I am an animal

[Jose AR]

I am animal and tell people but still get resistance and denial.

When I look at my family tree I see gibbon, gorilla, chimp, and baboon. I look at a capuchin monkey, alert, agile, and intelligent enough to use tools and medecine, and I see a not too distant cousin. I see that I am closer to rodents than carnivores, and, damn it, I sucked my mother's mammaries to survive my first few years!

Why is it such an insult to be an animal! There is an assumtion that animals are stupid and we are smart, that animals are dirty and we are clean, that animals are backward and we have progressed. We think animals don't think, aren't conscious or even aware, that they don't plan or feel or think or know.

Animals are so cool! albatross that never land, whales talking 4,000 km apart, birds and pigs getting honey together, cold blooded bees regulating temperature to tenths of a degree, and humans judging multiple tiers of intentional stance.

I am an animal, no better or worse than the rest , I don't hold a special place among the animals. The school yard bully does not deny that he is a student, why do we deny that we are an animal. I am a vertebrate, a mammal, and an ape. No one denies being a vertebrate, and few deny being a mammal, why do we balk at ape?

Jose AR

[DeterminedJuliet]

I don't!

[Asmodean]

The Asmo, he is a fungus, actually. 

[xSilverPhinx]

This is really the wrong place to ask to get more than a few answers, I doubt most here don't see themselves as yet another animal.

Now that question on a theist forum...that should be interesting...

[The Magic Pudding]

This is really the wrong place to ask to get more than a few answers, I doubt most here don't see themselves as yet another animal.

Now that question on a theist forum...that should be interesting...

Would a troll mode be OK if you weren't trying to fool, but provoke conversation in a positive way?  Like a debate, defending a view without agreeing with it.  You could make your text troll green to make it obvious.  We say we don't like fundy trolls but their threads seem to be popular, or is that populous?

I am an animal, I think we are special animals, not the only special ones though.  If our sentience makes us special, then our failure to see ourselves as part of nature makes us less so.  Appreciation and respect for the beauty and wonder of animals is one of my special human super powers.
In the movie of "Last of the Mohicans," after a deer is killed an expression of thanks and respect to it is offered.  I don't imagine the deer appreciated it but it seems a nice thing to do anyway.

[Jose AR]

I guess I was looking not for your insight (preaching to the choir apparently) but help understanding them who maintain a strict world view of human seperation from the animal.

As an atheist I probably have an unhealty interest in how "they" think. I just can't figure out why they think like they do. I have great empathy skills and can tell if someone is tired or anxious, or whatever. But I have no way of entering, even temporarily, the mind of a hardcore theist. Which is another way of saying that I cannot change their minds.

Does anyone here go on, say, creationist forums and ask questions (like Egor/Edward does here)? Is there any value to that?

And the "non-animalists": are they stubborn, Ignorant, willful?

How can I be part of the change in consiousness raising, part of the change in zeitgeist? I want to learn and grow and change and in so doing help others to learn and grow and change. How do I do this? 

[xSilverPhinx]

I guess I was looking not for your insight (preaching to the choir apparently) but help understanding them who maintain a strict world view of human seperation from the animal.

As an atheist I probably have an unhealty interest in how "they" think. I just can't figure out why they think like they do. I have great empathy skills and can tell if someone is tired or anxious, or whatever. But I have no way of entering, even temporarily, the mind of a hardcore theist. Which is another way of saying that I cannot change their minds.

Does anyone here go on, say, creationist forums and ask questions (like Egor/Edward does here)? Is there any value to that?

And the "non-animalists": are they stubborn, Ignorant, willful?

How can I be part of the change in consiousness raising, part of the change in zeitgeist? I want to learn and grow and change and in so doing help others to learn and grow and change. How do I do this? 

I'll give it ago, these are what I've observed so far as the most relevant...

The main problem they see with animals and evolution is the perceived moral implications. They reject what's staring them in the face because of the cognitive dissonance that the idea of being an animal causes them, not because they feel animals are less, but because they've been brought up to believe that morality and goodness can only be possible if they're created in god's image. I repeat: only be possible. God forbid they should be only human. They would have no dignity then...

This coupled of course with a misunderstanding of what evolution is, and human evolution specifically (social animals and morality is significant in social contexts).

They don't like the idea that the capacity for morality is partly hardwired and partly culture and upbringing, because they think that morality is objective, and that flies in the face of objectivity.

So, it's a complex problem for them though not on scientific grounds. The science of evolutionary theory doesn't matter to the most hardcore fundies. It goes against what how they see 'human' should be defined, and that isn't an easy thing to change.

I guess the best means to change is educating, of course, and showing why they're wrong and that it's not as black and white as they think it is. It isn't as certain and existentially safe either ("I know this and I know that I will go to heaven because morality is objective, was written down and I know..."), but...one thing at a time.

[xSilverPhinx]

This is really the wrong place to ask to get more than a few answers, I doubt most here don't see themselves as yet another animal.

Now that question on a theist forum...that should be interesting...

Would a troll mode be OK if you weren't trying to fool, but provoke conversation in a positive way?  Like a debate, defending a view without agreeing with it.  You could make your text troll green to make it obvious.  We say we don't like fundy trolls but their threads seem to be popular, or is that populous?

I don't know, have you given it a go?