If you want to be treated with respect, then treat others with respect. When wrote the post and put your name in the third person, I think you will see I was not addressing the post to you but was talking about your responses to On My Way. It was perfectly proper to refer to you by name.
In the meantime, my forum name here is tuppence. If you don't like it, I'm sorry, but please show me the respect you would like by not making fun of it. Thank you.
Now, how could I straw man your position when the purpose of my post was explaining my own? I already know you disagree with me. I was explaining my own position to On My Way, as that person was not sure about a couple of things I had referred to.
In your defense of yourself, though, I think a little needs to be said.
1. That animals can teach and learn is not the same as deductive or logical thinking. Copying a mother or another of the population is simply that: copying. It does not involve reasoning or logic.
2. None of the animals you mentioned designs their nests around an idea of personal invention. ALL bower bird nests are essentially the same -- the female builds them, contrary to what you asserted. It is the bowers you are talking about, I think.
http://www.drellenrudolph.com/featurean ... rbird.html
And none of them is radically different from any of the others. Not so with human architecture.
Adelie penguins all build their nests exactly the same way, with pebbles, and the only difference is they try to steal pebbles from each other. There is no individual creativity involved.
http://www.siec.k12.in.us/~west/proj/pe ... delie.html
And gorillas, as you mentioned, simply use the material at hand to cushion themselves for the night. No evidence of the desire to express one's individuality there...
3. One does not need to communicate with a horse to know when two horses are fighting over something -- or even what they are fighting about. So I will repeat, NO animal fights over colors! Humans do, however -- and not for any evolutionary advantage. Rather, for pure aesthetics.
4. Thumbs have nothing to do with being able to create art. Art is in the brain:
http://www.joniandfriendsstore.org/artprints.html -- Joni is a quadriplegic and paints with her mouth. Others paint with their toes. Not having a thumb can prevent a lot of things, but not the expression of art!
5. You linked to an article about dolphin communication. Here are the first two paragraphs:
The problem of the degree of complexity and semantic capabilities of the acoustic communicative system
in bottlenose dolphins has been under discussion for over a quarter of a century, ever since John Lilly
published his book "Man and Dolphin" Lilly, 19621.
Nowadays, there is an abundance of literature, with different viewpoints, but no consensus has been
reached so far among researchers.
The problem proved to be very complicated, both methodologically and experimentally, while the
methods used turned-out to be labour-consuming and, on the whole, inefficient; all kinds of
straightforward attacks failed.
I don't think that is the point you were trying to make, is it?
6. The passing of a history does not require written language. Witness the epic poetry and songs passed down verbally from generation to generation.
7. You danced around the point regarding having children. If the primary purpose were to pass on genes, more children is better regardless of financial condition.
8. Group selection is failing. Birth rates in Germany and other countries have fallen below the replacement level.
9. Neither beavers nor alligators seek to change their environment. They act instinctively to USE it, which is a far different cry.
10. If you were a 'literalist' Christian before you took your first biology class, which was after you became an evolutionist, then my guess is that you considered yourself a Christian on the basis of what you had been taught as a child. And while every child knows that God is real, which you also actually know, that is no guarantee that they will not rebel and reject Him later, as you have done. Wrestling with God as an adult is something that happens in the very late teens and twenties. What happened before then only sets the stage a bit.
My guess is that you have either avoided wrestling or you are still too young. If you are over the age of, say 30, I would strongly suggest you sit down quietly and just once in your adult life, read the Bible. Just once. Start to finish. Give yourself that chance.