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Pretty lame in trying to compare a rare event with human horrors that you find occurring every single day...especially the horrific acts committed by the males of our species.
It is believed that hippos sometimes commit infanticide when they are overpopulated or struggling with a form of sickness. The reasons for hippos to commit infanticide remain relatively unknown due to the difficulty of studying the aggressive creatures.
Nature can appear to be very cruel but no where near as cruel as humans!
Now onto the sharks. Shark embryos cannibalize their littermates in the womb, with the largest embryo eating all but one of its siblings.
Now, researchers know why: It's part of a struggle for paternity in utero, where babies of different fathers compete to be born.
The researchers, who detailed their findings in the journal Biology Letters, analyzed shark embryos found in sand tiger sharks (Carcharias taurus) at various stages of gestation and found that the later in pregnancy, the more likely the remaining shark embryos had just one father. That finding suggests the cannibalism seen in these embryos is a competitive strategy by which males try to ensure their paternity.
gram, there is a amount of "awe" one gets in figuring out where we fit in this universe. Its quite cool.
we are surrounded by life. we are connected to it from the "deep roots" that form the fabric of space to the chemistry interactions we experience every time we eat, breath, and live.
The interactions are cool, they just aren't a god thingie.
why do you need humans to be more than we are?
Damn That's another good one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Or it is indicative of a Creator using the same blueprint for designing countless creations. Why reinvent the wheel each time?
Which is the Theistic evolution argument and which effectively concedes our point - we Are animals -jus others are animals. And while our abilities are remarkable, so are the abilities of a bat to fly when other rodents can't. It is not an argument for a god needing to have a hand in it,
Quote:
Originally Posted by Danbo1957
Morality is nothing more than the weak appealing to the strong not to kill them.
Or is the reason given to the strong not to do it, or they might find the weak getting together in self defense.
The OP's getting hung up on the word 'animals' - and attributing some lesser religiously based bias interpretation re the same, to boot. Talk about tangled-up in nonsense.
No it's not a norm but might become one since humans are pushing more and more animals into extinction through our own overpopulation and deforesting of their homes.
However if you don't think humans engage in infanticide then you really have your head in the sand....especially since there is a long history of humans doing this.
Because many animals also have morality. Bees will die for the queen. Pack animals protect and act according to pack rules. Animals care for their young. If by morality you mean adhering to some nonsense a corrupt leader fosters on a group, that may be a very human problem, and is likely part of our dna.
Hey grandpa have you ever read up on the horrific deeds humans did in the name of religion? Check out what humans did in the 16th century in the name of religion.
Show me one other animal that does these things in the name of religion?
Quote:
Religion
Death of Ivan the Terrible by Ivan Bilibin (1935) - Ivan was a devoted follower of Christian Orthodoxy and placed the most emphasis on defending the divine right of the ruler to unlimited power under God. Some scholars explain the sadistic and brutal deeds of Ivan the Terrible with the religious concepts of the 16th century, which included drowning and roasting people alive or torturing victims with boiling or freezing water, corresponding to the torments of Hell, consistent with Ivan's view of being God's representative on Earth with a sacred right and duty to punish. He may also have been inspired by the model of Archangel Michael with the idea of divine punishment.
I've never run into any other animal species who behaved like this! However you can read up on humans behaving like this since the beginning of recorded history all the way up to the present day.
Well actually you make a good point here - but completely opposite to the one I think you were hoping to make. Where and why did their empathy go away? It went away because the focus of their lack of empathy was successfully dehumanized in their minds. A dogma was instilled in them that made them few "the other" as somewhat less than human.
And that is often the move the religious make. Not a move you often see atheists make and certainly not a move that you can make solely based on atheism as under atheism there is no difference between us and no basis for dehumanization of one group more than another.
Why only in my home country of Ireland recently did a Bishop high up in the Catholic Hierarchy declare that atheists are "not fully human". Once again the religious narrative of dehumanizing the other because once you manage that - you can do or say what you like to "the other".
This is the game _your_ people play. Own it.
Although mostly correct, you'd be surprised to find that Atheism doesn't have a mandate to believe that there is no difference either, and no basis for not dehumanizing another group. Tribalism is at the very core of human emotion, and human emotion is the most corruptable trait of human beings.
Humans evolved from fish but humans are not fish.
Humans evolved from animals but humans are not animals.
Your definition of "animal" is rather loaded and rather degradational.
"animal" merely means "having breath," as is needed to be animated (muscularly mobile).
Fish, for example, breath through/using their gills. Sure, "animal" might be an outdated concept given that plants "also breath through pores on their surface" just like bugs, but plants breath in mostly a different gas in the atmosphere, one that can last 100 years in the upper layers when it gets there.
It is the superficially religious and supernaturalists that seek to change definitions in this case.
Out of the thousands and thousands of other species, not a single one thinks like we do, communicates like we do, and is creative natured like we are. I don't think we've ever seen primates drum out a musical pattern with some sticks
False God of the GAP.
"Darwins theory of a continuity of mind"
Yes, sorry but Darwin was wrong in his prediction, The two closest non-human animals in intelligence are probably 100x closer to each other and some of the least intelligent animals, then they are to us. Because intelligence is specifically about the kind of thing we can do.
Flight, for example, is extremely the same and extremely found among diverse species. Same with sonar. Less so, but still diverse with shark's electroreception. Our level of intelligence is only in us. Pit vipers are almost unique in their IR visual sense, I suppose.
Surely though, no one does flight+vision like the dragonfly. No one sonar and intelligence like the dolphin. No shark does electroreception like the hammerhead.
Of course, you probably don't see too many of the non-human animals going schizophrenic or having language-focused diseases. Our type of language-communications probably helps out a lot with abstract thinking and puzzle solving.
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That's another good one.
