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According to every single atheist I have ever spoken to "humans ARE animals"
That's because for atheists, generally, the following is true:
1) Atheists understand the concept of 'animal', and
2) Atheists aren't upset by it to the point of denying it
Quote:
Originally Posted by granpa
Objectivity is what separates humans from animals.
I've noticed that you use the term 'objectivity' as a general excuse for anything you want to believe, no matter how baseless.
The construct of 'animal' is a biological one. That you want it to be a social/behavioral construct speaks only to your own unhappiness with the biological construct.
Quote:
Originally Posted by granpa
Humans evolved from fish but humans are not fish.
Humans evolved from animals but humans are not animals.
And now you're confusing colloquial English with scientific terminology. The word 'fish' in English refers to some but not all members of the clade (subphylum) Vertebrata. This includes all fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. However, the word 'animal' refers to all the clade (kingdom) Animalia is monophyletic, such that it is inclusive of all descending organisms and exclusive of all non-descending organisms. The word 'fish' does not represent a clade.
Humans are animals because they're members of Animalia, which is to say that they share a common ancestor with all other animals that live and have ever lived, and that no non-animal organisms share or have ever shared that ancestor. That's all 'animal' means.
The fact that the implications of the systematic concept of cladistics upsets you could not be more irrelevant to its veracity and utility, and your objection to it based on nothing more than being unhappy at being grouped with gerbils and lizards could not be more irrational. It is, however, an excellent example at religious nonsense.
According to every single atheist I have ever spoken to "humans ARE animals".
I call that dehumanization
Thankfully you calling it dehumanization does not make it so and more than calling a spade a helicopter is going to cause it to start hovering 20 feet in the air. You just have the linguistics wrong.
If I say Apes are animals - that does not de-ape them. If I call Battenberg a cake - that does not de-battenberg it. And if I call humans animals - that does not dehumanize them.
Put in plainer terms lest you still misunderstand it: X being a subset of Y does not make X and less X. Saying something like "atheists are not fully human" however does.
Even livescience has to admit that they can't explain why we are so different from animals:
Quote:
But according to Marc Hauser, director of the cognitive evolution lab at Harvard University, in a recent article in Scientific American, "mounting evidence indicates that, in contrast to Darwin's theory of a continuity of mind between humans and other species, a profound gap separates our intellect from the animal kind."
PROUND GAP. That means you can't directly link us to other animal species until you bridge that gap.
Out of the thousands and thousands of other species, not a single one thinks like we do, communicates like we do, and is creative natured like we are. I don't think we've ever seen primates drum out a musical pattern with some sticks
Out of the thousands and thousands of other species, not a single one thinks like we do, communicates like we do, and is creative natured like we are.
And? Out of the thousands and thousands of planes, not a single one flies like the Blackbird. Therefore (according to you) the Blackbird is NOT a plane?
Once again you are ignoring not only the similarities, but the identical features that we and other animals share.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffbase40
I don't think we've ever seen primates drum out a musical pattern with some sticks
And? Out of the thousands and thousands of planes, not a single one flies like the Blackbird. Therefore (according to you) the Blackbird is NOT a plane?
Once again you are ignoring not only the similarities, but the identical features that we and other animals share.
No, that would be like comparing a plane to a bicycle and saying they are the same thing because they both
have moving parts. If the differences far outweigh the similarities then how can you say we are the same?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Diogenes
Once again you ignore where animals make music.
Music or just repeating sounds that have no bearing on the musical alphabet or melody?
Out of the thousands and thousands of other species, not a single one thinks like we do, communicates like we do, and is creative natured like we are. I don't think we've ever seen primates drum out a musical pattern with some sticks
But by focussing on that gap which is actually development we can trace through evolution, just as we can trace the evolution of birds - which is a league different from other animals - you ignore the many, many common features that show that we are animals, and not something that was just miraculously poofed out of the dust.
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