Yes, of course. Bear in mind, we are talking about our biological bodies, remember? I am not say all we are in just our biology. Homo sapiens (let's leave "human being" as a term aside here) are a higher primate form.
No. Biologically, he is part of the animal kingdom, along with all other animals.
No. He is an individual species within the animal kingdom. All species of animals are part of the animal kingdom. This is basic science.
Evolution is the process. The results are what emerged from it. What emerged could be said to be "planned", in the sense the plan was to adapt and survive. The forms those took were simply what resulted from that "survival plan".
No, it's not a scientific view. Science doesn't deal with things like the "soul". Those are philosophical and religious questions. What part does biology play in this? Wow.... that would require me to type all night here.
To keep it brief, I am of the view that body, mind, and spirit are all interwoven. A healthy mind leads to a healthy body, and vice versa. Develop the spirit, heal the mind, heal the body, and so forth.
Medical science does recognize the interconnections like this, as biology is a very complex "animal", so to speak. It's not anything as clean and simple as physics, as much as many wish it were! A good meditation practice for instance, can improve things like your immune system by reducing stress, improving one's outlook on life, increasing spiritual awareness, etc. Changing thought patterns can improve energy levels and stress, etc. I personally reject that we are "nothing but a biological machine". We are vastly more complex than that.
I've always had a certain uncertainty about what this "soul" is. It's a very broadly used word in often contradictory ways. I would say this, I believe we are more than just our bodies.
Depends on how you define soul. I would say that who we are is Eternal.
Again, I'm not really sure how that word is being used. How are you defining it? I've heard it used many ways.
Hmm... I would say "yes". However, Consciousness itself, Awareness is present all the way down and all the way up evolution. Our cognitive thoughts that our evolved brains are capable of is how that Consciousness manifests itself in our form. When we die, all those intricate pathways that form our memories and habits of thought patterns dissolves with the organ of the brain.
However "we" continue, but not with all my memories and personality with all it quirks and talents do not. They drop off like the clothes we wore during the day. We stand before God "naked", and I suppose you could say that is the "soul", which I suppose at that point I would say is the essence of the individual without all the mess of this world in our brains we spent our days looking at and interacting with as who I thought I was.
Our animal impulse/instinct is of course part of who we are foundationally. We inherited that in our biology. But again, this is difficult to explain in a few sentences. If you were to take that Consciousness I mentioned and look at it not as the result of evolution, not as a product of higher mind at the top of some pyramid of hierarchical growth, but rather put it alongside of evolution, where it exists in the highest most complex evolved form, to the simplest least evolved, that's a better picture to me. The depth of that Consciousness is realized my "fully" with the higher more evolved mind. However, it's the same Consciousness in all.
Things like social and cultural forms are more patterns that emerged in Creation and exist pretty much all the way down in evolution as well, but in lesser degrees of sophistication than our own (hard to explain that briefly). Our forms of social interactions and culture are built upon it what was already there in other forms, but taken to a whole other level in ours. We didn't invent it our of nothing. So in a sense, we took the basic "order", and simply modified it and made it uniquely our own. It's way more complicated that I can begin to explain here.
Sure, yes. I said it before. Other animals made and built tools to do things that were not the object's original function. We do the same thing, turning hunks of metal into cars we ride in. What the difference is we first and foremost have a larger brain that can perform higher cognitive and abstract reasoning than lower primates.
No.
I appreciate you making the effort to better understand my thoughts about this. It gets a bit more abstract, but I can try to keep it simple as possible. That's why at this point I only answered the last question with a simple, "no".
It may take several posts of some length to explain what I think on that question.
Very true. I hope it proves fruitful.
