I never said you said we should get rid of the word animal; I said you erroneously said we shouldn't use it, as you did in your post here:

Which animal are we supposed to be comparing ourselves with? This has been a classic ploy throughout history, to compare certain types of humans or human behaviour to animals as a justification for assigning a particular status to them. But there is massive diversity among animals.

You haven't shown why we need use the particular word animal at all. It is clearly as I have mentioned a word that is applied selectively for different purposes.

And I have shown why we should use it since I said it was the proper classification just like we have proper classifications of words. So, if you don't want to use the proper scientific classification of "animal' to describe humans, then you'd be a hypocrite to call a shark a "fish" or a dog a "mammal," since they are classifications, too. Since I'm sure you don't want to present yourself as uneducated, I'm sure you'll avoid doing so.

"Long before post-Darwinian “scientific racism” begins to develop, then, one can find blacks being depicted as closer to apes on the Great Chain of Being. Take mid-19th century America in circles in which polygenesis (separate origins for the races) was taken seriously. Leading scientists of the day Josiah C. Nott and George R. Gliddon, in their 1854 Types of Mankind, documented what they saw as objective racial hierarchies with illustrations comparing blacks to chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans." — Andrew4Handel

This is the genesis of Darwinianism. It was embraced by Europeans (and funded) because it justified the occupation of Africa and Asia. There is no science here, just an economic invasion justified by Natural (what else?) Selection.

OK, so what if a semi-aware consciousness pervades all living things, and receives input from each entity's experiences, which it then uses to decide on perodic evolutionary changes to genetic programs? Genetic code is its programming language, but unlike computer code, it has a natural degree of chaotic behaviour, especially when subjected to various environmental factors (explaining things like cancer). The consciousness has a general sense of what is possible, and puts forth program changes that enable it's entities to adapt to the ever-changing environment. Add to this a desire to expand its population of entities, a sensitivity to pleasure and pain, and a deep yearning for its children to achieve the limits of physical existence. With the evolution of humans, and seeing how they can be so self-destructive, it questions the benefit of introducing further evolutionary changes until the humans can get their act together. Voila! An explanation for everything that is evolution. X-)

Science fiction is a wonderful thing.

No. Humans are simply experimenting, and sometimes they experiment on each other and kill hundreds of thousands of people with drugs. This isn't Natural Selection, this is greed.

What we do have in abundance is plenty of elitism and the supernatural force called Natural Selection that is mysteriously weeding out everyone who can't survive the concentration camps and sterilization programs. The concept of a Master Race was nurtured by the rather disgusting idea of Natural Selection.

Natural selection was operating many millions of years, a billion or more years, before any of the Nazis were even a gleam in their parents' eye..

The Nazis believed in evolution? Oh, then we'd better all be evolution-deniers.

The Nazis celebrated Christmas. So presumably Rich wants to ban Christmas.

The Nazis drank beer. Then we'd better ban beer.

The Nazis breathed air. Then we'd better not breathe air.

What kind of Nazis will we become if we follow Rich's reasoning?

Michael Ossipoff

Natural Selection is just a made up story with zero evidence created to justify imperialism. What has been happening for millions of years has been evolutionary change.

The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to believe that natural selection is only part of evolution, and is only responsible for removing life forms that don't adapt quickly enough to survive changing environmental factors. There must be some creative intelligence at work when it comes to positive adaptation. If not, how would you explain a centipede developing multiple virtually identical legs at the same time? It is hard to imagine that it developed one stump first by accident, that allowed it to thrive compared to other members of its family...

There must be some creative intelligence at work when it comes to positive adaptation.

No, there musn't. Tha'ts religious talk.

If not, how would you explain a centipede developing multiple virtually identical legs at the same time? It is hard to imagine that it developed one stump first by accident, that allowed it to thrive compared to other members of its family...

Nature has more than shown it's a very potent and creative creator in the existence of the universe, it's many wondrous phenomena, and all the different life forms--including humans'--on Earth. So, the development of legs on a centipede shouldn't make you doubt Nature did it without any divine intelligence.

@Thanatos Sand OK, so please explain how you propose nature 'did it'. Little atoms joined together into little cells that are operating according to some biological program spontaneously changed what they were normally doing, and said 'Hey, legs would be useful, and we can construct them just so.'?

@Thanatos Sand OK, so please explain how you propose nature 'did it'. Little atoms joined together into little cells that are operating according to some biological program spontaneously changed what they were normally doing, and said 'Hey, legs would be useful, and we can construct them just so.'?

That's a fallacious question that presumes I have to explain how Nature did something to correctly claim it did it. I don't and neither does anybody else. Using your flawed logic, someone would have to know how genetics works to be able to say reproduction is natural. They don't.

The Aztecs couldn't explain eclipses. I guess they weren't natural either.

@Thanatos Sand I'm simply asking for some sound reasoning to make your explanation a plausible one.

No, you asked for a scientific explanation, and I showed you why I don't need to give one.

@Thanatos Sand Well, now I'm asking for any type of explanation.

Then go look up the accepted scientific explanation. I've been going with that one the whole time.

@Thanatos Sand Well that was entirely unhelpful.

I think all human behaviour needs explaining or fitting into the paradigm of what a person is. (if you are going to propose such paradigms)

All human behaviour is human behaviour. I don't see how you can claim some behaviour is more human or more instinctive/animalistic or evolutionarily valid.

I also think that if you want a theory of all reality you have to include all human traits as facets of that reality.

Because you didn't read very well, and you're lost in a fantasy world.

It certainly was a waste of time for me.

To whom was that addressed?

OK, so please explain how you propose nature 'did it'. Little atoms joined together into little cells that are operating according to some biological program spontaneously changed what they were normally doing, and said 'Hey, legs would be useful, and we can construct them just so.'? — CasKev

Yes. There is nothing religious about creative intelligence. We experience it as ourselves every minute of every day of our lives. Watch a baby building with blocks.

What is religious is transferring this obvious creative intelligence from ourselves into some supernatural force called Nature and then claiming that we are just robots fulfilling the aims of this mysterious force. Nature becomes God or the Puppet Master and we are just mindless billiard balls bouncing around at it's whims.

The topic in general. As is this next comment.

I think people are being hopelessly naive if they think words are simply transparent and not power tools intended to defend ones own ideology. I don't think classification and conceptual division are neutral.

In terms of the word animal you can say things like.

"You were an animal in bed"
"You're worse than an animal"
"We are just animals"
"She was a party animal"
"He likes animals"
"Men are animals"

There are even more sophisticated uses of language in rhetoric, polemic and persuasion

@Rich So what are you referring to when you say "the big creative intelligence"?

This gets a bit tricky to explain but if you look around, there are many levels of intelligence working with each other and individually? It can be imagined as waves within an ocean where the individual waves can be perceived independently or as an ocean.

In the human body there is cellular intelligence all working together to create a large body v intelligence. There is no boundary, all working individually and together simultaneously.

↪Thanatos Sand

The topic in general. As is this next comment.

I think people are being hopelessly naive if they think words are simply transparent and not power tools intended to defend ones own ideology. I don't think classification and conceptual division are neutral.

In terms of the word animal you can say things like.

"You were an animal in bed"
"You're worse than an animal"
"We are just animals"
"She was a party animal"
"He likes animals"
"Men are animals"

There are even more sophisticated uses of language in rhetoric, polemic and persuasion

This is all irrelevant to the discussion. I was solely talking about the scientific classification "animal" meaning: "a living organism that feeds on organic matter, typically having specialized sense organs and nervous system and able to respond rapidly to stimuli."

Humans fit that definition and are part of that classification.

@Rich Any ideas on what the overall aim of the big creative intelligence might be?

What I did was observe a lot, studied a lot, and discussed a lot. What I came up is that we are all experimenting, exploring, creating and learning from the time we are born and throughout our lives. With this, I began immersing myself in the arts to see what new things I can lean and create.

↪CasKev This gets a bit tricky to explain but if you look around, there are many levels of intelligence working with each other and individually? It can be imagined as waves within an ocean where the individual waves can be perceived independently or as an ocean.

It's amazing, one day Rich is saying there are waves within an ocean when just days before he said the ocean was just ocean, and waves were mere human perception:

It's profoundly obvious, that the ocean does have waves, and not vise versa.
— Metaphysician Undercover

The ocean is the ocean. It is continuous. We make the distinctions, when viewing the ocean from a given perspective. One can turn it upside down and say all the waves contain the ocean. There are and there isn't one or the other or both.

If inconsistency were a virtue, Rich would be a saint.

I think you are fishing more more compliments. The quantum physics description for you is super-dense.

The only super-dense one is clearly you, and I just showed that in my last post...:)

Suggestion (and please take this as a compliment), if you ever need evidence that humans are computer bots, use yourself as an example. Almost irrefutable.