Evolution and intelligence

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My friend and I got into a huge arguement regarding Evolution and intelligence. He is convinced somehow that evolution's ultimate goal is to develop intelligent life...

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Perhaps from some theistic evolution perspective, but not from the purely scientific perspective.

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...and that if the dinosaurs' lived long enough they would have develop high level intelligense.

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I think that could have been the case. As I recall, Kenneth Miller proposed in Finding Darwin's God, that had evolution history followed a different path, a dinosaur decendent might have been the creation "in God's image".

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I beg to differ. First evolution should not be personified into some force with a conscious drive to make intelligent life. Second, Intelligence is just one option out of endless amount of options that are capable through the process of evolution.

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Sure, I agree.

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If you added up all the insects plants and animals existing on the planet from the 1st day till now you would see that intelligence occured like .00000000001 % of the time.

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You seem to be saying that intelligence is a yes or no thing. Rather, I certainly think it comes in degrees.

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Thirdly,humans are built perfectly for manipulating our enviroment. We have hands with useable fingers, allowing us to make tools, etc. No other animal can use their body in such ways. And it is proven that using and making tools was the first step towards man developing the level of intelligence we see today.

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But who knows what evolutionary development might have happened to the dinosaurs, had they been given many more millions of years.

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I just want to hear what some other intelligent people have to say on the subject.

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Oops, sorry. You've just heard from the flaming liberal loony Moose. Maybe Gene has a better response Moose"Scientists say that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but they are wrong. Stupidity is the most abundant element in the universe" (or something like that) - Frank Zappa