This brings up a metaphysical point of whether humans really play a natural part in the evolutionary process anymore. For example, when mankind wipes out anothe

This brings up a metaphysical point of whether humans really play a natural part in the evolutionary process anymore. For example, when mankind wipes out another species, in some sense you can say this is "natural", since evolution made us in the first place, and we're just doing what we do. In another sense, you can say we're assholes. Personally, I do see a line being drawn, starting a few thousands year ago and coming to a head now with bio-engineering and robotics, etc., where human-level intelligence represents the next major stage in how matter is organized over time. First was the stellar life-cycle, then biological evolution, and now we're joining the party. If you view it this way, I don't believe we can say that we're part of the natural environment anymore. Sorry, didn't mean to get all abstract...it's all physics anyway.