Thanks for the responce Deludegod. I am still very new in my understanding of evolution and you provided some really great info. I did not know that humans were so similar to other closely related organisms.

The other point I was adressing was the idea that we have so many intellectual abilities that are not nessisary for our own survival. Do you feel that other organisms have similar abilities? Also, are you aware of any potential reasons for this?

Intelligence is sexy, Ohhhh baby look at the size of my intellect

Good question, unfortunately my favorite TV program has just started,

So I'll just point you right direction, no1 lookup prisoners dilemma

Well I know how you feel and the thoughts that you might have. I wish to add a few thoughts myself. I know how it is to have a lot before you and not sure how all of this fits together into one culmination. I am a Creationist, more specifically I am what one might call an Old Earth Theologian (as seen in the book by David Snoke). I also enjoy studying, while working on my degree in theology, science—physics, astrophysics, quantum physics, that sort of thing. When I read about superstrings all the way to black holes, I see creation that is pointing toward God, toward the Creator. I have also studied biology, and I am very familiar with the theory of evolution (both macro evolution and micro evolution). In fact, before becoming a Christian, I had for years been a supporter for evolution. When I became a Christian, and yes it took God to take me kicking and screaming to His truth, I began re-examining all that I understood (to the best of my ability), and I saw the natural wonders of the universe in a whole new light. The more I study the sciences (in fact one of my friends is teaching me the mathematical portion of physics, something that I am having a lot of enjoyment with), the more I appreciate how…as Scripture says…nature naturally points in revelation to God. So what kind of God does this science, at least for me, point toward?

As I study science, as I examine both astrophysics and quantum physics, I see that there is a God. The reality of this universe, a universe amongst many other universes (as the theoretical physics muses toward), is not mere accident or chance—there is design, there is development, there is structure, there is correlation. Yet there is the problem that defies mere simplistic exploration—who is this Creator, this God? That there is a Creator. I go to history and I go to my studies in Christianity, from my study of the Old Testament, through to the New Testament, and then through the Church History. I have, in my days before becoming a Christian, naturally tried to read much of what I could on other points of view, from the study of atheism through the study of Wicca. I never found rationality and understanding and comprehension in any of these things, in fact none of these gave a realistic foundation. When I came to Christianity, I found that foundation. Just as God, through Christ, through the Logos that is Christ Jesus (the true Logos that only the Greek consideration of the logos was only a shadow thereof), shows Himself through special revelation (that is, revelation in human history as seen in Scripture), so too is this the same God that shows Himself through natural reality. As Scripture shows to us, God is a God who rules a vast and majestic Kingdom.

What I have found is indeed a bridge between Natural Revelation and Special Revelation, God’s revelation of Himself through nature and God’s revelation of Himself through what we have in Scripture, and that bridge is bound with the power of purpose. There is indeed a purpose to the universe, from the stars and the planets to the nebulas to the black holes. There is a purpose for man, a purpose for life, and a purpose for what we do and where we aim ourselves. This universe we are in, from the smallest of quarks to the largest of galactic clusters, has the purpose that is God’s Kingdom. God created the universe just as an artist paints a painting or a sculptor sculpts a statue. And this masterpiece has a purpose. For my own simple self, as I study what all I study, I see the purpose flowing. That might seem a bit poetic and philosophic, but that is how it works itself before me. And all of this flows toward the Cross, toward the Resurrection, God’s ultimate form of Revelation—a revelation toward our lives, our meaning, our purpose, and our hopes. Whether or not I am agreed with, something I doubt I am, still I think that the more I study the sciences and the theologies, the more I have an appreciation toward all that there is around me. And the more I appreciate, the more I am enraptured by the beauty of creation that does indeed have a Creator.

A good book on the subject:

Basically, science, art, and all the other things we see as unnecessary for survival are biproducts.  In other words, the intelligence developed beyond survival because females decided that intelligence was sexy.  Once men realized that intelligence was sexy, it was natural to try to do things that are not necessarily sexual in nature, but that display intelligence.

It's impossible to condense this whole book into a paragraph, and it's been several years since I read it, but female selection, while it may not be the complete answer, is certainly a substantial part of it.

Well, obviously it is slightly more complex than that! I would know considering I'm a geneticist. The table, which you did not understand, was simply to show that in terms of genetic diversity, the mammals were the least diverse and least phylogenically distint group of organisms.

But all processes in the cell in their entirety can be derived from the genetic control system in one way or another. That includes regulation, intracellular vescicular traffic, enzymatic pathways, signal transduction, transcription, translation, ion transport.

Where have we been discussing pure chance here? Genes are ultra-high fidelity, and there are thousands of things to consider, methylation, acetyl-methy-carboxyl tails of histones in Eukaryotic DNA, homologous duplication, modular domains, Heterochromatic and Euchromatic condensation, the position variegation effect, Homeobox sets, chromosomal polymorphism, inversion of modular domains, exaptation, the arrangement of introns and exons, regulatory intersperals, oscillating genetic switches, gene regulatory node pathways, etc ad infinitum. Given the monodirectional nature of evolution, mutation is forced in one direction. This is simple ecology mathematics. Genetic mutations are occurring in vast numbers all the time, are being passed on to progeny. The deleterious ones are weeded out by ribosomal mechanisms and then by natural selection. The good ones are being propagated. Now, this may be (or usually is) occurring for many different traits simultaneously over many different organisms in the same population, but the whole process simply converges in the eventual refinement of phenotypes into better symbiosis with the environment the organism is inhabiting . Evolution is a vast process with a huge amount of information to work with because they are so many organisms. This is why it works. It simply is the struggle for existence of biology which forces the random replications of non-random replicators in a direction where the random replications which may occasionally produce a beneficial trait will be propagated, and as a result, beneficial traits in the random replicators such that the organisms whose phenotype they express may become better adapted to the environment. The result? The genome is improving in continuum such that the codes held within form increasingly more diverse and complex and ingenious methods of exploiting the environment. As a result, as time passes, the diversity of the overall genome (by which I mean the genomes of all organisms in the biosphere) increases too (since it is expanding in size), and since the phylogenic tree depends on branching off, the variations and diversity of biological structures such that more and new ways of exploiting the environment in the struggle for resources amplifies exponentially.

Consider a simple example: Kinases are protein phosphorylating class of signal transductors which control a large amount of proteins and amplify many, many signals, also acting as signal-integrating proteins by anchoring to the extracellular matrix junction and relaying signals from the membrane to the Endoplasmic reticulum and the nucleus. Instead of a ligand reciprocal/cooperative Allosteric binding site to control the action of the protein in question, a certain side chain (always a threonine, serine or tyrosine) is phosphorylated, which activates or deactivates the protein. The cyclic nature of kinase loop functions is very similar to that of GTPases. The largest superfamily of kinase is a simple monodomainal kinase called the Ras protein. As evolutionary mechanisms took course and organisms became more complex, a wider range of transductors became required, which evolve in lockstep with other evolving functions, a process called coevolution. This has been indicated by the fact that the Ras like domain has since become integrated into totally different proteins, and created entire classes of kinases simply by joining the Ras to many other domains throughout the course of evolution to create novel protein combinations. The branching of various kinase families that results from this is fully consistent with molecular clock tracking of the divergence rate of the amino acids (recall noise mutations). Which means whole families of kinases have been generated at different times in the evolutionary process by duplication and divergence. We now have many, many families of kinases including Cdc7, PDGF receptors, TGF-Beta receptors, Ca2+ dependent kinase, CdK integrators (which include a large range of Cdk including Cdk2 and Cdk3), Src kinases, KSS1, the list goes on and on.

The example given above is one of the genetic mechanisms for the generation of new genetic innovation, the example of polyploidy, although, due the inverse nature of physiological and anatomic complexity with possible variation, we must also consider evolutionary developmental changes, as in the GRNP, as outlined, or Hox genes, PV, chromosomal translocation, recombination of modules, but also recombination which changes morphological structure due to the pattern of the genes in the development pathway being of similiar importance to the actual base-pair contents of the genes themsleves, and the rate at which such genes are transcribed and translation, by means of other non-associated change like spliceosomes. It is also extremely likely that heterochromatin shifts, in addition to altering by PVE, have a direct effect on the Gene regulatory pathway since the rates of expression are significantly lower to none when the material is packaged into heterochromatin.  

Absolutely not, no way. If viruses are the descendants of some proto-biological structure (which is obviously problematic since they require hosts to survive), then whatever process formed them could not be chance. But that is irrelevant. Under discussion is not how biological life arose, but rather that once it arose how it evolved. ToE does not deal in primordial biochemistry, before the rise of Prokaryota. There is not enough information at present. 

Sorry. I either write very rapidly or I use something I wrote before in response to someone else, so I tend to forget Paragraphing. I'll try to remember.

But I could not actually discern a point or a claim which would challenge evolutionary biology in your original post, so I was shooting in the dark.

Do tell, what position is that? Cells are polyphonic in the mataphorical sense, but every cellular function can be derived from genetic code. Without any known exception, all changes in biological life are derived from changes in the genetic code. Eventually, we can reduce, in effect, every single distinction between any two organisms to the genetic code. That is the foundation of biology and I do not see how you challenged it. 

Monkeys bashing typewriters IS an odd comparison in this discussion.  However, it would seem more fitting if you added a rule where when the monkeys got a word right... it was saved in place, and would continue to mash until it "found" the next word..  You'd be able to match into Hamlet much faster.

Or like how your odds of drawing any particular five cards in poker are pretty low, but if you're allowed to keep one you want and keep drawing, your odds of drawing what you "need" greatly increases each time.  

Codes that "work"  (for whatever purpose) continue to keep working and survive through replication. Sorta like keeping your good poker cards and trying for another draw on the next mutation you "need."

The degree of human intelligence currently observed i the result of what we could call a positive feedback loop.  Biologically modern humans evolved about 50,000 years ago, by this I mean there's reason to believe there was a very sudden and marked increase in their cognitive abilities, many biologists think this was due to adaptations in vocal chords that allowed for speech.  Now humans could more easily share information, and in greater detail.  At around this time humans spread themselves all across africa and eurasia.  Consider now that humans had moved away from tree dwelling, and humans are not the fastest, strongest, or best armed animals in the animal kingdom.  Our intelligence was a necessary adaptation to our new environments, available food, and preditors.  Human intelligence in the beginning was all about preditor evasion and food collection.  Back before we developed agriculture we had to maintain a nomadic lifestyle.  Durring that time an area could only support so many people.  When an area could no longer support what was there we spread to new areas, but in doing so we were forced to adapt to new environments, new predators, new food sources.  We had to adapt brains capable of allowing dynamic adaptation to environmental changes.

Things really started speeding up, though, shortly after the development of language.  Here humans spread across the planet reaching the americas as long ago as 13,000 years ago.  10,000 years ago in mesopotamia we see the earliest signs of agriculture.  Starting with grasses like wheat we see evidence for the beginnings of plant domestication.  The realization that plants such as wheat could be domesticated was not a sudden realization.  Very likely these plants were already a source of food for our ancestors in mesopotamia, at some point some of them realized that when the seeds fall into the ground a new wheat plant grows there.  At this point our ancestors were already semi sedentary, due to the herding of sheep which had become a ready and very useful source of food.  It was probably the discovery of the domesticability of sheep which lead our ancient ancestors to consider the possibility of the domestication of wheat.  This proved to be a much more difficult process.  At first the wheat cultivated by the first people to make the attempt was just wild wheat being grown and protected by man.  But this was a necessary first step.  After this we started selecting for certain traits in the wheat we produced which were beneficial for us, but would not have been beneficial for the wheat in the wild.  This was a natural next step, as it was clear how these traits were beneficial, and it was probably at first accidental that we first selected them.  But humans, as most animals, are capable of reasoning cause and effect.  If we plant the seed of a plant that did something we liked, its offspring are more likely to do what we like.  By this time, of course, our ancestors had started trying to domesticate other plants, and it really wasn't until we had started producing enough food through domestication to feed an entire hunter gatherer society that we settled down and became fully sedentary.  One this happened, and our agricultural societies started operating at full force, it freed people up to do things other than gather food.  This is where civilization came from.  This is where the positive feedback loop which lead to our observed intelligence, really kicked into high gear.

Once we were producing surplus food through farming it freed people up to be administrators, it freed people up to specialize.  But in reality it all started from us being only intelligent enough to survive.  We pushed the adaptation of our brain beyond this through this positive feedback loop.  Intelligence was selected for because intelligence increased an individuals chances of survival.  Then, even more significantly, once we became sedentary, intelligence contributed to the good of the society, so the intelligent in society were the most powerful and influential.  For that reason in the sedentary societies the intelligent were selected for.  Brain development was further stimulated by things to learn, and a mechanism (language) to learn them more easily.

So I think it would be fair to say that our apparent level of intelligence being way beyond what we need to survive is due to an initially advantageously high level of intelligence, which was still then only sufficient for survival, but which created for us a form of positive feedback loop, which was helped along by other environmental factors, such as our wider habitat range.  Then eventually pushed over the edge by language.

It's also helpful to keep in mind that in the very beginning we were competing with other hominids for territory and food.  This was another feedback loop source.  as they adapted to our survival strategies we had to adapt to theirs.