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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[USEC_OFFICER]

I haven't a clue on how evolution works (except in pokemon) but wouldn't back pain be nonexistant if we did evolve to stand up?

Well if evolution was a person then it'd be a very lazy tinkerer. A problem that doesn't affect the fitness of an individual before it reproduces and raises its offspring doesn't matter in evolutionary terms. Which is why we get so many medical problems in old age, since we're generally done reproducing by then and so there's no selection pressure to eliminate those problems. Which is why vestigial organs, back pain and similar things are a good indication that we did evolve, since they either have no effect on our fitness or occur late enough that it won't affect your children going on to reproduce. If we were created then our creators must have been very lazy or not paying attention when they made us, because there's many obvious things that could be changed to improve humanity. _{This is probably a gross oversimplification of evolution but whatever. Evolution isn't about perfection of a species, it's about being good enough to pass on your genes. That's sorta the gist of it.}

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Biology teacher's bit on human de-evolution and some explanation/examples

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My biology teacher have a nice lecture on the de-evolution of humans
Since we now live in a world where we don't have to compete physically for mates, and we have so much medicine and knowledge of how to cure things, humans are actualy de-evolving.
We as a species are losing our ability to weed out the bad genetic traits.
His example was penut butter allergies
Years ago (before allergy medicine that could stop or prevent allergy attacks) allergies to penuts were not all too prevalent, it existed but it wasn't nearly as bad. If it was really bad the individual would usualy die in their youth because
(This is my own assumption)
1) children are generaly weak in their health compared to healthy adults
2) living conditions back the. Weren't ideal so kids were probably likely to not be all to healthy in the first place (more leaning toward malnourished/not getting the proper stuff because nutrition wasn't all too much a thing)(though today we are now unhealthy in the obesity and no exercise way)
3)most really bad allergies are already pretty deadly
Now fast forward to today
If your kid has a reaction to a bed sting or a sand which they shouldn't have eaten then you can give them a shot and get them to the hospital and they will be fine.
Take my girlfriend for example, if she gets stung by a bee/wasp/hornet and doesn't get a shot she will die, there is no question about it. She is that allergic to those things.
If she were taken back to say hmm 1800? And she gets stung by a bee when she is 10 she drops dead 10 minutes later not to live on and pass that trait to what children she might have and those kids won't pass that on and so on and so forth.
Humans are de-evolving because we are finding ways to prevent the terrible things from happening
But what happens if we lose power and the hospitals shut down, or the medicine isn't able to be made anymore? We are screwed.

[TD1]

I thought you didn't "believe" in evolution?

Sorry for the quotes. Habit

[That Wolf]

So your not having kids then.
Phew human race saved guys and gals, high fives all around and lets rap it up.

Mission accomplished.

Jokes aside, if we get good enough at science wouldnt the devolution be fixed with genetic fiddiling.
Yes it is similar to genetic voilin.
Far different than any genetic chello.
By the way, how good is music..

[i2amroy]

Biology teacher's bit on human de-evolution and some explanation/examples

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My biology teacher have a nice lecture on the de-evolution of humans
Since we now live in a world where we don't have to compete physically for mates, and we have so much medicine and knowledge of how to cure things, humans are actualy de-evolving.
We as a species are losing our ability to weed out the bad genetic traits.
His example was penut butter allergies
Years ago (before allergy medicine that could stop or prevent allergy attacks) allergies to penuts were not all too prevalent, it existed but it wasn't nearly as bad. If it was really bad the individual would usualy die in their youth because
(This is my own assumption)
1) children are generaly weak in their health compared to healthy adults
2) living conditions back the. Weren't ideal so kids were probably likely to not be all to healthy in the first place (more leaning toward malnourished/not getting the proper stuff because nutrition wasn't all too much a thing)(though today we are now unhealthy in the obesity and no exercise way)
3)most really bad allergies are already pretty deadly
Now fast forward to today
If your kid has a reaction to a bed sting or a sand which they shouldn't have eaten then you can give them a shot and get them to the hospital and they will be fine.
Take my girlfriend for example, if she gets stung by a bee/wasp/hornet and doesn't get a shot she will die, there is no question about it. She is that allergic to those things.
If she were taken back to say hmm 1800? And she gets stung by a bee when she is 10 she drops dead 10 minutes later not to live on and pass that trait to what children she might have and those kids won't pass that on and so on and so forth.
Humans are de-evolving because we are finding ways to prevent the terrible things from happening
But what happens if we lose power and the hospitals shut down, or the medicine isn't able to be made anymore? We are screwed.

I'd argue that we aren't so much "devolving" as we are "broadening" those who are alive from just the fittest to include those who are less fit. We still have all the people with the resistant traits, it's just that all of the other people are surviving as well. To note, 5 out of 6 people on earth could die horrifically (assuming we were still able to handle infrastructure, etc. so nobody else did) and we would still have more people alive on earth then there were in the 1800's, simply because there are so many more people alive now then there were then.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I don't believe in evolution
Neither does my biology teacher
But this isn't conventional evolution, it's people becoming crappier people

While we might be broadening the traits are speading to more people in the populace

[Frumple]

... there is literally no such thing as devolution in modern evolutionary theory. It doesn't exist, and the concept of it is in complete contradiction to basically everything we know about the processes involved in evolution. It Doesn't Work Like That^TM.

If your biology teacher has been teaching or promoting theories proposing devolution, they should not be anywhere near a biology classroom.

[i2amroy]

I don't believe in evolution
Neither does my biology teacher
But this isn't conventional evolution, it's people becoming crappier people

While we might be broadening the traits are speading to more people in the populace

Not to sound horribly confrontative (I actually want to know an answer here), but what does your biology teacher think of experiments where they've replicated the effects of evolution in the lab through selective pressures (i.e. things like this, where they took two decades and over 44,000 generations of bacteria forced with selective pressures and watched them "evolve").

(As I said I'm not trying to be confrontational, I'm just interested in knowing if they are unaware or if they have some other explanation for the results).

And yeah, technically "devolution" would just be "evolution" working in the opposite direction as we normally think of it. Sort of how "deceleration" is really just "acceleration" in the negative direction.

[USEC_OFFICER]

I wouldn't call it devolution though. Yeah, if you took someone with a bee allergy to the 1800s they probably won't survive, but so would a dog if you tossed them into the middle of the ocean. They aren't adapted to living in the ocean like some people aren't adapted to live without modern medicine. We aren't changing, our environment is and that allows people with allergies and things like that to survive.

[King Kravoka]

Guys, we are getting alarmingly close to entering eugenetics territory.

That said, I'm going to say that evolution was the byproduct of an inherently hostile universe and isn't how reality should function. If we want to remove peanut allergies and such, we should just use genetic engineering.

[TD1]

Your biology teacher sounds rather...unscientific.

Are you sure he didn't just walk in off the street?

[That Wolf]

Your biology teacher sounds rather...unscientific.

Are you sure he didn't just walk in off the street?

Yeah played too much dwarf fortress and wrote on his resume that hes good at !!science!!
Many science teachers are dorks.
My one said no one landed on the moon.
I was like "for f sakes woman, we have a moon base on titan spying on us and your saying we never landed on luna"
I liked her though, she was hawt.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[scrdest]

I don't believe in evolution
Neither does my biology teacher
But this isn't conventional evolution, it's people becoming crappier people

While we might be broadening the traits are speading to more people in the populace

Not to sound horribly confrontative (I actually want to know an answer here), but what does your biology teacher think of experiments where they've replicated the effects of evolution in the lab through selective pressures (i.e. things like this, where they took two decades and over 44,000 generations of bacteria forced with selective pressures and watched them "evolve").

(As I said I'm not trying to be confrontational, I'm just interested in knowing if they are unaware or if they have some other explanation for the results).

And yeah, technically "devolution" would just be "evolution" working in the opposite direction as we normally think of it. Sort of how "deceleration" is really just "acceleration" in the negative direction.

It doesn't even make sense as a concept. Look at internal parasites, say, a tapeworm - it is far simpler than non-parasitic worms of the same group, with basically no digestive system to speak of - it's essentially a fancy tube of flesh. So, does that mean that a tapeworm is 'less evolved' or that it 'evolved backwards'? Nope, it means it has successfully adapted to the environment he is living in - all those protein synthesized and cellular divisions that would be required to make an entirely useless digestive system - since the host does the job for them - is avoided.

If a change increases the odds of successful reproduction, statistically, the frequency of the change in population increases - no matter what kind of change it is. Simplification and complication are both desirable outcomes in different circumstances. And all evolution cares about is if you can survive and reproduce, NOW, HERE.

The development of medicine does not mean we're 'losing' the ability to evolve in any degree - it means we have transformed the environment we live in. If we lived in an environment where, for some reason, peanuts were the only source of nutrition ever, the frequency of the peanut allergy gene would drop quickly - for the very reason you mentioned, people dying of the allergy. If you lived your whole life on an island without even hearing of the existence of peanuts, having the gene for the allergy would not affect you in the slightest.

If anything, the example here is evolution - because genetic diversity in population is *always* a good thing - the more differences you have, the lesser the chance that one single factor will wipe the entire population out. If aliens modified all the peanuts in the world to suddenly be toxic to kill all humans, those who don't eat them because of the allergy would survive - silly example, but it illustrates the point.

That's how it worked with sickle cell anemia - a bunch of people had a mutation that messed up their red blood cells, making them anemic - a straight-up negative trait - but suddenly, malaria shows up, and because their blood cells are non-standard, they are immune to malaria. So while half the non-anemic part of the village dies of malaria, Joe Sickly suddenly can get bitten by ALL THE MOSQUITOES and take it like a champ.

[MaximumZero]

And this is why I reserve the right to demand proof behind a belief and will call you names if you don't produce. Many people have deeply held beliefs, but understand none of the underlying mechanisms thereof.

Bring proof.