Is man lower than beast?

Question

We are undisputably the most vicious and destructive creature ever. We have destroyed the environment, torn each other apart, raped and pillaged far worse since our creation as an 'intelligent' species. We call each other 'inhuman' when one commits Evil, but Evil is truly a characteristic more than ever applied to humans in our 'enlightened' age.

The only other creatures to form armies and attack each other that we know of are called ants. So, does this make us on par with insects?

Answer 1

If you don't mind, I'll refer to C S Lewis.
Being a Son of Adam or a Daughter of Eve is, to his mind, "honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth".

That's the horror of it: not just that we are capable of being more violent, agressive and cruel than almost all animals, but that at the same time we are capable of being so much more. No other animal that we know of can perform cruelty *and* wrestle with morality, or create art, or consider the stars.
I'm not using that as a balancing positive, but as evidence of a strange dichotomy.
The hypocrisy is everywhere.
We describe and fear "killer sharks" but for every human killed by a shark we slaughter..?

Answer 2

God gave man dominion over the beasts of the field. The little ant as an army does mighty things. It is the heart of man that does the evil things you have mentioned. The heart must be changed and filled with love for each other. We have basically been fighting the Muslims since Tripoli. However, the Bible tells us that we are not wrestling against man but the evil spirits in man.

Answer 3

I disagree. Apes engage in warfare, it's documented and if You feel the need can google it up to see for Yourself. Nature is cruel in every way, a garden that at a glance appears so pretty is in fact a battlefield as each organism fights for it's ground. Birds make war continuously upon each other and regularly eat each others young, in fact often abandon their very own to allow the strong one to survive. Cats breed by raping the female, each kitten has a different sire. Wolves form war bands when they hunt and engage in co operative tactics then fight amongst themselves over the kill. I could site many other examples, we're just part of it all. We are able to rationalize a better way, a civil way of organizing ourselves that allows reflection upon these things. We are above the beasts, just ever so slightly though. A thin veneer indeed!

Answer 4

I purely regarded up those as against interior the Quran and that all of them state that the backside of beasts are human beings that don't see the sparkling warning signs and settle for the certainty. Such communicate is modern in ALL non secular holy books - i'm specific the Quran and Torah states something alongside the comparable lines. additionally, those as against declare no longer something approximately any orders to kill them. In Islam, no human is authorized to bypass judgement on yet another. in basic terms God is conscious of each thing, and subsequently in basic terms He can bypass judgement. The Prophet isn't any situation endorsed rape. in case you look on the history of Islamic conquest, it is the main purely in assessment to different conquests (such because of the fact the Crusades!) The Quran teaches it is mandatory to love your neighbor as you will possibly rather like your self - and the Quran elevates the human beings of the e book (the Jews and the Christians) or maybe states that a Muslim guy might marry a woman who's a Jew or Christian.

Answer 5

Actually............if you took "money" and "possessions" out of the picture, we'd be O.K.

“owning more than we need (the very foundation of capitalism) is immoral and amounts to theft, because it means someone else is going to have too little. Many animals have evolved very cooperative societies; if the negative impact of capitalism could be reversed, anarchists believe humans could move in this direction as well.”

http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/HKPC/anarchy.htm
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And furthermore:

Property is theft (French: La propriété, c'est le vol!) is a slogan coined by the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his book What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government.

By property, Proudhon referred to ownership of land and the means of production, being used to subjugate the labour of others:

"The peasant who hires land, the manufacturer who borrows capital, the tax-payer who pays tolls, duties, patent and license fees, personal and property taxes, &c., and the deputy who votes for them, — all act neither intelligently nor freely. Their enemies are the proprietors, the capitalists, the government." [1]
He proposed that "the laborer retains, even after he has received his wages, a natural right of property in the thing which he has produced." Taking away this property of the labourer (as is normally done in an employer-employee relationship), is theft. However, "instead of inferring from this that property should be shared by all, I demand, as a measure of general security, its entire abolition."

Similar sentiments were expressed nearly two hundred years earlier by the English Diggers, who are considered proto-anarchists by many: "And that this Civil Propriety is the Curse, is manifest thus, Those that Buy and Sell Land, and are landlords, have got it either by Oppression, or Murder, or Theft" [2]

Though Proudhon had many arguments against various forms of property, he did not oppose personal property, which he sometimes referred to as "possession". While he believed that certain formulations of property rights were dangerous and even irrational, he also felt that in some cases it could act as a counter-balance to the power of the state. He says: "The absolute right of the State is in conflict with the absolute right of the property owner." [3] He used the term mutualism to describe his vision of a society where individuals and democratic workers associations could trade their produce on the market. In this system, he supposes exchange value to be determined by the amount of labor required to produce a commodity, in line with the labor theory of value.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft!

Answer 6

Firstly,when God created the beast of the land, the fish of the sea, and the fowl in the air, he gave man dominion over them, so I don't think so.
Secondly, have you heard of T Rex?.
Thirdly, you finished your note comparing us to insects, not beasts.

Answer 7

According to Dostoevsky (speaking for Father Zosimus), human beings should prostrate themselves and beg forgiveness of the beasts.

Answer 8

I once heard someone liken the human race to a virus. Sounds appropriate.

Answer 9

animals are neither good nor evil, so its hard to compare us to them in the sense you are suggesting, there is no doubt we do horrible horrible things, but we do some pretty good things too, most of us have some good in us, some love and compassion, it can be hard to find sometimes tho

Answer 10

because of all these things god sends us reminders that we have done bad for example Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami, and "studio 60 on the sunset strip" TV show.......



must i say more