The difference of Man (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, February 15, 2013, 08:47 (4095 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: So let's just agree that humans are humans, and have special powers. Whether you call them great apes or not doesn't alter those powers, and so shouldn't make the slightest difference to the question of whether they are God's chosen "species" or simply another step in the impersonal process of evolution. So what is the point of the debate?-DAVID: It is a matter of emphasis. If humans are primates it infers that they are nothing really special.-Humans are apes if humans say they are apes. If humans say they are not apes, they are not apes. The classification is a human artifact. And if humans disagree on their definition of their own terminology, the debate becomes one of language only. (As regards "special", see below.)
 
DAVID: On the other hand, if they are a very special species, even if they have a common ancestor with the primates, this implies that they were teleologically chosen to appear.-They can be primates and still be a very special species, and even an atheist could agree that humans have special gifts that apes don't have, but he still wouldn't have to agree that they were teleologically "chosen" (see the next set of comments). As a matter of interest, what is your definition of a primate?-DAVID: Are we 'Naked Apes' as the book implies or are we so different it makes a major difference in the philosophy of our origins? God at work. I have covered this important point in my new book.-And no doubt you have emphasized, with consummate skill, all the attributes that distinguish humans from their simian ancestors, and because these attributes are so complex and give us incalculable advantages, you have concluded that God is at work. An atheist can agree with everything you say about man's attributes, and argue that it's just one more example of evolution refining organs (in our case especially the brain, in other animals sight, smell, hearing...). An atheist is not going to say, "I classify us as apes, and therefore we don't have these attributes." And you're not going to say, "If we classified ourselves as apes, we wouldn't have these attributes." The classification is irrelevant, except that some humans think it's an insult to their intelligence. What matters is the subjective value we attach to the similarities and differences, and the subjective interpretation we put on them.