Advances in medicine is interfering with natural selection

[david51058]

Does anyone think that as medicine and the treatment of illness gets more advanced, nature's system of elvolution and natural selection is being impeded? In the animal kingdom only the strongest survive and reproduce, hence the individual species grow stronger and healthier through the generations. However all humans are kept alive and are encouraged to reproduce no matter how weak they are, thus hampering evolution.

[Dagman]

I'm a bit late here but I see it this way, 'we' are natural to this planet as any other animal, therefore anything we do is 'natural progression', even sticking a man on the moon, it is a natural progress of a species indiginous to the Earth. We are adapting, improving, building etc like any creature in it's state of evolution. Some species can fly, some can live in extreme conditions, some survive by eating that which to others would be deadly. They have all evolved to live.

[Scylax]

Man, through his intelligence and ingenuity, forever seeks to defeat Nature, since it is red in tooth and claw. Nature's devices can be extremely cruel and wholly unfeeling. Therefor, at every level, Man thwarts the 'inevitability' of an uncaring Fate, and rises above the savagery of the jungle.

Life used to be 'nasty, short and brutal'; then came Science and rationality, and the world changed. Theologians and other clock-stoppers are fighting a rearguard action, but it's too late. We can control and ameliorate evolution, so that its evils diminish with every generation. Don't wish for yesterday, it was horrible.

[Old_Geezer]

Evolution will always apply to every living thing. However it is a missue of the word to apply it elsewhere. For example: cars do not evolve, because they don't reproduce more cars slightly different to themselves, that are subject to a filtering system, allowing only the "best" to reproduce next generation. Cars are designed by intent; by humans. (Although it is true that good design sells well, and so tends to stay in the market for longer; so one can understand why the word is misused.)

[jomifl]

Hi OG..I take your point re.cars not breeding and in that sense cars do not evolve of themselves. However cars are the manifestation of a process in a living creature. The phrase 'survival of the fittest' does not specify how or what survives so does apply to cars.
Scylax..humans may tinker with a bit of evolution but we and our activities will always be dominated by it. It is all encompassing and unavoidable.