Symbiotic relationships

@w4e: That's nearly right IMO - we have definitely reached a stage where we could begin spreading into space, making our dying out because of a single catastrophic event less likely. But I think we're still under selective pressure - from each other. Homo homini lupus est, man is a wolf unto man. I concede that, since we don't have much data we can look back at yet, our further development must remain speculation. The issue is complex, and I simply don't have a hypothesis I could support with evidence.

We think it is. Our earth features a wide range of environmental circumstances, some of which can be found on other planets in our solar system. If life exists on another planet, I doubt there will be no competition, no pressure to adapt, to become the meanest dog in the pack.

Hearken! Thou shalt not equate abiogenesis and evolution, thus spake I.

Are we discussing evolution or abiogenesis? I say we stick with evolution and try not to derail this thread too badly.

It's pointing out the error in your logic. The universe does not HAVE to have us in it. If the universe were different, the universe would be here but we wouldn't be here to marvel at all the parameters.

In the Strong Anthropic Principle, which is what you are using, there is a wandering "must". That is, the universe "must" be like this. What you have done is couch your logic in an incorrect fashion.

Let's try a different example. John is unmarried. Therefore he must be a bachelor, right? That's your logic. Poor John, he can never get married! The example shows the problem. If John stops being single, he simply stops being a bachelor.

That's the error. If you don't, then we simply aren't here to wonder about it. You don't HAVE to have everything.

Creationism and creation aren't the same thing. Creationism is a particular HOW that God made humans. Creation is that God made humans. Evolution can be just as much God making humans as creationism. You've made a mistake tying a particular HOW of creation to the existence of God.

Humans didn't beat natural selection. They were made BY natural selection.

Natural selection is a process that yields design. Here is how Darwin described it:
"If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each beings welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occured useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection." [Origin, p 127 6th ed.]

Now, as you say, wind distributing pollen isn't efficient. So any plant that has the slightest attraction to insects so that they would distribute the pollen is going to make more plants than the others, right? So soon ALL the plants in that population will have the adaptation because all would have descended from the first plant that had that variation.

Then the next variation that IMPROVED the first would also outcompete the other plants for reproduction. And so the improvements ACCUMULATE one step at a time until you have the flowers we see today and the symbiosis with insects.

It may sound crazy to you, but it makes perfect sense to us. And has been documented hundreds of times that it actually happens.
In that case you still have natural selection, but you have stabilizing selection. However, the environment is almost never totally stable. Any small change in the environment and we are off on directional selection again.

This was tried before 1859. It failed because most of the designs in biological organisms simply aren't "intelligent".

You don't know the first and the second is false. There were no bees 300 million years ago.

The first is correct. However, in the second the insect made from that germ cell will indeed test the mutation to see if it makes the wings work better. It is just pure blind luck that the individual would get that mutation. It's not a matter of choice. It's either in its genes or not.

Of course mutations in the germline can be adaptive. After all, they ARE going to be passed onto the next generation, and in THAT generation they WILL be in the somatic cells.

Who has been feeding you this line of manure? Worship4ever, think it trhough. A mutation in the germ cells. Random with respect to the needs of the individual because it can't effect the individual. But THEN used to make the next generation. And then EVERY cell, including the somatic cell, will have the mutation. NOW it is tested in the environment. IF it is successful, then the individual lucky enough to have the mutation will have more offspring. Since a mutation in the same gene is very unlikely, it's offspring will have that mutation by inheritance. Except, of course, for the offspring it won't be a "mutation" but their normal genone.

And soon, since it is successful, EVERY insect in the population will have that allele (mutation). So when the NEXT mutation comes along, it will ADD to the first, because the first will already be present.

You've got the basics of natural selection; you simply haven't thought it thru what those basics mean.

The technology we have developed has removed us from a lot of selection pressures. But not all. HIV is such a selection pressure. So there are still threats to our survival and reproductive success. There are just fewer of them. Of course, there are threats out there that out technology creates: like nuclear war, biological weapons, massive ecological disruption due to pollution, etc. The verdict isn't in yet on whether we are out of natural selection. The past 20,000 years may simply be an aberration.

BTW, the environment of the Kalahari desert has adapted the !Kung to start becoming a new species. And the environment of the Himalayas and Andes has done the same for those human populations.

And no, that does not make us "above" other species, but just means that our particular adaptation -- the ability to make tools to make tools -- had far reaching consequences.