I’m interpreting your reply as: you’re basically okay with the argument as I wrote it, but are bringing up an optional point that could be added. That’s fine, but for the moment, I’d like to focus on the argument that I wrote and you said was pretty good, because I think the point about presenting traits brings up additional details and complications and I want to try to “drill down” on a single line of argument somewhat. Hopefully that seems reasonable for now 
I think the argument as I wrote it is deeply problematic. There are 4 major issues in the first two points that I can see. Let’s consider the first point:
- Humans share a lot of evolutionary history with animals.
The first issue is that “a lot” is a very vague term. What’s the cutoff for what counts as a lot? That actually has a huge impact on the scope of the creatures in our analysis.
The second issue is how we define shared evolutionary history. I am by no means an expert in this. As a complete layman, I can intuitively see a couple of ways of doing so. The first is to look at how recent a common ancestor was between the two groups under analysis, and then determine a cutoff point a recentness (i.e. how recent the ancestor has to be to count as “a lot”). A similar method might use amounts of shared genetic code, or some particular subset of it, as a proxy for shared evolutionary history, and then determine a cutoff point (more than 50%, more than 90%, whatever) for what counts as “a lot”.
The third issue is that “animals” is a very broad category. It does exclude some things, like plants and inanimate matter. But the sweep of the category “animals” is huge, and so how we define what counts as “a lot” and how we define shared evolutionary history becomes really important.
The fourth issue comes in the second point
- If two groups share a lot of evolutionary history, then it is a reasonable default expectation that the two groups will share the same abilities.
Again, I’m not an expert, but my understanding is that you can gain or lose abilities due to fairly minor evolutionary changes. Even between entities that we’d probably both agree share a lot of evolutionary history or are closely related, traits or abilities can become vestigial (like the growth and use of tails) or fully developed (like human rationality). So the second point doesn’t seem accurate.
In light of the above points, I think the argument has a fundamental challenge. In essence, if what counts as a lot of shared evolutionary history is defined very broadly, then by similar reasoning you can generate arguments that are facially ridiculous. Suppose, for the sake of illustrating the issue I have in mind, that we specify that humans and rodents share a lot of evolutionary history (they meet whatever criteria we’re using to determine this). So then we might say:
- Humans share a lot of evolutionary history with rodents.
- If two groups share a lot of evolutionary history, then it is a reasonable default expectation that the two groups will share the same abilities.
- Rodents have the ability to squeeze through a hole of the size of a dime.
- Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that humans have the ability to squeeze through a hole of the size of a dime.
Of course, anyone with some common sense and an idea of the rough proportions and limitations of the human body will find that ridiculous. In other words, they will find that it is not a default reasonable expectation to expect humans and rodents to have the same abilities in that respect. So a premise of the argument is mistaken (as shown by this counterexample) and the argument fails.
The more broadly what counts as a lot of shared evolutionary is defined, the more of this sort of problem you can get into (e.g. expecting that humans should be able to fly or breathe underwater or whatever). I think any pretty broad definition of a lot of shared evolutionary history opens itself up to some of these problematic counterexamples.
You could choose to define a lot of shared evolutionary history very narrowly (to where it only includes, say, some closely related apes, who are considered by many to be more intelligent than most other animals). I think the overall argument would still fail due to the points I raised about point 2 (namely, that the gain or loss of traits can occur between species closely related). But I think there’s a second problem, which is that the purpose of your argument is to make a broad statement applying to animals in general. So if you “retreated” to arguing about apes and maybe dolphins and the like, that’d be enough of a change in position to constitute a major concession/revision.
Thoughts?
), but I’m actually relatively charitable towards religious people, so that part stood out to me (your list of “nonsense and bullshit” included people who “literally believe in some version of an invisible man in the sky who grants favors if you ask nicely.”) FYI, I never at any point in life had any serious belief in God. But I think I have some understanding of the meaning people attach to religion and the role it serves in people’s life, and so it is difficult for me to be harshly dismissive of their beliefs as you were (though I would of course argue against them if the point came up).
). Reasoning was something like: 1) lots of people seem to be claiming to see stuff or have various direct experiences, that seems notable, 2) I don’t trust the govt, they’re a bunch of liars, 3) seems like there should be plenty of aliens out there in space and some should have gotten here by now, so maybe they’re here and just watching and poking us or something.