Animals and Humans

[LonePiper]

*My understanding on evolution is a bit uninformed, ergo possibly flawed, and if you notice anything wrong with it, *please* feel free to correct my mistake.*

I realize that humans are animals, too, but we have this uncanny defining characteristic, that extreamly complex biomachanical device between our ears, our brain. (When I say "animals", I mean the ones NOT in the category as "homo sapiens", okay?) We can speak many different languages (are there any other animal species that can do this? Dolphins, perhaps?), we use our sense of reason to build and use tools, calculate when that tiger across the river might get tired and strike at the right moment, etc...

I get the feeling you may be getting off on the wrong foot here. We do have a larger (by percentage of body size) brain than any other animal, but that doesn't make us special in an evolutionary sense. Quezaqotalus, a pteradon from the cretaceous, had the widest wingspan (as far as we know) of any animal ever. Sharks have amazing perception of electromagnitivity (I may have made up a word there. I dunno) in water, being sable to sense other animals by the electromagnetic charge their muscles give off. Bats have incredibly sophisticated sonar receptors and transmittors. So much so that when the technology was developed by humans they refused to admit that mere animals had the same ability. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but if you are proposing that humans are somehow "special" in an evolutionary sense, you are unfortunately mistaken, except only in fields that we humans hold important because they are the ones we happen to be advanced in.

Anyways, what I wanted to say, was that maybe our ancient ancestors--ancient, ancient, ANCIENT ones (i.e., the ones that came out of the sea to being amphibians on land,)--had relied on their basic intincts, and didn't have the capacity to use logic or reasoning, and just didn't stand there and contemplate, "Where did those sparkling things in the sky at night come from?" but just LIVED, and did what was necessary. Isn't it interesting, to say the least, that animals--then and today--rely on their base instincts and seem to live more than we do? Or do they not have the capacity to emotionally enjoy things that a homo sapiens would, such as sex, eating, and the like?

I like the point you raise here, and you are probably right. And it doesn't just apply to our ancestors. I don't know if it's ever going to be possible to examine the subjective reality of another mind, but I think it would be realistic to guess that apart from homo sapiens and some of our extinct ancestors and close relations (and perhaps slightly more distant relations, such as chimps and bonobos), animals don't have the capacity to ponder, philosophise, hypothesise etc.
Psychology is a complicated field when approached from an evolutionary perspective, particularly if we're talking about the more abstract parts of the mind.

So, to sum it all up, here are my questions:
Do non-human animals have the emotional capacity to REALLY enjoy sex and food?

Hard to say, and I doubt there is an objective way to anwer this question. I think that most animals probably lack a sense of self-awareness and many of the other more subtle and complicated features that make up the human mind. But when we are talking about something as primal and basic as food or sex, do you really think that these "higher" parts of the mind are in any way involved?

Do you think that by humans' ability to think, to reason, we have taken away from what it is like to actually live a little? (example: with our ability to think SO HARD we just sit around all day, rather than actually going out and LIVING.)

The basic question is intriguing, and I have to admit I don't know the answer. However I don't see that this question properly applies to humans. As a matter of fact, I think that an affirmative to this question would be contradictory to an affirmative to the last one. What I mean to say is that in essence we are still animals like any other animal. We still retain the parts of the brain that control instinctive and basal behaviour, feelings and emotions. When we are philosophising we shut down (or don't pay attention to) these parts of the brain. When eating or having sex (or whatever) we may do the same for our more cognitive part of the brain. The more "animal" parts of our brain haven't dystrophied or died off - they are still there, just more guided or controlled by the more developed "cognitive" part of our minds.

Do some animals use their brains like we do, but maybe in a less complex way?

I would say so. I have mentioned chimps and bonobos, and these would be certain contenders. But again I dout there is any objective way to tell. However if we look at physical brain properties, many many animals - particularly in the vertebrates - have the same basic design of brains. We have no formation or area in our brains (to the best of my knowledge) that no other animal has. Certain parts of our brain just happen to be bigger or more complex than others.

Oh yeah--I heard some creationist say, "atheists are racist because they say that white people are "more evolved" than black people!" o_o by more evolved, do you mean more complex? Is complexity equal to better? and how are they more complex anyways? And who the hell ever said that white people are "more evolved" than black people? We're still human, right? We're still apart of the same species, so I don't see much of a differnece, other than the color of our skin, hair, and eyes.

I doubt whether creationists ever gave any real thought to this claim. They just saw that we propose humans radiated from Africa and somehow deduce that that means Africans stopped evolving. "More Evolved" is a meaningless term. "More complex" is something evolutionists may take seriously, but not in this occasion. (And even then "more complex" does not mean "better"). Maybe (and this is a pure hypothetical) the humans that stayed in Africa had slightly less pressure to evolve than those that moved elsewhere. But the environment in Africa has changed so drastically (as far as humans should be concerned) over the thousands of years since we radiated that there is no reason to believe that Africans today would make a good representative of humans of 30,000 years ago. And even if it were the case it would mean nothing. Humans radiating in other parts of thw world would have had no more reason to become smarter than those staying in Africa. Intelligence in humans is mainly a social development. The only differential evolution different lines of humans would have undergone would have been physical, due to differnt physical environments. Wherever humans went after the earliest ancestor left Africa, they would have always stayed in social groups. If there was any evolutionary pressure to become more intelligent, each human line would have been subject to the same. Even if they had been different, it's still only a matter of a few thousand years - that's almost worth no talk in evolutionary terms.
(It may also me worth noting that, due to a supposed bottleneck in human evolution in the distant past, there is actually very little genetic variation in humans compared to other species. Take a chihuhua and an Irish Wolfhound, for example. They are still the same species, yet vastly different breeds. Compare the differences between those two animals to those found in humans and you'll see our genetic variation is positively insignificant)