Hello yanniru.

Yes, one of main premises behind evolution is survival of the fittest. But one of the reasons why we've been so sucessful as a species is that we are capable of extensive species cooperation. It seems ironic that a process that stresses competition, would create cooperation, but it's true. We've devoloped language to facilitate cooperation. No doubt, collaborating was very important in our early hunting ancestors. This would have given rise to more intelligence, to compensate for our relatively puny bodies (compared to carnivorous hunters). The point is, survival of the fittest is a rather ambiguious term. It can be individual survival, or species survival (as it has been in humans), by working together, all individuals in the species stand a better chance of surviving. In this sense, evolution does apply to humans.

It seems that we live in an age where self destruction of our species is a likely prospect, but perhaps only the fittest species should survive. Only a species capable of coexistence with members within a species, along with other species is the key. So far it looks like this isn't the case. My hope was that all the violent individuals would kill each other, leaving only those able to come to peaceful nonviolent confrontations. As you point out, wars rage on and the environment deteriorates due to pollution. Perhaps we're unworthy, doomed to failure. Maybe we need to evolve into a more civilized kind of species.

We all hate war, but I don't think war is an inevitable consequence of evolution. In fact, war should be weeded out by evolution, if we were to survive.

If we destroyed ourselves, we wouldn't be a very fit species would we? In that case scenario, maybe we deserve to be wiped out... to make way for the next dominant species. Maybe next time, it'll be dung beatles?

P.S. former atheist? that's truely unique. I'm the reverse. I guess everything has its yin and yang.