the female that is infertile for some reason. But could there be cases where it's just that they're not compatible and that we're seeing what could be the very beginnings of speciation in humans? A very controversial topic for sure.

Comparing humans to the dog/wolf - well if you look at 12,000 generations of humans you're talking about a timeframe of 216,000 to 300,000 years, assuming a generation spans 18-25 years (It's only in the last few thousand years at most that a generation tends anything beyond 25 or so). And recent genetic studies point to modern man (homo sapiens sapiens) having only been around 80-100,000 years or so.

Have there been any genetic studies of infertile couples, or am I just all wet here? Is there a true genetic definition of speciation? Since humans and chimpanzees share more genes between themselves than mice do with rats, is there a definition other than the inability to produce fertile offspring?

There is no ceiling to evolution known. & if human go into space, which is vast beyond our ken, then effectively human evolution becomes unlimitted, which is as near to infinity as we can get.

It's possible that the human race could stabilize. The horeshoe crab, Limulus, the Coelocanth & the sequoias have been around for tens of millions if not 100's of millions of years, without much change.

But those are more the exception by 1 million fold compared to other tens of millions of living and extinct species.

The recent evolution of human intelligence has been traced to the presence of the microcephaly gene which has shown that within the last several thousand years, humans are still evolving, very likely.

The frequency of the dyslexias are also decreasing as reading becomes more and more important. So there is yet another reason for it ongoing.

The increasing heights and speeds of pro basketball players, & the weights and power of football players also show microevolution occuring. The same is true as athletic records fall with each new Olympics.

As long as the technologies continue to change, then humans will change, as well, as those technologies are part of the environment around us.

As energy release continues to increase on the planet, then that will 'Stir things up' as well. As the US has the greatest energy production, then things are going to be stirred up here, the most.

IN quiet, low energy, poor societies, change does not come very fast. IN agro societies, this is the case. IN industrializing nations energy release is NOT only due to the sun stored energy of food being burned, but in the release of energy from coal, petrols and nuclear power, among others.

So, nope, human evolution has NOT slowed down. In most advanced nations in the last 50 years, there has been more change than in the previous 500-1000 years. Given the advances of genetics & genetical engineering, then the processes of evolution will indeed speed up, by quite some many fold times.

IN the medical fields, which are very sci/tech intensive, there have been more changes in the last 20 years, than in the previous 1200. The amount of medical information doubles about every 5 years. That is breakneck change!

IN combinatorial chemistry, a 15 years old method to create new drugs, the speed of new drug development, when it maxes out with the human genome project & computer simulations, will be at least 1 MILLION times faster than in 1990.

IN very real terms that means within 10 years, 1 MILLION years of new drug development will take place wthin a single year, compared to 1990. That is little short of astonishing. Even 5 years ago a properly equipped pharmaceutical lab could create more new drugs in a single afternoon than the entire world did in 1995. (!!!)

That results not only in safer drugs, but those which are far, far more effective and better. Because there are more drugs by 1000's fold to pick from and test.


As humans go out into space, the needs for resistance to radiation, muscle & heart breakdown and calcium losses in bones, PLUS eliminating any kind of mental illness which can damage or destroy a habitat, will also result in far, far greater evolution of humans than those who stay to live on the earth. Compared to those who live in space permanently, raise children & grow & build a space faring civilization.

Given the very real need for a very cheap, abundant energy source to get us into space, just creating that alone will increase the speed of human evolution, because more energy release increases the rate of reshuffling.

100 years ago it was unusual for a person in the US to Ever travel faster than 20 mph, if at all. Now some travel 100's of times faster than that. & the average rate of travel of the usual American, In his car, must be substantially greater as well, compared to walking which was the huge majority of travel 100 years ago.

So, rather than humans being at a point where evolution of our species is slowing down, in fact, for MANY reasons, it's going into higher speed than ever before. and God only knows where that will end up in 10,000 years or so. Which is the usual time in which speciation takes place.

One suspects in 10K years, that space faring humans will be a different species than the parent H. sapiens race on earth. & some of them might even have speciated among themselves, as well.

Larry Niven in his interesting sci fi book, Mote in God's Eyehas speculated upon future human evolution.

But, for obvious reasons, some people do NOT like change...
Without artificial enhancements, with a more natural approach, using nothing but the untapped innate potential of the nervous system, the human race may evolve to higher states of consciousness. By making fuller use of the brain and activating seldom used areas through meditation techniques, people of the year 2525 may look on us, as we may look on the Cro Magnon man. The Vedas, some of the oldest writings of man, are beginning to be understood, not as poetic symbolism, but as the instruction manual of the human nervous system and how to actualize its full potential through Sidhis, or special abilities. Currently a large group of Sidhis practioners in Iowa is working to hasten human evolution.