Jethro Tull said:

It seems to me that most people are just monkeys with car keys. 

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It seems to me that most people are just monkeys with car keys. 

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Are We Intelligent Beings?

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I don't know about "we", but I am.

MushroomTrip said:

I don't know about "we", but I am.

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Jethro Tull said:

When you see that we are all one, the distinction between "us" and "them" dissipates.  By embracing reality and not spreading deception, one may make the knot looser, and thus it may become more easily untangled.  If one deceives, we all have to face that deception, and try to help others overcome their deceiving minds by spreading the truth.  It is compassion, the path of the Bodhisattva.  If one suffers, we all suffer.

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Existence said:

Why does everybody want to be a monkey? They masturbate all day and throw feces. Oh, I get it now.

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It seems to me that most people are just monkeys with car keys.

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The easiest way to distinguish monkeys from the other anthropoids is to look for a tail.

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I guess you have a tail.

Jethro Tull said:

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Human beings are just one of millions of different species of life on earth. We are nothing special in the eyes of creation. We are just legions in our own minds and have created myths to glorify ourselves not God. Are we intelligent beings?

We are special in the sense that we have a rational mind, but that is not a big deal, especially if you misuse it and spread deception, or do not use it at all.

The life of all animals below humans is fundamentally the same.

The creator has favored other life forms much more than human beings. Bacteria is by far the predominate life form on the planet. It is really their planet. Microbial life has been here longest, and there are more of them than anything else  now.

If mankind destroys itself, bacteria will survive and evolution will start over.

Bacteria are becoming resistant to all of our antibiotic drugs and may kill mankind off in the near future. We should put more money into winning that future war.

We are not more powerful than them. We have the brains, but they have the numbers. Their numbers could easily prevail over our intelligence if we do not start putting more of our resources into countering this coming war. It will be a real contest between David and Goliath, and the little guy won in that story.

Out of sight may be out of mind, but the truth is bacteria are everywhere, alive and conscious of life just as we are. If you look through a microscope at them, you can see for yourself. They eat and digest food, are born, die, reproduce, sleep, feel fear and feel pain just as we do. What makes us different, our minds? Right now we use our minds to fight wars, to destroy the environment, and to deceive ourselves. If anything we are using our mind to be less than they are. At least they live in the present and are more aware of life then mankind is now.

One of the ways we deceive ourselves is by thinking we are separate from other animal life on earth. The truth is we were them, and we are much like them now. The only real difference is we can be different if we learn the truth and the life. We are different only in knowledge and the ability to understand the world around us. If we do nothing with it, we are no different at all and will stay an animal.

Waste our advantage: Being thinking creatures is just a small difference, but this small difference can make all the difference if we use it. This is why we do not want to waste our intelligence believing that myths are the truth. It makes our greater intelligence useless and makes us no better than any other animal. If we are not any better than an animal, we will continue to be one.
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Page 92 of The Present (with religion) at http://www.thetruthcontest.com

Acknowledging our true past is the next step in human evolution.  Not only did we evolve from lower animals, we were them.  Instead, we think we are separate from the evolutionary cycle, the crown of creation.  We may be the crown of creation, but that is only because we are at the top of the food chain.  If we do not use our rational minds to overcome deception and embrace reality, we are just playing make believe.  Use it or lose it.

Are we intelligent beings?

It seems to me that most people are just monkeys with car keys. 

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Icelander said:

It's nice to be in agreement with you once in awhile. From our actions I would say that even while we have the capacity for intelligence we seldom use it to advantage. Especially in the emotional realm and you need to be emotionally rational to have wisdom IMO.

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If we give our emotions life, the mind becomes overbearing; it comes to life.  As of now, I agree that we seldom use our intelligence to our advantage.  We play make believe and let the mind deceive us.  We pretend like we just showed up at the top of the food chain, when we know beyond a reasonable doubt that we evolved from lower animals.  Not only did we evolve from them, we were them.  There is no evidence that anything else happened.  There are people that want to preserve their myths so badly, that they say the bones were planted there by an irrationally emotional man in the sky (man/God) to test our faith in the Bible.  They claim that evidence matters, yet they have no evidence to support their claims.  God/life is the evidence; the evidence is God/life.  When we dig up the bones of a dinosaur, they could have been our bones from a past life.

How could we just show up at the top of the food chain, the top of the evolutionary cycle?  We lived dog-eat-dog for millions of years to get here, eating things alive, being eaten alive.  We fanged and clawed our way here, to a point where we don't have to kill each other to survive.  Our true past was brutal and savage, but necessary to get to where we are now.  We have to realize how important it is that we use what makes us different from other animals (the rational mind) to learn the truth rather than deceive ourselves.  We must recognize and accept our true past to take the next step in human evolution.

Arden said:

And let's not forget the major behavioral contributions that are manifest from instincts. When you couple this with our biochemical systems like hormones and neurotransmitters, one may argue that our intelligence is either mostly unconscious or not our own.

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