The myth that people are animals debunked

[Rev. Rye]

Also, just did some looking up Roger Scruton: he does not actually deny that human beings are technically animals. He just thinks we’re a special kind of animal.

Bold mine, source: “ If We Are Not Just Animals, What Are We?” by Roger Scruton.

Philosophers and theologians in the Christian tradition have regarded human beings as distinguished from the other animals by the presence within them of a divine spark. This inner source of illumination, the soul, can never be grasped from outside, and is in some way detached from the natural order, maybe taking wing for some supernatural place when the body collapses and dies.

Recent advances in genetics, neuroscience and evolutionary psychology have all but killed off that idea. But they have raised the question of what to put in its place. For quite clearly, although we are animals, bound in the web of causality that joins us to the zoosphere, we are not just animals.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/opini...re-we.html

(N.b.: If you run up against the paywall, just turn on reader mode.)