(December 9, 2010 at 1:10 pm)16three-john Wrote: So I made a thread on morality, and a reply concerning evolution really got me thinking...If evolution got us humans where we are today, why didn't all animals keep evolving until they're humans? Also, why are humans the last stop on the evolutionary train? Why haven't humans evolved into 10 armed 3 headed super-humans? I just think that with so much body-enhancing things around today, that nature would have thought of it first, instead of its product (humans). Again, no twisting of answers or preaching is gonna come from me, promise
There are a few false assuptions here:
The first is that evolution isn't a ladder. Evolution is a process by which species evolve to suit their environment through a combination of mutation and natural selection. There is no ultimate result of evolution because it is an ongoing process. All life on Earth is still evolving.
The second is that we have evolved multi-headed and multi-armed humans, but those mutations tend to not be beneficial so they rarely get passed on to the next generation and nowadays, doctors surgically remove the additional or parasitic parts.
Just to note though that the vast majority of mutations are benign, but there are beneficial ones as well, such as resistance to disease and such. The example in the link above is certainly not beneficial.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
