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Are they saying that gorillas and orangutans are more highly evolved than humans are?

Only that they are more "changed" from the ancient common ancestor of all these species. One of the great mistakes in many people's understanding of evolution is that it is designed to create "higher" life. It is not. Evolution's primary goal is to produce creatures that survive, by whatever means necessary.

Which means that future human culture will look middle eastern and worship Allah. Western Culture is on a downward spiral and Islamic on an upswing, merely because of who has babies and who does not.

I see; Thank you. :-)

Chimpanzees and men share 95 percent of their DNA. Species is a social construct!

"Only that they are more "changed" from the ancient common ancestor of all these species. One of the great mistakes in many people's understanding of evolution is that it is designed to create "higher" life. It is not. Evolution's primary goal is to produce creatures that survive, by whatever means necessary."

True, but high intelligence and symbol manipulation help a species predict and prepare for change massively better than otherwise, and help a species change its environment drastically, in order to help perpetuate its own survival.

Evolution isn't "planning" something, it is a matter of what survives the world... but "higher" mental functioning has certain unique and massively advantageous survival potentialities. (And yes, certain big risks come along with that... that's how the world works...)

"Which means that future human culture will look middle eastern and worship Allah. Western Culture is on a downward spiral and Islamic on an upswing, merely because of who has babies and who does not."

There's this one split-off branch of Western Culture that has a maintains a replacement fertility rate, has tremendously advanced military technology, has a relatively free-market economy, has an ability and history of culturally assimilating immigrants, and it ideologically celebrates life, survival, and self-sufficency. That's us.

Islamists may breed children faster, but the people in our culture at least aren't shrinking, and further, we have better weapons, functional economies that help sustain the fact that we have better weapons, and we even have some potential to spread key parts our culture to the children of those breeding faster. (See how a great many of previously oppressed Iraqis like democracy? Notice the recent stats on the increase in Iraqi civilians informing US troops about the locations of bombs?)

We've got some of the serious problems of mainline Western Civ (religiously socialist folks (esp. in the big cities), government education monopoly, fiat money system, tendency to ideologically split off sex from procreation). However, we've got these things in potentially-survivable and potentially-vanquishable amounts, at least in much of the country. Let's not convince ourself it's over until and unless it really is over.

Only that they are more "changed" from the ancient common ancestor of all these species. One of the great mistakes in many people's understanding of evolution is that it is designed to create "higher" life. It is not. Evolution's primary goal is to produce creatures that survive, by whatever means necessary.

Which means that future human culture will look middle eastern and worship Allah. Western Culture is on a downward spiral and Islamic on an upswing, merely because of who has babies and who does not.

But won't that culture be more likely to self-destruct given its inclinations coupled with the technology at hand? You do agree with Wilson as far as Darwinian sociobiology goes?