is it really brain size / body mass? wouldn't that make fat people dumber?... i'm not sure i'm with you on that.

but i do think that intelligence is being overplayed here. i mean, lions have lots of strength, cheetahs are fast as hell, elephants are huge and us? we're smart. our advantage was the one that beat the others, but it doesn't make it some magical sort of 6th sense. i mean, every animal does it, we just do it better. chance.

We're talking about species averages here, not individuals. In general, human beings have relatively small body size in comparison to brain size.

Then again, you might have just foreseen an unexpected evolutionary change, who knows?

Evolution definitely has a lot to do with chance, yes...I mean, it's not like animals exactly choose to evolve.

hmm... still i'm not sure. i mean, dogs seem like a good example, except i don't know exactly how much 'brains' they have. insects then? still, very little idea. umm... maybe shellfish? or shrimp? crawfish? dude i seriously don't know, but i might look into it. what it might be is that it has to be the right KIND of brain goo, not just the quantity. like, elephants have bigger motion areas or something... know what i mean? whereas humans have bigger.. lobes is it... so we can do abstract thought better.

I think it all comes down to what we are doing right now, man devoloped the ability to communicate. Dogs will stand in the road, yes, but if the dog gets hit and survives, it will learn to avoid the road, it will become afraid of the road. Another dog will go and do the same thing, because dogs dont have any type of communications network to share the knowledge that "road = danger".

There's a quote at the beginning of the Pink Floyd song Keep Talking on the Division Bell album, its by Stephen Hawking and it says:

For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals.
Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination.
We learned to talk.

Now I realize you're going to ask "how did we learn to talk"? And this discussion can go on indefinitely, we've effectively reached a "which came first, the chicken or the egg" scenario.

The Egg, but obviously not from a chicken as we know it.
Enviromental triggers and natural selection is luck, those who learnt to think talk and say "I am, you are" lived, the rest died. Put it in another way our species rolled the gentic dice and came up winning.

isn't it just the luckiest of coincidences we were the species that learned to speak...create and thrive?

why is that a coincidence? could just be random. coincidence implies there's some meaning to the randomness. like, it's a coincidence if i say i'm hungry and you say you have a pack of crackers. if you just say you have crackers, though, it's no coincidence. if i then say i'm hungry, that's a coincidence. i mean, our being intelligent isn't coincidence because it isn't convenient to anything else - one even cannot be coincidental except in relation to another event (co-incidental).

Evolution is not an active process per say. Evolution is simply a result of natural selection. A magical hand doesnt say okay grow a larger fronal lobe it will help you thinkbetter.

Natural mutations occur. This is one thing even creationists do not begin to question. If mutations in your genome exist then the proteins translated chnge too. This causes this creature to be slightly different than the rest. If its advantagous in this particular environment then it survives to a reproductive age and passes it on, if not it dies and the gene its deleted from a population because it did not have advantagous results. If it outcompetes another without this advantage then the gene pool has changed. This is how natural selection works. There is no why to it.

It statistics really, there is a rather constant mutation rate in regards transcription/translation/meoisis, every so often things go not right. Then, see above, that happens. These proteins that change may be hormones, they may cause a longer neck, they may cause a larger frontal lobe.

Thats a real basic summary of what evolution is actually about. Evololution doesnt 'decide' which creatures live and which die, or which ones get to have langage capabilities, evolution just explains the result from the mechanism described above.

Situations dictate EVENTS and in turn those EVENTS create the situation. It was luck that it happened to us, that it happened here. That it happened was only a matter of time. It was going to happen to some species, we were just lucky and unlucky it happened to ours.
Without some proof of intervention or another speaking Creature it cannot be considered coincidental.

I don't understand this post. If it had been the neandertahls it would have been lucky for them. If it had been the dinosaurs it would have been lucky for them. So yes, I guess it was lucky for us, but I'm not sure what your point is. Are you saying it was divinely inspired that this group of monkeys got to evolve and not that group of monkeys?

well, if it all does come down to some random, natural selection, being as we're top of the food chain instead of the bottom, i'd say that's pretty lucky.

maybe it was divine intervention, maybe it wasn't...there's really no proof, either way. it all just proves that modern man has been around for a couple of a million years and has always been rather ingenious.

well yeah, i'm glad it happened, and since i think it was random, i guess that means we are pretty lucky

Natural Selection is not random! Realize that before you speak again.

now, you're just being catty....


if it's not random...who decides which species are better adapted to survive?

either it's a completely natural process subject to the randomnalities of nature and "luck of the draw" or it's planned out.

AAAUGH!

Its based totally around a species ability to survive and adapt to its environment! Its not "planned out" by anything, and there's nothing random about it. Jesus did you even take an entry level science class in school?

whoa, now, everything is random and then again it's not. random just means we don't understand why it works. in a sense, the laws of physics dictate everything. so nothing's really random, except that which we can't explain through physics, which we call random to feel better about ourselves.

there's some randomness involved in evolution and then again there's a lot that's not, in fact, most of it can be explained in thefrog's introductory science class.

our entry level sciences were earth science and a brief overview of biology, having people chew a soda cracker to check their bloodtype, doesn't always work...i can tell you about the, evolution of valleys, the randomness that came from gigantic glaciers tearing through massive stone mountains...i can even tell the difference between a variety of rocks, minerals and read my popular science monthly...but how is "natural selection" not random?

because it's dependent on environmental factors?

...we started out in africa short and dark, and as we migrated up to the north we grew lighter, more hair and heftier bodies to with stand the cold...if the ideal of evolution comes into play, was that natural selection that we were better migrators than, well...the neanderthals i suppose as they didn't survive?

monkey man needed to walk further distance so over time his body became more designed to walk tall on two legs than four...etc, but anyone who's read about prehistoria knows the chronology of man from little ape in africa to dominating war mongers of the north.

what's the opposite of random, if it's not random shouldn't there be a predictable order...what would be the next species to survive, when we fail...or will humanity always be around, i mean...if it does have a predictable pattern, wouldn't science be able to say?

please oh mighty paragon's of all science and knowledge, explain the order and predictibility of natural selection to me, proving how it's not random.

because looking over the evolution of man, i see nothing that suggests it was anything other than a luck of the draw...if no deity was involved.

let me give this a shot, i'll try to be as brief as possible...

atoms are the basic building blocks of this world and all we see in it. atoms are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. all atoms have specific properties determined by the quantity of these three particles. these three particles have are very very (though not perfectly) predictable relationships with one another. the relationships are not perfectly predictable because we lack the means to make perfect predictions about them. these relationships fall under the realm of physics.

atoms form to make molecules, in some cases. the forming of molecules is also very predictable. the combination and arrangement of atoms in a molecule gives molecules unique characteristics which are predictable as well. molecules are explained via chemistry, which is a shorthand for physics when systems of atoms are involved.

in living things, molecules and sometimes even atoms form to make cells. cells have specific parts, the functions of which are easily understood. the way a cell behaves is also understood and explained through biology, a short-hand for chemistry when so many chemical substances are involved.

cells may join to form tissues, organs, and organisms. we can predict the processes occurring inside living organisms, and the mechanisms which cause said organism to behave as it does. anatomy and organismal biology are shorthands for cellular/molecular biology when so many cells are involved.

organisms interact with one another through predictable processes explained by ecology. (i think...) ecology is a shorthand for organismal biology when the number of organisms is increased from just the one.

the theory of evolution falls under organismal biology. the principle of natural selection falls under ecology. now, let's address your question for serious.

let's put a cat and a mouse in a locked room with nothing else. both are prime, healthy specimens. what happens does not require much imagination. the cat will eat the mouse. this is fundamentally explained by physics, at the atomic level.

now what i think you're saying is that natural selection is random not because the animals' behavior is random but because what happens is random, in relation to the animal. this is true at the macroscopic level but not true at the atomic level. however, at the macroscopic level, this is true in individual case scenarios but statistically not true, as it evens out. eventually all animals are subject to the same conditions (statistically) so whether it's random or not has no bearing.

if an organism can survive these mean conditions, its genes are preserved. if it cannot, its genes are not preserved. assuming the mean conditions stay the same, only the best organisms' genes will remain. assuming the mean conditions change, there will be a shift (evolution) in a species' genes. depending on what genes are combined in sexual reproduction, and what mutations occur, new and different species can come into existence. this explains simultaneously the wide variety of life on earth as well as the fact that they can split even more, and their genetic makeup can shift via evolution and natural selection. evolution is the after-effect of natural selection.