Biological Evolution is... irrelevant

The battle rages on in the U.S. over teaching darwinian evolution in school. Some fight to have Creationism or Intelligent Design taught as alternatives. However, this debate is mostly over the teaching of children and not very deep into the concepts themselves. This is a cultural debate, not a scientific one. This is largely because to people living in the present and looking into the future, evolution DOESN'T REALLY MATTER.

Sure, it was an important scientific breakthrough at the time, and it has led to a much better understanding of where we came from, but the mechanisms of the past should not necessarily control the goals of tomorrow. And lets face it, evolution will not have a significant impact on human society in the forseeable future. Why?

Well, first of all, evolution take hundreds of thousands of years. Our technological advances are accelerating such that our world changes significantly in centuries and decades. Biological evolution is working so slowly as to be irrelevant in the short term.

Secondly, we've separated "good traits" from the main tool of evolution: procreation. Almost all humans can now survive long enough to procreate. In fact, the birth rate in industrialized nations is dropping while the rate in poor countries remain high. If anything, we are trending towards the evolution of poor traits.

Finally, human beings formed societies. By doing so, we made the organism that evolves a society rather than an individual. But societies are different in several important ways:

1. Societies can change - biological evolution is based on random mutation (luck) and dying. Societies can plan and change on purpose without dying out. Poorly constructed societies can also die out while well-planned societies survive, but this is not purely by chance. Intelligent design and redesign is allowed.

2. Societies can merge - in individual evolution, we require a LOT of individuals to support random mutation and the weeding out of bad genes. Though societies can also be weeded out, there are a lot fewer of them. In fact, as we advance technologically, we have also globalized our societies. There are now fewer socieities that grow large. Eventually there will only be a few truly distinct societies. This means that traditional random evolution becomes hazardous. We cannot let these societies die without suffering immensely. That is why we must evolve our societies by choice and design.

Biological evolution WAS important. But understanding Societal evolution and planning it... that is what is truly important today.