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Assuming evolution is factual, what do you think is the next step in our evolution?

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Chris OConnor

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Assuming evolution is factual, what do you think is the next step in our evolution?

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I'm a member of Mensa and in the monthly "Bulletin" magazine they ask questions to the readers. I'm going through the questions from the past several months and will be posting the ones I find interesting here on BookTalk.org.

Assuming evolution is factual, what do you think is the next step in our evolution?
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johnson1010
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Re: Assuming evolution is factual, what do you think is the next step in our evolution?

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Our best attribute for survival is our ability to create and innovate.

Using that tool we've been able to provide food where there was none, water for crops where it is naturally dry, and a living space that removes us from the selecting pressures that applied to us for so many millions of years to shape us into what we are.

Now, even debilitating illnesses which would have struck us down can be managed. We can not only survive and have children, we can thrive even while being physically unable to dress ourselves.

So with this as the backdrop, what is our future? What is the selective pressure that moves us forward?

It's hard for me to imagine a truly isolated breeding pool. World wide travel is too easy. I don't see some small splinter lineage really diverging from the rest of us too easily.

To force a change on us now would require something catestrophic, i think. Some disease which sweeps the population sparing only those with some peculiar genetic mutation.

Either we will develope our abilities to change the world with technology and augment ourselves with computers, or perhaps we will have a world wide break down leading to something close to idiocracy. Where we have high technology from our granparents, but nobody who really understands it.

As for a sequestered breeding population which could lead to a more natural natural selection process, maybe that will finally come to us again when we manage to colonize another planet?
In the absence of God, I found Man.
-Guillermo Del Torro

Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?

Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
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Dexter

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Re: Assuming evolution is factual, what do you think is the next step in our evolution?

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I contest your assumption. Evolution is JUST A THEORY.
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DWill

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Re: Assuming evolution is factual, what do you think is the next step in our evolution?

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I don't see much reason to think we will evolve organically to any from we could label as a next stage. As johnson said, where would the selective pressure come from to make this happen? Cultural evolution is a different matter, and it doesn't require that we become brighter bulbs than we are now. If we listen to people like Steven Pinker, we've already become quite a bit more morally evolved than was true just a couple hundred years ago, and this progress may even accelerate. The next stage is one where we don't need to solve our disputes by killing each other, and where moral consideration is extended to all humans as well as to the natural world.
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Assuming evolution is factual, what do you think is the next step in our evolution?

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Physically, human evolution is driven by technology, which has radically liberated women, in terms of childbirth, drudgery and social equality. Where it used to be the case that wealth enabled fecundity, the situation is now reversed, with wealth enabling barrenness due to careers open to merit and fertility becoming optional. Meanwhile poverty now enables high fertility, since nearly all children survive in communities where infant mortality used to approach one in three. Medical technology is causing the evolution of narrow hips, since women who previously would have died in childbirth now have children.

Socially, evolution will be driven by globalisation, with steadily greater inter-cultural mixing and technological innovation. But with an approaching ten billion world population, and carbon emissions likely to utterly destabilise the climate with a six degree celsius temperature increase this century, the four horsemen of the apocalypse - death, famine, war and plague - pose significant risks.

Christianity will have a great revival in a new form, delivering ethical meaning, community ritual and emotional comfort, but totally shorn of all supernatural fantasy, which will in future be understood just as symbolic allegory within a purely scientific paradigm.
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Re: Assuming evolution is factual, what do you think is the next step in our evolution?

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Robert, you say Christianity will have a rebirth. From what we can see today, I think that this might be true only in the sense that some of its ethical basis will generalize to greater parts of the population. But there would be as much reason to call this Buddhism as to call it Christianity. What we may see is continued growth of the "beyond religion" approach advanced by the Dali Lama, who has become a "major brand" in the marketplace of religious thinking. Given that in his teachings he incorporates a scientific perspective, he seems better positioned to give us a viable, modernized religion. I sometimes am surprised by his statements, because they actually often don't seem profound, and there is nothing difficult to understand about them. Maybe that is just the point, that we don't need any of the dogmas particular to a tradition, dogmas that tend to the abstruse and that seek to be exclusive. The real inclusive truths turn out to be humanity's commonplaces.

I just don't see any future in terms of worldwide religion for the repurposing of the mythic narratives of Christianity. That would not provide the truly ecumenical foundation that people will seek.
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Re: Assuming evolution is factual, what do you think is the next step in our evolution?

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Is it possible that we will follow in the footsteps of the dinosaurs and become smaller? Like it is said of the birds of today having evolved from the raptors of the Jurassic Period. Technology and/or catastrophe will almost certainly play a part in evolutionary change but imagine a world of billions and billions of tiny people looking in awe at the gargantuan faces on Mount Rushmore. Tiny people setting up towns and city's near local landfills of the past, mining whats left them from ancient peoples. I think human population will be a concerning factor in the evolutionary change to tiny humans, overcrowding each other we will subtly diminish in size that could be less than lilliputain in stature. Mind you this is just hypothesis born of a brain that was not qualified for Mensa status(though I tried) but of of a brain accustomed to LSD in its youth.
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Re: Assuming evolution is factual, what do you think is the next step in our evolution?

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Dexter wrote:I contest your assumption. Evolution is JUST A THEORY.
Gravity is also "just a theory." Please learn the difference between hypothesis and theory. Also the question started with the assumption that evolution is factual, which means that it is meant to be a discussion about where evolution, if true, might lead, and not a place to argue about whether or not evolution is real. There are other places to argue over that on this forum. Just have fun with the question.

And just for fun...I think the next step is communication by telepathy instead of having to use words. The brain functions on an interesting combination of electric and chemical signals. I think that someday the electric stuff might be able to be passed from person to person instead of just inside one person. Words are a poor way of communicating between people. Words are a description of the picture one has in one's mind. I often find that the words I use to describe the idea in my mind doesn't match up with the way a different person pictures what a particular word or set of words describe. If I could send the ideas from my mind directly instead of using words I'm sure there would be less mix ups regarding the ideas that I try to describe using words.

This actually makes me think of Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist that has recently written the book "The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind." I'd do a poor job of describing it so I'll just post this clip of his interview on The Daily Show:

thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-february-25- ... ichio-kaku

It sounds like we might as some point be able to upload learning into our brain in a similar manner to The Matrix.
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Re: Assuming evolution is factual, what do you think is the next step in our evolution?

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Ina you FACE dexter!

haha

Scrumfish is right.
In the absence of God, I found Man.
-Guillermo Del Torro

Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?

Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
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ant

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Re: Assuming evolution is factual, what do you think is the next step in our evolution?

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johnson1010 wrote:Ina you FACE dexter!

haha

Scrumfish is right.

This is off topic; how did scrumfish get all those stars by his name?
I thought stars by a user's name represented the number of years a person has been a member of BT

I deserve more stars by my name.
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