I'm curious, do you believe humans are animals? And you forgot about fungi which aren't plants or animals.leopold said:
So if humans aren't animals, what "class" are they (in your opinion)?
Denial of Evolution VI.
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So if humans aren't animals, what "class" are they (in your opinion)?
Awww look everyone, a baby fresh out of the creationist womb, uttering his first words. It's so cute how they don't even know what they don't know yet!
no. mainly due to their "mental capacity" and intellectual prowess.
i made the above post while i was thinking about a good definition of life.
i thought by making the post that i could shake out a good definition.
humanity differs from all other life due to its "mental capacity".
i know of no other lifeform that can give you an opinion on a van gohg for example.
morals, ethics, right and wrong, these are topics associated with humanity.
because of this i feel humanity belongs in its own class of life.
leopold
Our mental capacity is only different from other animals in degree, not in kind. Ditto our "intellectual prowess", whatever that means.
Or you could study what others have found out about it. Your record of accuracy is terrible, rely on someone elses' work.
Again, degree, not kind.
Zeno
Belief is not necessary once one has knowledge. We KNOW evolution is true, it is a well observed, multiply confirmed fact, deal with the reality.
No, the argument is that if we were designed, the designer was worse than incompetent, the huge errors we see in nature would get any human designer fired on the spot. Of course, what we see is easily understood once we realize there was no designer and everything developed from what came before by chance and happenstance(tested by survival). Your choice, a totally incompetent god or an amazing nature.
Grumpy
Our mental capacity is only different from other animals in degree, not in kind. Ditto our "intellectual prowess", whatever that means.
Or you could study what others have found out about it. Your record of accuracy is terrible, rely on someone elses' work.
Again, degree, not kind.
Zeno
Belief is not necessary once one has knowledge. We KNOW evolution is true, it is a well observed, multiply confirmed fact, deal with the reality.
No, the argument is that if we were designed, the designer was worse than incompetent, the huge errors we see in nature would get any human designer fired on the spot. Of course, what we see is easily understood once we realize there was no designer and everything developed from what came before by chance and happenstance(tested by survival). Your choice, a totally incompetent god or an amazing nature.
Grumpy
Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
I am forced to conclude, until and unless you tell me otherwise, that you have not actually looked at any of the evidence. There is so much evidence that had I started examining it as a teenager (which I did) and had continued through for the next several decades, I could only have touched a portion of it all. You seem unaware of the shear volume of well supported, well documented data that exist.
So, in one respect you are correct. I certainly don't believe that evolution is true. Belief is something that is almost akin to faith - it lacks a solid foundation. (Matthew 7:26) I accept evolution. I accept it as reality because there is no better explanation for the wealth of data I have referred to. If reality is different from what the data show, then God needs to explain why he has created a false history for the Earth. It is much more likely that evolution has occured in the way the evidence shows it to have occured and that is what I accept.
Have you read the whole thread along with web pages linked by hyperlink?
If not, then this web page on your screen is a waste of space, like a textbook on atomic physics in a kindergarden library. But on the web authoritarians cannot win the day on the basis of coercive threats of violence, so only facts and reasoned argument can have any lasting impact. So if you came to this site unwilling to engage in an exchange of facts and reasoned argument, then you likely are wasting your time. This may be unwise for you as unless you are a secure pensioner or independently wealthy most of us are deep in red queen territory where we must run as hard as we can just to keep what progress we have made.
Do you mean the fact of evolution, a history of life on earth dominated by the pattern of common descent from ancestral populations which are susceptible to further modification and radiate in a mostly-tree-like pattern, lightly salted with horizontal gene transfer? Or do you mean the predictive power of the modern scientific theories of genetics, development, epigenetics, statistics, population biology where evolution by the mechanism of natural selection operating on individuals who exhibit variation within a breeding population leads to differential reproductive success of heritable traits in a manner which is sufficient to explain the factual pattern of the history of life on Earth? Or do you mean that the above happened and happens solely following lab-replicable behaviors of chemistry and physics which aren't continuously sustained by an intelligence or will and the history of life on Earth happened without guidance of an external plan or author? I have a deep and abiding trust that all three are reliable truths and refer to them as the "fact of evolution", the "modern theory of evolution" and "natural law is the most parsimonious explanation for natural behaviors."
You made the baseless and counter-factual claim that if we "go back in time" the types of people on the planet would be unchanged in furtherance of the nonsensical claim that "man has always existed" -- thus has no need of an author. You, in your confusion, have ascribed to mankind some of the traits traditionally ascribed to the Christian God: Eternal and Unchanging. This may be blasphemy to some, but it is actually counter productive to your argument that mankind has a particular origin if you also claim that mankind had no origin.
Perhaps you were so caught up in your desire to deny the fact-based claims of others that you ignored your burden of actually arguing for a position, but when you contradict your own position you undermine estimates of your reason and reliance on the truth in your claims.
No, I'm just pointing out by deceit (BAD), colossal indifference to the suffering of individuals (MAD), or incompetence (SAD), if there was an author of these living things, said author appears to have worked over many hundreds of millions of years as a ignorant tinkered replicating by design or accident the patterns of trial-and-error that one expects to see by unguided evolution. What's the plot? What great moral lesson should we take from the extinction of the T. rex ? Or H. erectus? Or R. cucullatus ?
Most of my examples were not diseases with external origins but evidence of incompetence. Wearing your testes in an external bag is silly -- all mammals do this because it is a feature reused in a pattern of common descent with modification. Both evolution and complete asshattery by a design team would load said testes up with pain sensors when the more reasonable design choice is to have spermatogenesis happen at body temperature. Common in software engineering firms is a process of code review -- here it appears there was none. So are you claiming your author is BAD (maliciously inflicting bad design on creations), MAD (capriciously inflicting bad design on creations), or SAD (incompetently inflicting bad design on creations)?
If getting hit in the balls is supposed to be some great moral lesson for mankind -- why then do chimpanzees have the same design flaw? Are they moral creatures too? Dogs? Rats? What's the plan?
It's easier to assert there was no plan and no author than to explain why the BAD/MAD/SAD features of design so closely mimic the trail-and-error patterns expected from unsupervised evolution.
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Sounds good to me!
animals do display remarkable talent in a lot of areas.
insects were the first to repopulate radiated areas.
hawks are known for their keen eyesight.
elephants seem to mourn the dead.
speaking of which, why do whales and elephants use low frequencies for communication?
intellectual prowess, human intelligence and associated consciousness/awareness.
i'll stick to my own judgments on that.
The sounds travels for miles. Makes you wonder why humans don't use them.
Hard to generate with our small throats.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Of course you will. After all, look at how far it's gotten you so far. You've become SciForums' little jester. No one respects you because you're wrong about practically everything.
Yes, indeed, this is a fabulous way to get through life.
Doh! Good point.
Were Neanderthals animals? Were Homo Erectus animals? Were Homo Habilis animals? Or does your denial run so deep that you do not believe they existed?
How about cheetahs. Maybe they are not animals because of the "speed capacity" and the fleetness of foot. The can run at 70 mph fercryinoutload!
all i know in this regard is what other people tell me.
we both know how reliable THAT is.
Nice dodge and weave...
what, is my post in error?
if so, how?
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
The navy does. I believe this is suspected of disorienting whales.
Humans can generate significantly lower frequencies than Western folk are accustomed to hearing (a full octave below one's normal lowest pitched voice, at least) - Tuvan folk musicians can even sing in them. There is a guess running around that the human larynx and attendant vocal capabilities were in the early going (before the big brain, speech, etc) a singing or complex howling adaptation, like a bird's syrinx, and if so these low frequencies would have indeed been very impressive - they still are.
Not quite in the subsonic range of elephants and whales, but low enough to carry a very long way - a chorus of men generating them would carry farther than, say, the pack howling of timber wolves.
So what about humans being warm-blooded and placental? Are humans mammals in that case, or does our large brain exclude us, and why?leopold said:
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Really? If birds did not have a sense of aesthetics, why the plumage, the dance, the bringing of shiny objects as gifts, the making of "adorned nests", all to please the female and curry her favor?
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/birds-of-the-gods/bird-of-paradise-facts/6236/
http://birding.about.com/od/birdingbasics/a/courtshipbehavior.htm
Humans can imagine art, but IMO many animals can recognize aesthetics when they see it in nature. Usually, the female selects a suitable male by his physical features as well as his ability to defend his territory.
A famous story of a female gorilla named Koko,
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=127510&page=1
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