Would charles darwin think the human race today is fit?

Question

are we still evolving? any thoughts.

Answer 1

Charles Darwin would be appalled at our race-mixing, where we take the *****, the link between ape and man, as our equal.  He is rolling in his grave.

Answer 2

just like anyone else, charles darwin wants to be famous during his time so he came up with his stupid theory about evolution.  experts have proven that lucy, the first human that those evolutionist claims turns out to be assembled from selected different bones just to produce a human monkey features. no such thing as human evolution. it was all just a big hoax.

Answer 3

One look at TV and a quick listen to radio, and he would revise his theory to the de-evolution of Man.

The assembled mokey face was "Piltown Man", which fooled the "experts" for 70 yrs.

Vertigo:  Your ex. of dogs isn't remotely evolutionary- just , simply VARIATIONS within a species, no different than the inbred Pygmies of an isolated area or "tribelness" of any given local which has the resulting effect of a conentration of genes.

Answer 4

have you been to texass? but seriously, that is one of the flaws with evolution no proof of anything evolving in the last several thousand years.   we are finding better ways to train and more about the way we should eat and some races are just better at certain sports and with the world becoming smaller you see different people doing these sports and are amazing at them. in the 50's basketball was more  or less jewish guys. then you get wilt the stilt and the game changed now you have some euro's playing and they are very good at certain aspects of the game.

remember in science we always prove the last guy wrong. 200 hundred years from now everyone will think what we believed, was as dumb as the earth being flat

Answer 5

Darwin never offered an opinion regarding the fitness of humans during his or other times.

Micro-evolution is a visible fact. Go to any natural history  museum and look at the remains of ancient people. They're all munchkins. Humans have gotten larger as we've moved from a hunter/gatherer community to a specialized community.

Macro-evolution is a theory based on unscientific observations. A reptilian dinosaur needs seventeen major structural mutations to become archeopteryx (the oldest fossilized bird found in Germany). Given even millions of years this is incomprehensible and violates every biologic experiment to date.

Answer 6

We exist, therefore we are....fit.

Yes, we are still evolving.

Answer 7

That is a great question.  

1. Darwin himself purposefully stayed away from the topic of humans, hoping to avoid controversy.  He didn't discuss evolution, either, BTW, because he had no knowledge of genetics.  However, he was a scientist - an objective observer.  We are "fit" because we survive as a species.

2. Evolution takes place at the cellular level through mutation.  So, yes, we are evolving.  In what direction?  Who knows?  Mutation is random.  Survival is not necessarily random.  For example, many human beings with defects that once were fatal, small and large, are now reproducting.  Also, we cannot determine how much our control over our environment (as compared with other organisms) will affect evolution.

The debate among anthropologists is whether evolution occurs at a steady rate or whether it occurs in spurts.  The late Stephen J. Gould was the primary proponant of the latter.

3.  Evolution is observable.  Look how quickly bacteria mutate.  Many anti-biotics are no longer effective - and they were just discovered in the years before WW2 (Fleming).  Look at the fear of a bird flu pandemic.  Humans are not normally affected by avian illness, but this virus seems to mutate, and may kill many humans before a treatment is found.

Answer 8

Please, for the love of god, ignore the people who answered this question before me. Charles Darwin did think we were still evolving- in fact, there's a lot of proof of this.

You remember that story about the old lady who swallowed a fly? Well, that's how it tends to. Except we don't live long enough to see the effects, and we are constantly trying to balance and maintain the world as it is. However, if we just sat back and let nature happen, you would see and explosion of evolution from the species that we allowed to thrive.

The best way of proving evolution is still happening is by looking at domesticated animals that have been bred for certain features. We have all these highly specially bred dogs- not for anything useful, sometimes, usually just for how they look. this was possible because humans have been manipulating the forces of evolution-- we have become a selective pressure in out own right.

So yes, we are still evolving. The world is still going.

The only reason you don't see any major human evolution is because there are so many of us. Even if enough of us did evolve some cool traits- there's nothing to make us need to exploit them. Evolution is a slow, small process, and short of a serious disaster knocking out most of the population (except those with certain inborn traits, think a huge plague kill everyone except the few that just randomly were genetically immune) we're not likely to see any jumping in the way of human evolution. On that note, you should look up the lions who have started swimming in africa. That's a change in behavior of huge evolutionary magnitude, which is to say,

YES EVOLUTION IS REAL. It's going on right now.

Answer 9

I got through the first two answers posted, and almost cried for their ignorance, so I felt compelled to correct them.  All life is evolving.  Learn a little about genetics and you will realize that even if natural selection is not at play - which is a very hard situation to come by - genetic drift continues to evolve the population.

We don't see anything evolving today? Haha.  I hope your doctor doesn't think that when you have a bacterial infection.  Scientists are in a race against bacteria - bacteria become resistant to an antibiotic soon after it is created, showing natural selection at play.

Unfortunately for the less educated who think everything has stopped evolving, they are wrong.  Evolution is a very slow process, spanning over millions of years.  If they want to "see" it happen they need to look no further than the massive amount of evidence that ALL points to evolution.

Charles Darwin would think the human race is fit in the sense that we are surviving and reproducing effectively.  One could argue that since we are destroying our environment so rapidly, though, that if things continue we will not be around much longer.

Answer 10

Vertigo - You Rock!