The inferiority of 'beasts'

The inferiority of 'beasts': "

I gave a keynote address at the North Carolina School of Maths and Sciences on Monday about the question of what makes us human, and what we can learn from other animals.

In response Steven Breedlove, the Upper School Principal of the Veritas Christian Academy sent this early 20th century quote by G.K. Chesterton (I've shortened it a little)

'That man and brute are like is, in a sense, a truism; but that being so like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock and the enigma. That an ape has hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does next to nothing with them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or carve mutton...

Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilization. Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants?.. No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation, but it is a chasm....

So that this first superficial reason for materialism is, if anything, a reason for its opposite; it is exactly where biology leaves off that all religion begins.'

I find it interesting that the quote deals mainly with tool use, culture and art. It reminds me of the recent TIME magazine article which I loved, but still presented animal intelligence as a linear scale, with humans at the top and sea sponges at the bottom.

Obviously humans are different from other animals. Obviously we can do things they can't. But the reverse is also true. Because animals don't create art, does it make them inferior? (There was that slightly embarrassing case of The Director of the State Art Museum in Moritzburg mistake the painting of a chimpanzee for the famous artists Ernst Wilhelm Nay...)

And what do all these temples and paintings and violin concertos really mean? I still maintain that bonobos have done something that humans, for all our artwork have failed to do - live in peace, as Jesus (if you believe in Him) so desperately wanted. No bonobo has ever been seen to kill another bonobo.

Who is the more divine?

Thoughts, anyone?

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