evolution creationists **** off?

Question

humans have pretty much stopped evolving as we have no predators

what might have happened to us?
no neitzche superman comments

Answer 1

Why do you think we have stopped evolving? To be sure, we still are. It may be difficult for some to understand as the evolutionary process takes time. The modern man of cro magnon type (that's almost us) has only existed for about
40 000 years. In another 40 000 years maybe WE have become the anscestors of a new species.

Answer 2

Strange to say, a study has just come out which argues that human evolution has been speeding up:

"The traditional picture of humans as a finished prod­uct began to erode in recent years, scientists said, with a crop of studies suggesting our evolution in­deed goes on. But the newest investigation goes fur­ther. It claims the process has actually accelerated."

As others have pointed out here, predation is only one in a myriad of selective pressures involved in evolution, both internally and externally to the human body. Furthermore, evolution doesn't necessarily take the form of one individual dying and another living, but in terms of various characteristics, or alleles, having relatively better reproductive success than other characteristics or alleles over generations, more often than not in increments that are not readily apparent without careful measurement.

One thing that lends to an illusion that humans aren't prone to selective pressure is that we are living in a time of great energy surplus as we burn up the earth's accumulated fossilized solar energy. Like any biological organism that comes upon a great surplus of stored energy, it has allowed a great blossom of the human population lessening the effect of many usual normal selective pressures. But also like any organism, when this energy gives out, one can expect a big population crash and the work of different selective pressures will suddenly become much more apparent again.

Addendum: In answer to fixn2roc, below, you aren't being quite fair because you are asking a question but getting credit for an answer -- a question furthermore that does not exactly follow logically speaking from the first one. That said, 20,000 years is a short time in the evolutionary scheme of things for complex creatures such as humans, given that humans have between 26,000 and 150,000 genes and reproduce only every two decades. I am an anthropologist and don't have at hand knowledge about many different species, though there is speciation going on all the time -- albeit nothing as dramatic as a fish evolving into a crocodiles, for the simple reason that evolution doesn't pull things from hats but builds on what is at hand. The quicker the reproductive cycle the faster the evolution; complex creatures that take years or decades to reproduce, with hundreds of thousands of genes, are not going to differentiate quickly. Thus over 28 million years, humans, apes and even monkeys have remained pretty much similar in form.

An interesting point in the recent study I referenced is that contemporary humans have evolved more from early modern humans than humans in general have evolved from Homo erectus. Another point is that this raises the question of when humans actually became humans.

Answer 3

I don't know where the idea that we are not evolving has come from.
Just go to a museum and look at the old European paintings and tapestries from the Renaissance era and any from before that you may be able to find.
Look at the facial structures. The almost pointy features and receding chins that were so common in portraits from that era are rarely seen in the descendants of those same cultures today.
Look at clothing - especially old suits of armor. We are getting taller with every generation. Our domestic prepared food industry is also promoting heavier figures - and even THAT is a product of evolution.
Look at the features of people depicted in ancient Mayan art. NO ONE looks like that now!
Strangely, the classical Greco/Roman image is about the ONLY ancient genetic prototype still around - and it is now most commonly found among the descendants of the Europeans who looked nothing like the old Greco/Romans!

Answer 4

Humans who live in cities and towns have no traditional predators, but if you lived out in the wilderness, you'd have plenty of predators....people get eaten by tigers in India and lions in Africa all the time.
We also have other kinds of predators that are even more dangerous, like these viruses that have jumped species and have a high mortality rate.
Trust me, all living things are evolving, that's the way nature works.
*** off yerself and have a nice day!

Answer 5

By that logic apex predators wouldn't evolve. They need to evolve for many of the same reason as any other animal. They evolve to meet changes in the environment or niche. They evolve to better compete among themselves, selecting mates, disease resistance and other factors. Selection pressures are quite low now but that won't likely last forever.

Answer 6

No organism on earth stops evolving because they have no predators. Predators are only a part of the environment and have nothing to do with, say, sexual selection.

Answer 7

Survival of the fittest most of the time has nothing to do with predators.

* A change in wheather conditions, food supply, sunlight intensity and etc can cause a difference in tommorrows humans.

Answer 8

I agree absolutely with Stephen M... but would add one thing. Just because we can't see a predator, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Many different virus & bacteria are evolving rapidly to take advantage of an ever increasing host (prey if you will).

Answer 9

It's pointless to look at human development over the last 100 years and claim that there will be no further human evolution in a million years. It's hard to look at ourselves on such a grand scale, so we may fall victim to the delusion that there is no way we will change.

Answer 10

Can anybody name any thing that has evolved over the last 20,000 years? Changed from one creature into another?