“Humans
are fitter animals.” Animal (The New Oxford Dictionary definition): A living (meaning breathing ≈ animated)
organism which feeds on organic matter, typically having specialised sense
(meaning navigation, my insert) organs and a nervous system and so on (and
capable of reproduction, my insert). The NOD qualifies the above with the pre
20th century naïve and highly misleading opinion: any such living
organism other than a human being (as though the human did not predate
organic matter, my insert). Humans are born as animals, breathe, eat
(i.e. predate animals and other living systems), shit and reproduce as
animals, die as animals. Because the survival means peculiar to
humans, and which define the human mask or persona, such as the increased
capacities for problem solving and awareness, not only differentiate them from other animals with very
different masks (i.e. survival characteristics) but also provides them with
decisive survival advantage (i.e. as fitter
predators), humans arbitrarily classify themselves as a species wholly
different from and superior to animals. That is serious but useful deception,
indeed, hubris. Animals of all species, including those
with a human mask, i.e. persons, disintegrate at death. In short, as the poet
says, “Death closes all.” No evidence for survival (of the person) after
death happening upon cessation of animation ≈ breathing, for
instance, the Christian utopia, has yet been established. Claims by religious
fantasists that the upgraded survival means peculiar to the human animal
indicate a transcendent capability, like a soul (derived from the ill-defined
Greek fantasy word psyche
deliberately mistranslated into the Greek version of the Bible, the
Septuagint, in place of the Hebrew nephesh,
meaning a living (i.e. breathing) being) likewise remain unproven. To animals with a human traits mask,
self-referenced as persons, natural animal rights should be accorded. Which
means that animals with a human mask should have the right to (choose to) be
terminated naturally or by artificial means if and when no longer viable as
animals. |