First I need to get this out of the way because there are a couple of polluting concepts from other disciplines that have worked their way into the popular concept "evolution" and exhibit at least a modicum of intransigence. If we are to have a conversation about evolution we have to have the same understanding about what evolution is from the point of view of the people actually doing the work, otherwise we fall prey to popular concepts and run the risk of speaking naive gibberish. Both of the pollutants I mentioned enter our conversations intentionally and unintentionally and I want to deal with them before I proceed. I present them to you as questions and don't be so swift to dismiss them as silly. Though it may seem obvious how these things apply to evolution you might be surprised or even embarrassed how often they appear in text you have written. I bet I could comb through threads all over TT and find each of you guilty of one of them.

So here goes -

Is there an evolutionary discontinuity between the rest of Animalia and Homo sapiens sapiens ?

Several folks in TT are rabidly pro-evolution yet they continually make remarks that reveal a distinct personal segregation between human kind and animal kind. I propose that Biological Evolution does not recognize any kind of special place for humanity. All species are unique, otherwise they wouldn't be species. Humans though, do not represent a special case of evolution. The unique qualities humans have are not any more extraordinary in terms of their evolution than the unique qualities of Amoeba proteus or Mimus polyglottos.

We humans are just animals. Does anybody disagree?

The other concept has to do with giving purpose to evolution. For instance, when describing a unique trait of a species one may make the mistake of assigning a purpose to that trait. This occurs in statements from both sides of the argument and I could show it to if you want. If the evolution of a trait involves a purpose then that implies design which at least sullies the nature of evolutionary study. While heritable traits can give a species some advantage, that advantage can never have been planned by previous generation and consciously incorporated into the species' genome for a purpose.