I could write a book concerning the problem with rationality and may well expound upon many of my introductory post's assertions in future posts. I will attempt to be as succinct as my run-on brain is capable of. Forgive the vaguery and lack of precision. Here goes!

Life came to be billions of years following the earth's haphazard entry into the universe. It's agenda was basic: survive, thrive, and reproduce. That edict is still paramount to every form of life to this day. Failure to abide by it ultimately results in extinction. Life obviously started very simple but separated into kingdoms relatively early as compared to how they exist today. Homo sapiens appeared from the Kingdom Animalia a very long time after the the simplest members of said Kingdom. For the sake of brevity, I will jump a few billion years ahead to a comparatively complex single celled member of the animal kingdom - the amoeba. The Amoeba has organelles that work together and a crude ability to manipulate it's environment. It senses, engulfs, and consumes nourishment until it is able to split into two amoebae. That sequence is a precursor to consciousness; it is "aware" of it's environment and actively pursues a course of action it "assumes" will benefit it.

Multi celled animals had developed by a few million years later. Different cells developed the precursor to a brain by using biochemical communication between the cells for the entire organism to function. Primitive nerves appeared later to convey messages quicker giving the organism an advantage and ushering in more complex creatures that possessed the ability to "think" from central nerves. Thus, a brain came into being. Animals' brains continued to develop specializing in various tasks eventually bringing mammals into the scene. Note that all of the advances that culminated in a rational thinking brain did not develop to be "right". They developed to gather information from the environment and produce a surprisingly efficient best guess of how to best survive, thrive, and reproduce. That motif is also primary in the more primitive mental processes of homo sapiens. The predilection to survive and thrive is far more important to all mammalian animal brains than being right.

Interestingly, there are many major differences in body development and sensory abilities that have adapted to the specific environments different mamma...

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