Same-sex unions / marriage

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Rau said:
Mankind is only partially described by the term “animal”. That term is entirely inadequate to describe us, for it entirely omits consideration of what distinguishes us from all other animals.
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All sorts of animals have things that distinguish them from all other animals. We, as animals, have relatively large brains, are bipedal, etc. Those things distinguish us from all other apes, including our closest relatives, chimpanzees. 🤷
 
Thorolfr said:
All sorts of animals have things that distinguish them from all other animals. We, as animals, have relatively large brains, are bipedal, etc. Those things distinguish us from all other apes, including our closest relatives, chimpanzees. 🤷
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You only see these physical differences? You are a Christian, and the key difference that you point to is our larger brain. Seriously?
 
NM505StKate said:
Homo sapiens is a word, It describes the family we belong in as humans are animals. Human is just another term for homo sapiens. By trying to load a word like marriage with some other kind of meaning then two people having some ritual that…heck it is a civil union. Hand fasting is about the same.
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Surely you are not claiming that a dog, because it is an animal, can be described by the word “human”. If not, why don’t we call a dog “human”, despite it’s animal characteristics? Why do we call a dog “dog” and a human being “human”?

And you claim that “human” is just another term. What are the other terms?
 
clem456 said:
Surely you are not claiming that a dog, because it is an animal, can be described by the word “human”. If not, why don’t we call a dog “human”, despite it’s animal characteristics? Why do we call a dog “dog” and a human being “human”?

And you claim that “human” is just another term. What are the other terms?
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Dog or Canis lupus familiaris or Canis familiaris is a dog. Human or Homo Sapiens are human. Both are animals which was my point. Nothing more.
 
NM505StKate said:
Dog or Canis lupus familiaris or Canis familiaris is a dog. Human or Homo Sapiens are human. Both are animals which was my point. Nothing more.
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Right. But it is what one thinks flows from this that matters. There is a universe of difference between man and all other animals, far greater than the difference between the ape and the amoeba. Our relationship with God sets us far apart from the animals. This is often forgotten when appealing to our membership of the “animal kingdom”.
 
NM505StKate said:
Dog or Canis lupus familiaris or Canis familiaris is a dog. Human or Homo Sapiens are human. Both are animals which was my point. Nothing more.
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Now you are insisting on precision in the use of your language. 🤷
Earlier you were suggesting that words are not very important.

Which is it?
 
Rau said:
Right. But it is what one thinks flows from this that matters. There is a universe of difference between man and all other animals, far greater than the difference between the ape and the amoeba. Our relationship with God sets us far apart from the animals. This is often forgotten when appealing to our membership of the “animal kingdom”.
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Well I think what makes humans different from other animals is our ingenuity as well as our abilities to go beyond simple desires. We can’t say communication as it shown that other animals have ways to communicate to one another. We also cannot claim tool use as it is also shown that some animals are capable of using tools. Heck some animals are shown to have empathy.

Oh and I used the terms I did because someone asked me to use other words for species.
 
NM505StKate said:
Let both have civil unions and marriages. Nothing special about the word marriage. Awesome post btw,
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So what is the nature of language in your opinion?
Earlier you were making distinctions using the words “human” and “animal”, and/or “dog”.

It seems to me you believe that words express unique realities, as do I.

Does the word “marriage” express something unique and of value?

By analogy, if I call a “human being” a “dog”, you might agree with me the use of words can have real and meaningful implications, for the better, or for the worse.

How is the word “marriage” different than any other word?
 
NM505StKate said:
Well I think what makes humans different from other animals is our ingenuity as well as our abilities to go beyond simple desires. We can’t say communication as it shown that other animals have ways to communicate to one another. We also cannot claim tool use as it is also shown that some animals are capable of using tools. Heck some animals are shown to have empathy.

Oh and I used the terms I did because someone asked me to use other words for species.
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Does nothing from your religious education come to mind when thinking about what sets man apart? 😦
 
Rau said:
Does nothing from your religious education come to mind when thinking about what sets man apart? 😦
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You might want to read the new book by David R. Begun, The Real Planet of the Apes: A New Story of Human Origins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). On p. 15 he writes:
The difficulty that some people have in accepting the idea that chimpanzees could be more closely related to humans than to gorillas, or that we could be related in any way to apes, is really an artifact of our perceptions of humans as apart from the other animals. We all know that humans are animals (as opposed to plants or fungi or bacteria), but we often separate the two categories in our minds. Many religions also teach that humans are separate from animals and have a special and unique origin. So our understanding of a chimpanzee is biased by the influence of our cultural traditions. When we consider them outside this frame of reference (as much as we can), it becomes obvious that chimps and humans share a special, extremely close relationship.
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There’s also a good review of this book in the New York Review of Books.
 
Thorolfr said:
You might want to read the new book by David R. Begun, The Real Planet of the Apes: A New Story of Human Origins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). On p. 15 he writes:

There’s also a good review of this book in the New York Review of Books.
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I was not thinking about biology Thor… The important distinction between man and animals is not simply biology.
 
I find it interesting that two parties are discussing what is the proper word to use for a thing.
:hmmm:
That in itself is encouraging.
 
Rau said:
I was not thinking about biology Thor… The important distinction between man and animals is not simply biology.
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So tell us what the special and important distinction is…
 
Rau said:
Our relationship with God; our capacity to be in that relationship. But you know this Thor. You are a Christian.
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I’m less certain than what you are that humans have a completely different kind of relationship with God that puts them into a special and separate class of creation (despite what it says in Genesis, for example).
 
Thorolfr said:
I’m less certain than what you are that humans have a completely different kind of relationship with God that puts them into a special and separate class of creation (despite what it says in Genesis, for example).
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Uh huh…
 
Rau said:
Does nothing from your religious education come to mind when thinking about what sets man apart? 😦
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Nope because that was, as far as I remember, that never was brought up in my religion classes.
 
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