In this day and age I find that practically everyone believes in Darwin's Theory of Evolution. I personally adopted it in 8th grade when we were taught it in our principles of science class. The reason most believe his theory to be true is that it makes pretty good sense. For hundreds of years science has been answering our questions about the unknown. Science has allowed us to start to understand the microscopic workings of matter and our universe. If science has been answering unknowns for years, people are far more likely to accept this theory because it's backed by the scientific community, rather than a theory made up by some man in Detroit. I think Darwin's ideas are also far more believable when its greatest natural confliction, the church, works alongside scientists to try and help science explain ideas. The article "How to Teach Science to the Pope" mentions the vast resources that the church has at its disposal and how the church works with the scientific community to incorporate science into religion so that they don't conflict and end up being at each other's throats. It's hard to determine if humans have been physically evolving, there's not a lot of physical proof we can present to say we have. When it really gets down to it we've got about 3000 years of history we know a good amount of. Evolution takes place over hundreds of thousands of years to adapt to a species enemies. Even since the Roman and Egyptian empires our only real enemies are each other. We're not preyed upon by animals because we construct dwellings and have guns to protect us. Some diseases can still pose troubles but nowadays that's nothing compared to the amount of fatal diseases when there was no medicine or established medical field. We tend to not even adapt to our environment. If the environment is too cold for us to physically survive in it, instead of not going there like any normal animal might, we just throw on thick layers of clothes and bring some form of heater. This is the idea that writer and futurist Jamais Cascio puts forth in his article, "Get Smarter."
Instead of physically evolving over millennia of trial and error on a certain subject, we use our cognitive abilities to solve problems. Our most powerful evolutionary asset is definitely our brain. Our brains allowed us to make hunting easier in the past, to construct dwellings to make the condition for living better, to even develop communication systems that allow humans around to world to acquire knowledge on a subject they may want to know. For instance, and this is extreme, but say a man wanted to know how to brace his leg after he broke it in the middle of the outback with no one else around. If he has any sort of internet capable phone, and service, he could bring up his browser and look up how to brace his leg. This sort of easy access to advanced and not everyday knowledge is how we adept to hostile environments. Our almost daily immersion in knowledge can lead to some deficiencies.
Nicholas Carr's piece "Is Google making us stupid?" brings this idea to life. Nicholas opens his idea up with the topic of reading. Most of the article is true but the reading part really strikes home to me. The speed at which we can acquire practically everything we want over the internet has definitely lead me to be a little less attentive to certain activities. When at work I would usually start a task but get bored, so I'd drop the task and try to find something else to do. Being able to hop on your computer and watch a specific episode of your favorite show in about five minutes can definitely lead to impatience in boring situations. I think to myself, "I've been bleaching these tables for 15 minutes. I could've been home playing a game, doing homework, or researching. This also applies to reading and the problems some have with it. Carr said that the fast pace of information technology has made it harder for him to stay connected to a book. Where as he used to be able to read in long segments he can barely make it threw a chapter without his attention span wearing thin. The easy access digital media like videos and games have definitely made it harder for me to get started on a book, but they've made me read more overall. When I sit at my computer I always finish a game I'm playing or a video I'm watching in one sitting, if not, I pick up where I left off immediately when I can. This is how I read books now. It's harder for me to start one, but as soon as I'm reading I won't do anything else until I'm done with that book. I recently took a train trip back to Connecticut which was seven hours long, so I brought a book to read. This almost 700 page book took me about 10 hours to read. I spent the entire train ride reading, and when I got back to my house I lay down on the couch and finished the book. If there's anything that Google and the internet has done its make fun more addicting. If I'm bored I'm more fidgety, just like Carr says, but if I'm having fun I always complete what I'm doing before I move on. So just like Cascio stated, we evolve our knowledge far faster than out actual bodies. Why would our bodies need to adapt to something like polio when we can invent a cure that can be taken as a child to prevent the disease for life.
In short, I believe Darwin to be spot on in his theories basis, especially pertaining to animals even today. But humans aren't generally threatened by anything more than disease, our own creations, and our own stupidity. Maybe evolution will somehow opt out a part of our brain that makes us act without thinking. But for now we'll keep using out knowledge and studies to react to changes in our environment. Much like humans react in the recent Movie 2012 humanity knew the disaster was coming, and in about five years they constructed massive ships that could stay afloat after the world was flooded and could house a good chunk of the world's population. In less than five years, humans reacted to the "end of days" and survived it, not with evolutionary gills, but with an expansive knowledge of seafaring and structural engineering. Here I have a video that helps back up my main point of Darwin still being credible even today.
Works Cited
Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”. The Atlantic. 2007. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
Cascio, Jamais. “Get Smarter”. The Atlantic, July/August 2009. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/intelligence
Consummate proof of Darwinian evolution. Youtube. Google, 11 Nov. 2007. 30 Nov. 2009.
Mason, Michael. “How to Teach Science to the Pope”. Discover Magazine. August 18, 2008. http://discovermagazine.com/2008/sep/18-how-to-teach-science-to-the-pope/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C
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