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Originally Posted by Michaelangelica
NATURAL selection is now no longer "natural." It is man made. That has only really happened in earnest in the 20C.
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For mankind, in all but third world nations, this is true. It is also true of all domesticated animals. It is not, however, true for domesticated insects.
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Originally Posted by Michaelangelica
Beginning with the first technological war (WW1) and the fist pandemic ( Bird flu)that did not leave any resistance genes as did the plague.
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??? Could you expand on this statement please?
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Originally Posted by Michaelangelica
Man might be a product of nature but he has taken that product and shapes it in ways no longer natural
The processes of 19C Darwin don't apply in the same way now as that they did in 19C England.
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Darwin is alive and well. It is based solely on the environment that life exists in. The fact that mankind can changed his environment practically at will does little to dispel Darwinism, and will only prove it is true.
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Originally Posted by Michaelangelica
As the devil said "You have to admit the 20th Century was mine."
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That would be Al Pacino that said that... mind you, he was playing the devil at the time.
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Originally Posted by Michaelangelica
My faulty thinking is that I think natural selection should improve the species ability to survive.
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Natural selection does not select for the survival of the individual. It selects for the survival for the species. Otherwise, it would have never selected for the altruistic traits we social creatures display every day.
Natural selection has endeavored to see that we survive by creating a system of reasonable mutation that ensures diversity in the population. The result is that even in the face of a plague that mankind has never encounter before, and in fact has no defense against, he still survived. The global population has never been impacted by more then 1% even in the midst of the worst of recorded plagues. Darwinism at work.
One of the problems with the “Reasonable Mutation” aspect of evolution is that it requires an environment that removes the “chaff” and allows the “Wheat” through.
Mankind is no longer bound by that, and must use the technology that freed him from his environment to “recreate” this aspect of it. It is that or watch the genetic dissolution of his race.
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Originally Posted by Michaelangelica
Some of the things we do (War, technology,medical interventions) are difficult to explain in those terms.
Viruses that select for the fittest childbearing age humans (HIV/AIDS, bird flu) are also difficult to explain in darwinnian terms. Perhaps they are just bad luck?.
How are the survival genes are to be passed on?
Not by decrepit old buggers like me.
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Nature uses luck to counter bad luck(sort of). By ensuring diversity in a population, even the worst events are usually survivable by some lucky few with the right combination of traits.
