Humans are animals

[Wysiwyg]

(although lol - I'd challenge people to find those 5% on anything other than trivial stuff , like the sky is blue maybe

The sky is blue only via agreement .(nice set up lol)










p.s.

 

[2020hindsight]

This is part 2 ( part 1 is also out there in cyberspace - but this is more relevant - at the 3.5 minute mark I extracted the jpegs below.

An Introduction to the Big Bang Theory (Part 2)

I'll post part one just for completeness :-
An Introduction to the Big Bang Theory (Part 1)
there are a lot of extraneous bits of info - not relevant imo. (especially as I haven't got a clue what he's talking about lol)

it mentions that the theory predicts peaks in the cosmic background radiation - and "observed" exactly matches "predicted" -
now I'm not gonna pretend to understand 100% what he's talking about - or where or how they measured it - I'll leave it to scientists to add any details, lol - but if it's true , then he's onto something you'd think ...

( back to Part 2 for a minute) he concludes that

"big bang theory has made predictions that have turned out to be incredibly accurate , and the evidence for it being right is , well , overwhelming .
theory may mean " guess" in everyday english, but not in science. "

I mean it's a damned site more feasible than this version which follows below .... ( to which people around here arguably want to give equal merit)

.... the bible (you need a lot of faith for this one lol) says on day 1 he made "light"

etc ... day 3 the forests were made,

then day 4 the sun moon and stars

I've never thought of this before (it's just so wierd) but - how did God light things up without the sun and the stars ??

DAY 1.
1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon
the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters.
1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light
from the darkness.
1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
And the evening and the morning were the first day.

DAY 2
1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters,
and let it divide the waters from the waters.
1:7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were
under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament:
and it was so.
1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the
morning were the second day.

DAY 3
1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together
unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
1:10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of
the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding
seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is
in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after
his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after
his kind: and God saw that it was good.
1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

DAY 4
1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven
to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for
seasons, and for days, and years:
1:15 And let them be for lights in
the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was
so.
1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day,
and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light
upon the earth,
1:18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and
to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

DAY 5
1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving
creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the
open firmament of heaven.
1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that
moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind,
and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
1:22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill
the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
1:23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

DAY 6
1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after
his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his
kind: and it was so.
1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle
after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after
his kind: and God saw that it was good.
1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl
of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over
every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created
he him; male and female created he them.
1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every
living thing that moveth upon the earth.
1:29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed,
which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which
is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
1:30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air,
and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is
life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was
very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

if this isn't a "guess", then I'm a monkey's nephew

 

[wayneL]

FFS 2020!!

You continue to hammer the binomial, big bang vs genesis despite trying to gently point out that that is not where this discussion is at. Nobody is interested!

You are Dawkins' answer to Bullmarket.

 

[Freeballinginawetsuit]

Yes that's exactly what I was getting at, clumsily.

I no longer wonder why we're here and just try to enjoy the ride. That does not preclude a journey of discovery however, whether spiritual, philosophical, of the planet, whatever.

I notice that yielding to strictly animal instincts does not make me very happy, while an interest in more nobler ideal does.

I liked the Dalai Lama's answer when questioned as to the purpose of life:

"I don't know" LOL

Can't say I've ever wondered why "I am here"!, I know exactly why I am here

 

[Woodchips]

It is just so stupidly easy for a blind man to drive a bus through the gaping holes in creationism.

Yes mate, it is, but once upon a time it wasn't. It's easy to fault creationism today because science is the dominant discourse thus scientific evidence is the accepted form of evidence. But remember there was also a time when it was so easy for a blind man to drive a bus through the gaping holes in scientific theory. Not because one theory was right or wrong, true or false, fact or fiction, but because what counts as a gaping hole is relative to what you believe in.

The Big Bang Theory? No one is denying that the Big Bang is the accepted theory at present. It is the theory that best fits the available scientific evidence. But a major discovery in the future might change all of that. If all scientists adopted your attitude (and it would seem, the attitude of Mr I Can Reveal The Truth To You on Youtube, Everyone Else Is Lying - Here Look At My Qualifications) you can bet that Quantum Mechanics would never have been dreamed up. In the end, the cutting edge of any discipline - the people who make the biggest changes, the people who instigate the paradigm shifts, are the people who question the fundamentals that everyone else takes for granted. To do that requires a completely different outlook/attitude to the one that you seem to have adopted. If you want to set yourself apart from the creationists simply adopt a more open minded attitude, don't just say that you're right and they're wrong, no one cares about that. What creationists (and interestingly many science graduates) so desperately lack is the ability to question, to rationalise and to think 'outside the square'.

WC

 

[2020hindsight]

woodchips and wayne and rafa
(and anyone else who has taken or might have taken offence at my posts trying to establish the world's - and man's - origins, so that we can understand better what we are dealing with when we compare men and animals ....)

here's a poem I just posted in poetry thread
https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=199827&highlight=evolution#post199827

btw, I don't recall insisting that it’s either genesis /creationism, or Dawkins - and I personally love to think outside the square .... but I think that all of us should be able to say we are "closer to Dawkins" or "closer to a totally faith based religion". Trouble I have with the latter - and the US Bible belt (Hovind etc) in particular - is that their faith overrides evidence - i.e. their religion INSISTS that they reject (or twist) scientific evidence.

lol - As for thinking outside the square - I might be a square, but don't think I haven't been a-round as they say

As I explain there (on poetry thread)....
- once I get a theory that makes sense with the available scientific data
or I’m told it does lol
(but by people who make sense to the limit of my understanding)
then I happily “sign up the adoption papers” and take that theory on board
whether its a 'possible' or a 'probable' or a near bludy 'certainty' (in part or in full) may vary from theory to theory

- if what I’ve adopted grows with time, then that is good
- if it changes due to refinements around the edges, then that's ok as well

(supporters of Johnny Howard can think of it as "core promises" and "non-core promises" lol)

but if what I’ve adopted turns out to be just hot air,
then it can be released into the rest of the atmosphere (like a bad smell lol)
with a clear conscience (preferably not in a lift)
because it was “nothing-nil-zilch” in the first place to owe allegiance to.

I wrote some comments on Descartes back there - where he tries to argue that men are totally different to animals - a point that we were all saying was wrong , and beyond question - but that's a slightly different point - and the subject of another post .

 

[Happy]

We seem to have covered few aspects of the subject.

I would like to point out some artificial differences.
I am quick to acknowledge; that I probably benefited and will most likely benefit in the future from our man made rights.

Few rights are down right dangerous to long term survival of our race.

We seem to use antibiotics as there is no consequence and as if there is something else after we become resistant to vancomycine.

We can make indiscriminate choice of partner, which if we look at the consequences might be one of the reasons for our demise.

Let’s say that this has no bearing on future of the human race. But if this is so good, why animals breeding is selective? Why animals are culled if they do not satisfy certain criteria?
Why there is such an outrage because Belgium has 26 weeks cut off point for premature babies.


I can be wrong but we promote weaker and weaker genetic material to slip though natural selection process.


Probably enough to get bashed, hope will not cause bull-thing resurrection.

 

[happytown]

I converted to become a Humanist.

hey rocky watch me pull a hat out of my hat

Just an animal with some special talents

...

Are we any more special than just being an 'animal'?

link below to some recent stories in der spiegel:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,504423,00.html

Toddlers Are Smarter Than Apes, but Not by Much

...

A German team of anthropologists has published a new study claiming that human toddlers learn better than adult apes only in certain areas -- namely "social intelligence," like learning from others -- which could influence our understanding of what sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.

The study shows that two-and-a-half-year-old human kids perform about as well as great apes -- namely chimpanzees and orangutans -- in certain physical-learning problems, like finding hidden objects or using a stick as a tool. The apes also had math skills which the kids hadn't yet developed, like estimating the number of raisins in a covered dish after watching a scientist distribute the treats.

...

linking to the study:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/317/5843/1402

note: sub reqd

Science 7 September 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5843, pp. 1360 - 1366
DOI: 10.1126/science.1146282

Research Articles

Humans Have Evolved Specialized Skills of Social Cognition: The Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis

Esther Herrmann,1* Josep Call,1 María Victoria Hernàndez-Lloreda,2 Brian Hare,1,3 Michael Tomasello1

Humans have many cognitive skills not possessed by their nearest primate relatives. The cultural intelligence hypothesis argues that this is mainly due to a species-specific set of social-cognitive skills, emerging early in ontogeny, for participating and exchanging knowledge in cultural groups. We tested this hypothesis by giving a comprehensive battery of cognitive tests to large numbers of two of humans' closest primate relatives, chimpanzees and orangutans, as well as to 2.5-year-old human children before literacy and schooling. Supporting the cultural intelligence hypothesis and contradicting the hypothesis that humans simply have more "general intelligence," we found that the children and chimpanzees had very similar cognitive skills for dealing with the physical world but that the children had more sophisticated cognitive skills than either of the ape species for dealing with the social world.

further,

Science 7 September 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5843, p. 1308
DOI: 10.1126/science.317.5843.1308

News of the Week

PSYCHOLOGY:

Nonhuman Primates Demonstrate Humanlike Reasoning

Elizabeth Pennisi

Experiments reported on page 1402 of this issue of Science suggest that the supposedly unique human ability to understand others' intentions is shared by chimps and at least two monkey species.

linking to:

Science 7 September 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5843, pp. 1402 - 1405
DOI: 10.1126/science.1144663

Reports

The Perception of Rational, Goal-Directed Action in Nonhuman Primates

Justin N. Wood,1* David D. Glynn,1 Brenda C. Phillips,4 Marc D. Hauser1,2,3

Humans are capable of making inferences about other individuals' intentions and goals by evaluating their actions in relation to the constraints imposed by the environment. This capacity enables humans to go beyond the surface appearance of behavior to draw inferences about an individual's mental states. Presently unclear is whether this capacity is uniquely human or is shared with other animals. We show that cotton-top tamarins, rhesus macaques, and chimpanzees all make spontaneous inferences about a human experimenter's goal by attending to the environmental constraints that guide rational action. These findings rule out simple associative accounts of action perception and show that our capacity to infer rational, goal-directed action likely arose at least as far back as the New World monkeys, some 40 million years ago.

as if that was not bad enough for us humanists:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,504508,00.html

Behavioral Science Turns to Dogs for Answers

...

"Dogs can do things that we long believed only humans had mastered," says Juliane Kaminski of the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Evolutionary Anthropology in the eastern German city of Leipzig.

...

"When it comes to understanding human behavior, no mammal comes even close to the dog," says Kaminski. Her Leipzig research team has demonstrated that dogs are far better than the supposedly clever apes at interpreting human gestures.

...

Dogs are so geared toward communication with people that it seems to run in their genes.

...

"Puppies are still with their mother at six weeks. The phase in which they are most susceptible to human influence only begins after that," explains Kaminski. Her conclusion is that the animals must already have the innate ability to interpret human gestures.

...

kinda get the feeling we are gonna be learnin' from them and about them for years to come but wonder whether they already know all they need too about us

having said that it will be a stellar day for planet earth when we truly learn how to communicate with our fellow animals

cheers

 

[Julia]

FFS 2020!!

You continue to hammer the binomial, big bang vs genesis despite trying to gently point out that that is not where this discussion is at. Nobody is interested!

You are Dawkins' answer to Bullmarket.

Yep. And we all know what eventually happened to Bullmarket!
A little reasoned conciseness would be wonderful, 2020.

 

[disarray]

I can be wrong but we promote weaker and weaker genetic material to slip though natural selection process.

this thread leads to a long and slippery slope that ends at eugenics. i happen to agree with it and would support eugenic programs if humans could be trusted to manage it the right way, however the likelihood of this occurring is zero.

 

[happytown]

...

Our unique capabilites include:

Empathy.

...

and on that note, (yawn):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/sep/11/1

Why engineers yawn less than psychologists

Psychologists have shown that a phenomenon called "contagious yawning" is strongest in people who are more empathetic and have a more developed sense of social awareness.

...

cheers

 

[2020hindsight]

Currently on
question is ..
Are chimps Humans ??? lol

Chimps Are People Too
Time: Sunday, September 23, 8:25 PM
Channel: SBS
Duration: 55 minutes
Rating: PG
Type: Documentary

Danny Wallace, a London writer, is sent to Uganda on a scientific mission to find out the differences between apes and humans. He believes the time has come to make our hairy relatives part of the human family. Scientific research has revealed that chimps possess 99.4 percent of human DNA, considerably more than the gorilla. But what then makes humans the greatest ape? He talks to many primate experts and scientists who reject any thought that chimps are human. He visits a sanctuary where chimps are studied and experiments are carried out to work on their problem-solving ability, and they pass with flying colours. In America, he meets Sue, a woman who studies bonobos (or pygmy chimpanzees) at close range.

 

[2020hindsight]

ahh - wassies !
if you can make the time to watch that last mentioned show on SBS
it's a classic !! lol

 

[Whiskers]

Currently on
question is ..
Are chimps Humans ??? lol

He visits a sanctuary where chimps are studied and experiments are carried out to work on their problem-solving ability, and they pass with flying colours.

Saw a little of it 2020. The high gene similarity to humans has got to say something eh!

I have had an affinity for animals all my life and am not at all surprised by what they can do. I definetly think some people have more of a natural talent for communating with animals though. Most people who have pets have probably seen little examples of problem solving.

One of my pet cats, the smallest female, worked out for herself that she could get more to eat if she put her paw in the feed dish and pulled it away from the others.

A male worked out by himself that the new bags of dry feed are always tastier than the opened one and promptly bites a hole in the side of the new plastic bag and claws out the little biscuits to eat.

And of course they talk to me, and I back to them.

 

[2020hindsight]

Saw a little of it

... I have had an affinity for animals all my life and am not at all surprised by what they can do.

Hey whiskers what did you think of the problem solving ...

like they put a chimp in a cage where he has the ability to unlock the door for a second chimp to join him IF he needs help with a problem.

Then they give him a problem where a plank in yet another neighbouring cage has bananas on it - and a rope tied to each end, and those ropes accessible to him in his cage. (too wide apart for him to pull on both concurrently) .

Now the problem is that only with both ropes (one at each end) being pulled towards him can be get the bananas - he needs his friend's help.
So ALMOST IMMEDIATELY he twigs to this ( faster than I would have lol) - and goes to the latch of the second chimps cage and lets him in - they both immediately solve the puzzle ( I suspect they'd done t before sheesh) .

THEN, lol - just to prove how human they really are -
they give him a problem where he can solve it alone, and he has the option of letting his friend in to help finish off fthe bananas - lol - Friend? - what friend ?!! he polishes them off himself, with the other chimp rattling at his prison gate - locked out of the "kitchen"

a Jack man ?
or a Jack Chimp ?
(PS I get the feeling that different chimps would behave differently btw)

 

[Whiskers]

Hey whiskers what did you think of the problem solving ...

(PS I get the feeling that different chimps would behave differently btw)

Yeah, me too. I think some of these sorts of tests are a bit arbitrary. Some humans grow up to be not very good problem solvers either. Let an animal interact with humans like a child does, to learn the strings a bit over time and the communicative interaction, intelligence and problem solving becomes more apparent, I reckon. Guide dogs for the blind for e.g. never cease to amaze me.

 

[Julia]

And of course they talk to me, and I back to them.

LOL: say this to someone who doesn't connect with animals and they will regard you as certifiable!

 

[2020hindsight]

Speaking of problem solving ...
This could be on the "all creatures great and small" thread - except equally it shows that animals are almost human dog scratching its back down a hill

ok here's a light hearted ad for some roofing material (flexibond?) - even lizards can (attempt to ) solve problems

 

[Whiskers]

LOL: say this to someone who doesn't connect with animals and they will regard you as certifiable!

Yeah funny thing that, and animals can generally pick them out and let you know pretty quickly.

 

[2020hindsight]

Adam Smith may be onto something

Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.
..... Adam Smith


The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.
..... Adam Smith