Animal Minds (Animals)

by dhw, Thursday, June 16, 2011, 17:09 (4908 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: God used evolution to create humans. 'Red of tooth and claw' was required as soon as one animal started to eat another.-If there is a God, and if God used evolution in order deliberately to create humans, then it is not unreasonable to assume that God decided one animal should start to eat another. And that is also the starting point of my post. A lion cannot feel compassion/sympathy/empathy for the antelope it is eating. Taking another life for one's own purposes is just about as selfish an action as one can conceive, and I am arguing that this pattern of self-interest was established by other animals long before humans came on the scene. If you 
believe God directed evolution, I see no alternative to believing that God directed the pattern which underlies all evil. No wonder those who believe literally in the Garden of Eden are so resolutely opposed to the blood-spattered history of evolution, since the former illustrates precisely what God could have created if he had been so inclined.-DAVID: We think of killing other humans as evil. Not in wartime. So we are conflicted.-That has no bearing on the subject I have summarized above, which is the SOURCE of what we humans call evil.-I went on to argue that our sophistication covers up the fact that the human world is based on the same mixture of "good" and "bad" instincts as that of the animal world. You responded: "Oh, I think we do see it. As omnivores we kill to eat." And as humans we institutionalize what other animals do naturally: raising families, forming relationships, educating ourselves, building homes, acquiring food, protecting ourselves against the climate, against other species, against our own species. It's true that some of us have the luxury of being able also to devote our attention to less mundane matters, like religion, philosophy, art, science ... but for most humans it's the above activities that form the focal points of life. Thanks to our extra intelligence we make all of them vastly more complex, but different in kind? Well, humans, hyenas, humpback whales, honey bees and humming birds all have those same preoccupations, but are all "different in kind". What is the significance of that?-********-I'm afraid there was no link to the article about Corvids and parrots.