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Eharding's avatar

"Humans are not special"

Wrong. They are the only species with language. Also, read Pontzer's *Burn* book -they are the only species that need exercise to stay healthy.

"that we have come into existence through eons of blind mutation and selection, rather than from the conscious decision of a judgmental deity"

How many years does it take to evolve a 100 IQ lifeform? Probably not as many as millions. Evolution would imply rapid evolution of human-level intelligence followed by its destruction, happening many times over hundreds of thousands of years.

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Apple Pie's avatar

Wait, are you sure cetaceans don't have language? What about corvids?

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Eharding's avatar

I don't think their vocabulary is very large.

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Apple Pie's avatar

Does it need to be large? Crows are able to transfer information to one another about threatening humans in a way that's highly discriminating; this one, but *not* that one: https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-06/how-crows-recognize-individual-humans-warn-others-and-are-basically-smarter-you/

Orcas have their own dialects: https://oceanliteracy.ca/whale-talk-orca-communication-and-dialect/

I could go on, but ultimately experience tells me that what I'm saying won't matter if you believe in God and the Bible. I don't know if you do, but if so... I wish you a joyful and successful life.

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Anders L's avatar

If you have not already read Eric Kaufmann's book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? you might find it uplifting although I suspect you already know most of its contents. Mr Kaufmann at least shows some understanding of the fact that the higher fertility rate of the religious has the capacity to change socities.

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Apple Pie's avatar

I haven't read it - I also suspect that I already know most of its contents. I will say that I've at least listened to interviews, and I have an intuitive sense of Kaufmann as a secularist who is rather neutral on the issue of religion.

Speculatively, I actually think that believers and atheists have many things in common, and that agnostics have their own styles of thought which differ from those of both believers and atheists. I'd write more, but my children keep chasing me from computer to computer and I *still* haven't even finished reading Tove's post at https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/the-origins-of-patriarchy !

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