The difference of Man (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, February 20, 2013, 20:21 (4295 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The key to my objection about classifying us as primates, is that atheists constantly use the classification to imply we are not so special. We are just naked apes as the book said. But our posture is different, our skeleton is different, our gait is different, our hands are different (opposible thumbs) and our brain is enormously different. We are beyond primate although we came from there.-I have no problem seeing the differences, and I have no problem seeing the similarities. My point is that atheists will continue to emphasize the latter, and you will continue to emphasize the former, no matter what we call ourselves. Perhaps we should leave it at that.
 
I'd like to take the discussion into a different context, which you will perhaps look on more sympathetically. I constantly refer to humans and their "fellow animals", which may also sound degrading, but there is no atheist agenda behind my terminology. In my view, it's important not to lose sight of our common ground with our fellow animals. They're sentient beings even if we may assume they're far less intelligent and self-aware than we are, and they suffer both physically and mentally as we do. Our basic needs ... food, shelter, nurture, security, propagation of the species etc. ... are identical, and most of our human activities are dedicated to precisely these aims, even though we've institutionalized them to such a sophisticated degree that we've lost sight of their and our animal origins.-Why is this important? Firstly, because the way we treat our fellow animals is often appalling. In 2011, a single UK animal charity investigated 159,759 cases of cruelty, and rescued 119,126 animals. The intellectual justification for this is often that animals are different from us, inferior to us, don't feel things as we do. Secondly, it's important because humans use exactly the same reasoning to justify their cruelty to their fellow humans: whites enslaving blacks, Aryans slaughtering Jews...And this way of thinking still features in most human conflicts. "Oh, those people are just animals." In the context of respect for all living creatures, we need to emphasize our similarities rather than our differences. At first sight, this may seem to have nothing to do with the great-ape-taxonomy-debate, but it's actually the reverse side of our earlier discussion. In the philosophical/religious context of the specialness of humans, you find the link with other animals degrading. In the context of ethics, the specialness of humans (often extended to the specialness of SOME humans) has been and continues to be distorted to such a degree that it lies at the very heart of our most degradingly "inhuman" activities. But just as I do not believe for one minute that atheists would change their mindset if we stopped calling humans "primates", I do not believe for one minute that calling humans "fellow animals" will change the mindset of those who abuse their fellow animals as well as their fellow humans!