Our being such an easy meal for so many other animals may be why we ended up brains capable of developing weapons. We might have been better off sticking to spears instead of inventing nuclear bombs, VX gas and suchlike, though!

@Jnei Yep, why we needed better brains & a co-operative social structure. & tho a bit dated, Desmond Morris' "The Naked Ape' explains this well.

@phxbillcee Read it 35 years ago and several times since; might do so again if I can find another copy.

@johnprytz Yes, that is the usual " Get out of Paying" Free card used by Insurance Companies everywhere.

Exactly!

I think you mean the laryngeal nerve which serves the larynx.

@indirect76 my bad

@Pedrohbds You got the important details right.

No.

Does it matter if a God exists? If you think so, say why?

@johnprytz I agree with you. What silver one one doesn't seem to understand is that amoeba life began approximately a billion years after the Earth formed and that it's had three and a half billion years to get to where we are now. Duh!

No apology from this atheist for the use of miracle. The definition isn't limited to belief in divine agency as a qualification. The term has broader meaning and uses. Would that many people's mentalities expanded as appropriately. Most, however, though rejecting gods, cast out the proverbial baby as well and as a consequence of group thinking afflictions.

Who are you, or anyone else for that matter, to set (speaking of expanded) non-reasoned, inappropriate criteria for qualifying other atheists? Does a shared status of rejecting gods mean that some of us are more 'divinely' endowed with discernment faculties and therefore supremely qualified to certify levels of 'approved atheism' on the parts of others? Are our attitudes about non-existence of gods and worthlessness of theologies now to be subjected to the scrutiny of a budding, self-appointed orthodoxy? Who might., conveniently, be appointing themselves in those positions of superior judgment? This inquiring mind would love to be informed.

As for when 'amoeba life' actually began; a billion years hence or why not two billion or how about double or nothing? Our perspective on even a million years is but a pin-hole view based on assumption of unproven and non-reasoned constants. It has little to no bearing on broader reality that IS observable and comprehensible in the here and now.

Consider consulting with an amoeba about it's own notions regarding genealogical history; or simply observe it's timeless example of tension-charge-discharge-relaxation. The pulse paradigm applies to all that is alive and even in the observable universe itself. One can learn a lot from a mere amoeba; more than from most people.

The body is comprehensible—and becoming more so every day. It is called science.

@Weismonger No argument on my part against science being a more dependable tool than imagination and fabrication for explaining the process of life and other phenomena. It is, in my view, only a tool; only a method that exists and is recognizable in it's rich value as a tool because of imagination and reasoning faculties, which came first and are native to our kind. It is believed for good cause that science validates sound thought. The latter actually preceded science and is indispensable in determining what is good science. The instrument, as in computers for example, can outperform it's source in mechanistic functions only, like science, as a valuable tool. Without mind and animating life source they are still capable of 'mindless errors'. Science orthodoxy also discloses a long history of pockets of mindless error coupled with self-imposed blindness.

If you had a better designed heart one would be quite sufficient. It is pretty silly that the main cause of heart problems is that an organ which is full of blood doesn't get a sufficient blood supply. This is because oxygenated blood is pumped out of the heart into the aorta whence it returns by the left and the right coronary arteries. These are what cause the trouble. It shouldn't have been too difficult to have designed a heart which got it's oxygen from the blood in the heart.

A more radical redesign is possible too. There are several other pumps in the body (most obviously the gut), and these work by peristalsis. Intelligent design of a circulatory system would have probably given us a peristalsis based system. What a shame evolution didn't.