Have humans stopped evolving?

It’s an illusion, we can never control/defy nature. We still can’t prevent hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, global warming, melting glaciers or plagues of diseases like Ebola. Nah, nature will always win but, at this stage of the game it is human ego that needs to evolve, transcend the long and undistinguished history of greed, murder and mayhem. It seems pretty clear to me if a major shift in consciousness is not attained pretty damn soon we’re toast.

We’re the only species that is feeding and shitting in it’s own nest simultaneously. We will bring about our own extinction sooner or later, no doubt. Rock-a-bye earthings.

We are likely evolving quite fast right now. Never in human history has a melting pot of this magnitude been stirred.

No. Not at all. But evolution is slow process – usually in the hundreds or thousands of generations. We’re still changing. It only seems like we have stopped because we’re living it, and it seems imperceptibly slow.

We will continue to evolve as conditions slowly change. If Ozone depletion continues we might have different skin or eyes. Here is one person’s thought experiment for humans 100,000 years from now.
If CO2 rises maybe our lung capacity will change.
It’s anyone’s guess but one thing is certain: Change we will.

Human beings are a product of nature. They don’t control it. They are governed by it. Everytime you think you are controlling nature, you are inviting nature to respond in another fashion.

Are humans adapting-yes, they are good a that.
Are they evolving-Species don’t disappear into a new species. They are replaced by a new species.

Humans have gone through a large degree of social evolution. The way people in industrialized areas live now is very different from what it was even 400 years ago. It seems reasonable that we will evolve physically in order to be better suited to the environment we have created.

Worldwide obesity has become a larger problem than hunger. I would guess that we will evolve so as to cut back on our current fondness for foods that are sweet, salty and fatty.

During the last 100 years there has been a rather large increase in IQ scores, which has been called the Flynn effect after James Flynn, who studied it extensively. What he found was that the score increases was more of a qualitative than a quantiative change, an increased ability to deal with abstractions. My guess is that we will evolve so as to be much more naturally inclined toward abstract scientific reasoning.

There may be a natural component to our tendency to be prejudiced those who are culturally or racially different from us. When we lived in tribes, outsiders could be the source of dangerous pathogens. Now that we live in groups that are so much larger, there is little benefit from such prejudices and we may evolve to be more tolerant.

If humans are evolving, and I think we are, it doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. If you put 2 rats in a box (1 male, 1 female, naturally), and feed them, they will procreate. When the box becomes full of rats they will kill each other. We are like those rats and the box is full.

Every generation is a little different from the previous. Evolution has no end.

Yes, it is that simple.

I could be wrong about this, but it is my understanding that evolution happens more quickly when the population is small and there are pressures for fitness that natural selection favors. So if there were a large pandemic that killed off most humans on the planet, those with mutations that helped them survive the pandemic would pass those genes on. If the population is very large and stable, it won’t evolve much.

no

@stanleybmanly Well clearly your clothing style has not evolved since about 1910. lol

@LuckyGuy Whoa dude, we’ll look like anime characters.

@Symbeline That or this .

@Coloma neither me nor my getup have bothered to evolve. I remain blissfully in the past with my tophat, tails, spats and memories. Those were the days when you women knew your place and the Klan was respectable. Yes indeedy. It was heaven.

@LuckyGuy – that last pic is from an article in a 1972 Playboy magazine. It was my dad’s collection, really! And I only read it for the articles.

But seriously, black people have become really resistant to skin cancer (or is it that everyone else lost their resistance?): http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/skin/statistics/race.htm

Some have become resistant to malaria. I think there are some people resistant to AIDS now. Don’t forget the classic – ability for adults to digest milk.

@LuckyGuy Uh…lol.

@RocketGuy Apparently blood type “O” is resistant to Malaria too. Doing some research recently on blood type. Also blood type evolution does carry certain protective factors as well as certain risks. Very interesting.