Are we still evolving or have we stopped evolving?

Research has shown atheists have a higher intelligence than people with a strong religious faith. The difference is 5.8 points according to findings in developmental psychology!

More members of the "intellectual elite" considered themselves atheists than the national average.

Only 7 percent of members of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God. Whilst only 3.3 percent believed in God in the UK’s Royal Society.

Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQ’s tend not to believe in God."

Neuroscientists have conducted the most comprehensive brain mapping to date of the cognitive abilities measured by the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), the most widely used intelligence test in the world.

The results show that the various factors that comprise a high or low IQ score

depend on particular regions of the brain.

The WAIS test is composed of four indices of intelligence, each consisting of several subtests, which together produce a full-scale IQ score. The four indices are the verbal comprehension index, which represents the ability to understand and to produce speech and use language; the perceptual organization index, which involves visual and spatial processing, such as the ability to perceive complex figures; the working memory index, which represents the ability to hold information temporarily in mind (similar to short-term memory); and the processing speed index.

With the exception of processing speed, which appears scattered throughout the brain, the lesion mapping showed that the other three cognitive indices really do depend on specific brain regions.

For example, lesions in the left frontal cortex were associated with lower scores on the verbal comprehension index; lesions in the left frontal and parietal cortex (located behind the frontal lobe) were associated with lower scores on the working memory index; and lesions in the right parietal cortex were associated with lower scores on the perceptual organization index.

The study also revealed a large amount of overlap in the brain regions responsible for verbal comprehension and working memory, which suggests that these two now-separate measures of cognitive ability may actually represent the same type of intelligence, at least as assessed using the WAIS.

It matters not if they are atheist because of this new type of intelligence or get it because they are atheist – it is a totally different and far more efficient process!!

Humans getting taller is not an example of evolution. It's an example of improved nutrition, which is an entirely different mechanism at work.

Evolution never stops. However natural selection, by which some evolving traits are favoured and others are not, operates primarily as a response to the environment. Humans have become very adept at controlling their environment, and shaping it into the environment they want (or think they want). This may impede the process by which the environment affects evolving genetic traits. Thus the rate at which evolution brings incremental change to the human species may be slower that it otherwise would.

None of this will be perceptible at the leve of the individual lifetime, or indeed at the level of any human civilisation. Evolution, as others have pointed out progresses at a variable rate - either very, very slowly, or much, much more slowly than that.

Scientists agree we're still evolving. I think it's well established that in the future we wont have pinky toes or something.

Evolution will never stop, but I bets it's pretty slow now that we've eliminated all threat from other species and we've built societies that make survival until reproduction age very easy.

The speed of evolution is driven by catastrophe, niche drift and occasionally mutation. Evolution never really stops but in our current situation - large gene pool, lots of cross breeding and stable niche the speed of evolution for our species has slowed down a lot. We could expect to remain fairly similar for many hundreds of generations.

Of course this doesn't take into account the speed at which we are capable of making deliberate changes to our genetic makeup. Within a dozen generations (even within 2) we could radically alter our physiology using direct manipulation of our genes however I would suggest this falls outside the realm of 'evolution'

we are still evolving, scientists agree.

The only way for no evolution to take place is a status called Hardy Weinberg equilibrium, where all gene frequencies remain constant over time.

This equilibrium requires specific conditions to be met.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy%E2%80%93Weinber...

We have stopped evolving. For all practical purposes, evolution is so slow as to be imperceptible, especially in a slowly reproducing species like homo sapiens. So now that homo sapiens is about to go extinct, its evolution has stopped.

I see neanderthals wondering around every day, maybe there hasn't been any evolution , kids in school today are dumber than 20 years ago if you look at test difficulty and scores, maybe we are going backwards

My sixth finger says yes.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=t...

Begsus D telos

We have not evolved to begin with

We are still evolving.

It's just that the factors that affect it have changed