Friday, October 14, 2011

Is "thinking" an Evolutionary Quirk?

Of all of the thousands of species that have evolved on this planet, we are the only one with the capacity to "think".  By "think", I actually mean the ability to mentally store facts, rearrange them, record them and express them in a new form - technology, science, literature, art, music, etc. Perhaps some people would like to call this being creative.  That's okay, I'm not going to argue over semantics.
Now, some animals have the ability to "learn" and make rudimentary tools. Evolutionarily speaking, this is probably the forerunner of our thinking ability. It is a similar talent on a much smaller scale.
Anyway, this ability to do this leads us to all kinds of abstract thoughts. We come up with interesting questions like "What is the meaning of life?" or "Where do we go after we die?" and so on.  Perhaps, there is simply no more than what meets the eye.  We live, have fun or suffer or a little of both, and then we die. After all, 99.99% of the life on this planet has no problem with that.  Why do we have to think there is some grand design to the whole thing?
Does the absence of this grand design somehow make life not worthy of living? I think not. The pure joy and happiness found in your family, doing good for the community and helping to improve the world for future generations makes it all worth it.

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