Tag Archives: anthropology

Human Nature

Are Humans Intrinsically Good?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

The Christian view of man holds a tension.

On the one hand, we are to understand that God created man in his image, meaning he gave us rational minds, a will, moral values, and so forth.  Since we are unique among his creation in possessing his image, this surely guarantees our tremendous value, both as a species and as individuals.

On the other hand, we are nothing, less than nothing, without God in our lives.  Sin pervades our nature and darkens our souls.  Only when we reach out to God can we cure this horrible disease.  We must humble ourselves before him to escape our predicament.

How do we synthesize these two views of man?  We are to always remember our value in God’s eyes, but we are also to remember what we are like without him.

It’s no use beating ourselves up all the time and putting ourselves down.  That denies our value.  Maybe you’ve heard the following wise saying: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”

It’s no use thinking we are intrinsically good on our own.  That denies our need for God.  Those who think they don’t need God end up with a distorted view of their own abilities.

Both traps are waiting for us, so we mustn’t fall in either one.

Which trap do you think people are more prone to fall into?

Human Nature, Philosophy

More Ways Humans Differ from Other Animals

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

I have written on this topic before, but it’s so important that when I come across more information, I feel compelled to write about it.

Recently I was reading a book by Hugh Ross (More Than a Theory) and he listed off several stark contrasts between man and all other animals:

  1. awareness of right and wrong (conscience)
  2. awareness of mortality and concerns about what lies beyond death
  3. hunger for hope, purpose, and destiny
  4. compulsion to discover and create
  5. capacity for analysis, mathematics, and meditation
  6. capacity to recognize beauty, truth, logic, and absolutes
  7. propensity to worship and communicate with a deity

The gulf between man and the other animals is indeed massive.  Those of us who recognize this gulf encourage men to reach even greater heights, while those of us who think that man and animal are basically the same tend to excuse every kind of animal-like behavior in man.  After all, those people claim, we are born to act like animals, so why expect more?  (There is a schizophrenic third view that claims men are nothing but complex animals, but still expects men to rise above it.  This view is incoherent to me.)

Of course, the person that philosophically excuses men from animal-like behavior – who believes men are literally animals, and nothing more – quickly abandons that view when someone behaves like an animal toward them.  In that case, all we hear is how the perpetrator should have behaved better and should have controlled themselves.  It’s funny how vain philosophy collapses when it bumps up against reality.

Creation, Human Nature

How Are Human Beings Different From Other Animals?

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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.