Much like the great philosopher Socrates, I believe in asking as many questions as possible to as many people as possible throughout my life. It takes an open mind to think seriously about some of the questions that I'll ask. Whether you are religious, atheistic, skeptical, agnostic, or whatever, you have to be willing to admit that you do not have all the answers. If you can truthfully tell yourself that then you are capable of at least considering these questions. Based on your own beliefs in life and what our purpose is, this is strictly subjective and I ask these questions only with the intent to make people think; not convert to my beliefs or anything. I am an agnostic; I grew up Catholic and considered becoming a priest in my early adolescents. I however, began to grow away from the church because I was reading the bible intently. I wanted to learn more and began to found many controversial subjects and questions which ultimately turned me away from the very thing I strove to grow stronger in. So why is it that I was raised a certain way and wanted to follow a certain path, but in so searching for the correct way to follow such a path, was strayed the wrong way? I've seen this in many other cases as well. One such a story is that of a man named Matt who hosts a site; which I highly recommend people watching on YouTube. It's called the atheist experience and he tells the same general story, but is about fifteen times more intelligent and articulate than I in religious matters. Once again though, I find it interesting that in really taking the time to analyze something that I thought I truly cared about, I found that I knew little to nothing, and it was in trying to find what it really meant that I began to understand not this idea I had, but instead myself and who I truly was. And so I began to ask myself many questions.
One was the topic of animals and death. When I would ask someone, "what happens to animals when they die?" I would almost always get the response, "They just die." Now hearing this from an atheist I have no problem with because they accept the idea that there is no God and thus no afterlife, but I was very interested in hearing this from religious people because they believe they get to go to heaven or hell. Now, my question is:
If animals can die and go nowhere; or in other words, into nothing; then why can't humans as well?
A common answer to this question is that humans are special. That we have a complexity much higher than any other species, thus making it more plausible apparently that a God would have chosen us as a divine kind of creature and animals as our gifts to do with what we wish. Now, I would agree that to our current knowledge of species on the Earth, we do not know of any other kind of species that has as high of mental capabilities as humans, but there's many things that you have to consider. We don't know if there is other life in the universe, and considering the fact that we only see a VERY small fraction of what the universe is, especially if it is in fact infinite, we don't know if there are other life forms out there like us. Now looking at our sun, we know that it is what gives us life. Without it, we would die as well as everything else on Earth. So I ask you to look up at the stars really quickly and tell me what you see. What you see, is millions of suns; some smaller and some larger than our own, that have the potential to provide that precious life to something else somewhere on a distant planet. The chances in my opinion; if you look at the enormous size of only a very small amount of the universe we can see; the chances become quite large. So, going back to the question, if there is indeed life out there and they happen to be more intelligent than us, wouldn't this defeat the very argument considering the fact that these life forms would in fact technically according to your argument, be more special.
Another thing to consider is the similarities we share with many other mammals on Earth. The primate family obviously is the first to compare to considering our DNA is almost an exact replica. They have proven through scientific studies, that primates are good problem solvers. This brings in another interesting comparison to humans, is the ability to use tools. Both of which you can see in the links below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LThJWvJ2YNI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAFQ5kUHPkY
Just one other example is the desire to have sex for pleasure. Now, for those of you that don't know, Dolphins are the only other species known to share this same trait. So, I ask:
Why are only humans given this idea of salvation and all other species on Earth are not?
Why do we believe animals are less special than humans?
Why can an animal not have a soul?
Does not an animal also show emotions and feelings?
Do we truly have some divine uniqueness that defines us as a special species?
