I have been wondering about the long-term future of the human race from an evolutionary stand-point By long-term future I'm talking about thousands or millions of years from now.
It's hard to know what the long -term future will bring but curious what you think will happen.
Do you think that:
1) The human race as we know it today will become extinct because humans will evolve into some other species that's better equipped to handle its environment. If you think this will happen, what do you imagine the new species to be like?
2) The human race will become extinct and there will be no other species to follow it. Humans will become an evolutionary dead-end. If you think this will happen, when do you think it will be? What would be the primary cause of humans demise?
3) The human race will remain and not evolve into any new species. There may be other intelligent beings out there which humans helped create but this is not evolution.
1) I posted a very similar thread, I didn't realise someone already had. To get off the tangent, I believe human beings are not at their evolutionary peak, and we have a genetic modification or two to undergo. Look up
Homo evolutis or
Homo sapien evolutis. There's a theory out there that suggests
Homo sapien shall eventually reach a stage of mental betterment, a stage that is Einsteinian to the general
H. sapien populace.
When one studies human phylogeny, we see that it is rare for just one species of the
Homo Genus to exist, and oftentimes, a new, slightly better evolved one emerges from the ancestral stock. Applying the Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest, this new species successfully competes with the older one, and because of having adapted to the new external stimuli that may appear globally on the planet, and optimum utilisation of available resources, will drive the older species into extinction.
The new species is expected to be taller, bear less body hair than the average
Homo sapien, smaller mandible and maxilla, and possibly, smaller arms.
2) The human demise theory is a possibility if current urbanisation trends continue. One might even apply the concept of insular evolution to humans. Insular evolution occurs on islands, and due to stagnation of the genetic pool, the species eventually goes extinct. If one considers the entire planet as one island, due to the accessibility of every stretch of land in existence, and due to progressive rises in interracial reproduction, the genetic pool of humans could also stagnate.
3) As for Creationism, whether by God, or extra terrestrials, I think the theory is pure bulldandruff. There is not a single nanoparticle of evidence that supports this theory, and all evidence available points to Evolutionism being correct.
So in conclusion, I believe that the Human race has two options- evolve, or die out.