Humans 'evolved' as a function of (years x quantity)?

Most mutations end in surgery or death, not more mutations and evolution. Yes you would think we would see some kind of change that was for the better.

For evolution to work, you are right you do need diversity in the population, but also selective pressures from the environment (natural selection) to chose which advantageous mutations have survival value. Considering more children survive to adulthood than ever before those pressures aren't having an effect on the population.

If there are no selective pressures, then genetic drift comes into play, that pulls the over all gene pool to what the majority would consider the norm.

As for mutations, there are plenty around, I know people with 12 toes, Downs Syndrome people with an extra chromosome and so on.

PS Adaptation is evolution, you can't separate the 2.

It is.

For macro-evolution - look at skin colour, look at sickle cell syndrome, there are hundreds of examples of humans adapting to fit their environments.

Quantity makes little difference. More mutations, but mutations do not drive evolution for species that have sexual reproduction and it dilutes any changes. But evolution is a reaction to changes in the environment. If the environment does not change or, as humans do, we change the environment to suit us then you do not see much change.

But mutations do still occur, and there are multiple studies that show this. The mitochondrial DNA testing for ancestry discovery is based on this.

> then the rate of mutations would be a function of years times the population for genetic mutations

Actually, the rate of new mutations will simply be a function of the population size. Most new mutations are basically neutral, and may either drop out or become established in the population by chance. Older neutral alleles may also drop out, so the overall number of alleles in the population at any one time will also be a function of the population size. The actual alleles represented in that number will change over time as new ones are added and old ones drop out. Any alleles that happen to be advantageous will be maintained in the population by natural selection.

> Considering that the current human species is the most studied and observed with over 7 billion people living, - shouldn't mutation rates and macro-evolution be observed in such a large sampling base?

Mutation rates are observed. But macroevolution requires more than just mutation rates (and more than just genetic variation produced by mutations). It requires at least two genetically isolated populations and differing selective pressures. The stronger the selection differences, the less isolation is required, and vice versa.

For instance, about 150,000 years ago, due to climate changes, a population of brown bears began making a living hunting seals on the ice rather than catching fish and berries in the forest. They became isolated from other brown bears, presumably because of the changing climate, and so mutations that provided an advantage in hunting seals were selected in that population but not passed to other populations by interbreeding. That population thus became more adapted over time for hunting seals and less adapted for living in forests. Eventually the accumulated differences became so great, and the chances of interbreeding with regular brown bears so low, that they are now considered a separate species (that being polar bears).

Similarly, about 6 million years ago, a cooling climate in Africa caused savannahs to expand and forests and jungles to retreat. One population of a particular species of forest ape began making a living on the savannah. That population became genetically isolated from the other apes in the forests, and began adapting to life in the savannah. Over time members of the population lost their grasping feet in favor of feet more adapted to running and walking long distances. It gained a more efficient bipedal gait, and better cooling abilities for running across the hot savannah. Most importantly it gained larger brain size, because despite the increased food intake and more difficult childbirths that large brains require, the resulting increased intelligence allowed them to make better and better tools, and to coordinate hunting and defense in more and more complicated ways. The savannah apes needed those better tools to survive in their new, hostile environment. The forest apes did not. We are the last of the savannah apes.

> I've seen at least 2 responders promote the idea that 'selective pressures' in that the less-fits die off earlier, some how stimulates some an increase of the mutation rate.

They didn't say selective pressures increase mutation rates. It's not about mutation rates, it's about the combination of differing selective pressures and genetically isolated populations.

The number of mutations increases with population yes but large amounts of time are still required for macro-evolution as a large number of generations is still required

Also total speciation requires isolation and natural selection, niether likely to happen with modern humanity

We do have mutation rates of about 20 per generation or so...but not every mutation is deadly or immediately evolutionarily crucial. Evolution is not a simple linear function. It is subject to environmental changes, which can be rather periodical.

Oh my gawd, this is what happens when people without any science degrees read articles written by PEOPLE with no science degrees.

Read up on "DNA proof-reading system".

And, yes mutation is still occurring within humans.

By your logic, then why don't bacteria and viruses become multicellular organisms? There are more than 7 billions bacterial cells in the world, you know that?

And yes bacteria and viruses evolve in their own way.

Even Michael Behe accepts we evolved from apes. That's right even one of the main spokesmen for ID doesn't dispute the evidence showing our common ancestry with primates.

"Humans 'evolved' as a function of (years x quantity)"

Arguments based on oversimplification of reality tend not to be very good ones.

we humans are just that and we did not ever descend from apes. The problem comes from early animal man who had sex with the then huge she-apes around them so that their offsprings were simian types etc. Amen.