Different in degree or kind (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, December 19, 2013, 02:08 (3993 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that in different local areas, tree-living became difficult or impractical (down came the hominins), while the chimps stayed up elsewhere. You don't need a global catastrophe to change the environment. You seem to be implying that suddenly God stepped in to do one of his dabbles, or he'd fixed a hominin-here-you-go programme in the very first cells, which they passed on through a few billion years and species until something triggered the programme (and you still don't know any more than the rest of us what that trigger was).-We don't know why hominins left the trees, or what pushed them to do it, but transitional hominin forms have been recently found to have heavy arms for tree work, but also more upright postural changes and better walking ability. This is highly suggsetive that they weren't forced to leave the trees as they prepared to descent. Looks for all the world as preplanning!
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> dhw: I admit that I can't do half the things that dogs, crows and ants do, but who cares? We are all different in one respect or another. And this would be so whether God exists or not. Why, then, is it a problem for you if we say that humans are simply different from the other primates, just as chimps are different from gorillas, and primates are different from dogs, crows and ants?-But, they are not 'simply different'. They are vastly different. You are minimizing the difference. You can do lots better stuff than sniffing other dogs butts, flying, or tunnelling underground. 
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> dhw: The origin of human language remains as mysterious as the origin of life and the origin of consciousness. Perhaps David thinks that all languages were preprogrammed into the very first cells, along with the billions of other innovations, lifestyles etc. that God crammed in there. -What is wrong with preplanning?