to be no more than animal.....I would need to surrender
my social abilities
my politics
my economics
and my .....God
Why? Social non-humans have social abilities. Social non-humans have politics. Social non-humans have economics. Not sure about God issues but I doubt God is human-like for them.
BTW, do non-human "animals" have "souls" in Christianity? Even though the Bible doesn't say they do, neither does it say they don't. As for me, I don't have an opinion one way or another on this.
Well, in the story of the Garden of Eden's serpent and Balaam's donkey, they can speak even if the latter has to be granted the ability for a specific event. I think the idea that non-humans can talk somehow shows an admission that they are sentient beings even if we don't speak their language.
animals mature to an extent and proceed no further
But if primates other than humans can learn to cook and steal keys and stuff, we might be giving them a much needed push to something more interesting. I mean, even teaching cows and horses to play with toys might give them an edge one day.
can put on a man-made suit and fly through a rocky outcropping......thread the needle
put his LIFE at risk
and do so for no more than the reward of doing it
And there are entire books and websites devoted to Darwin Award winners.
a man can stand to a pulpit and convince so many.....God wants you to (whatever)
A silverback gorilla doesn't really need a God to make others listen to him.
Gods are effective convincing agents when the "strongest of the strongest" is just a weakling like everyone else.
a man can stand to a podium ...in uniform.....and lead a nation to war
and a man can lead us to prosperity.....or poverty
Other primates have leaders responsible for convincing the group they are qualified for the job.
Wolves too.
That depends entirely on the scale you’re measuring by. We’re not the greatest animal by size, speed, strength, agility etc. We can’t swim or climb especially well and we can’t fly at all. Our eyesight is average, our hearing poor and our sense of smell all but none existent. There are things we are good at, some all but uniquely, but that doesn’t make us overall better than any other species.
It's like this one episode of Farscape where all of the non-humans, even the most human-like one there, are able to read print off an object the human protagonist would need a microscope to see. Eventually, Pilot even snaps at John, asking him in exasperation how our species became dominant since we essentially suck at so much.
but humans have circumvented those points in so many ways
But take away our cheat codes and gravestones fill up fast.
This is why i also ask why we are killing animals and eating them.
The same reason the lion does: hunger.
In Genesis we did eat from the 'green herbs' (out of the top of my head), both animals and humans.
Plants can feel pain and communicate even over long distances.
Unless you're a producer, you're a consumer, and we just have to accept it.
Well, if a dead animal is no longer an animal, then since it isn't really vegetable, despite some spores here and there, that leaves mineral.
From the show Dinosaurs:
- "As you can see, I have separated all known dinosaur wisdom into three categories: animal, vegetable, rocks."
- "Water is the opposite of fire, which we have previously established as a vegetable. What's the opposite of a vegetable? Fruit. So, water is a fruit! Fruit is not a vegetable, so it has to be either an animal or a rock. We know it's not an animal. Therefore, fruit is a rock."
They lost their brothers to an argument about something that looks like .....us
on third of heaven lost their positions for that same argument.....about us
So, it's a heavenly version of the plot of the Planet of the Apes, then?
The juiced up apes decide one moral should be "ape not kill ape", but I guess Cesar's human buddy failed to mention that we are also apes. You have all the great apes fighting with each other about which version should stick around when they're all apes anyway.
if there is no Greater Authority.....you have nothing ahead of you but a box in the ground
A book shouldn't be that authority, though.
eternal darkness is physically real......yes it is
I work night shifts a lot. Light hurts my eyes.
You need darkness. If there was only daylight, you could never appreciate just how vast the universe is beyond the atmosphere of our lonely little planet. Only in darkness is the scope of reality truly revealed.
You seem to imply that what you are is what you believe.
And a lot of people think they are made of dirt, so....
What do you have against talking apes?
Some people act like God would be offended if we turned out to be primates even though He was there when our species first appeared and would already be well aware of what we were.