The Reptile-Brain, the Atheist, and the Jew.

[John D. Brey]

We are surely the only creature on earth, capable of defying or amending it’s own nature. Neither a cat nor a crow can hold itself accountable for cruelty - cruelty is in in’s nature, and it must respond to the world according to it’s nature. Only humans can choose not to respond to the impulse towards cruelty; only humans can consciously choose unselfish love over naked self interest.

In a similar vein, Jeff Hawkins says:

I find it amazing that the only thing in the universe that knows the universe exists is the three-pound mass of cells floating in our heads. It reminds me of the old puzzle: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound? Similarly, we can ask: if the universe came into and out of existence and there were no brains to know it, did the universe really exist? Who would know? A few billion cells suspended in your skull know not only that the universe exists but that it is vast and old. These cells have learned a model of the world, knowledge that, as far as we know, exists nowhere else. I have spent a lifetime striving to understand how the brain does this . . ..

A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence, p. 10.​

John

 

[John D. Brey]

I am deeply offended by your antisemitic assertion (and many past antisemitic assertions) that Jews or atheists are reptiles. Jews are not subhuman.

If you can't win an debate using facts, you should not insult others.

You might want to look up the term "reptile brain." We all have one.

And utterly contrary to your statement, the gist of this thread is that Jews have a viable theory for how the current state of the human brain, and it's abilities, so transcends the reptile part of the human anatomy, while, according to the author of this thread, the atheist does not have a viable theory for how, why, the human brain can do what it does.

Anyone who has read more than a part of a sentence in this thread would seemingly know that if anything it's offensively pro-Semitic.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Cats can be taught to leave mice alone.

Can an unaltered male be taught not to mark? The one's I've known would rather be cut than not mark their territory.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

What is your Nazi idea of evolving Jews? Death camps? Gas chambers? Do you assert that the cruelty of Jews makes them subhuman?

I'm using Judaism and Christianity as the example of theism versus atheism. As has been pointed out in this thread, Eastern religions can be included with Judaism and Christianity, to a point; though they aren't necessarily purely theistic like religious Jews and Christians are.

I share and applaud your concern for weeding out any anti-Semitic antics whether they're hiding in convoluted language or otherwise. I assure you there's no intended slight of Jews or Judaism in this thread so far as I'm concerned. Quite the contrary.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Well I knew this but it might be better to put such quoted writing in italics or quotation marks.

It's not a general practice to put quotation marks around a quotation that is offset from the rest of the text. And I also noted the source of the text at the bottom of the offset quotation.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Yes, cruelty is in our nature; but we can consciously choose to circumvent our nature. Seemingly no other fauna nor flora, nor inanimate object, can do this. This, perhaps, is what some religious people mean when they say humanity is, of all living things, closest to God.

It is the glory of the human cerebral cortex that it -----unique among all animals and unprecedented in all geological time ---has the power to defy the dictates of the selfish genes. . . We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism – something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world.

Richard Dawkins, quoted from the two sources noted in the thread.​

Dawkins and Hawkins acknowledge the glory of the human mind. It's just that based on what to me appears to be an utterly deformed and bankrupt ideology, they chalk the glory up to accidental mutations that accidentally led to the glory of the human brain.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

I think you have completely misunderstood Mr Brey. Not that I always understand his posts myself, his thought processes are nothing if not idiosyncratic; still, he is certainly anything but anti Semitic. He clearly has great reverence for Hebrew knowledge and scripture.

I would say not just great reverence for Hebrew knowledge (many anti-Semites have that, say Heidegger for instance), but a genuine love and respect for the Jewish people themselves (ironically the aforenamed had an affair with Hannah Arendt showing how layered and difficult it is to sling meme's like "anti-Semite" around like mud).

Because of the horrendous pogroms and persecutions the Jewish people have endured from the very start of the nation of Israel, many Jewish people can be forgiven for seeing an anti-Semite behind every corner, and every argument. It's unfortunate when they inadvertently attack the very people who stand beside them through thick and thin. It could probably be said there's no person with as many arrows in their back as the anti-anti-Semite who gets thrown a good beating by the Semite and the anti-Semite.



John

 

[RestlessSoul]

In a similar vein, Jeff Hawkins says:

I find it amazing that the only thing in the universe that knows the universe exists is the three-pound mass of cells floating in our heads. It reminds me of the old puzzle: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound? Similarly, we can ask: if the universe came into and out of existence and there were no brains to know it, did the universe really exist? Who would know? A few billion cells suspended in your skull know not only that the universe exists but that it is vast and old. These cells have learned a model of the world, knowledge that, as far as we know, exists nowhere else. I have spent a lifetime striving to understand how the brain does this . . ..

A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence, p. 10.​

John

“I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself, and knows itself divine.”

- Percy Shelley, Hymn of Apollo

 

[John D. Brey]

It's inevitable that Atheist plagiarize morality by acknowledging its existence but denying its origins. As if they thought it up in the animal brain.

This segues into the spirit of this thread that we haven't even touched on as yet.

If we acknowledge Dawkins and Hawkins undeniable realization that the human mind is now free from the gene, and is doing, in days, weeks, months, and years, what took the gene billions of years to do, we can realize the most important point of this thread: atheism is the theological metaphysics of the reptile brain that's opposed to the spirit of the theist who implies that the development of the human mind was preordained from the very start of life, such that that spirit, God, guided evolution up to the glorious day of awakening allegorized in the story of Adam and Eve.

With the awakening taught in the story of Adam and Eve, the spirit that guided evolution out of the muck and mire of mud and clay found a home in the human cerebral cortex. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is nothing if not allegory for the fact that the spirit of God that formerly guided evolution at a snails pace, finally arrived at a biological-bridgehead, incarnated in man, in the cerebral cortex, so that now, in the last two-thousand years, the spirit of God has jump-started the intended goal such that the days of the gene, of biological death, disease, want, tears . . . are on their way out. And with them, the reptile brain, and its ancient, dare I say asinine, religious metaphysics: atheism. Atheism's future is inextricably intertwined with the dim future of the gene, the serpent in the garden, and the reptilian brain.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

1 Corinthians 15:53–58.​

John

 

[John D. Brey]

Judaism and Christianity are not the products of biological evolution. The are cultural artifacts, like secular humanism, which has surpassed both of them in its epistemology and ethics.

I'm not at all clear what your point for this thread was. Are you trying to promote the prescience of Christian scripture by pointing out that some scripture foreshadows this modern formulation of a mind in conflict with itself? It's the basic human condition. So Paul or whoever noticed that he struggles within himself, a theme that appears in all cultures and literatures. It's the foundation of morality fables, where a character often gives in to his lower (reptilian) nature and regrets it. It's Freud's id and superego. It's Plato's horse and rider. In Western culture, it is depicted as an angel one one shoulder and a demon on the other arguing through the ears.

So, if that was your point - that the Bible anticipated modern evolutionary neuropsychology - just about everybody did, including you and me. You didn't need anybody to tell you that you were witness to internal tugs-of-war. But you probably did need science to tell you why, to frame it terms like brainstem, the limbic system and the neocortex, to point out to us that we still have these reptilian structures, which are the source of survival and reproductive urges and instincts. Retiles don't think in terms of rape or theft or murder.

And their legacy still plays out in modern man, who has since added a mammalian mind (parenting) and other more complex brain functions than mere fight or flight including emotions beyond fear and lust, followed by the evolution of the human mind, which adds the well-developed moral and reasoning faculties (symbolic thinking as with language) and even more complex behavior, like launching telescopes into space. This shows it graphically:

Anyway, if you purpose was to promote a particular faith, perhaps you could have stated so explicitly. If your purpose was to announce that you've come to see this matter in terms of distinct parts of the mind in conflict, then congratulations. That is a good way to visualize the matter, although I wouldn't drape it in religious finery. The idea is best understood in terms of evolution and the structure and function of the brain.



Secular humanists have no interest in theistic ethics. None of my moral values come from reading a holy book or listening to a sermon. Where there is overlap, still, the ideas weren't received moral imperatives, but the result of the application of reason to conscience. If my ethics came from the Christian scriptures, I'd still be justifying slavery and absolute monarchy rather than advocating for human and civil rights.

I'm certainly not taking advice on abortion from people that make decisions by faith. Those people let a priest or pastor tell them what "God" thinks and wants, and defines morality that way. Whatever clergy can convince a deity says or does is moral by definition. That's a wrong-headed way to determine right and wrong. Jesus doesn't want people to have abortions? How about Brigit, the Celtic goddess. What's her command on this matter? I don't know or care. Do you?

But here's where we part ways: Jesus, too. That god (or Yahweh) is no different to me than the Celtic gods or any other god.

A secular humanist is going to use rational ethics to decide this matter like all others. Whereas the theist frames the issue in terms of commandments, sin, when a fetus becomes a child, if it is considered human or a person, pleasing a deity, etc..

None of that is relevant to the rational ethicist. Why does calling the fetus any of those terms change the ethical calculus? Pleasing somebody's idea of a god or what they are told is sin is also not a factor. The question becomes, who should decide whether a pregnant woman delivers a baby, the woman, or the church using the power of the state? My secular humanist values tell me that the church deserves no say in the matter in a secular state. Let the church have dominion only over those who willingly subject themselves to its will, and be disentangled from the lives of the rest of us. Let the Christian forego the choice by choice, and let others choose as they see fit as well.

Well said, for the most part. And all of this is old hat to some extent; historically and ideologically factual.

What I think is new, is the fact that men like Dawkins, Hawkins, and Dennett, have now, in my evaluation, crossed the point of no return in their recent realization that what the human mind is now doing (sending machines to Mars, AI, gene-manipulation, etc.) has no precedent, no materialistic, atheistic, Darwinistic, explanation in all the writings proffered by atheists and materialists for aeons.

The human mind has clearly and undeniably broke the bonds of its humble beginnings in biology and terrestrial existence. Seemingly only an uneducated fool is blind to the fact that what alleged mindless evolution accomplished in 2 billion years, the human mind has doubled down on in two-hundred years (which isn't even a twinkling of an eye in cosmic time).

Only theology, theism, has a viable explanation for what has occurred in the last two-hundred years.

Sadly, for their part, Dawkins, Hawkins, and Dennett, are realizing their reptile-religion, the religion of the serpent, based on terrestrial knowledge, grown from and guarded by the reptile-brain, is on its way back into the dustbin of history that it crawled out of before slithering into the Garden of Eden.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

“I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself, and knows itself divine.”

- Percy Shelley, Hymn of Apollo

James Webb Space Telescope Launches Successfully After Years of Delay.




John

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The human mind has clearly and undeniably broke the bonds of its humble beginnings in biology and terrestrial existence. Seemingly only an uneducated fool is blind to the fact that what alleged mindless evolution accomplished in 2 billion years, the human mind has doubled down on in two-hundred years (which isn't even a twinkling of an eye in cosmic time). Only theology, theism, has a viable explanation for what has occurred in the last two-hundred years.

I found no answer in theology regarding this matter or any other.

Nor is any more explanation than that which science has provided necessary or possible. Life arose in matter, then mind in life. Eventually, there was consciousness, desire, emotion, intelligence, and conscience. These developed over time in vertebrates, reptiles to one level, mammals to a higher level, and man to the highest level. We have the anatomic evidence from comparative neuroanatomy, where these functions appear sequentially and in layers neurologically, the oldest parts deepest in the brain, and the newest on its surface. What can theology add to that apart from religious ideas that have no predictive or explanatory power, nor supporting evidence?

But yes, human intelligence is different from what came earlier. It's the use of symbols (language in thought and communication) that makes human thought qualitatively different.

Sadly, for their part, Dawkins, Hawkins, and Dennett, are realizing their reptile-religion, the religion of the serpent, based on terrestrial knowledge, grown from and guarded by the reptile-brain, is on its way back into the dustbin of history that it crawled out of before slithering into the Garden of Eden.

Perhaps you've misunderstood Dawkins and others like him like Sagan. Using your language, they are the ones chasing the reptile out, as are all secular humanists, who promote the use of reason over succumbing to base, reptilian urges. Harris is advocating an ethics rooted in reason. If you can call their worldview a religion, here are its tenets: Humanism is a worldview characterized by the belief that the world is naturalistic, that it is best understood by combining rational skepticism (doubt and reason) and empiricism (an appeal to evidence as the arbiter of truth), that human societies are optimally served by rational ethics (a combination of reason and empathy to determine a moral code), and that man and man alone can improve the human condition.

No reptile religion there. That's the most fertile worldview man has come up with to date. It transformed superstitions into science and monarchies into democracies. And it continues to lead in the application of the Golden Rule. Where the religious are still marginalizing and demonizing LGBTQ, for example, humanists are promoting tolerance, dignity, and human rights. Why? Golden Rule. Do unto others. Humanists see the alternative as "reptile religion," that is, more primitive, less evolved.

 

[Left Coast]

Richard Dawkins, Edward O. Wilson, and Jeff Hawkins, are all aware of the so-called biological altruism concept you note. But they also know that the altruistic tendency is actually a scam used by the gene. The perceived altruism is merely programmed into the species for the sake of protecting the genes of the species even if it means some of the members of the species have to self-sacrifice. You know, take one for the team, so to say.

Other species also do this, though. Orcas and dolphins have saved humans from drowning. We literally train dogs to save us from life-threatening situations. We can and do apply pro-social behavior to other species, as do other mammals (not sure about non-mammals).

What the aforementioned also know, is that in the human realm, altruistic tendencies that don't help the gene at all are often practiced. True self-sacrifice, for the sake of "love," and other metaphysical notions, take place in the human realm. Dawkins and Hawkins are aware that there's no genetic advantage, no communal advantage, to some of the kinds of altruism practiced through the freewill associated with the cerebral cortex coming fully online.

I'm not sure what the bother is here. So we've developed a trait that doesn't always contribute to our survival. This...happens all the time. Do you think this is some sort of disproof of evolution? Is that the point here?

This whole conversation also completely ignores the role of epigenetics and environment, which we know affect genetic expression and behavior.

 

[John D. Brey]

I found no answer in theology regarding this matter or any other. . . Nor is any more explanation than that which science has provided necessary or possible. Life arose in matter, then mind in life. Eventually, there was consciousness, desire, emotion, intelligence, and conscience. These developed over time in vertebrates, reptiles to one level, mammals to a higher level, and man to the highest level. We have the anatomic evidence from comparative neuroanatomy, where these functions appear sequentially and in layers neurologically, the oldest parts deepest in the brain, and the newest on its surface. What can theology add to that apart from religious ideas that have no predictive or explanatory power, nor supporting evidence?

There's very little explanatory power in a tautology. I wrote an entire book (Tautological Oxymorons) on the non-theist's attempt to use tautologies as though they have explanatory power.

To say that things occurred is not to explain the power, spirit, the why, they occurred.

Saying that God guided evolution, when God is an invisible spirit, has its own problems. Nevertheless, saying an invisible God guided evolution, problematic though it be, is not as flawed and disingenuous as implying that because evolution has occurred, and the brain evolved, nothing more is hidden, or mysterious, about it.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

But yes, human intelligence is different from what came earlier. It's the use of symbols (language in thought and communication) that makes human thought qualitatively different.

Inquisitive persons my age have watched the evolution of atheistic materialist scientists like Dawkins and Dennett. They (the Dawkins and Dennetts) once laughed at the mind/body problem and poo pooed theists who claimed the human mind couldn't be explained by genes or naturalistic evolution.

Alas, that time has past. They now concede, for they must, that the human mind is something different than genes, and that it appear to be free of the "natural" constraints of evolutionary processes couched in genetic evolution. The scientist Ray Kurzweil even claimed that we now know the human mind transcends the laws of physics. Dennett and Dawkins won't be too far behind when we see the first transference of soul into inorganic matter which is probably less than 100 years away.

Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species, us. The differences between autonomous human agents and the other assemblages of nature are visible not just from an anthropocentric perspective but also from the most objective standpoints (the plural is important) achievable. Human freedom is real---as real as language, music, and money----so it can be studied objectively from a no-nonsense, scientific point of view. . . Human freedom is younger than the species. Its most important features are only several thousand years old--- an eyeblink in evolutionary history---but in that short time it has transformed the planet in ways that are as salient as such great biological transitions as the creation of an oxygen-rich atmosphere and the creation of multicellular life.

Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves, p. 305.​

John

 

[John D. Brey]

Perhaps you've misunderstood Dawkins and others like him like Sagan. Using your language, they are the ones chasing the reptile out, as are all secular humanists, who promote the use of reason over succumbing to base, reptilian urges. Harris is advocating an ethics rooted in reason. If you can call their worldview a religion, here are its tenets: Humanism is a worldview characterized by the belief that the world is naturalistic, that it is best understood by combining rational skepticism (doubt and reason) and empiricism (an appeal to evidence as the arbiter of truth), that human societies are optimally served by rational ethics (a combination of reason and empathy to determine a moral code), and that man and man alone can improve the human condition.

No reptile religion there. That's the most fertile worldview man has come up with to date. It transformed superstitions into science and monarchies into democracies. And it continues to lead in the application of the Golden Rule. Where the religious are still marginalizing and demonizing LGBTQ, for example, humanists are promoting tolerance, dignity, and human rights. Why? Golden Rule. Do unto others. Humanists see the alternative as "reptile religion," that is, more primitive, less evolved.

Excellent summary of the viewpoint the author of this thread opposes, and believes to be the evolution of an opponent, and competitor, to Judeo-Christian thought, but based on the reptile-brain, rather than a divine spirit.

I applaud your clarity. You've set the gold standard, so far, for what I would like to show to be precisely what we should all oppose: a religious competitor to Judeo-Christianity; but based on the reptile-brain, and its belief that the natural world experienced by the owner of the reptile-brain is some objective world just sitting out there such that the lens of the human eye is acting something like a plate of glass rather than little more than a devise measuring electromagnetic vibrations that the reptile-brain fabricates into its own, personal, world, devoid of anything like your own personal Jesus.

There's a saying that may be true, that good intentions pave the way to hell. In that light atheistic religion could be thought a product of the reptile-brain, that refuses to cede its authority to the spirit of God. The reptile-brain uses the cerebral cortex not to allow the incarnation of the spirit of God, but rather, cedes the clear authority of the spirit that the cerebral cortex was clearly designed to incarnate, instead, to the old, reptile, part of the brain.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Other species also do this, though. Orcas and dolphins have saved humans from drowning.

What Dawkins and Hawkins point out, is that whereas a dolphin might save a human from drowning, it doesn't ever evaluate the situation, using human-style self-consciousness (what Daniel Dennett calls "human freedom") in a situation where the dolphin will knowingly (it knows it) lose it's own life, to save the life of a human.

No animal can do this since no animal possesses, so far as we know, the human ability to think and evaluate things like life, death, self-sacrifice.

The dolphin would have to be capable of evaluating life, death, perhaps the afterlife, before it chose, willingly, to sacrifice its own life for the life of another species.

We literally train dogs to save us from life-threatening situations. We can and do apply pro-social behavior to other species, as do other mammals (not sure about non-mammals).

When the scripture speaks of Adam and Eve eating, in disobedience, from the tree of knowledge, the scripture could be read to be placing the point of self-knowledge and freewill, rather than mere obedience, into a narrative context.

Adam and Eve have to chose to do good through obedience to one supposed to be good, or else, strike out on their own, in disobedience, to gain self-conscious knowledge of good and evil. In the scripture, this could be considered the moment of self-conscious ensoulment: the coming online of the power of the cerebral cortex that was sitting there await its bar mitzvah.

I'm not sure what the bother is here. So we've developed a trait that doesn't always contribute to our survival. This...happens all the time. Do you think this is some sort of disproof of evolution? Is that the point here?

I believe the cerebral cortex is a product of evolution. But when it comes online, and the person with it is self-conscious, conscious of good, i.e., being alive, and evil, being dead, and when this same self-conscious knowledge places the life of another, over its own, at the cost of personal sacrifice of good, life, at the expense of evil, death, that is something that has nothing to do with mammals or evolution.

I could give dozens of quotations from men like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and more recently Jeff Hawkins, that show that they're fully aware that the self-consciousness related to the cerebral cortex can't be explained, or really made to serve, the Darwinian worldview of life and thought.

But because they refuse to place the reptile-brain, now fitted with knowledge of good and evil (made possible by the cerebral cortex), back under the authority of the God who designed both, they're not taking part in the epoch of those who know that God knowingly subjected humanity to the fall from grace (Romans 8:20), in order to allow, create, creature freewill, with the expectation that the receiver of this divine gift would willingly, gracefully, and gladly, come home to the One who gave it, and who has, since the fall in the garden, been earnestly tenderly calling Oh sinner come home.

In a sense, the atheist is using the freewill come online through the cerebral cortex, to say no to the god-consciousness that come online with self-consciousness. The atheist is therefore attempting to deny the god-consciousness that's part-and-parcel of self-consciousness, and therein retreats back into the unspiritual world of the reptile-brain, such that tautological nonsense like Darwinism as an explanation for life and the power of evolution, must be swallowed no matter how bad the tastes, in order not to have to swallow the red pill and experience a whole other reality.



John

 

[atanu]

Who is this "we" that can rebel against genes (biology) and memes (ideology)? We're created, evolve, as gene-machines, while at the high-point of that evolution we developed the ability to also function as meme-machines (machines that can create and evolve viable, real, world-altering, thoughts). Furthermore, the latter is thought to arise out of the former.

But who, what, is this "we," that having begun as a genetic machine, and evolved into a thinking genetic machine, can, should, might, could, consider our creators ("elohim" אוהים is plural) tyrants whom, almost theologically, we can rebel against (Genesis 3:6)?

John

Evolution is now a tool under our control. We are now endowed with the spirit that guided evolution to its final grand creation: the Jew, and the Christian.

Sit back and watch. We'll take it from here.

John

I like the question “Who is this "we" that can rebel against genes (biology) and memes (ideology)?”

But then, you say “We are now endowed with the spirit that guided evolution to its final grand creation: the Jew, and the Christian.”

The first question is good. A gene machine (the creator god in a different terminology) gives rise to a system that over-rules the creator’s intentions. It is absurd, in my opinion.

In the 2nd quote, you say something absurd. 2000 to 5000 years before the Bible, it has been taught that man is endowed with faculties to overcome egoic instincts. With an intellect looking out at mind-sense objects — including mental thoughts etc.; the sense of touch delineated body; and the world which appears to be external to the delineated body — we construct a narrative of “I am this body and there is the world external and separate from me”. This is the instinctive animal narrative that drives the world.

Some 2000. to 5000 years BCE, some thinkers-knowers have urged mankind to introvert the intellect to the thoughtless realm and determine for oneself the nature of self and its boundaries. To these sages, the self is not delineated but appears so due to operation of senses. These sages have also taught that humans have the inbuilt competence to overcome the erroneous notion of the self and can gain mastery over the base instincts.

Anyone who is agnostic in true sense and questions the credo that a mechanism generates our intellect can gain this viewpoint. And this questioning did not begin with Jews and Christians.

YMMV.

 

[danieldemol]

For four thousand years Jews and Christians have been teaching their offspring that their natural, evolutionary desires, are bad

They might have been saying the natural desires are bad, but they didn't know about evolution 4,000 years ago that I'm aware of within the Judeo-Christian context.

In my opinion.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

We are surely the only creature on earth, capable of defying or amending it’s own nature. Neither a cat nor a crow can hold itself accountable for cruelty - cruelty is in in’s nature, and it must respond to the world according to it’s nature. Only humans can choose not to respond to the impulse towards cruelty; only humans can consciously choose unselfish love over naked self interest.

I'm not sure (I have provided examples in the past) that that is entirely accurate. We may do more of it, we might communicate about it better, but I think there are examples of altruism and feelings of guilt in other species.