Have evolution select species to die sooner?

Species have NOT evolved to die. The more accurate phrasing is that they have not evolved to live indefinately. After reproduction, and the passing on of genetic material, Selection can no longer exert any pressure on a population. This means that a species cannot evolve a longer life span unless there is some environmental pressure which causes reproduction to occur later, thereby selecting those individuals who can both survive, and remain fertile until such a time. Actually, since reproduction is the defining event, some think that populations may actually enrich with genes which cause enhanced function in early life, but are detrimental later, eg. increased calcium deposition in bones. Its called antagonistic pleiotropy.

Recent research on yeast has found genes which are regulated by metabolism, and can sense a dearth of nutrition. When they do, they cause changes which allow the yeast to extend both their life and fertility until conditions improve. So you can see that there are some ways in which selection can yield a longer life span.

Evolution works to increase the chances of species survival. Once procreation has occurred, the pressure is off, so to speak, and we have done our job. This is why many moths die after laying eggs, just a few days after emerging from metamorphosis.

Life just for the sake of it is not considered a factor in natural selection, and any mutation for longevitity would be a waste of energy, which may well be detrimental to the species overall.

Similarly, diseases which affect older people (such as Alzheimer's) are not selected out, because people have already had their children, so the absence of these diseases is not an advantage to anyone, or to the species.

Evolution works best when there is lots of generations. For example, viruses can evolve very rapidly because of their short lifespan and rapid reproduction. The reason why this works is because rapid reproduction and slow life spans keep the gene pool fresh and constantly changing. If a species lived a long time, then the gene pool wouldn't be that diverse since you would have one animal procreating for many years. So the shorter a species life span is, the more diverse the gene pool becomes.

Because immortality is detrimental to evolution. The older generation dying off speeds up evolution, leaving space and sole reproductive rights to the younger generation. So way way back, natural selection would have selected for many organisms with a limited life-span - they would have out-competed others for many novel niches.

In the case of us, we have evolved to live a bit longer, past our reproducing age, because elders and grandparents are important in our social structure, having lived and learnt for the longest. But we won't ever evolve to live forever.

Oh, and yes, evolution is always incomplete.

Immortal creatures would overpopulate a region eventually. Either the old die off of the young cannot grow to adulthood. If the young do not grow to adulthood, evolution stops. Some other creature will eventually evolve to displace the immortal creature. From an evolutionary standpoint, immortality is not a favorable trait. Evolution is never complete.

Nature has developed immortality.

Circular chromosomes don't require telomerase. And, infact, the organisms with circular chromosomes happen to be the most varied, plentiful, ancient and dominant (in terms of biomass) on the planet.

Also, when human cells try and pull off the immortality trick, it has terrible consequences for the attached person, ie cancer.

If nature selected immortality, it would be a dead end, and nature won't be able to try new options. Plus with out death nature would eventually run out of building materiel.

Have a nice life while it last and hope nature improves on the next model.

the nature of science is knowing that we don't know all answers. and using a provable method to find them.

the nature of faith, is Stating that we don't know all the answers, and using... uh... faith? to pacify them.