Human Beings - the apex of evolution?

[_honorentheos]

UD,

I don't know that a person can be wrested free of the idea that humanity is the crown jewel of evolution if they wish to hold onto the illusion.

I grant that our mental capacities make us unique. I submit that in the end, evolutionary process won't care, and it will be the diversity of life forms that will continue life forward. If we manage to get off this earth in some way, it will be the "rats" in the cargo holds that will likely thrive in these new environments while we live in our technologically created fake environments.

I do think, however, that the potentially pending capacity to create life makes us singularly special. If the day comes that humanity begins to create life in a test tube, and formulate new DNA-like self-replicating forms, we may become something of an apex, if only because we would then become another platform for a separate strand of life to spring off of, adding even more to life's overall diversity.

[_Uncle Dale]

...If the day comes that humanity begins to create life in a test tube, and formulate new DNA-like self-replicating forms, we may become something of an apex, if only because we would then become another platform for a separate strand of life to spring off of, adding even more to life's overall diversity.

Unless, perhaps, the denizens of Alpha Centauri 5-b accomplished that
feat a million years ago, and their eight-legged artificial offspring are
already colonizing an adjacent star system.

At what point, back along the evolutionary tree, might we and my
hypothetical Centaurians be of common stock, I wonder -- at the
stage of self-replicating life; or at the stage of planetary formation;
or all the way back to the time when space dust was gathering?

At any rate, should our test-tube life run into their test-tube life,
"somewhere out there," then I suppose they can call one another
"cousin," and my question will be a moot one.

I'm still more than three-quarters convinced that intelligent species
destroy themselves, leaving no genesis stock for galactic civilizations.

UD

[_Tarski]

Have we reached the end?

The end of what? Evolution isn't a linear progression at all, let alone an upward progression in any sense. It is a branching and we are on one tiny branch.
Will our offspring include creatures significantly different from us? Yes. Yes, if our branch does not terminate too soon due to something like an extinction or world catastrophe. Our current branch will likely yet branch out manyfold given enough time.

[_truth dancer]

Doesn't our sun, or solar system have something like another five billion years left?

If so, I'm thinking there is a whole lot more to come.

Our species is only what, 150,000 years old and the average length of a species existing on our earth is around 5 million years (If I recall correctly). We are just at the beginning of what will be.

Another million years of so and life will look back at us as we do a paramecium.

Actually, this is one reason why the LDS church doesn't make sense to me. It's doctrine seems to imply that evolution stops with humans right at this particular moment in history.

I just don't see it.

~td~

[_Uncle Dale]

...
I just don't see it.
...

If we were at the sacred grove, today, and by some warp in the
fabric of time, also at the moment of Joe's reported first vision...

And brought along with us a medium sized tactical nuclear weapon,
and set the thing off, just then...

What would the aftermath be?

Eloheim and Jehovah, being celestialized entities, survive the blast
unscathed -- while poor Joe, Palmyra, and half of Rochester end up
as windblown fallout sifting down upon Syracuse?

And astronauts in the Space Station watch from above as the
tragic spectacle unfolds?

Mormonism belongs back in 1820.
It makes no sense in 2011.

UD

[_moksha]

Spend a million years mating TBMs together and you would have a lot of TBMs.

[_EAllusion]

Uncle Dale -

Our ability to intentionally manipulate our environment in the manner and to the extent we do certainly is unique among living things on earth, but that doesn't make us an apex anymore than the blue whale having a giant penis makes it the apex of life. We certainly might be fond of it, but that doesn't make it objectively an ultimate trait to have. Evolution doesn't progress to better and better things. Rather biological forms spring up, stick around, and fade away due to a combination of luck and fitness. If it's alive right now, it's doing as well as you are.

In terms of ability to bring about radical change to the environment, I think the cyanoabacteria responsible for oxygenating our atmosphere have a lot more on us than anything we've done.

[_Uncle Dale]

...I think the cyanoabacteria responsible for oxygenating our atmosphere have a lot more on us than anything we've done.

Probably so.

There are probably thousands of environmental variables which had to
mesh into place, ere we could have ever become viable lifeforms. And
we have only been around for a relatively short time -- so who knows
what other species might one day surpass us in biological complexity,
self-awareness, and power over events on the planet.

But, as I said a couple of times, we are on the verge of having the
ability to destroy earth -- not just the biosphere for a few millions
of years, but the planet itself. The day will arrive that a certain
group of us will possess that power, and then after that, smaller
and smaller groups, until the ability rests in the hands of a single
individual.

I'm having a difficult time imagining how another species could
surpass us, in terms of intelligence, tool-making, mathematical
calculative perception, remote sensing, space travel, etc. etc.

So in terms of destruction, I think we are near the apex.

But let us suppose that we somehow evolve past this danger I
keep pointing out --- and that we learn how to create life,
and terraform other planets, and evolve ourselves to live
elsewhere, perhaps even in adjacent star systems.

What about construction?

If LDS godhood is sometimes expressed as the ability to organize
entire worlds out of space dust, how might we evolve to that level?

Or, if not ourselves, can we even envision another species obtaining
that godlike capability?

Something along those lines is hinted at, in the end of the sequel
to the movie 2001 -- What if we ourselves one day do that --
turn Saturn into a companion star, with orbiting inhabited moons?

Would doing THAT demonstrate a certain kind of apex evolution?

UD

[_Simon Belmont]

Actually, this is one reason why the LDS church doesn't make sense to me. It's doctrine seems to imply that evolution stops with humans right at this particular moment in history.

I just don't see it.

~td~

Does not the rest of Christianity view humanity in this manner as well? How about Islam? How about Hinduism?

[_Simon Belmont]

Mormonism belongs back in 1820.
It makes no sense in 2011.

UD

But Uncle Dale... your website is "dedicated to the Latter Day Saints." So, while you view yourself as an "anti-Mormon" (as stated in another thread), why create a website with thousands of historical documents which are about that which you are against?

I don't get you, man. You are obviously very interested in theology, Mormonism in particular, yet you speak both in defense of it and against it (lately, it seems, more the latter).