Humans have not advanced beyond their technology for its entire existence.

First, I'm not exactly sure what you are saying, so you need to clarify your position a little more. Darth: "Humans have not advanced beyond their technology for its entire existence." Reply: Obviously there has been some advancing in technology. We drive cars instead of riding in a horse and buggy. At one point there were no humans and hence no human technology, and now we have advanced past that point. Darth: "People, primarily those of homo-sapien decent, like to imagine that they are the most advanced creature on the planet. The top predator, the best melder of the world around it, the most intelligent. But is this really so? Look at your body. Do you see claws? How about fangs? Poison quills? " Reply: I'm not sure what claws have to do with intelligence, although my cat is pretty smart. In terms of computation power versus body size, humans are clearly number 1. Darth: there is a structure with walls, a roof, floor, and your species made it, and only they can do that. But wait, what's that out the window? Its a bee's nest, a termite mound, and a beaver dam. Reply: Again, the complexity of these things are dwarfed by modern housing or the hoover dam. These animals posses some level of intelligence, but it isn't even close to the level of human intelligence. Darth: What other creature was able to make weapons of such extremes that makes claws laughable? Nothing else has made shelters of such magnitude to conquer nature in any climate. What animals mere presence can be seen from the night sky's? Well, yes, that is all great. But that is not people, that's the stuff that people make. Reply: And the bee's nest is just stuff bee's make. What about language? Cognition? How did these buildings get built? It's because humans have very complex brains relative to their body size, not poisonous quills. Darth: Have we truly outgrown any primal instincts that keep us connected with our animal ancestors? No, I do not believe we have. Reply: I'm not sure what you mean by outgrown, but I'll give it a shot. Humans evolved in an environment where food was scarce and sweetness was a sign of ripeness in food. So it became beneficial for reproductive success to eat as much as you could and to enjoy sweet tasting foods. Now that food is plentiful and usually sweeter foods are bad for you, those things have lost their edge, but we have changed our environment faster than our genes could catch up. Evolutionary psychology is useful in explaining certain irrational business practices. Now if you mean outgrown as in we have ditched certain instincts that other animals have, that is different since different animals have varying instincts, e.g. Humans don't instinctively migrate south for the winter. The most basic instincts of living organisms, consume and reproduce are certainly still with us, although they can be manipulated by other things (birth control)--but that doesn't mean they always will be, or even likely will be. The only thing that looks like it will surpass human intelligence is computers. But it won't surpass us, so much as we will become them. Intelligence did not develop for it's own sake, but rather, it lead to reproductive success in a hunter gather society. Intelligence was a way to help genes forge ahead, but it is possible that this system of intelligence could drop genetics all together and humans can be "post-evolutionary." All your memories could be downloaded into a new brain that would allow you to do as much thinking in a minute as you do in a year. You won't have to worry about breeding, since you have no sexual organs, and if these new trans-humanists lived in space, they could receive nearly limitless solar energy from the sun--and spend practically an eternity exploring the cosmos. So your argument sounded like "we are just animals." True, on the very broadest meaning of the word animal, but that's not a very nuanced way of looking at the world. And the things that do make us animals are in no way guaranteed to be always with us, or even likely. If I have misunderstood any of your positions, let me know and I'll revise my arguments accordingly.