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? 
June 27, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Well, One: I would question whether humans are more advanced than other creatures. It was humans who invaded Iraq and slaughtered thousands of innocent beings. It’s the human race that will shortly kill off this planet by overuse of fossil fuels and other resources. You don’t generally see whales doing that. Maybe they’re too bright.
Two. The idea that we all have a common ancestor does not at all imply that we would develop (evolve?) at the same rate. That’s a non sequitur.
Three. We are evolving as we are because we respond over time to changes in our environment. The environments of elephants and of whales have changed in different ways to ours, so they’ve evolved in different ways in order to survive. Not worse, just different.
Four. You perceive beauty in a sunset because you have learned to interpret some phenomena as having a value you call ‘beauty’, and sunsets are things that you associate with that value. Another human may asociate the value ‘beauty’ with toads, or snowfalls, or modern art. It’s entirely subjective. It doesn’t have any relevance to the discussion about whether humans evolved over time or were created in an instant by a God.
Hope this helps.
June 27, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Thanks for stopping by, I appreciate your thoughts. It’s always helpful to get a different intelligent perspective.
“One” strikes me as a bit of an appeal to emotion, so I don’t know if I can really respond to it.
Regarding “two”, you’ve misunderstood me slightly, I don’t mean to say we would all develop at the same rate. I’m saying there is a relatively narrow standard deviation in the development of all other traits, so it doesn’t make sense from the theory of a common ancestor that human intelligence skews that range so radically. If all variations in mammals hover around a particular mean except for this HUGE deviation caused by human intelligence, it can imply there’s something going on that’s not explained by a common ancestor theory.
Regarding “three”, we’re all supposedly evolving on the same planet, so why would the environment engender a fairly comparable standard deviation for all traits except this one which sticks out like a throbbing opposable appendage?
Regarding “four”, there’s a remarkably objective range of what is considered beautiful to humans. The subjectivity of which you speak is often just a social/cultural superset to the foundational objective which humans share. Scientists can isolate variables in music, painting, sculpture, etc., to which a great number of people ascribe beauty. These aspects of humanity make no sense given a theory which implies humans will be efficient and interconnected to their environment only in ways that procure reproductive advantage. They make perfect sense given a common transcendental creator. Accordingly, I find the discussion quite relevant.
September 23, 2007 at 11:59 am
Scientists actually know a lot about why our adaptations have made us–by some measures–more successful than other animals. But the truth is we’re not greatly advanced over, say, chimps, which are capable of language, abstraction, and tool-building.
Or why would we accept that we’re more intelligent than dolphins? We still don’t understand their language, and their survival strategies–until we started polluting–have worked wonderfully well. As Douglas Adams put it, the things we point to to say we’re more intelligent are the same ones dolphins might point to to say they are.
Furthermore, there is no evidence that developing intelligence is a particularly good survival strategy–roaches existed before we did, and will exist long after we disappear.
If you’re interested in learning more, I suggest reading Steven Jay Gould, who addresses the questions you raise. Humans truly are amazing creatures, but so are other creatures. Darwin noted their “endless forms most beautiful,” which we are lucky to have evolved the capacity to appreciate.
September 23, 2007 at 3:10 pm
EB, you’re echoing a very common response to these lines of reasoning that just doesn’t take the issue very seriously, I feel. Are dolphins intelligent? Yes, most definitely. Are chimps? Certainly. But humans have so much more advanced artistic, abstraction, and communicative abilities that it seems in service of a particular philosophy to ignore the magnitude. Do you seriously think chimp language is anywhere near as advanced as ours? If so, you’re using a scale that is heavily weighted against humanity.
As for the roaches statement, I’m discussing the human mind and the inexplicability of its state through evolutionary reasoning. I’m not even really discussing survival as much as intelligence, which very well may not be a good tool for survival, which again begs the question of why it’s found ridiculously abundantly in humans.
I’ve read the Gould book, and was less than impressed. It seems he and many others ignore the basic idea that in almost every environment, humans consistently stand out as the most rigorously intelligent by far. What explains this quantum difference in a single species across almost every environment, if we all had the same starting point?
In a race where everyone begins at the same position on the starting line, and all the athletes are at a similar level of training and fitness, but one person crosses the finish line 90% faster than all the others, it’s ridiculous to just say “well, I guess they were really fast”. You start looking at other things, like drugs, cheating via a shortcut, etc. In the same way, an evolutionary pole position which is equal for all creatures doesn’t jibe with human intelligence towering over all other creatures.
January 7, 2008 at 12:06 am
I do believe your article labors under a common false dichotomy. The idea that the debate is comprised of two positions alone is demonstrably false and causes unnecessary friction. It may even open before the feet of potential converts an impossible chasm to be leaped on their road to Calvary. If the supernatural, direct creation be both true and necessary to faith, then it is a person’s tough luck if he cannot believe it. If it be not true, or even if it just not be crucial, then its progenitors and present advocates have placed a terrible, unnecessary barrier before those who cannot go on to Calvary because of it.
There is in your article—and others in your blog—a choice between just two positions: supernatural, direct creation and unguided, evolutionary materialism. This is an error in argumentation because these are not the only positions that have been advanced. There is, in fact, a continuum of ideas between these extremes involving many variations and blendings of the two. But, Christians argue against their own who have fallen into the “trap” of “Theistic Evolution”—so called—accusing them of little better than treason. “You spit in God’s face!” being once shouted into my face as I tried to discuss evidence for human evolution in the Bible.
I have never understood why, starting with B. B. Warfield to the present day, that Christians are so animated against the idea that God should use ordinary tools for an extraordinary work. Have we not daily examples of His doing the very thing?
Warm regards,
Opus
January 7, 2008 at 1:43 am
Opus, I’m undecided on the idea of theistic evolution, so if you sense a false dichotomy in my blog, you’re reading into things. Evolution very well may be true, but if it is, I’d like to see some answers regarding the elephants in the room regarding morality, meaning, aesthetics, etc. I simply see people avoiding these issues, which makes me smell a rat.
January 7, 2008 at 2:14 am
Evolution, and I mean the truly scientific theorem, has nothing whatsoever to say of such things. One must distinguish, as Lewis did in his _Funeral of a Great Myth_ between the scientific theorem, which even he conceded may be true, and what he called Evolutionism, which he held to certainly not be. When Sagan opined in his _Cosmos_, “The Cosmos is all there is, all there ever has been, and all there ever will be.”, he was not speaking there as a scientist or from the lessons of biological evolution. He was speaking as a metaphysician on his faith in a covert religious dogma. For him, science had proved that which it had no power to prove. Even so, this must be clearly separated from that which science can speak to—the relationships among species, the history of morphologies, and such like.
Warm regards,
Opus
January 7, 2008 at 2:33 am
I respectfully disagree. Science, at a fundamental level, sets out hypotheses and then explores how well reality lines up with these hypotheses. If the hypothesis of evolution lines up poorly with human behavior, reasoning and consciousness, there is a fundamentally scientific problem at hand with evolution (as we currently understand it). “Non-overlapping magesterium” is a joke, if you ask me.
It sounds like you limit science rather arbitrarily, and in any case much more so than do most scientists.
January 7, 2008 at 2:54 am
The point is that there are things that science is less speculative about—some things about which it can be more confidently assertive than others. But that all begs the question. Long before a high degree of confidence has been attained on the questions you raise, I think other questions can reasonably have been settled. We should not wait for science to approach the others to attend to these. In the long run, the important thing here is the search for Truth. The notion that the evolutionary sciences cannot explain certain things to our satisfaction does not mean 1) that other things are not well explained, and 2) that we are not being unreasonable in our expectations of its powers or of our demands of personal satisfaction.
Warm regards,
Opus
January 7, 2008 at 4:41 pm
You seem to misunderstand. What I’m saying is that if the extended conclusions arrived at from the “reasonably settled questions” you mention seem radically off from reality, then perhaps those questions aren’t so “reasonably settled” as you may suppose. I’m not advocating “waiting” to deal with micro issues until macro issues are settled, I’m advocating questioning micro conclusions which have untenable macro implications.
January 7, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Naturally, I should disagree with the idea that my “reasonably settled questions” are “radically off from reality”. Christians often talk down the evidence that exists supporting certain answers to such “questions”. More often, they simply disallow the discussion. Nevertheless, there is powerful evidence in favor of certain points that Christians simply will not consider. Saying such things as “I shall not believe X so long as it (or they) cannot explain Y.” is nothing more than avoiding the question. Moreover, if their explanation for Y is not to our satisfaction, that does not mean that it does not really explain.
Warm regards,
Opus
January 7, 2008 at 7:35 pm
With all due respect, Opus, you seem to be coming at this colored from some sort of bad experience, since you’re speaking to the points of some “typified Christian”, not mine. I’m utterly excited to have the discussion about proofs for evolution, and utterly open to the evidence (in fact I’m trying to find a biologist with whom to converse about questions I’ve had).
Requiring evidence before accepting a hypothesis (and rejecting hypotheses with negative evidence) is not avoiding the question, it’s how science works. I would caution you that beliefs which aren’t loosely held and available to critique are closer to dogma than science.
January 8, 2008 at 12:52 am
My memory rings with the many times in my life when I have met obdurate souls—not counting you among them—who were utterly unwilling to listen to what I had learned and experienced in my own journey from where they were to where I had arrived—as if so doing would be a temptation to turn from Calvary. This all climaxed in the summer of 2005. Being a son of an old sharecropper family of the southern high plains of West Texas, I had occasion to resort there for my holidays that year. In a visit with my parents there, a discussion of these topics had arisen. It was not really a discussion so much as it was their shaking (once again) their heads at a son who had forgotten his childhood lessons in Church. At one point, my mother asked me this question: “If you were positively shown to be wrong about this [we had been speaking then on the age of the earth], would your mind be open to change?” I was deeply grieved at this question for two reasons. First, that I had all along had an open mind on the question as shown by the fact that I often changed my views by increments as new data had become available. Second, my mother had shown herself to be utterly closed-minded in this area always refusing to allow me to speak much on the matter—unwilling even to listen to my own thoughts so closed were hers.
Because of the biblical command to honor her, I never showed my mother how her words had pained me, but a few days later, my wife and I departed for a favorite old haunt of mine deep in the high deserts of West Texas—Big Bend National Park. There, I was surrounded with powerful evidence, which had never spoken to me so clearly, of the ancient geological processes that had formed the various canyons and mountains of that beautiful land. I saw saw once again the powerful geological evidence of the antiquity of that place and of the inadequacy of such things as Flood Geology to explain it. (Mariscal Canyon particularly defies explanation by such catastrophist arguments.) I was more certain than ever that my mother was wrong, but it was not for me to correct her.
Having learned how divisive discussions on such things can be, I do not often bring them up with fellow believers. Most Christians that I know do not want to discuss these topics but wish only to be affirmed in their dogma.
Warm regards,
Opus
January 8, 2008 at 1:33 am
Thanks for sharing, Opus. Consider yourself home, ‘cuz openly and honestly discussing divisive topics is what this blog is all about.
February 20, 2008 at 8:35 pm
We are not more evolved than currently existing whales or currently existing dogs. Every creature currently alive today is at the same evolutionary “stage”. Your claim that we are more evolved than whales because our cognitive faculties are more advanced is fallacious.
February 20, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Arturo, your point is well taken, but I think the average reader understands that I’m using the phrase “more evolved” in a loose sense. It’s simply verbal shorthand for the idea that our cognitive faculties are inexplicably exponentially more advanced than any other animal.
April 15, 2008 at 10:12 pm
I believe you are making a common mistake in your understanding of evolution. You are looking at humans as the final result of evolution. Actually, animals evolve to suit their environment the best way possible. I am no expert on this matter, but I can tell you that the animals you speak of fit into their environment in the best way possible at the current time. This is all through evolution. Apes have developed in such a way that they can climp trees, gather food, etc.
Man just happens to be the most advanced. The size of our brain is no issue. It is the composition that matters. Our brain happens to be the most developed. We have consciousness, and can question our existence. This is why there is religion. Think about this. Their are no signs of religion outside of Homo Sapien Sapien. Because we have consciousness, we wonder how everything could have happened without a god or gods. It is an error in the attempt to understand the world and the universe.
Because we are the most advanced, we can change evolution. We can keep other animals from developing in the way we have developed. We can change the living environment of animals, or wipe them out completely, by destroying their homes.
April 15, 2008 at 10:41 pm
asl, with all due respect, you’re reading things into my statements that aren’t there. I don’t see humans as an evolutionary endgame, I just see them expressing traits that aren’t readily explained by evolution. Clearly whales are better physically suited for a marine environment, oxen are stronger, and I’ve not seen a person with leather wings yet. But we can build submarines, subjugate much stronger animals as beasts of burden and fly higher in our jet planes than any bat, all due to our massively greater intelligence which isn’t explainable under evolutionary theory.
You say that “animals… fit into their environment in the best way possible at the current time”, but what I’m pointing out is that man can be found in many, many different environments and yet always seems to have the greatest intelligence out of any mammals around. Why would this one trait be selected for, and selected for *heartily*, only in humans in every environment in which they’re found? I don’t see any humans trying to make other mammals dumber (what would they do, force them to watch the Three Stooges?), so it’s not like they’re being held back from what we have. It simply breaks the evolutionary story.
I would recommend you read about studies comparing brain size to intelligence; I used to think that it was childish oversimplification to equate the two, but I’ve since learned that studies show a strong correlation.
As for religion being a side effect of consciousness, you’re gonna have to back that canard up for me with empirical evidence. I know of abundant signs of religion outside of Homo Sapiens; I call them the inadequacies of naturalistic explanations and the explanatory power of supernaturalism.
Thanks for the comments.
April 21, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I do not understand why you believe that consciousness is not explained by evolution. Furthermore, if brain size were related to intelligence, the ‘genius’ of whales would surpass our own, and when you compare between humans, with males being larger and therefore generally having larger brains, it would suggest females are intellectually inferior.
I think your main problem is that you are limiting the scope in some areas and not extending enough in others. We develop in ways that ensure our survival. Most animals had to develop by being physically stronger or faster, and if not, than to find some other characteristic that gives them an advantage. Blending in with environments is more useful to a butterfly than intelligence.
Now, we have to work on what we know. We know that something about the human mind causes consciousness. Apes are most similar to us. There must be something about our similar brains that causes consciousness. Here then, you narrow down the field of what types of animals are most likely to develop sentience given Earth conditions. From that narrow spectrum, it is illogical to think that all of them would have developed consciousness.
It is statistically probable that only one species would have. That species is homo sapiens. Of all the other traits to develop that would give us an advantage over other apes and their generally stronger bodies, sentience makes sense. Without it, it is very easy to conceive of an alternate history where humans went extinct. But, what are the chances of us developing it? The spectrum of species that are potentially capable of developing it is narrow. The chances could be one in a billion, making our sentience very improbable but still within the realm of statistical probability. There may be other Earth like planets where the small spectrum that allows for the possibility of sentience is greater but yet it did not emerge. Still, there could be possibilities where the spectrum was narrower than on Earth and more than one species developed sentience. My point, is that it is very easy and tempting to see our consciousness and marvel at it and call it design, when we look at Earth alone and omit the rest of the universe.
To illustrate this using an analogy, if a remote tribe in Africa, with individuals only of great height, dark skin and hair stumbled upon a shorter, blond haired, blue eyed person, they would marvel at the sheer unlikelihood of such a person existing in their tribe. However, whilst it may be unlikely in their tribe and given their ancestry, they would be less captivated if they knew in other parts of the Earth there were lots of people that resembled that curious stranger–even if those characteristics are still rare when you take into account all humans.
Again, it is easy to see design when we look only at a small part of the universe–or in my example, a small part of the Earth. It is understandable because the Earth is all we experientially know and the vastness of the universe is usually beyond our comprehension. This may start to change when we begin to collectively venture into space, and/or we can detect thousands of planets, and/or even make contact with an alien sentience.
April 21, 2008 at 7:32 pm
saturovash, consciousness is different than intelligence, so much of your comment doesn’t speak to my post. At issue is the extreme to which this one variable finds expression in humanity; to bum off your analogy, it would be similar to a situation in which the Africans would come across a person who was 80 feet tall, had flourescent green skin and breathed fire. At that point, naturalistic explanations start to fail.