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Teleology in Evolution
I certainly do not speak as if Earth or God or whatever or whoever had decided to get the dinosaurs out of the way in order that mankind might come to be. That creatures such as us could not arise as long as there were giant predators such as dinosaurs or the early Cenozoic giant mammals does NOT imply that it was inevitable that such frail-bodied creatures as us would ever arise and survive. All I said was that they could not as long as there were giant predators, not that there was ever any necessity that they should.
In fact, I have never ceased to marvel that humanoids ever came to be. It seems most unlikely to me, the result of the concatenation of a series of unlikely events which gave intelligence a survival value which it had never previously possessed.
To me, this is the best argument against the existence of intelligent life on other worlds. In evolution, intelligence has not proved to be all that important. Throughout most of the history of terrestrial life, armour, speed, fangs, and claws have been far more useful. It seems as if the existence of intelligence on this planet is the result of unlikely favourable accidents. We have no reason to expect a similar scenario to be enacted on other worlds.
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Originally Posted by Loki
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