Why is your religion the real religion ?

Yep, only one God; and, one can mean one molecule to one universe, etc. It's all encompassing.
He just goes by different names. Well, actually, people/different religions give Him different names. It's not like God is going incognito.

 

ah nevermind

 

Exactly.

 

Just sayin'.

 

Now that I'm not working a 12 hour shift...

Simply put, because no other known life form has adapted to its environment - violent or otherwise - with the kind of brain/intellect/psyche development found in the human race.

Across the planet, every known life form that's still around - other than humans - has survived and prospered without the one adaptation that sets us apart: our freakishly disproportionate capacity for intellect. All the others have gotten by well enough with one physical adaptation or another, as necessary... without anything that could remotely compare to our self-aware psyches.

No other known life form operates on a level remotely in the same league as the human race, and none seems to be on track to even start to in any foreseeable future. Sure, dolphins can do some cool tricks and a few apes can pick up a little sign language under the right conditions. But no other known life form has culture. No other known life form has "humanities." Heck, off the top of my head, I'm not aware of another life form that can even build a campfire, much less write a real song, or pass that specific, recognizable song on to its offspring and establish it as a preserved tradition.

How is that "natural?" That is conspicuously inconsistent at a minimum, and the objective universe, to the extent that it's currently understood, is defined by its consistent and predictable laws.

There's something different and special about humans. We are definitely more than just another species of ape. This can be acknowledged and established as a point of departure for further exploration without buying into any established religious dogma. We should give ourselves credit where it's due.

 

i think that's all true, but i don't think that being uniquely intelligent and/or self-aware means we aren't products of natural selection. there are plenty of animals that are highly unique in their own way -- ours just happens to be one that we appreciate more. certainly human intellect probably trumps all other evolutionary advances, but on the other hand, what about the more basic evolutionary leaps? like, i dunno, bones. or eyes? or livers? if you can accept that they are evolved via natural selection, why not human intellect?

 

One word: Parthenogenesis


A blacktip shark named Tidbit had been living at the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center for the last eight years, with no contact with males sharks of her species. When Tidbit died mysteriously last May, an autopsy revealed her nearly full-term pregnancy (the stress-related complications of which were probably what did her in).


It does actually happen.

 

Not with mammals.

*edit*
hehe

 

And you know this because?

 

'Virgin birth' mammal rewrites rules of biology