evolution will slowly devolve us back to single celled organisms as a direct result of medical science allowing inferior genetics to survive and reproduce
i can't tell if you're being serious, but i haven't known you to be so elaborately sarcastic so i'll assume so.
evolution by natural selection doesn't work that way, and even if it did, once we "devolved" back into homo erecti we wouldn't have the brain capacity to use medical science and we'd resume normal evolution back to homo sapiens and start all over
from there - but not from single celled organisms.
it's not medical science that's halted natual selection. it's been a cumulative process probably dating back to the gradual development of agriculture. as people could feed themselves more reliabily, and especially once some people could feed all people (ie, crop surpluss), natural selection started losening its grip.
modern medicines impact on genetics has been much greater on bacteria than on humans, vz. antibiotic-resistant super-bacteria. these genes for things like sickle cell anemia, on the other hand, go back thousands of years to relatively stable populations.
evolution by natural selection doesn't result in perfect life forms, but rather life forms that are merely good enough to keep breeding while competing with other life forms for finite resources.
certain hereditary genetic defects are becoming more common, yes. but that doesn't mean they're bringing us any closer to being single celled organisms, or anything like "devolution" (which makes about as much logical sense as "reverse racism"). in terms of genetics, it'd be like saying typos in an instruction manual would cause you to accidentally build a sofa when you purchased a dresser. typos might happen, and they might cause you to make an error during the assembly process. but the chances that typos could accumulate to such a level as to give instructions to build something else entirely are slim to none.
finally, putting all that aside, the "slowly" part of "slowly devolve us" is tens or hundreds of millions of years - at least it was the first time around. before we face the choice of eugenics (restriction on reproductive practices), we'll probably already have the ability to correct genetic defects in embryos at the genetic level. at least, i'd put my money on it. as it stands now, we don't mess with human genes (to cure a disease in a living human, anyway; experimental researchers are starting to apply molecular engineering to DNA, though).
the more likely reason we'll have to chose who can have children and how many is the population level. it'd be hard - at best - for the earth to sustain the current population level at its current spread of living standards indefinately. it'd be impossible to support 6 billion people living an american (or otherwise economically developed) middle class lifestyle without a much greener economy. plus, at the current populat growth rates, there will be about 8 billion people on earth by 2020 and 10 billion by 2050, where it
might start to level off.
as it stands now, western medicine tries to find ways of ameleorating the proximate causes of known genetic diseases - in other words, the environmental factors that make the defecitve gene a problem. take
phenylketonuria for example. in days past, it caused mental retardation and seizures. in a hunter-gatherer society, children born with it would have probably been euthanized by the time they had symptoms. but now that we understand the disease, its effects can be completely controlled through diet in most cases.
does that argue against your point? not directly. however, the disease itself isn't caused by a single defect. according to the article i linked above, "More than four hundred disease-causing mutations have been found in the PAH gene". i did the footwork of looking into the citation, which links to a cite where you can buy the full article; i didn't buy it, but the abstract was available as a demo. it much more clearly indicates that different mutations cause the same disorder.
my point is that we don't know what a "perfect" human gene looks like. we can use our knowledge to week out genes that we know to cause diseases, sure. but the prospect of eliminating all genetic diseases is a much more daunting task. if we need to start limiting birth due to overpopulation, and it's a rational choice, i don't think the science of genetics could rationalize such choices. in think in honest reality, the "evil" will be along economic lines. the simple, cold rationality will be: only those most able to support children will be allowed to bear them. in our society, that boils down to economic class. i don't think the rich are about to start paying for the most genetically fit children; like all people, they want their children to be their own flesh and blood. but who knows what culture might do.
the funny twist is that if things did go that way- richer groups given preferential reproduction rights - the rate of genetic defects would probably increase! just look at blue blood in the european royalties. i can't think of a single society where the richest groups weren't also the smallest (least genetically diverse) and most likely to reproduce among themselves (maintain the power).
shallow end of the gene pool much?
anyway, i believe we
can avoid that. how is another question. i mean, we've all got a whole lot of things in common that are at stake. some things have managed to unite very large groups of people in the past, and not always based on the threat of another group.
i don't know a lot about most religions, and i know very little about yours. but i know a lot about buddhism. i don't chose to identify myself as a buddhist, and i don't believe its cosmology literally, but that's about all that separates me from other mahayana buddhists.
i make no mistake that buddhisms and buddhists throughout history have changed and don't represent a single, unified group. it was huge at its peak, and it's still considered a major religion. why? i mean, if some other religion is right, or if they're all wrong, why do the "false" religions catch on?
we are not simply our genes. religious experience can foster something healthy in us. community. ethics, though not always very well. comfort. and there's something more. from what i do know, it's variously called satori, samadhi, moksha, wu-wei, fana, inhabitation by the spirit or rebirth, and i'm sure i missed some other 'major' ones plus countless shamanic rituals, with or without psychedelics. St. Teresa of Avila chronicled it in her memoirs, saying "The soul is dissolved into that of God..." it's similarly described in the hindu isha upanishad:
"Whoever sees all beings in the soul
and the soul in all beings
does not shrink away from this.
In whom all beings have become one with the knowing soul
what delusion or sorrow is there for the one who sees unity?
It has filled all.
It is radiant, incorporeal, invulnerable,
without tendons, pure, untouched by evil.
Wise, intelligent, encompassing, self-existent,
it organizes objects throughout eternity."
to describe it psychologically, it's the dissolution of ego into an absolute. it doesn't come easy. i've experienced it here and there through meditation. i'd say orgasm and death are the only other times that can be observed to happen with remotely similar effects. so why is it that the most extremely religious public figures in the west, not to mention all of our political and economic leaders, seem totally devoid of such experience?
but i can't help but thing it's those tidbits of divinity or whatever you want to call it that have given religions their longevity. not necessarily to those extremes, of course, and not just those things. i think the best definition of religion is: sponge. a religious system can incorporate all sorts of different aspects of human life, systematically or idiosyncratically. sometimes it has strong or direct ties to political power, sometimes it is the political power, but not always. sometimes community is really important, sometimes it's based on adversity and other times not, and sometimes religion is a private practice. i could apply that variously to many more aspects of human life, but i think the point's been made. religion won't go away. but where it is and will go is another question.
i think we can figure good ways to change, and ones that everyone can feel at least okay about without having been decieved, bred or drugged into being okay with it. i just don't know what could possibly bring everyone to the same table long enough to even develop some ground rules.
maybe
that's what ascention should mean.
anyway, long tangent. but, that one little sentence that got me going had a lot packed into it. lots of fodder for discussion, at least.
cheers