Random question...

Or dumb enough…

  1. Obviously, humans are the dominant species on the planet. What I’m saying is, we’re a species of animals that got lucky, not godly and above all forms of animalistic life.

I agree with Evolution on most points, but I’m not about to say it doesn’t have it’s shortcomings.

  1. Good point… although, all of that is instinctual. Dolphin’s aren’t instinctually required to use tools.

  2. Yes, as of right now, Humans don’t have a worrisome animal COMPETITOR. That doesn’t really mean we’re above them, morally. There was once a single species of dinosaur that made up 50% of all life on Earth…they weren’t necessarily better, just lucky.

  3. Yeah, that’s my point. Humans don’t have any retro-spiritual emotional superiority over the rest of the planet. >_>

  4. I DIDN’T argue that. =P And I’m pretty sure that if animals where ever smart enough to create a nuclear weapon, they’d also be smart enough to not use it, since they’d have to be aware of the power they have in their hands.

  5. ? Yeah, good point.

I would think that is kinda obvious, when you talk about how humans came and the gap between them.
What animal I think I am? Hmmm… I dislike that question. I hate discussing about my personality with others, because frankly, what you think about yourself isn’t important (until you go 'mo), it is really what others think about you that makes what is you, you. You can think yourself to be the smartest, phatest, coolest kid, but if everyone thinks your a loser, you won’t get very far will you?

Conversations like this generally make me go hitler on everyone, so I won’t get involved.

The way I see it, we ARE fucking animals. It’s because of our sentience, and emotions, that we’ve found it unsettling to think of our selves that way, since human’s feel like, “themselves”. It makes perfect sense for it to feel unusual, so I don’t blame people for feeling that way. But if we weren’t sentient, we wouldn’t feel that way, because we wouldn’t be aware of it. But being aware of it doesn’t stop us from being animals. You may see it otherwise, but that’s how I see it.

<_<

“I won’t get involved, but here’s me getting involved.”
Good one?

So um, here’s the thing. Being sentient makes us different. Yes, we are animals. Yes, we are similar to what people commonly call animals in a lot of ways. But also, yes we are in a category all of our own. It’s like comparing fish to sponges. Yeah, they’re animals, yeah, they both have circulatory systems, they’re both amphibious, but they’re not even nearly the same.

Yes, that’s true. But it doesn’t really make us “above” them…just different, or more accurately, lucky.

It just gets on my nerves when people blab about “we r ^ animals lol”. >_>

Well too fucking bad. You’re going to hear it a lot, because it’s true.

Whether it was luck or not, fact is we ended out above them.

Yeah, well now that you said that, I might as well get involved.

Lol, you sort of screwed yourself over with that.

The way I see it, that’s like saying. You’re saying that sponges and fishes arent similar, but you could say that barracuda, and viper fish are similar, right? That’s the same thing as saying that humans and Chimpanzees are similar. Since I’m almost SURE that Chimpanzees DNA is closer to ours than barracudas are to viperfish. So I’d say that humans are in the upper primate sectionish, not a section of their own, even though they’re sentient. Because that’s like comparing an octupuses intelligent to a nautilis’s, though probably even closer, yet their both Cephalopods.

So yeah.

Fact. I dont see any reversing it, since chances are we will dominate this planet (as far as sentient control) until we destroy it, something else does, or the covenant show up and take over (or hopefully glass us).

Actually, no, you couldn’t say barracudas and viperfish are similar.

Cause they’re completely different <_<

Claims that all fish are similar aside, let’s compare chimps with humans. I’d like to do this from both an biological and practical standpoint. Practical first.
Chimpanzees are incapable of development. They can use twigs to eat, and their children can use twigs to eat, and their grandchildren can use twigs to eat. Humans have civilization. That doesn’t exist with any other animal. If we took a random selection of, say, 300 (I just watched the movie <_<) babies, or other people that don’t know anything about the modern world, and stuck them in a random jungle, we’d be back to square one in terms of development. Fire and the wheel would have to be reinvented. That is what sets us apart; we can pass knowledge on over the generations, we can invent. We have more than instinct to keep us going.
From the biology point of view, we are indeed very very close, genetically, and timewise. There’s one very important thing to note, though: we are the dominant species of land animals on earth (except insects, but those live in a different world than we do). That means that there was a change that led us to become what we are. In other words, by being the dominant species, we are proving how different we are from all of our relatives.
While I’m on that subject, Algernon, what the hell are you trying to say by “luck”? We’re the first (land) species since something like trilobites to cover the entire world, and we’re definitely the first who have the power to destroy it. I’d say we’re pretty firmly planted in first place, what with the fate of all life on earth being in our hands. If you mean we got lucky that a big rhino didn’t come along and eat us, then you’re sort of right, because we got lucky that none of our ancestors were ever killed (not before they had children, at least), but well, obviously the same is true for every creature living on earth. We’re no more lucky than everything else, and we’re still winning.

He means it was luck that we happened to evolve with whatever aspects allow us to be so dominant.

[b]IF[/b] we evolved…

The only difference between us and the other animals is that we have larger, better brains coded in our DNA. The rest is all about the same as most animals; skin, blood, faces, arms, legs, hearts, lungs, stomachs, other organs, the need to reproduce, etc. We’re really not that different…

Also, Tim, you’re right in that some intelligence wouldn’t help monkeys much, but that’s basically going against everything about evolution. Any teeny tiny mutation isn’t going to help any species much at all, but that doesn’t prevent them from still slowly evolving from them, as long as they help, even if it’s just the slightest, slightest, unnoticeable bit. You have to think more longterm–think about if they had enough intelligence to control fire and build tools and traps and hunt in the wild. Wouldn’t that, you know, help them survive a whole lot better? Maybe humans are taking over the world and it’s going to end soon, but that doesn’t mean nature decided to make monkeys stop evolving. :sweat:

Well this topic certainly branched off a lot from where it originally started.

I think this debate is complicated enough without things like Intelligent Design getting in the way, so let’s pretend, for the purpose of our intellectual debate, that evolution is factually sound. Ok? Everyone good with that?

Second, genetically we are very similar to chimps, it’s like 97%, or 99, I can’t remember…but here’s a crazy bit of information I learned from Biology class, and later reminded by Michael Crichton,who rocks, most species, and this may cause some of you to gasp in shock…most species share about 90% of the same genes. Yeah. 90. That last ten percent is pretty much the only stuff that changes. So really, that small difference between chimps and people isn’t really that impressive when you consider that a few percentages of genes is the difference between an ant…and an elephant.

I’m also getting sick of people saying that we’ll destroy the earth, or we have the potential to do it. No, we have the potential to destroy HUMANs. We could also, by nuking every single square inch of the earth, potentially kill essentally everything else, and completely screw with the earth’s weather and other crazy stuff…but something would survive. Either buried in the earth’s crust, or living deep in one of the ocean’s trenches, or hell, a freaking cockroach, something would survive, crawl out of its little hellhole and start the whole process over again. Besides, personally I don’t think the earth gives a damn whether or not we wipe ourselves out. If anything, it’d think its funny.

(P.S.

You’re back in reality now…or are you? (Dramatic pause.) Yes. Yes you are. (Metal Gear Crisis)

Yeah, that made me think of that for some reason.

You evolved…or did you? (More dramatic pause.) Yes. Yes you did.)

Strange to ask this question, however, you can dream what you want to be. instead of it happen when your awake, just dream what you are.

thats all no more posting in this.

You’re completely downplaying the possibility that another animal could evolve to be smarter than us. Would we, then, be considered animals for the comparison?

While everything that breathes will always be considered an animal, the thing that separates us from them is our ability to reason. That’s what gives us our ability to “evolve”. In a sense. I’m a creationist. And I don’t really think that human ancestors were ever incapable of reason. I’m just using the term “evolve” subjectively.

But for those who DO believe otherwise, how do you think an animal could replace us as the dominant species? Just give birth to an intelligent creature?

Correction: our ability to reason on a higher level than animals. Dolphins and others I’ve mentioned can reason quite well, but they’re not about to pop open “War and Peace”.

And…you clearly don’t understand how evolution works. o_O

Dolphins can’t reason. They can’t sit and ponder things. They have a higher level of instinct than other animals. That’s all.

I understand the theory of evolution fine. I just don’t believe it.

…XD.

No. Dolphins are very capable of complex reasoning. They’ve passed questions on HUMAN IQ tests, albeit not many.

Okay…so you’re under the impression that Evolution happened all at once? An ape suddenly gave birth to a human?

Dolphins passed questions on IQ tests? 'Kay.

There is no such thing as “half reason”. All humans have it, even with varying degrees of intelligence. The term “reason” is overused. Your a predator, in the woods or whatever. Cutting off your prey using a shortcut isn’t reason. Predicting how your prey thinks and determining it’s path of escape would be reason. Your degree of intelligence determines how well you reason.

Monkey’s can’t give birth to creatures with slightly more reason, because there is no such thing as slightly more reason.

Oh, and sorry for taking the extra step in turing this topic into an evolution vs. creationism debate. =/