I'm just leaping in here before reading the whole thread ... too many damned pages ... but on the first few I've noticed already that people seem to have trouble understanding evolutionary and environmental changes.
Dominant fingers? That's due to PRACTICE, not evolution. Likewise, if we were required to all walk backwards everywhere all our lives we'd all get better at it. That's not evolution, it's just practical specialisation. Again, if we ran everywhere all the time, we'd get faster and fitter - through PRACTICE. Evolutionarily we are still the goddamn same.
Getting taller? That's due to medicine and access to better and more varied diet. We have a biological, genetic level for height - a 'best case scenario' - and that's what we're reaching. If you TRULY think that tall people are out-breeding short people to the point that it's influencing us at a genetic level, you *really* need to double check your stats.
Becoming smarter? Noooooo. We most definitely are not. Our *edu-ma-cation* is becoming more specialised - essentially, "taught-to-test". That's the reason European middle class kids invariably do better than an African slum-dwelling kid - they're taught how to answer IQ tests from an early age. How to 'appear' intelligent, without necessarily actually *being* smart.
So, in summary, EVOLUTION isn't a process that happens through practice. It's basically something that means you can pass your genes on - you SURVIVE where others DIE or become unable to breed. And frankly having agile thumbs and being able to answer logarithms and understanding calculus, like walking backwards quickly, means FUCK ALL on that level. A clear demonstration of evolution is things like the tendency of Europeans to be lactose tolerant - if you couldn't eat cheese through the winter, YOU DIED.
EDIT:
Guffe said:
Let's just wait until evolution gives the first humans the "ability" to use more than 10% of their/our brain and see were that takes us.
Brains don't work that way. There's a balance of inputs and outputs required. Let me illustrate further:
A scientist one day said "you know we only use 10% of our brains ..." and some journalist went "OMG That's amazing!" and ran off before the scientist could finish saying - and this is the important part! - "...for conscious thought. The other 90% is required for maintaining our automatic phsyiological functions."
In other words, sure, we only use 10% for what we consider to be 'thinking'. But the other 90% is ALREADY IN USE keeping us vertical, bipedal, balanced, etc. Think of our 10% as being the GUI of Windows; your computer is working 90% however on the backend programmes, virus protection, printer drivers, iTunes helper, nVidia drivers, and system32 stuff that is keeping it from crashing (ie keeping us from dropping dead).