Humanity: Kickin’ mammal butt, taking names

I’ve been thinking: if evolution is true, why is it that humans are so far advanced past even the most advanced mammals in intelligence?  There’s no great buildings erected by simians, or photorealistic art created by whales, or exponentially increasing medicinal breakthroughs helmed by dogs.  If all mammals share a common ancestor, we would expect to see a roughly similar level of intelligence development among them all.  There are certainly some non-human mammals who are smarter than others, but nowhere near the order of magnitude between humans and the most advanced mammalians.

One could argue that a whale has hugely more advanced intelligence than a paramecium, but I don’t think it’s a fair comparison.  A paramecium hardly has resources for intelligence, but whale and elephant brains are huge compared to ours.  Many scientists believe brain size can be a decently accurate indicator of intelligence, so what’s up with these lazy beasts?

One could also argue that our fine motor skills allow us to better express our intelligence, but it wouldn’t be too hard for an elephant to utilize their trunks to make intelligible markings on the ground indicating a language of some sort, or markings indicating abstract mathematical reasoning.  Could it be that these creatures are so beyond us that we just don’t comprehend the subtleties of their grand superiority?  I doubt it; I’m no Einstein by any stretch of the imagination, but I can appreciate his transcendent intelligence.

Any time I try to put on an evolutionary perspective, I find myself thinking: if this is true, why do I perceive beauty in a sunset, or feel gratitude, or desire meaning and autonomy?  You won’t see much discussion of these sorts of questions in Talk Origins and similar evolution apology sites.  I wonder why?

quiet, easy to dismiss

quiet, easy to dismiss

heaving with beauty, torrid raw hunger of life

squeezed into the tip of a point

forgotten, abused for convenience

overwhelming, simply bypassed

hard-won satisfaction with disease

still overwhelming, pivoting

remembered.

expanding point, enveloping, inviting, becoming

aching awe, blinding pure fury love

quiet,  set inside like a wall  

Mad No Longer

After taking several months to ponder the last post, I feel I’ve come to somewhat of a conclusion: If a human’s possible moral freedom is limited even in the slightest way, humanity in general is wronged deeply, not unlike how human life in general is cheapened by a single murder. Possible moral freedom should be thought of as that freedom which exists inside the necessary limits of the physical world (as humans are physical) and of social/cultural behavior firewalls (as humans are social creatures).

Moral freedom is connected deeply to who we foundationally are, for much of our humanity comes from our ability to make moral choices.  Accordingly, there is no such thing as unnecessary evil.  For humans to exist as we know them, evil must exist, from minor to horrific levels.

After surveying the various views, this one seems to be the most resonant with reality.  Nonetheless, thinking through it all has really made me fall in love with God’s subtlety, respectfulness, and grandeur all the more.