Mr November

I don't have time to try and find a 100% reliable source, but this one seemed pretty legit.

The Appendix: Useful and in Fact Promising | LiveScience

Either way, if you've had your appendix out you'll survive. Much better to lose it than die I'd say.

Guybrush

Natural selection is a consequence of life as we know it. You can't turn it off. What changes is stuff like the strength and direction of selection (is it better to have a smaller or larger beak? Better to birth females or males?). Random killings from natural disasters is part what's called genetic drift and it generally does have an effect (it changes the overall genetic makeup (allelic frequencies) of the human population ever so slightly), but the effect is smaller the larger the population is.

As for what evolution favours, you should remember that fitness which is what is selected for is measured by how much one's able to perpetuate one's genes. If society is made up in a way that makes asocial people and criminals have overall less fitness (have fewer children) than their counter parts, then that could translate to a selection on a genetic level with important effect on our common genetic makeup over the course of our relatively recent history. You could arguably call that natural selection because it is the environment of the societies which dictates the consequence (making it a natural consequence in that environment), but it's not consciously selected for by a great manipulator. Environment is important, so for our example, let's say in pre-society, the traits which more often create asocials and criminals had a generally more positive effect on fitness.

Ecologists often say simply that evolution is simply a change in allele (varieties of genes) frequencies over the course of generations, for example that the relative frequency of the allele which codes for blue eyes is less in the new generation compared to the parent generation. Going by that definition, it would be hard to argue that mankind does not evolve .. or is f.ex the North American population pretty much similar to what it was like 100 years ago?

edit :

In modern society, people can get by as vegetarians as they can get fruits and vegetables from all over the world, filling every nutritional dietary need. For us to evolve the ability to eat and digest more greens than we can now so that we can get by more efficiently on a plant diet, you'd need a pressure in that direction (generally speaking; vegetarians with plant eating behaviours would need to have a fitness benefit over meat eaters) and you'd need a helluva lot of time too .. making it a sort of irrelevant argument.

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Bloozcrooz

Jesus Christ eating meat is not murder unless your a cannibal. This is almost like saying drilling for oil and gas is wrong, and should be banned. You have to eat and if you dont like to eat vegetables then eat meat or eat both of them together. Yes its a sad thing that ignorant cows are born, raised, fed, and fattened up just to satisfy our taste buds. But there are more pressing issues in the world than people who like eating cows and chicken and etc.

ProggyMan

What gives you that impression? It was our natural state for, oh 100,000 years or so.

No. The place of grain as the largest source of calories in the modern and post paleolithic diet is the single worst thing to happen to our species health wise ever. PaNu - P

Guybrush

There are indeed a number of what I think are good arguments as to why one should consider cutting grain (like just about all bakery stuff), sugar (candy, soft drinks etc.) and milk (drinks, lots of bakery stuff) from a healthy diet. The general argument is that the inclusion of these things in our diets is so recent that we haven't had much time to adapt to them, hence they have negative effects on our health. Many scientists believe that a number of the common lifestyle diseases as well as anti-social behaviour and mental problems often stem from our modern diets which include these 3 no-nos.

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VEGANGELICA

I would say that making choices using ethics is *part* of our human nature.

I agree with you that we can suppress many urges and behaviors when we feel we have a good reason to do so.

For example, I love the taste of cheese...hot, gooey, salty, fatty!! And I liked the taste of hamburgers and even veal when I was a kid, not knowing exactly whom I was eating or how people had treated them. However, avoiding actions that support the killing of "food" animals, who have feelings and experiences that I assume they enjoy, is much more important to me than the momentary pleasure I might get from eating these animals.

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The Batlord

Indeed. I would also like to add that human evolution does not need to affect only our physical bodies. Our brains didn't just magically pop into existence. They evolved due to the fact that we were using them more (creation of fire, tools, agriculture, and even group interactions since they require more brain power than being solitary). And we are still finding ever more complicated and difficult things to make our brains deal with, so our brains are still evolving and will always be evolving.

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The Batlord

You only consider the comparison crazy because you don't want to think of animals as having equal worth to a human.

Yes, because we stopped the suffering of a living, feeling creature and gave them a possibility to experience happiness.

And empty milk cartons of all sizes are still empty milk cartons. What's your point? Are you just appealing to my innate sense of human superiority over non-humans?

As slave owners didn't feel nearly as sensitive to black people as they did white people. The fact that you are not as sensitive holds no actual weight. If you really wanted to, you could try to develop more sensitivity to the suffering of animals, you just choose not to.

I think the key word here is "basic". Has it ever occured to you that perhaps animals might have more worth than just their usefulness to humans?

Because, of course, humans are superior to the rest of the world and are not actually part of it.


I'm not asking you to become a vegetarian. I'm just asking you to perhaps challenge your own notions of what is moral conduct in relation to other species.

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Howard the Duck

well, as long as the steak I'm sticking my chops into doesn't moo at me, I don't feel much empathy

Paedantic Basterd

Dirty's never heard of an ecosystem.