clipped from: www.slate.com   

Now we're in the midst of the next mutation in evolutionary theory: Human evolution didn't slow as we advanced from nature to culture. It accelerated and changed. Culture, born of natural selection, became natural selection's driving force.

This is the message of a new study of the human genome. If true, it radically complicates the debate between nature and nurture. The question is no longer simply whether our genes are the source of civilization, but whether they're also its product.


Organisms evolve in response to changing environments. This can lead, paradoxically, to the evolution of traits that change the environment. Once that happens, the process becomes dialectical, and its speed increases, because culture changes more rapidly than nature does.

Much of what now passes for "natural selection" isn't exactly natural. It's social.

It may be true that today's God a human creation. But so, in a way, is today's evolution.