: Just looking at what humans have done with crops makes it plausible that one
: day we could guide our own evolution and improvement. Isn't it largely
: accepted that humans are already a huge abnormality in evolutionary terms
: because of our development of higher thought processes and a comparatively
: weak physical form in the animal kingdom.

We're weak compared to what? Our legs are stronger than most (IIRC). Our jaws might not be able to do what canine jaws can, but they can apply a pretty substantial amount of force-- people biting chunks out of people is probably the most realistic thing about zombie movies. There's also physical endurance-- humanity's favorite hunting technique, speaking broadly and historically (there's evidence from ancient times and modern tribes and biology that backs it up), is persistence hunting-- chasing an animal until it can't run away any more. A lot of the time this would, and still does, take all day or even several days. Of course to actually be successful you'd have to be able to track animals across long distances, probably across varied terrain and through forests and other places where visual contact is lost, and our big powerful brains are a big help there-- that is an area where we're pretty unique.

: This was definitely a fun read though... haven't seen this extensive of a
: debate on this forum in a long time. My simple opinion is while some
: things can be discredited from scientific laws that we have a fairly firm
: grasp of, humanity is more than likely far from being an intellectual
: heavyweight in terms of absolute universal knowledge.

I like that it didn't degenerate into being more about the people than the issues.