I happen to be one who does have a mixture of faith and science. My personal beliefs are that a higher power ( God , if you will ) put in place all of the raw materials etc…needed for life to start and to thrive etc….then, natural selection has taken over from there. A bit difficult to sum it up i a sentence or two, but there you go.

If you see any “scientific evidence” for intellegent design you would be the first. It is exceedingly difficult to design experiments to test ideas that are unknowable because they involve powers that exist outside our realm. Moreover, intellegent design, as an idea, is fluid since it cannot be rigorously tested, but any evidence in favor of “old earth” or natural selection can be discounted by new interpretations of what the “higher powers” have done to trick us or create illusions in our world. On the other hand, to take it on faith is the choice of the individual. I am always disturbed, though, by those that are incapable of having both faith and appreciation for scientific evidence, and in this case (natural selection that is) indisputable fact.

On breasts, none of our near neighbors (the other primates) have noticeable breasts, so there is the question of why do we have them. Their direct utility is unclear (enlarged breasts are not required for milk production) and they can be a hinderance and, large or small, they seem to be eroticized to some degree in many cultures. Added together, that does suggest the possibility that breasts may have been developed at least in part by sexual selection. Of course, it is also possible that enlarged breasts are a response to some other human feature (such as short faced babies). However, visible physical features which imply a greater likelihood of successfully reproducing are often the objects latched onto by sexual selection mechanisms, so it is possible that both mechanisms are in play. Since small breasted women (whose breasts are still much larger than chimpanzee breasts) don’t accidentally smother their babies, it is clear that large breasts (within the human range) do not provide an advantage in feeding short faced babies, and they are definitely much more of a hinderance.

One other thing, humans have lost estrus, lost our sense of smell, and taken to covering our genitalia, so features that make it possible to distinguish men from women quite possibly have a selection advantage all by themselves.

One thing to note about sexual selection, the preference that drives the sexual selection does not need to be hereditary. Cultural preferences are perfectly capable of creating sexual selection. If there is a strong sexual preference (sufficiently that people who don’t meet the criteria are significantly less likely to breed) that lasts for a meaningful length of time (relative to the difference in rate of breeding) where the thing preferred is genetically determined, then sexual selection will occur. For example, if a population of people decided that only blue eyed people would be allowed to breed, it would only take a single generation of this rule being thoroughly enforced for the subsequent population to be entirely blue-eyed. If only blue eyed men were allowed to reproduce, it would take longer, but still would have a substantial effect. This is also true in non-humans (there was recently a very nice review article (in Science, I think) about the effects of public information in evolution that talked about this effect on sexual selection in birds, I can try to track it down if anyone is interested).

Perhaps that is a poor example, but I think you can get my point. Either way, these are questions we will eventually face if for no other reason than we will have the technology to do so in the future (on that I have no doubt).

I’m sorry to be too lazy to look it up, but one of these has a line of argument about the evolution of the eye which parallels closely, in principle, the remarks about wings. And while I don’t remember anything about breasts, there’s an interesting discussion of long tails on some birds.

Whether or not you find yourself persuaded by Dawkins, I believe you would find that he is a really good writer and will give you a lot to think about.

And although Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” covers plenty of other subjects too, it’s worth a read too.

I think it’s possible that once the enormous timescales over which evolution is said to have occurred are appreciated, then looking for anything very significant (in the evolutionary sense) in plastic surgery or modern medicine will not be a very fruitful line of enquiry.

Whoever it was who coined “survival of the fittest” at least gave dramatic emphasis to what might otherwise have seemed a dull explanation.

“Things that survived a little bit better than things that did not survive quite so well, tend to be the things that, having survived, exist” is not exactly snappy is it?

Brad, your point about plastic surgery is an interesting one; however, we humans reproduce on a glacial time scale and it is unlikely that we would see any evidence of it unless 1) humans, in mass numbers, continued to have plastic surgery for eons and 2) they all did it before they started reproducing (to cover up or alter some trait). In the same way, it is way to early to judge how our changing our environment, tech advances and all will influence our evolution. We will likely be manipulating our own genome long before any of the environmental pressures will have an effect on a genetic scale (or the environment will wipe us out altogether),

Surely not!

And here’s a readable link to the article about sex and yeast.

Did you mean the Nature article? Just realized maybe you meant the O’Toole et al., on which I am an author. Here is a link to that article (which was 1999 not 1998 as I mentioned above). I cannot even access that one!! But you can read the abstract. I don’t even have a reprint, and my library has no holdings on the journal. MADNESS!!

Here is the link letters to nature

there is also a news and views article about the manuscript.

I don’t think you will be able to access it, though, as I have an institutional subscription, unless you are also sitting in a University or Library. Nature is widely available in bookstores and news stands though. It is the March 31st issue. Someone put up some site that gives out registrations for sites that I cannot find again, BUT, they had one for http://www.nature.com.

Have you got a link for that article? I’d like to read it, I’m always interested in more details on subjects that interest me. And please excuse me for misreading you.