I don't think anyone can adequately answer the caveman v. astronaut scenario without foreknowledge of whether evolution-causing obelisks are in the area.

Personally, I vote for brains and body only fightin'.

But then again, I gotta lot of Celt in me. And I like my steak rare and mooing.

Astronaut gets caveman to chase. Runs to garage. Shuts door on caveman. The End.

I'm getting more and more mad that more people aren't mad (about the stupid carry on restrictions. ) This has brought me a solution to the whole problem: based upon our aparent collective stupidity, no one gets to fly. Privilege revoked. Solves the problem of planes as carriers of people with things that go boom- which seems to be the only idea we wish to address- take away the people.

So there was this survey in multiple countries where people were asked if the following statement was True, False, or if they were not sure: "Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals."

The United States was second-last in belief in evolution. According to the survey, about 40% of Americans agreed with the statement, compared to almost 90% in Iceland, about 70% in the UK, almost 80% in Japan, etc....

At least we beat Turkey.

[link]

The total effect of fundamentalist religious beliefs on attitude toward evolution (using a standardized metric) was nearly twice as much in the United States as in the nine European countries (path coefficients of -0.42 and -0.24, respectively), which indicates that individuals who hold a strong belief in a personal God and who pray frequently were significantly less likely to view evolution as probably or definitely true than adults with less conservative religious views.

IOW, fundementalists in the US were much less likely to believe in evolution than fundementalists in the nine European countries.

Caveman Vs MacGuyver

Then my brain jumps to MacGuyver vs Chuck Norris, then to The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny!

See, here's the real question -- does the astronaut get a space suit, or a space ship, or anything to really make him an astronaut (beyond just a job description, and a vague one at that)? Does the caveman get a club, or a rock, or a pointed stick?

I think in order to make the words "astronaut" and "caveman" mean anything, you have to allow each of them the tools of their trade. Astronaut gets a fully stocked spacecraft, caveman gets a fully stocked cave.

Astronaut gets a fully stocked spacecraft, caveman gets a fully stocked cave.

At which point all my money goes on the cavemen EDIT: Er, astronaut. All my money goes on the astronaut. Distracted. The astronaut can use his spaceship's robot arm to gently nudge a small-side-of-medium sized asteroid onto the proper trajectory and make the caveman go *squish*.

At which point all my money goes on the cavemen. The astronaut can use his spaceship's robot arm to gently nudge a small-side-of-medium sized asteroid onto the proper trajectory and make the caveman go *squish*.

Er...and your money is on the caveman? I'll take that bet.

I'll bet there is a big ass wrench somewhere on that spacecraft.

See edit.