Neural xenophbia is a natural instinct, (and often a pleasure), easil hijacked plasicically speaking.
Gotta’ hate those creationists.

focus on sciecne they are not the only true believers. Talk to any Porgressive.

I also don’t think we are so alone on the intelligence scale. Greater apes are able to learn sign language and communicate with us. Dolphins and whales are considered extremely intelligent, almost certainly more intelligent than some people I’ve seen on TV, and there are groups that have shown that the squeaks and whistles of dolphins do in fact qualify as language. Ravens have shown that they are avid tool users, finding appropriate items to handle there needs. Theres even a video showing one with a thin strip of wood using it to ‘snowboard’ down the roof of a house with snow on top. And these are just a few examples. They may not be as intelligent or capable as we are but we seem to have a collection of advantages put together that others don’t. We have a developed vocal structure for advanced communication. We have dextrous hands for the creation of tools, manipulation of materials, or writing. Add that in with our mental capacity and we have a package of abilities that makes it easier for us to have achieved what we have today. Were we able to find a way to overcome the barriers that other species have we might be able to rapidly uplift them to a level comparable to our own.

Finally, I feel too many try to make assumptions about the possibility of intelligent alien life. In all probability if they are moving about the galaxy or universe easily, they aren’t using radio waves for communication. It would be like us shouting to communicate with people thousands of miles away. Heck, any suitably advanced life could be watching us and waiting for us to evolve to a level where we are worth communicating with, using technology we can’t comprehend to be hidden in plain sight. As for spotting the activities of alien life, well, we can barely pick out nearby planets and don’t have the ability to even map out all the stars (red dwarfs and such) in our own galaxy, let alone the universe. It could be any suitaby advanced alien intelligence would be unobservable by us with current technology. It could also be that aliens closer to our own scale are spread out in a way that would make them unobservable to us. There are currently too many potential ways of thinking about this and little to no real way to get suitable information with our current tech. Maybe if we hit the singularity we may be able to change this, perhaps we’ll be invited into a greater community of intelligences that was simply waiting for us to evolve. Who knows. All I know is we can’t be too sure of anything at that scale with what little we know right now.

#1. Humans had stone tools for thousands and thousands of years….even native american Indians were using the same basic stone tools just several hundreds of years ago…and they are surprisingly similar to the stone tools we find that were so much older. Why did stone tools stay in use so long? Was organized war what forced development of metals and other tools to go beyond stone tools…. Were stone tools “good enough” that left users with a why bother making anything else more advanced for so long, or were we missing the overachiever gene until very recently? Minor differences in stone tools spanning the entire globe for so very long… why was this development beyond stone tools so slow?

#2 I find it amazing that if you count up every living type of creature to ever grace the earth there is only modern day humans that have been able to use a written language, where knowledge can be passed forward to advance future generations. Yeah insects can leave chemical signals behind that must be able to be read by future generations and there must be genes within a baby deer that teaches it to stand, then walk, then run and then even hide to survive in the first 24 hours of life…so some info is passed on to assist the future…but you would think that as an evolutionary concept that passing on knowledge to the future generations to advance it would be a valuable gene for EVERY species and that we would find more species that used tools, or had an opposable thumb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumb#Other_animals_with_opposable_digits, or used language, or created written languages or just had an overachiever gene, vs. the good enough gene, or the wait for total disaster, then start to prepare gene.

so…are we just some stroke of luck along the evolutionary path, or is it only a matter of time and enough RNA soup and mixing that this good idea of written language gets created and technology sparks…and intelligent life that wants to build a radio tower eventually then forms?

if this good idea is just waiting to happen, then where the F is everyone else? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

maybe life in general is way…way more rare than we think.?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis

it would be interesting to see what happens when they turn off that gene (RNAi stuff) or turn it on for creatures that don’t have it now…..but my guess is that there are a lot more genes involved that are critical than just this one….

But Marcos, they are already annoying now.

Oh no, creationists will get really annoying now…

This could give you a talking dog. Very useful for the military and the police. It could tell you that there is a bomb under the road, or heroine in the parking lot at the airport.

But on the other hand, if my dogs could talk, they would always be begging for unhealthy foods, such as chocolate, or nagging me for extra walkies. OOPS! I’m already five minutes late giving them their 11:30 a.m. walk.