Evolution-Humans Evolving?

Fox News Reports on a recent studywhich concludes that Humans Still Rapidly Evolving. Since the article is written in appropriately dense scientific language, I was compelled to take Foxes word for it. Here are a few out takes from the Fox article. But you can read the original.

Study: Humans Still Rapidly Evolving
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
By Ker Than

A comprehensive scan of the human genome finds that hundreds of our genes have undergone positive natural selection during the past 10,000 years of human evolution.

"This study addresses the question 'Are humans still evolving?', and the answer is 'Absolutely,'" study team member Benjamin Voight told LiveScience.

The new study links genetic changes to major events in the history of our species.

"There have been a lot of recent changes — the advent of agriculture, shifts in diet, new habitats, climatic changes — over the past 10,000 years," said Jonathan Pritchard, a human geneticist at the University of Chicago who led the study.

The researchers also found positive selection in four pigment genes important for lighter skin in Europeans that were not known before. Scientists think humans evolved lighter skin in Europe as an adaptation to less sunlight.

The study, which used data collected by the International HapMap Project, is detailed in the March 7 issue of the journal Public Library of Science-Biology.

Maybe I'm just a really dumb layman on this stuff, but in reading the Fox article and the study article, all of the changes that were discussed looked like minor changes within a species. Why spend all that effort to talk about minor changes over 10,000 years? Does anyone have any doubt that humans adapt over generations just like Darwin's Finches or the Bible's examples of animal breeding.

But the headlines and the articles seem to want to convince us plebes that all of this is part of evolution. Show me a super human race and I'll believe. But in fact, I argue that the human race is devolving, not evolving. When we see how many intellectual giants there were in the US 230 years ago, an evolving population should be producing 1000's of Jeffersons, Franklins, and the like. Where are they? Instead we have Edward Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, not to mention Edwards, Kerry, and the other presidential candidates of 2004.

Evolution? Bah! Humbug!

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