The Ark of Evolution

I think it's quite naive of humans to think they are the top of the evolutionary chain on earth. I recently re-viewed the movie "Deep Impact" which suggest the way to survive a comet impacting the earth is to create a sort of "ark" in which we'll house 1 million people that could repopulate the earth. Granted, this is only a movie – and a bad one at that – but I can't help but wonder if this is how people really think.

Building an "ark" to ensure continuation of the species implies to a certain degree that we created earth for ourselves. Believe in a god or not, there is a "higher power" – nature, mother earth, biology; call it what you will. Unless earth self-destructs into dust, elimination of life may be an impossibility. Life "as we know it" will surely change, but that may not be a bad thing (for the continuation of life itself – for us [read: humans], it sucks).

Ridding earth of humans may be a good think if you believe the latest Al Gore documentary detailing how humans are destroying the earth. Continuation of our species may be terrible for not only us, but for all planetary life. The extinction of humans may be the actual purpose of "global warming"; the thought being that we aren't close to a planetary tipping point, just a tipping point to which survival of humans is not possible. We all die and the planet corrects itself after our countless factories stop spewing their toxic gases into the fragile atmosphere (or something along those apocalyptic sounding lines). Life goes on without us.

The important concept that we seem to be missing is that life does not culminate in humans. The dinosaurs taught us that. At the time, they were the dominant species on the planet. Just because we are now, does not mean that something more advanced cannot come from our destruction.