The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes (Humans)

by David Turell , Monday, July 06, 2009, 17:18 (5410 days ago) @ xeno6696

Where he has a stronger argument, is in dealing with the differences between say, plants and animals. But the fact that all life contains DNA and that all life contains a single common ancestor necessarily dictates a continuum from the first organism to ourselves. There also exists a continuum between every form of life and the common ancestor. Humans and trees are a subset of life, thus part of a continuum. - In the continuum there may be a branch in the road. Yogi Berra took both branches but we did not. The following excerpt from a book I am reading may influence your thinking and certainly supports Adler's viewpoint: - "The Self-Evolving Brain - 
What makes humans unique is the extraordinary impermanence of their ideas, and this impermanence is reflected in our extraordinary neuroplasticity. Neurons do not have fixed properties. Instead they are changing all the time. (38) It takes less than two weeks for a neuron to grow new axons and dendrites, (39) and in some cases the change occurs suddenly.......In essence, evolution gave us a nervous system that actively participates in its own neural construction, something we do not see in other animal brains. - It even appears that our brain has a mutant strand of DNA that contributes to our creativity, inventiveness and individual uniqueness. These 'jumping genes', as scientists are fond of calling them, can cause cells to change their functioning as we grow. (44)....... - Terrance Deacon, the esteemed professor of anthropology and neuroscience at [U. Cal. Berkeley] describes the human brain as an 'evolutionary anomaly' because human being have unparalleled cognitive abilities to imagine the unimaginable: - 	We think differently from all other creatures on earth, and we can share those thoughts with one another in ways that no other species even approaches....We alone brood about what didn't happen, and spend a large part of each day musing about the way events could have been if events had transpired differently. And alone we ponder what it will be like not to be....No other species on earth seems to be able to follow us to this miraculous place. (45)" - (Pg. 104-105 in "How God Changes Your Brain, Andrew Newberg, M.D. & Mark Robert Waldman, 2009). Newberg is a neuroradiologist whose studies determine how religious activities affect the brain. Previous book, "Why God Won't go Away", 2001. - The numbers in the text are his reference numbers.