Quote Originally Posted by mrdevious
there is quite a reason to believe it stopped in mankind. evolution isn't a magical process that happens every once in a while just because, as presented in X-men. it's the result of natural selection. a member of the species that has an advantage in attracting mating partners, or asserting dominance, becomes dominant in the human gene pool. when a species adapts to their environment, the individuals do not actually change. rather, the members of the species that are most suited to surviving in the environment will become prominent in the gene pool. because we have society, government, and welfare programs (and the such), those who would naturally end up dead and out of the gene pool are artificially kept alive by government and societal assistance. for example, if we cure all the cancer patients, those more prone to getting cancer will not die and be removed from the gene pool, hence cancer will persist.

btw, I'm not saying we should let everybody die.
Evolution is a constant and gradual process. It does not stop for any species. Why would one assume that we have reached the end of our evolutionary path, when our form has been evolving consistently for 4 billion years? Evolution is the constant change of the makeup of the genetic pool, and we can all agree that today's genetic pool is not exactly the same as the genetic pool of 10,000 years ago. As people are born and die, the genetic pool changes and the human phenotype changes as some populations persist and others die out. No amount of society and government can stop that. The question is, what kinds of changes will come about, and how beneficial or harmful will they be for humanity?

I'm not saying we should let people die either. I'm just trying to generate some discussion on what effect modern civilization is having on the inevitable process of evolution.