Future Human Evolution?

    I remember my mother, when I was about 10 years old, saying words to the effect that: "... many thoughtful, wise, educated people suggest that humanity has stopped evolving now ... that we evolved this far over the last three to four billion years but have now reached where we were 'intended' to reach in biological terms."  She stated, furthermore, her belief that our future evolution would be in terms of cultural change, not biological change.  These words had a deep effect on me as they both gave me deeper insight into my mother's character and beliefs and, at the same time, distanced me further from her.  To my mother, although she was not stating this as unquestionable dogma, the lack of future biological evolution in humanity was a comforting thought which helped to unify her educated belief in science and evolution with her "fuzzier" Christian faith in the presence of a God who wanted us to live forever, after death, in heaven.  I suspect most people of faith share some similar version of this belief.

    I have heard what amounts to the same view expressed by many atheist and agnostic friends, colleagues and acquaintances.  They do not share my mother's belief in a teleological universe ruled by the plan of an intelligence intending to create us by means of evolution, but neither do they seem to be able to envisage a future in which evolution continues to operate on humanity in any meaningful way.  They do not even foresee our deliberately manipulating the genes of our children and their children's children's children in any great way other than minor tinkering with factors such as aging or general susceptibility to various diseases.  In short, almost everyone I know seems to believe that evolution has all but ceased forever to operate on humanity.

    To me that concept evokes a sense of sadness, if not outright horror.  To suggest that we would not, could not or should not evolve further sounds to me more like a prison sentence than an affirmation of our present glory.  I do not mean to suggest that I believe in a ladder-like 'upward' directionality to evolution; I do not believe that.  What I do envision and hope for is a future in which humanity will change to meet myriad challenges in myriad environments, perhaps on many different worlds throughout the universe.  Resultantly, I foresee us developing into myriad different forms, mental as well as physical. Science fiction tends to portray 'more evolved' intelligences as little more than modern human intelligences with a few fancy skills added, such as teleportation or telekinesis or telepathy.  But why should our descendants not change mentally as drastically as we have changed from our most ancient ancestors?

    My mother viewed us, in comparison with our distant descendants, as grandparents in comparison with adult grandchildren.  These grandchildren, in her view, would have different experiences and more advanced knowledge, but would remain comfortably familiar both in physique and in mentality.  In contrast, I view us in comparison to our distant descendants as bacteria might be compared to worms, worms compared to lizards or as lizards compared to modern humans.  Perhaps, among at least some of our descendants, should they manage to avoid total extinction, some form of multi-unit intelligence might arise, functioning analogously to the way individual cells in our bodies function together to create what seems to each of us to be a single thinking creature.  Should we be any more horrified by that possibility than an intelligent bacterium should be at the existence of a modern, multicellular human?