Yes. That humans are unique is a theological, not a scientific claim. Anteaters are unique, as are Tasmanian Devils and Woolly Mammoths and humans and Haleakala Geese.
What constitutes “uniqueness” needs to be defined before the question can be discussed in a meaningful way.
Uniqueness is first a philosophical understanding, it is philosophical prior to it being a theological matter. This is an important distinction.
Towards an understanding of a specie’s uniqueness, that which differentiates it from another species as being a difference in kind rather than degree, we can consider an essential attribute or characteristic possessed by one species and not another, not even possessed in a rudimentary sense.
A rudimentary possession of a characteristic by an organism, a characteristic which is more fully possessed by another, is a difference in degree only.
Again, a characteristic that categorizes an organism as different in “kind”, that is, a difference in kind that is radical (and not superficial) is not possessed by the second organism in any “degree”.
Science can show, in the limited way proper to its own authority, that *Homo sapiens or Homo sapiens sapiens *differs in “kind” from other animals, and that the difference in kind is “radical”. What is it that is observable and can be studied by the scientific method which will address a difference in kind? It is the possession by man of propositional speech.
So far, animal language and cognitive studies, as far as I can tell, show that the most intelligent non-human animals exhibit communication and cognitive abilities that are fully explained on the level of
perceptual thinking. Of course, this is not the conclusion often drawn by contemporary researchers in this area, but the problems with their studies and the underlying assumptions that contribute to such a mis-interpretation are evident.
Propositional speech, which involves abstract conceptual abilities, the ability to know via universals and express such in language use is unique to man. And this is a radical difference in kind. Even the concepts of biology are manifestly universals as evidenced by the terms of taxonomic nomenclature, species, genus, family, order, etc, each of which involves a broader and more inclusive universal conception. On the other hand, every thing in the perceptual order of animals is a “particular.”
This why one will never hear a non-human animal lecture in the U.C. Berkeley science department on the characteristic differences between Coleoptera and Hymenoptera, or the idea of the universe as the totallity of consistentally interacting things.
In matters of religion, the
Ave Maria song expresses in language ideas that
radically transcend the communication and cognitive abilities of non-human animals. I cannot imagine someone seriously contending that the anthropoid apes or dolphins possess such ability in a rudimentary sense. But then again, almost anything that can be claimed has been claimed by someone, no matter how nonsensical the idea.
