Man is not an animal

[Wildswanderer]

Popularity is NOT an indicator of truth.

So I guess that would mean that most social norms like rape being immoral are questionable.
Usually if something is pretty much universal across the board in human experience it is considered to have merit.

 

[Wildswanderer]

So, intelligent, yes. Sophisticated, no. Definitely not stupid, but also definitely uninformed.

Let's see, primitive man navigates by the Stars, has the ability to craft weapons with sticks and stones, start a fire by rubbing sticks together, lives in a cave that's naturally insulated and warm in the winter, cool in summer, pays no bills, owes no taxes, has all the knowledge he needs to thrive in his mind. Kills and harvests natural organic food from nature, with sticks and stone tools he makes himself, and worships the God he knows to exist because he lives within the created world.

Modern Man keeps his brain in his pocket in a little plastic box, buys a $100,000 house that depreciates instantly, pays constantly for it's upkeep, can't even fix his own lunch without an expensive device, buys prepackaged food that's bad for his health, is constantly stressed, can't make it across town without a GPS, and is scared to death to be in the woods. Doesn't believe in God because a liberal professor at the college he attended mocked the idea of a deity.
You know why people don't believe in God? Because they are too scared to. They prefer everything to be prepackaged or on screens... The real world is just too much for them.

 

[YoursTrue]

Why are you frightened of the fact that humans are just apes?
We are superior in one crucial way, we have a larger brain.
We can't fly, we can't run very fast, we can't swim underwater apart for short times, our eyesight is poor when compared to many animals. My dog has a far superior sense of smell.

Speech and poetry do make us different but do not define us as 'not animal'.

I did not detect he was frightened that humans are considered by some "just apes." They're not anyway, so it doesn't matter what others think in particular, because those who do think humans are "just apes" will probably not come to the recognition that humans are not "just apes." That apes have special powers or habits that humans do not have does not make humans animals.

 

[YoursTrue]

Many humans today don't have an alphabetic language.

Writing is a comparatively recent behavior among humans. Throughout most of the time our species has been around, we did not have writing.

You may think so, but time devices can be wrong. And the mere fact that humans have developed writing -- still gorillas in their longevity have not.

 

[Valjean]

Because for most people some sense of the spiritual is intuitive.

Intuition is bunk. If it were not it would yield consistent conclusions, which it clearly does not, given the myriad different intuitive beliefs of mankind's many religions and myths.

 

[Kfox]

So I guess that would mean that most social norms like rape being immoral are questionable.

If the only reason you can think of for proclaiming rape wrong is because most people say it's wrong, then yes that would be questionable. But there are a plethora of other reasons we declare rape wrong.

Usually if something is pretty much universal across the board in human experience it is considered to have merit.

Until proven wrong; like the idea that the Earth is flat, the idea that Earth is the center of the Universe, the idea that volcanoes and thunder the result of angry Gods, like Epileptic seizures the result of demon possession; and the list goes on.... again; popularity is not an indicator of truth

 

[Valjean]

I did not detect he was frightened that humans are considered by some "just apes." They're not anyway, so it doesn't matter what others think in particular, because those who do think humans are "just apes" will probably not come to the recognition that humans are not "just apes." That apes have special powers or habits that humans do not have does not make humans animals.

"Animal" refers to any life-form in the biological Kingdom Animalia. Brains, consciousness and spirituality do not define Animalia, much less speech or reasoning. It's a taxanomic category.
Sponges and jellyfish are animals, and they have no brains at all.

We are multicellular and eukaryotic, we develop from a blastula and lack cell walls; therefore, we are animals.

This thread has a massive problem with definition and strawmen. Some are using a precise, biological definition, others are using various colloquial, culturally based understandings of the term. We've been talking past each other for 145 posts.

Colloquial "definitions" are never precise, and they vary even among culturally homogenous individuals. They are unsuited to serious discussions. They do not lead to consensus.

 

[Valjean]

So I guess that would mean that most social norms like rape being immoral are questionable.
Usually if something is pretty much universal across the board in human experience it is considered to have merit.

????? -- this makes no logical sense.

 

[PruePhillip]

Animals do not have articulate speech and poets. Man is not an animal.

Yes, the animals can communicate. But they have no articulate speech. There is difference: articulate communication, and non-articulate one. Articulate one has alphabet. Do whales have letters in alphabet order?

Many humans do use alphabet. Some humans are sick or not developed so much, so they do not.
But no bear, wolf, nor spider is using alphabet.

According to this ridiculous theory a newborn baby is an animal??
No. I repeat: "Many humans do use alphabet. Some humans are sick or not developed so much"

IF you define an animal.....
I am not defining. I am saying fact:

Only humans use alphabet.

Some humans are humans, but do not use alphabet (they are e.g. babies).

But no single bear has used alphabet. Hence, humans are not bears.

HOWEVER, there are plenty of apes who use ASL (a type of alphabet)??
Why a type of alphabet, but not actual alphabet? Can you list right here the first 10 letters of monkeys alphabet? And what words are there in their language? How they sound?

But the real thing that sets us apart from animals is the spiritual component, almost all humans understand that they are spiritual beings??
They have replied, that monkeys built primitive holy places as well.

CONCLUSION:

Animals know the Lord, unlike the atheists. Top primates are religious, and praying, and having alphabet.
But they are not human, because they have mortal soul.

John Nash was a Nobel Prize winner in economic science and a member of the Academy of Sciences. He was also highly delusional and spent considerable periods in psychiatric hospitals.
Most people are schizophrenic, because schizophrenia is a person's split. Major splits are: Faith vs. Knowledge, Religion vs. Science, State vs. Church separation.

People with schizophrenia require lifelong treatment??
Not all people. For example, the atheists have schizophrenic split between God and reality. But most of them are not in mental clinics.

There's animal, vegetable and mineral (plus virus and bacterias) - which are you?

 

[Mark Charles Compton]

There's animal, vegetable and mineral (plus virus and bacterias) - which are you?

We are sentient ¹Prokaryota dwelling within our host ²Prokaryota who we use to infect ³Eukaryota which are the tools for the domination of our primary target *Eukaryota! We are Legion!

¹Archaea that is somehow self-aware and intelligent calling itself Legion.
²Bacteria which causes disease with convenient symptom of craving neuron consumption.
³Parasite capable of neural manipulation.
*H sap sap, which are supposedly possessable by demons.

 

[Altfish]

I did not detect he was frightened that humans are considered by some "just apes." They're not anyway, so it doesn't matter what others think in particular, because those who do think humans are "just apes" will probably not come to the recognition that humans are not "just apes." That apes have special powers or habits that humans do not have does not make humans animals.

Humans have created a great system for testing ideas, it is called science, it makes humans special. Denying accepted and proven science is not a good idea and goes against the best interests of the human race.

 

[Mark Charles Compton]

Humans have created a great system for testing ideas, it is called science, it makes humans special. Denying accepted and proven science is not a good idea and goes against the best interests of the human race.

If you ask me, we've got a long way before we reach a level of intellectual proclivity for any system better than our logic based scientific method, along with our categorizing and cataloguing the recordings of our findings. Perhaps quantum computing or AGI will provide the potential for a better method, but a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

 

[Polymath257]

Let's see, primitive man navigates by the Stars, has the ability to craft weapons with sticks and stones, start a fire by rubbing sticks together, lives in a cave that's naturally insulated and warm in the winter, cool in summer, pays no bills, owes no taxes, has all the knowledge he needs to thrive in his mind. Kills and harvests natural organic food from nature, with sticks and stone tools he makes himself, and worships the God he knows to exist because he lives within the created world.

And as I said, just as smart as us, but oriented to different things. And the *theoretical* understanding was quite limited.

But recall that these things were also what previous generations *chose* to move away from because there was a high risk of disease, more likelihood of starvation, or death by exposure, or even being eaten by predators.

Modern Man keeps his brain in his pocket in a little plastic box, buys a $100,000 house that depreciates instantly, pays constantly for it's upkeep, can't even fix his own lunch without an expensive device, buys prepackaged food that's bad for his health, is constantly stressed, can't make it across town without a GPS, and is scared to death to be in the woods. Doesn't believe in God because a liberal professor at the college he attended mocked the idea of a deity.

Yes, we developed the technology to make our lives easier and we have become too dependent on it. That is a lack of wisdom and determination not a failure of understanding. As a society, we understand far more than was understood in the past. We understand because we questioned and tested our ideas and the stories passed down over generations. We can now communicate across the world instantly. We can now send food and supplies across the world to relive famines and disasters. We can now explore more of our world and understand it more deeply than ever before.

And I agree that we have lost a lot. But the reason people no longer believe in a God is because we have learned a LOT since those early days of hunting and gathering. Our understanding (as a society, not as individuals) of the world around us is much, much deeper than what was available even a couple hundred years ago, let alone a few thousand.

People have also realized the moral vacuum of most theologies. They tend to promote tribalism (also a problem with early humans) and thereby hatred of others.

So, people don't disbelieve because of the liberal professors any more than they believe because of the conservative preachers. They either believe or disbelieve because of what makes sense to them. And for many people today, the old myths simply no longer make sense.

You know why people don't believe in God? Because they are too scared to. They prefer everything to be prepackaged or on screens... The real world is just too much for them.

No, it is not fear. It is disgust at the hypocrisy. It is the realization that it is all a type of mythology no better than those of the Greeks, Romans, and Norse. it is the realization that the old viewpoints were mostly wrong and that the old stories are just that: stories intended by those who knew no better to explain the complicated world around them.

We no longer believe storms are the work of a storm god, that earthquakes are the work of an angry god moving around under ground, that the positions of the stars in the sky control our actions, etc. These were *myths* that were invented to explain what could not be explained at the time.

The way I see it, it is fear that *keeps* people believing in gods. They are afraid of societal collapse, of moral laxity, of having to learn enough to decide for themselves what is good and evil. They want to be told what to do and to not think about it any further. They are afraid of an invented hell and an angry deity that will send them there if they disobey.

 

[Polymath257]

Really? Well I suppose a lion does love a good meal of gazelle, and a Coyote does love eating a rabbit... But I suspect that's not the kind of love you're talking about. I'm not at all certain that animals are capable of the kind of love humans are. Agape love requires a spiritual soul.

I disagree. My dog *loves* me and the rest of her family. And, in the wild, wolves *love* the members of their pack.

if anything, their love is more pure and less adulterated by the desire to hide from others. We could learn a lot from our dogs in this regard.

 

[Polymath257]

So I guess that would mean that most social norms like rape being immoral are questionable.
Usually if something is pretty much universal across the board in human experience it is considered to have merit.

Funny that rape in some contexts (war, for example) has always been seen as allowable. Of course, we also kill in organized fashions and even claim those that do so are heroes and have great merit.

Yes, humans have a common biology, which means we respond to things in many similar ways and that leads to some commonalities in our moral systems.

Moral systems are built up by humans for the benefit of humans. This means our biology plays a part in their development. And, I would point out that many other primates have some basic 'moral' qualities like a desire for fairness (giving up treats if someone else doesn't get what they deserve), etc.

Maybe the universality is partly because we *are* a type of social primate, not because of some invented myths.

 

[Polymath257]

You may think so, but time devices can be wrong. And the mere fact that humans have developed writing -- still gorillas in their longevity have not.

Sure, all measurements have some error bars. But they are not likely to be so far off that the conclusions fail.

Humans have had writing for only the last 5000 years or so. We have been around for at least 20 times that. That small time period is not representative of what it means to be human.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Oh, so we are all rational now so we have all knowledge? I suspect that early man was just as intelligent and sophisticated as we are. You sell our ancestors short. They were not stupid.
Today people are so "educated" they lose their common sense, and their knowledge of the spiritual.

We know so much more than our ancient ancestors could have ever dreamed of knowing, it's not even funny.
That's not to say they were dumb, but they were indeed ignorant about a lot of things. Things that we know a lot about today.

 

[Wildswanderer]

If the only reason you can think of for proclaiming rape wrong is because most people say it's wrong, then yes that would be questionable. But there are a plethora of other reasons we declare rape wrong.

Until proven wrong; like the idea that the Earth is flat, the idea that Earth is the center of the Universe, the idea that volcanoes and thunder the result of angry Gods, like Epileptic seizures the result of demon possession; and the list goes on.... again; popularity is not an indicator of truth

Only the existence of a deity has not been proven wrong and in fact, most people still believe in God.

 

[Wildswanderer]

We know so much more than our ancestors could have ever dreamed of knowing, it's not even funny.
That's not to say they were dumb, but they were indeed ignorant about a lot of things. Things that we know a lot about today.

No, things that we think we know. Most science of the past is shown to be wrong within a couple of years. We only think we know everything.

 

[Wildswanderer]

I disagree. My dog *loves* me and the rest of her family. And, in the wild, wolves *love* the members of their pack.

if anything, their love is more pure and less adulterated by the desire to hide from others. We could learn a lot from our dogs in this regard.

Sorry, but no. Your dog can express affection but it's really loyalty because of what you do for her. And she's not from your family tree, that's just fuzzy feeling silliness. And the Wolves "love" their pack members until one of them has food the other wants. My dogs do the same thing. Animals are basically selfish creatures because that's what is required to survive. The only exception would be mothering instinct, but that's just to ensure the species continues.