Excerpt from Ever Since Adam and Eve: The Evolution of Human Sexuality Many species of mammal will fight to defend or to extend a territory on which their survival depends. Among animals that live in herds or in social groups, individuals will sometimes fight among themselves. Male chimpanzees compete for sex and status in their own group, and they very occasionally kill another member of the troop. Warfare, however, is very different from murder. In a war, individuals are killed simply because they belong to an alien group. Chimpanzee social structure, as has been emphasized previous, is built around a group of related males, who defend a territory they recongnize as their own. The unique and bloody common characteristic of the chimpanzee Pan troglodytes and Homo sapiens is a propensity for a close knit group of mature males to drop what they are doing, venture stealthily and deliberately into the territory of a neighbouring groups, seek out one or more individuals they can outnumber, and then beat the living daylights out of them. This behavior has not been found in any other animal, and it has all the attributes of a war. Sometimes, the warring chimpanzees attack individuals they have never met. Sometimes, a sort of "civil war" develops, when a large troop (where each individual is well know to every other) splits, then hostility arises as the two groups becomes fully seperated. Under these circumstances, animals with a memory of one another may end up killing each other. Notice the difference between murder and warfare.
adam and eve... now thats something i cant believe in... its just like the chicken or the egg concept that i raised in my argument earlier...
@vintage Behavioral science, it's been documented that wolves display the same behaviors. Wolves do that also. Wolves have a hierarchy system where there are two alphas, a male and a female and both have their own group. One group is lead by the alpha male and the other by the alpha female. Both hierarchies are interdependent and the dominance of one group over the other are maintained constantly by aggression towards each other. Sometimes, this leads to a serious injury or death. I think that can be consider a sort of civil war, also.
And to what should they conform their beliefs to? I mean, there could be many different interpretations of the Bible... what if they doubted one interpretation, and believe another?
Rather than looking at generic behaviors, lets look at unqiue behaviors that humans and chimpanzees have in common. Chimpanzees are probably the only mammals to use tools, and primative weapons. They also throw rocks at predators and prey. Bonobo Chimpanzees also use the missionary position when mating.
I'm not quite sure what you're claiming.. If you are claiming that chimpanzees and humans are similar, yes they may be similar in some aspects, but not all. Chimpanzees and human beings are descendants of the previous type of beings, prior to the homo sapien... the evolution of man is as follow: Australopithecus afarensis Australopithecus africanus Australopithecus robustus Homo habilis Homo erectus Neanderthal Cro-magnons Homo sapien Chimpanzees, if they knew how to use tools, must have originated from between the Australopithecus robustus and the Homo habilis. But they never evolved after that. As for human beings they eventually evolved to Homo Erectus, which was when the being was fully standing on two feet. But the Chimpanzees never did. The Chimpanzees only stayed at the previous level. So it was from that point that Chimpanzees ad Human beings differ. The only commonality the chimpanzees and the human being ever had was that there was a moment where both were the same. but as both took different directions, i fail to see afterward what they have in common.
All i did was give people a different perspective, I noticed many people who criticize evolutionary biology. Only focus on the genetic part, failing to even consider animal behaviors. Some even rely on visual apperances, but of course this is inaccurate as well. Focusing on "Genetics" , "Behaviors" , and viseral "Organs" alone will not give us a definite answer. I believe we must consider all of these factors and piece them together as a whole before drawing conclusions based on one source...
you know what.. theres a point to what you said.. some people dont believe in the Big Bang, others don't believe in dinosaurs.. some believe in human beings being the first living beings on Earth.. hence the Adam and Eve story... what i think, which you said (consider all factors) is that in order to see if religion has some consistency, we have to find the correlation between religious scriptures and scientific discoveries...
^^ If there comes a day when religious scriptures and scientific discoveries correlate, I still believe that would not be enough for some people to believe that their is a god. Regardless of new scientific discoveries that may correlate with religious doctrine it still takes faith to believe in god.
im not saying the correlations will lead directly to the existence of God, rather, it may eliminate certain doubts and false facts that are present in religious scriptures. so basically, we're narrowing down the possibilities.
@vintage Sea Otters use tools, also. An otter usually has a favorite rock that it used to smash open oysters and clams and other animals utilize tools, also. Bonobo's and Chimpanzees are not the same. They're related and belong to the ape family and from what I understand, Bonobo's and Chimps (short for chimpanzees) differ substantially interms of behaviorial characteristics. Bonobo's don't use weapons and bonobo's don't us tools (Bonobo's in captivity, however, use tools skillfully.). Bonobo's are a close cousin to the Chimps and as far as apes go the Bonobo's are the pacifists of the species and unlike Chimps, Bonobo's have not been observed to hunt monkeys. Now as for the missionary position thing goes, another term for the "missionary position" is "dolphin style" which is essentially a front to front mating process. Armadillo's mate in this position aswell as dolphins, potto, sloths, sea otters, sharks, whales, and others. It's not uncommon so there's nothing special about it.
