(April 5, 2010 at 4:18 pm)Welsh cake Wrote:(April 4, 2010 at 2:30 pm)AngelThMan Wrote: This is not circular reasoning at all. When the bible claims that man is made in the image of God, and that man is superior to animals, it is not said in the same context as I'm using it here. In other words, no one was saying "the fact that we are the only species with sapient intelligent is evidence there's a God." I'm the one making this claim. What we see around us corroborates what was written in the bible, in passages written with entirely different purposes.That was their world-view, their perspective or subjective take on reality, like the world being flat, the idea we're superior to all other life is as dead as a doornail.
You're corrupted your capacity for intellectual study with such rod and that is a sad thing for a sapient creature to do. It makes you ignorant of the varying levels of intelligence that is empirically abundant out there. I mean take a look at these big fellas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCAUleX5h8A
Every time I see them I get Goosebumps, I realised they're studying us, they are alive like you and me, watching us and interacting with us, if that’s not sapience, a living being that is self-aware then I quite simply don't know what is.
Welsh cake that is very entertaining and they do show a degree of intelligence but to put them on the same level as humans is hardly a sapient decision. Take a look at your thought process,on the African plains a lion hunts its prey this makes the lion self aware because it knows if it does not eat it dies. The prey flees this makes the prey self aware because it knows if it does not flee it will die. Both are aware of their existance but that does not put them on the human level.
I train rottweilers and they can do more tricks than that and they obey commands in three different languages. I've seen herding dogs respond to many different whistled commands. From personal experiance I've watched rotties study people for the sole purpose of training them so they could do what pleased them not what would please the owners and even this does not raise them to the human level. Because a person does not understand the nature of dogs and allow themselves to be manipulated by dogs does not raise the intelligence of the dog it only shows the lack of understanding on a owners part. Oh by the way my latest rottie she loves to blow bubbles in her water pan and she gets just as excited as the whales do.
God loves those who believe and those who do not and the same goes for me, you have no choice in this matter. That puts the matter of total free will to rest.