It is very clear that humans are much more intelligent than animals.
We are more intelligent in specific ways, but the last 50 or so years have shown us that many animals are far more intelligent than we thought - we discovered that chimps use tools and pass on ideas from generation to generation, i.e. culture, and have better spatial memory than we do. Birds can use tools, have a basic knowledge of physics, and can work out complex puzzles - some can understand and communicate abstract ideas, and so-on.
We have evolved abstract symbolic manipulation, which has given us language, deliberative thought, mental projection forward & backwards in time, and metacognition. These facilities give us a tremendous advantage, and together with hands with opposable thumbs, enabled us to master tool technology and so-on. But the truth is that if you look at everyday human behaviour, we have a lot in common with other primates.
I am very confident to say that even if you give any animal billions of years, they would never get to the point of reading, writing, making computers etc. Sure you can teach a monkey sign language, but even getting them to speak complex languages such as human languages is simply impossible, even with animals that have larger brain mass then humans. What is the evolution answer to this? There are no other animals which are close to human intelligence. Where are the talking lions, the talking bears; where are the literal code monkeys.
If animals remained unchanged for millions of years, they wouldn't be able to read or write like us, but evolution is a process whereby populations change and adapt to their environment. If humans weren't around, it's quite conceivable that another primate could evolve along similar lines, but not inevitable; our evolution was the result of a long sequence of changes, probably started by the adoption of a hunter-gatherer savannah lifestyle.
This is a testament to how unique humans are, and to say we have evolved from animals is nonsense. What I see in the world is humans more advanced than animals, an entire nation, and also history which confirms scripture.
You have an understandably anthropocentric view - humans excel in cognitive abilities (and endurance running); in almost every other sphere, there are animals with far superior abilities. Naturally, we tend to focus on what we're obviously good at and judge other animals on those terms.
But there are multiple independent lines of evidence that we have a common ancestor with other primates and all primates share a common ancestor with other mammals, and so on. Not only do we share the same basic body structure and function, from biochemistry to cells and organs, and many other indicators, but the clinching evidence is in our DNA, which we inherit from our parents.
Embedded in our DNA are fragments of virus DNA that we've inherited, that were inserted there when a
retrovirus infected an ancestor's cells and inserted a piece of DNA during its reproduction. We can identify these pieces of DNA with the various types of retrovirus that left them.
When we compare our DNA with chimp DNA, we see embedded virus relic DNA there too, but we also find that around 200 of those pieces, scattered at random through the ~3 billion base pairs of the chimp DNA are the same as ours (which means we've been infected by the same viruses), but more than that, they're in
exactly the same places in our DNA as in the chimp DNA. There are other chunks of virus DNA that we don't share with chimps, but the only way we can share 200 identical viral DNA insertions in exactly the same places, is if we both inherited them from a common ancestor.
Then I am told that a Theory which is "well-tested" is to be believed. One that requires millions, if not billions of years; "well-tested" over at most a few years, by scientists which are intentionally seeking alternative explanations...
Not exactly. In science, you don't
believe a theory, you accept it as the best explanation we currently have. All scientific theories are, in principle, provisional, which means they could be changed or abandoned if new, contradictory evidence emerges. Having said that, some theories are so well-supported that, for all intents and purposes, they can be taken to be correct. For example, with evolution, we have multiple independent lines of evidence accumulated over 150 years, we know the basic principle by which it works, we know the basic mechanism which it uses, and we've been able to use that principle to use generate novel designs by computer ('
Evolutionary Design').
... rather than first testing what is presented and has been known for thousands of years, in a world full of lies (check the news and you'll see).
I don't know what you mean by this - can you explain?
