Science, Creation & EvolutionMorality and evolutionismVerry well tuppence. You actually addres me in the first person, and I will use your name. Thank you for ignoring the cognitate abilities of dolphins and octopi. Hard to lose a debate when you ignore rebuttals. Also I would point out that logic, as we know it, is a human invention. An octopus would not use it per se, but neither did humans until we developed writing. Reason, on its own with no formal training is a different manner, and in now way is any animal(with the possible) exception of dolphins and orcas anywhere close to the cognitive ability of an adult human, but it is not an all or nothing scenario. True, it is the Bowers I refer to, forgive me, I am not an ornithologist And again, creativity is a matter of degree. It must build those structures in such a manner that it pleases a mate, and there are differences from Bower to Bower. DO they have anywhere close to human complexity and creativity? No. Is said creativity there? Yes. COnceeded on the penguins The idea of what is comfortable is subjective. It is one of those unique personality traits. ANd thanks to google... Ever heard of a gorillas named Koko and Micheal? Well it seems they are capable of painting on a level on par with small human children. http://koko.org/world/art_still.html Seems primates other than humans are capable of creating art. Not good art, but art nonetheless. Well then I will see about giving a paintbrush to a dolphin. Did you actually try reading the next 22 pages? And yes, we are still working on it. SOmewhat hard to determine if an animal has grammar and syntax when you have no frame of references. and remember, you can control everything from water quality to temperature to amount of food, but the organism will do what it darn well pleases. All this makes it possible to think that the communicative system of bottlenose dolphins is "open" in terms of vocahulary formation. This conclusion is indirectly supported by the fact that dolphins use hundreds of structural types of signals for communication (see, for instance, Table 3).
ANd without being able to speak dolphin, we would hlave no way of knowing if they do or not. Maybe once we can get it translated, or teach them some form of communication we can understand that will change. As to what my position is on that, We dont know yet, and it is irresponsible for us to assume one way or the other. No, not really. Ever hear of the concept of diminishing returns? Back in the middle ages, you needed 8 kids in order to do the farm work. Now, the adults are the sole breadwinners, and it becomes difficult to provide for the needs of the offspring. Also, we are limited in population culturally, and geographically. The simple matter is, there is only so much space in an urban or suburban area, and having many children is not conducive to comfort or the ability of said environment to provide for their needs. Basically, we limit out population growth by living in cities. In third world countries this is not the case, and they have LOTS of children. PostPosted: Sun Jan 16, 2005 12:09 am Post subject: 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. Only in those countries. That is just natural selection doings its job. Now, we can discuss this further if you can propose reasons. Here is one. The heavily socialist economy cannot provide for the needs of the people(Germany has an 18% unemployment rate, last time I checked, which was, addmittedly, some time ago) SO they are sort of, subconciously limiting population growth(or even conciously "Honey, we cant provide for children") Changing a stream into a pond is a far cry from simply using their environment. They are changing it, whether they do so conciously, and using reason, is open for debate. However, I will say that it is irrelevant, as the original topi of this discussion was discussing how human behavior developed, in evolutionary terms. Pointing out examples in other organisms for evidence f stepping stones to the way humans are today, is the point of the above examples, and should be construed to support the idea that animals(save dolphins) are in any way as intelligent as humans. They arent, out intelligence would have devloped in earlier hominids. I have, twice. I love how creationists assume I havent read their book... :roll: Appeal to motive fallacy, hasty generalization. Care to provide evidence that every child believes in God? Care to provide any evidence whatsoever that I still think God exists? Oh, thought not. You dont know my life, you dont know me, dont presume to. However, I was a christian based on what I was taught as a child. SO I will throw you a bone there. I came to the conclusion that god did not exist when I was 14. |
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