Re: Special Creation

I think this is a perfectly valid question. The self-awareness of
chimpanzees and dolphins is a fairly recent amendment of the long and
widely held notion that this was only a characteristic of humans. That
is illustrative of the strong impetus to interpret characteristics such
as self-recognition, threat assessment, and sense of imminent death,
solely from human perspectives. But with a little thought, we can
identify many non-human ways that living creatures sense and process
information (just how does that distributed processor in the octopus
work?). There are undoubtedly some physical and cognitive processes at
work that we just cannot relate to in human terms. How long was it
before we found out something about the low-frequency ground vibration
information aspect of elephant life? But even more to the point, how
does that "feel" to the elephant?

We cannot get into the head of an elephant, or any other living thing to
get a good "sense" of how they respond to the world around them.
Moreover, the history of discovery about such things is dynamic, these
days tending to show us that "lower" forms are more capable than
previously thought. In light of that, it is appropriate to at leave a
little wiggle room when ascribing some characteristic, or the lack
thereof, to such "lower" living creatures. JimA

jack syme wrote:

> Interesting idea but how do you know that is true? How do you know
> that animals are not self aware? Or for Moorad how do you know that
> animals are not aware of imminent death?
>
> How do you suppose you would test for these things? Chimpanzees and
> dolphins have been shown that they are able to recognize themselves in
> a mirror. Perhaps this is not self awareness in the sense that you
> are using the term, but perhaps your use of the term is not testable.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: RFaussette@aol.com <mailto:RFaussette@aol.com>
> To: asa@calvin.edu <mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2006 1:04 PM
> Subject: Re: Special Creation
>
> In a message dated 3/4/2006 12:00:34 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> jack syme writes:
>
> No special creation in the physical sense. But there has to
> be something unique about mankind, something that seperates us
> from animals; the "imagio dei."
>
> His reason... his knowledge that there is good and evil.
>
> "The divine element in mankind's creation explains why, in obvious
> distinction from the animals, the human race has self
> consciousness and reason. It also explains why, in Babylonian
> belief, men live on after death as spirits or shades in the
> Netherworld."
>
> From the introduction to Andrew George's translation of The Epic
> of Gilgamesh.
>
> Enkidu is imbued with reason after he is seduced by Shamhat.
>
> This is also the core of the allegory of Adam and Eve. What is
> unique about man is man's self consciousness and reason, his ontology.
>
>
> rich faussette
>
>
>
>
Received on Sat Mar 4 16:55:47 2006