THE GREAT FAITH OF THE EVOLUTIONIST

[iSok]

I do understand what you mean.
But, in those millions and millions of years, nature always had a certain balance.
Things did change fast for example, but there was never a single dominant species.

I don't know much about what species were dominant in the past but in the age of the Dinosaur mammals were completely dominated by the dinosaurs.

But I think the last 50.000 years?, human species came for the first time to dominate nature.
I just find it odd, if we take a look at the whole time scale of our earth, that somehow we humans
'took over the planet' and not some other specie.

We do not dominate nature...the natural order of things is still functioning just as it has since the world started turning.
We simply are towards the top of the food chain and large in population; for now.
It's not odd, it's luck.

So why do we dominate the world? (We count over 6 billion....)

Reasons:
1) Big brains allow us to come up with more ways to survive.
2) High survival rate of young...our family structure as well as our medical technology has allowed an increasing number of humans to survive till sexual maturity.
3) Quality birth control methods are only a recent invention.
4) Big brains have allowed us to come up with ways to prevent many diseases which use to kill us before we'd reach old age.
5) Some of the world's main religions teach that not only is it good to have huge families but that preventing pregnancy is bad.
6) Ability to create shelter rather than having to find shelter.
7) Ability to travel long distances in search of new land when we fill up one area.
etc.

There was never another specie that destroyed so much of nature as we did.

And that is a main reason why we won't be a dominant species much longer...unless we change our ways.

I still fail to understand

You summed up a few reasons why we are dominating the world.
I understand that part, what I don't understand is; how did we reach that goal? (how did we advance towards that goal?)

Was it really nothing more than luck?
I thought there were certain aspects, why it happened to be us and not other species.

About dinosaurs, I don't think we can compare ourselves with the dinosaurs.
Man is a mammal, but this mammal clearly dominates over every organism.
Dinosaurs did not have a single specie which dominated.
To compare us with Dinosaurs, would mean that the Spinosaurus for example
was dominating, even a top predator like the Spinosaurus had it's place within the ecosystem.

I understand that the world is not self-aware, but I don't understand how we stepped out of the ecosystem.
Clearly there has never been in the history of our planet a creature more succesful than man, not a single
specie managed to step out of the ecosystem.
Instead of dolphins, whales have a far more intelligent language. Most likely more 'intelligent' than English...

So was it just dumb luck?

[McQ]

I'm so bummed. I wrote for 30 minutes and just inadvertently deleted my post! Ahhh, crap!

iSok, If I had time to rewrite it all over, I would, but I don't. This is a good topic, and deserves well-thought-out answers.

Quickly, I will mention that evolution is not directional, has no end point, and that humans have not dominated the world. We are far from dominant, in evolutionary terms. I don't mean to quibble with those who have answered before, but some things have been wrongly put forth.

So, in brief:

1. Evolution is not directional
2. Humans continue to evolve, but are in no way dominant, evolutionary-wise. Weak. Way weak. We can brag when we've been around 300 million years.
3. We are still in the food chain.
4. Mutations drive changes in species.
5. Extinction events change the playing field for ALL species and only "favor" species by pure chance. No species adapts to mass extinction events, they either live or die out because they were already adapted to the change in environment, or they weren't.
6. Don't be confused by the differences in natural or sexual selection, or by how humans have learned to alter their environment. That is not natural selection, nor is it that hideous term "survival of the fittest".

If I get more time, I'll try to participate in your thread, as it's a good one.

[Will]

I'm so bummed. I wrote for 30 minutes and just inadvertently deleted my post! Ahhh, crap!

Protip: for longer posts, it's good to use a txt document in WordPad or an equivalent (I use Jarte), then copy and paste it when you're finished.

[Whitney]

I'm so bummed. I wrote for 30 minutes and just inadvertently deleted my post! Ahhh, crap!

Protip: for longer posts, it's good to use a txt document in WordPad or an equivalent (I use Jarte), then copy and paste it when you're finished.

I always forget to do that...I've lost a couple long posts by accidentally closing the browser  

[McQ]

I'm so bummed. I wrote for 30 minutes and just inadvertently deleted my post! Ahhh, crap!

Protip: for longer posts, it's good to use a txt document in WordPad or an equivalent (I use Jarte), then copy and paste it when you're finished.

Yeah, excellent idea. It would prevent much wailing and swearing! Serves me right for being in a hurry with my clicking and typing.  

[Recusant]

Sometimes, if you realize quickly enough and haven't done anything at all to the computer when you realize your hideous error (believe me, I've been there   ) you can hit "Ctrl-z" to save your sanity.  It's only worked for me a couple of times; usually the mistake is not so easily remedied.  Just throwin' it out there.

Another option; create a gmail account just to use as a kind of document program.  The "compose mail" function has an auto-save feature which clicks in every couple of minutes or so.  One advantage of this is that you can access drafts of stuff you've worked on using one computer from an entirely different computer.

[LegendarySandwich]

Or you could use Docs, which automatically saves every few seconds.

[DJAkuma]

Humans can be compared in many ways to other apex predators like sharks, bears, and T rex. We're only a dominant species by our own subjective definitions of what it means to be a dominant species, when using more objective criteria we're far from dominant.

We don't have the highest number of living specimens
We don't represent the largest amount of biomass
We don't have the most biodiversity

That's just what I could think of off the top of my head, I'm sure a few of you can come up with more.

[Tank]

Evolution seems to me a pretty plausible theory how life originated.

Evolution is not a theory that in any way addresses how life originated. That is a separate discipline called Abiogenesis. Evolution theory explains why there is variety in the life that we see around us, not how life originally started came about.

But I have a question.
Why did man continue to evolve? And lead eventually to the
fact that he's the most dominant specie on this planet?

All organisms are subject to various selection pressures all the time. These selection pressures influence the gene pool of any given species of organism. They influence which individuals in the species reproduce. The species Homo Sapiens is still subject to selection pressures and as such still has the potential to evolve.

By what criteria are you judging humans are the dominant spices on the planet? If you are using longevity of existance there are cyanobacteria that have been around for 4 billion years. If you are going by numbers there are insects with far higher populations than us. If you are judging this by biomass then there are types of plankton that far out weigh us. If you are using the development of technology to the point where we can actively effect out environment then I would agree with you. However there are many measures of dominant and by most of them we fail to even register.

We have come to our ego-centric technology based 'dominance' of the Earth because  language, tool use and intelligence (in the sense of problem solving) has been a highly beneficial survival traits, and therefore have been positively selected. Whether these traits continue to assist in our survival will come down to how we cope with the problem of population growth.

Let me say this way, are there any theories why nature let her grip loose on man?
And what was so special about man? So how come man eventually stepped out of the food chain?

Nature has not 'let her grip loose on man' the Boxing Day tsunami is evidence of that. Human ego and arrogance have given rise to the illusion that we are somehow above nature and are no longer subject to its processes. There is a huge volcano under Yellow Stone national park in the USA. When it erupts again, not if, but when. The USA will effectively be erased from the map. Just because the last 10,000 or so years have been relatively benign does not mean that will remain the case.

Mankind stepped out of the food chain by solving a problem, that of gathering food, they started growing it not chasing it. But there are still hunter/gatherer communities. They are out of the food chain (most of the time) because of our unique ability to exploit technology in the form of guns. A grizzly bear is no match for a hunters bullet.

velociraptors also seemed to be pretty smart, so why us and not raptors?
Even though the theory why they came to an end is a bit confusing.
Some say climate change, others say meteor impact which caused climate change?
(My favourite dinosaur in my youth was the Spinosaurus however...)

Good question. And I don't think there is a definitive answer as to why dinosaurs didn't develop an intelligent species.

Why the dinosaurs died out may never be known in absolute detail. However apart from the birds the dinosaur line did die out around 65 million years ago. There have been many mass extinctions traced through geological time. The fossil record actually defines the geological record from about 545 million years ago various rock strata are specifically identified by the fossils one finds in them. One of the problems humans face is cause and effect. We like neat answers. In practice things are rarely, if ever, as simple as they first appear. Current research appears to show that dinosaurs were in decline prior to the Chicxulub impact. So it could well have been a 'last straw' or 'tipping point' event, one that speeded up the possibly inevitable decline of dinosaurs.

I never understood this part of the theory, hopefully someone here can explain?
So why did we continue to evolve?

Well extinction is a part of life. There are many more species that have died out that currently exist. Take for examples Trilobites, they dominated animal life on Earth for hundreds of millions of years.

Evolution via natural selection posits that species evolve into new species and the originator species may be replaced by the new species or continue to exist along side the new species. Natural Selection posits that selection pressures passively effect the gene pool of a given species. Natural Selection influences variations within a species. It is usually in the form of negative feedback, mutations are mostly bad so they are culled out of the population. But the occasional useful/neutral mutation can be spread through a population and cause diversification. This diversification is dependent of genetic isolation of a fraction of a population. If a population is genetically mixing the whole population can contain the positive mutation over time and thus the new species replaces the old one.

Humanity can't distance itself from evolution because it can't distance itself from selection pressures. It is a fact that family size in the so called 1st world is lower than the 3rd world and that with basic sanitation in place the 3rd world family can take more children through to reproductive age. Where these selection pressures will ultimately lead is very difficult, if not impossible to gauge. Will humanity take control of its reproduction or not? If it does not who will survive? The low reproducing 1st worlders or the high reproducing 3rd worlders?

EDIT: To add this, I hope it will clarify my question a bit more.

How did man escape from nature's grip?
If you get too many bunnies, eventually a disease spreads out and kills half of the population.

What I mean is, the rest of nature is pretty much in balance, so how did we break loose?
As we're the only species which can easily destroy nature and ourselves (we are doing it already..)

I think I've already dealt with these above.

[iSok]

Thank you for your post Tank,

I still have a lot of questionss, I think I'll open a new topic (about evolution) with a short personal introduction.
If that be ok with the people here?

[Tank]

Thank you for your post Tank,

I still have a lot of questionss, I think I'll open a new topic (about evolution) with a short personal introduction.
If that be ok with the people here?

More than ok, please do.

[Stevil]

Man is a mammal, but this mammal clearly dominates over every organism.

The common cold dominates humans, so does meningitus, and most other viruses, many bactaria are now becoming resistant to our medicines. Our bodies are a virtual breeding ground, we get dominated and then disgarded without so much as a thank you.

[Asmodean]

Man is a mammal, but this mammal clearly dominates over every organism.

The common cold dominates humans, so does meningitus, and most other viruses, many bactaria are now becoming resistant to our medicines. Our bodies are a virtual breeding ground, we get dominated and then disgarded without so much as a thank you.

Not to mention that humans are dominant among mammals only by virtue of technology. We shape the world around us in order to dominate it. However, our dominance is often illusionary at best.

[Sophus]

But to say that our brains grew, since we can cook our food; that would mean that a lot of animals
in the animal kingdom would have a reasonable chance to become dominant.

Is this the only reason?

Not soft food. Soft meat. Soft cooked meat.

Keep in mind the starting point of the EQ already, and also that we're omnivorous. Our ancestors, having almost no other quality to their advantage, would need to be more clever to survive. Once the big jaws are no longer needed there's no where left to go but toward a larger EQ.

[ForTheLoveOfAll]

I was considering attempting a rebuttal to the author of the thread, but since it seems he copy/pasted and probably wouldn't listen to anything I have to say anyway, I'll settle with the usual responce to such things as this.