Quote:
Originally Posted by jimjamuser
As far as mechanical devices go - chimpanzees are known to use tools.........so, are they evolving or using intelligent design. Are they just a few evolutionary rungs behind humans?
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I thought the point was that life is the PRODUCT of intelligent design, not that life necessarily uses it.
But, in any case, I sometimes wonder what chimpanzees think of us. Human arrogance is a wonderful thing: it assumes that animal life must in some way be "behind" us in development. It is that whole "Amazon tribe" thinking: their particular tribe is the apex of human development and everything else--man or critter--is inferior to us; that we inhabit the exalted top rung. It seems as if the less we know, the more we think we know.
It is certainly that way when we try to define our "species" in relation to others. My own thought is that the more we allow ourselves to see, the more similarities we will recognize. A couple of examples from my own experience: some years back, my wife and I were camped in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of northern Minnesota. We were camped on a narrows may be 80 to 100 yards wide, with the lake widening both before and after the narrows. One morning just after dawn we heard a ruckus in the woods across the narrows. A deer suddenly appeared at the source of the noise, looked around, saw my wife and I, jumped in the water and swam right towards us. Getting out of the water it went to the center of our camp and just stood there, almost within arms reach. Just after the deer got there we heard another noise in the same spot where the deer had appeared. A huge timberwolf ran out obviously on the trail of the deer, looked around, and saw us and the deer. Not wanting to deal with Mr. Wolf on our side of the lake, I grabbed the canoe paddle and started beating on the canoe with a paddle while jumping up and down and yelling loudly. The wolf just looked at me for a few seconds before turning around and walking back into the woods. His body language said it all. There was no fear in him, we just weren't worth bothering about.
As soon as the wolf disappeared, the deer melted into the woods as well.
Another example: I once had a cat that had the habit of raiding the garbage. I bought one of those childproof door latches and installed it on the door under the sink where the garbage was stored. I installed it, while the cat laid on the floor and watched me. I didn't think much of it at the time. The next morning I got up to garbage strewn all over the kitchen. Assuming I had left the door open I put the garbage back and made sure to close the door. I got up early the next morning--and caught the cat in the act: he was lying on his back with his paws stretched up under the door trying to trip the latch, which he succeeded in doing. He quickly pulled his paw out when he saw I was watching him.
Both these examples, to me anyway, show animals having complicated and advanced thought processes, having the ability to evaluate risks, make subjective judgments, planning ahead. The deer in the first example made a conscious choice between the lesser of two evils. People hunt deer up there and deer fear men, but that deer sought protection from us, knowing that the wolf would probably not approach us. We were still dangerous, just not quite as dangerous as the wolf. In the second example, the cat knew how to trip the latch just by watching me install it, and also knew without any evidence that I'd not approve if he tried to open it. Thought processes in each example are far more "human" than many of would like to admit.
There are more similarities than differences in life. Humans and chimps may share 98% of their DNA, but I recall reading that humans and microbes share something like 60%. That is well over half. We're far more similar in appearance to chimpanzees than to, say, a paramecium, but the functioning of all life, at least as we know it, seems to be identical on the molecular and sub- molecular level. The design of all life is contained in the DNA of that life, and how DNA works seems to be identical no matter what life we are talking about. Sure, the product of that DNA can vary tremendously in appearance and functionality from species to species, order to order, genus to genus, even phylum to phylum; but human life is related to all life, one way or another. Chimps and humans may not be brothers, but for sure second cousins is not out of the question. The watchmaker had a good blueprint for all the watches that have inhabited this planet.
It is LIFE that is special. What makes humanity special, if indeed we are special at all, is not in our biology.