I think the time scale is too short. In the other thread (about the CNN nonsense) I linked to a story speculating that it'll just be too silly to be religious by the end of the century. I feel that's the way things are going. Divergence of a species takes thousands of years.
One very disturbing theory is that psychopathic behavior is a sign of the next evolutionary step. Remember....evolution goes with what
works, not what is right. I found out about this when listening to the awesome Quirks & Quarks podcast on CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/06-07/sep30.html
Quote:
As a society, we’re both captivated and repelled by psychopaths and their seemingly endless potential to commit murder and mayhem. There’s no end to the number of movies made about them, not to mention true-crime novels and news stories that focus on such notorious psychopaths as Ted Bundy and Paul Bernardo. However, the popular portrayal of psychopaths is a little misleading. Since many of them do commit horrendous crimes, it’s easy to chalk them up as evil monsters. But there’s more to them than that. In fact, there’s a lot of new scientific research looking into the nature of psychopaths that suggests there’s a biological basis for their so-called evil behaviour....
Dr. Marnie Rice is a psychologist with the Mental Health Centre Penetanguishene, in Penetanguishene, Ontario. She studies criminal psychopaths who are incarcerated there. She views psychopathic behaviour as an evolved survival strategy. She says that there’s not a lot of evidence to suggest that psychopaths are mentally ill but there’s good reason to believe that their disturbing behaviour is an evolved trait. She says psychopaths have evolved to capitalize in a particular environmental niche -- namely preying on the rest of society.
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Scary.