So we have big brains and special abilities through that. Whoop-de-doo. How is that any more special than the abilitiy of birds to fly? It's not' date=' and only human arrogance makes us think it is. Our consciousness only presents an evolutionary puzzle because we cannot define it or understand the mechanisms. Once those are solved, the question of how it evolved will the rapidly solved, I suspect.

 

 

 

Why? That smacks of human assumption that anything smart would be like us and our way is the best. We're social because we evolved from social primates. A species just as intelligent as us that evolved from leopards would *never* be social. This is because being social is not "better", it's just a different strategy for dealing with life, one we happen to employ.

 

Mokele[/quote']

 

 

Well, i can't argue the finer points of biology with you because i'm not a biologist, but our big brains are definately more complex and special than birds flying, because through that big brain we saw a bird fly and decided that we wanted to fly, and what did we do, we invented a way to do it. I think that makes us pretty special and one of a kind. What other species can do that?

But from a biological standpoint, it was harder for them (birds) to start flying than it was for us to become delusional...er... conscious. For birds to evolve flight, they had to undergo a complete rehaul of their form; develop the proper musculature, skeletons, respiratory systems, feathers etc. etc.

 

All humans had to due was undergo some mysterious upgrade to an already existing brain; an upgrade, I might add, that was most likely a direct result of the Divine Caress of the Noodly Appendage of the Great and Sagacious Flying Spaghetti Monster, an act probably committed while His Greatness was totally wasted on cheap Sicilian wine. (although those scientist's ignorant to the ways of the FSM claim extra protein from a changing diet was the catalyst for a bigger brain... heathens...)