The End of Evolution?

Somehow I think what Dr. Jones said was misrepresented by Mohler. This is what the London Times article said:

Speaking today at a UCL lecture entitled “Human evolution is over” Professor Jones will argue that there were three components to evolution – natural selection, mutation and random change. “Quite unexpectedly, we have dropped the human mutation rate because of a change in reproductive patterns,” Professor Jones told The Times.

“Human social change often changes our genetic future,” he said, citing marriage patterns and contraception as examples. Although chemicals and radioactive pollution could alter genetics, one of the most important mutation triggers is advanced age in men.

It also seems to me that when man achieves the ability to change his own genetic makeup, it interferes with Darwin's natural selection process. Therefore, the evolution process is changed and evolution as it formerly was defined no longer exists.

I'm not supporting evolution as a theory nor do I believe that it in any way can stand on a par with the reality of God's involvement in the beginning of our universe.

Maybe I'm wrong and both Dr. Mohler and you interpreted this in the same way I did.

 

As a side bar:

Tomorrow I have to take a test in Psychology. This is what the material came down to after reading two pages of praise for the "groundbreaking" works of B.F. Skinner in my college text; all in one paragraph:

"He believed that the application of basic learning principles could create a better world, more humane world for all, one that was free of poverty and violence." ..."has inspired many people over the last 50 years; entire communities,..." "...live according to the principles discovered in Skinner's research."

Maybe I'm reading more into it because of all the other evolutional dogma I've had to endure lately, but the above sounds like a Messiah complex to me.

 

Skinner wouldn't be the first scientist to suffer from ideas of grandiosity. He did do a lot of good work in the field of Psychology that is still useful today and the book Brave New World drew a lot of concepts from his work, probably to the detriment of his vision. But the motivation for scientific research often is to "change the world" and leave a lasting impact on human civilization.

 

From an evolutionary perspective, it is true that natural selection is no longer the primary driving force for biological change in humans and other plants and animals. Human intervention regarding which plants and animals survive or die as well as which genes get passed onto the next human generation have overridden natural selection.

 

Oops. I was thinking of Pavlov with regard to Brave New World.