How Are Human Beings Different From Other Animals?

I can remember having this debate with my friend, Mike, when I was in college. He argued that humans are no different from other animals except for our larger brains. There is nothing we can do that animals can’t do. Animals just do things in a more primitive and basic fashion.

This always struck me as ridiculous, and I just ran across a quote from Professor Bruce Thornton at Fresno State University which explains the difference well:

What makes us recognizably human, then, is not what is natural about us but what is unnatural: reason and its projections in language, culture, ritual, and technology, self-awareness, conscious memory, imagination, and the higher emotions; and, most important, values, ethics, morals, and the freedom from nature’s determinism that allows us to choose, whether for good or ill. Nothing else in nature possesses any of these attributes, despite the wishful thinking of those who believe they are teaching chimps to “talk,” or who consider a monkey digging up termites with a stick to be “using tools,” or who label baboon rump-submission a “social practice,” or who subjectively interpret the behavior of animals to indicate the presence of “self-awareness” ore higher human emotions such as love, grief, regret, guilt, shame, or loyalty. For every dog that howls over the body of its dead master there is another that, if necessary, will happily eat his corpse.

Well said, professor.

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Tags: anthropology, apologetics, Evolution, Human Nature, Intelligent Design

This entry was posted by Bill Pratt on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 8:40 pm and is filed under Creation, Human Nature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Bill Pratt

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Rza

This is very good!
We always here how we’re just like the animals…..
Karen Stockton

“‘For every dog that howls over the body of its dead master there is another that, if necessary, will happily eat his corpse.’

Well said, Professor.”

Not well said. The fact that the person observing this recognizes difference in choice from one animal to another, (one that will howl over its master, versus one that would just as soon as eat it) is recognizing free will in animals to act differently for themselves–a trait that all humans have as well. There are good men and women who choose to act according to the knowledge within, as their are those who choose to act contrary to the light they hold.

His last statement contradicts all of the previous paragraph before where he holds that the various individuals of nature can not act as agents for his or herself.

There is no gene for race, and many humans are more closely related genetically to mice, than some humans are to other “unrelated” humans.

We are of differing intelligence and strengths, according to the template we’re given in addition to what we choose to do with that template.

If you believe in Isaiah 11:6, that one day, “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.”, then it stands to reason that you will see the above Professor’s paragraph of species-ism stands on the same level as racism, sexism and genocide of thinking and bleeding beings of any kind.
Bill Pratt

Hi Karen,
Brice Thornton did not contradict himself at all. He was vividly illustrating that people who mistakenly assign human characteristics to dogs need to look more closely. Dogs are not in any way choosing, the way humans make choices using reason and moral values. He is saying that to believe this is folly.

Thanks for stopping by,
Bill
http://www.calvaryle.org Steve Wright

Karen, the significance of the Isaiah prophecy speaks to the restoration of the creation as when God first created all creatures to live in harmony, with man of course ruling over them all. Animals did not eat other animals until after sin entered the world, and likely not until after the Flood when food became far more scarce.

Are you equating the present food chain as equivalent to genocide or racism? That the wolf that eats a lamb or the leopard the baby goat is partaking in an immoral act?
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http://yahoo mary

well for me we are crazinly different from the ANIMALS other wise the planet earth wud be in mess well dis can only be recognised by people not any body trying to be an animal by behaving like them.
Andrew Ryan

“Hi Karen,
Brice Thornton did not contradict himself at all. He was vividly illustrating that people who mistakenly assign human characteristics to dogs need to look more closely”

I fon’t see that you have refuted Katen’s point. The scenario Bruce uses does not prove his point. As Karen says, it is consistent with two dogs simply making different choices to each other.
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