The spiritual interpretation that occurred to me once, about the boiling a kid in its mother's milk, was the idea of using things like moral teachings and laws in a way that was overly harsh and punitive toward children, thus killing them with the very thing that was meant to give them life. I think we have seen lots of depictions of this in books and movies, and it's a well-known trope, of the religious parent who is so strict as to lose touch with human kindness, nurturing, and joy.
Will I and my wife know our miscarried child who had a heartbeat when we are in heaven? Will we know our baby who we never met. I am old now and I have little time left on this Earth. Can I have a reasonable expectation of knowing my departed child, and will the spirit of that child make itself known to my wife and myself?
I would suggest these possible criteria for thinking about the differences between human and animal intelligence. First of all, I think there are different aspects of consciousness and mental function and rationality. These can be thought of as emotional, relational, and pain reactive, and then also as language, communication, and the ability to render concepts into symbolic forms. One super great difference that humans have is the ability to write, to speak, and to iterate story, meaning, and history across generations. As far as I know, no non-human living creature does that. The second thing is that humans can, aided by these language abilities, deduce complex and abstract things about the environment and manipulate the material world in highly complex ways. Now, even though some animals do things like that to some extent, like building nests and dams and so forth, humans are building computers and rockets, so there is an order of magnitude difference going on there which is significant. Humans are the only biological creatures on earth with philosophy and the only one's asking questions like -what separates us from the other animals. Humans are the only animals with moral responsibility. I think we share with many other creatures the capacity for pain and fear, and it seems evident that many animals are capable of developing the kinds of social relationships with humans which seems, on the surface, like human type of emotional connections. Also, there are lots of videos online which suggest that even wild animals have an understanding of humans that lets them know we will help them when asked. This is very weird. We owe a duty of care to animals as creations of God not to subject them to undo suffering, and this does raise ethical questions about present day factory farming, which is highly productive by nightmarish in its reality. Being rational, I think, means having both the ability to perceive reality, and to then conceptualize that reality into its abstract, practical, concrete, and spiritual parts (which we do rather automatically), and to then also be aware of choice. I don't think animals generally really have the ability to make choice, but rather they are driven by instincts and experience in ways which makes somewhat automatic. Or at least, though they may have the ability to be deliberating in action, they do not have the ability to conceptualize choice as choice, or to imagine the effects of choices as they iterate through time.
The spiritual interpretation that occurred to me once, about the boiling a kid in its mother's milk, was the idea of using things like moral teachings and laws in a way that was overly harsh and punitive toward children, thus killing them with the very thing that was meant to give them life. I think we have seen lots of depictions of this in books and movies, and it's a well-known trope, of the religious parent who is so strict as to lose touch with human kindness, nurturing, and joy.
What about Parrots?
Will I and my wife know our miscarried child who had a heartbeat when we are in heaven? Will we know our baby who we never met. I am old now and I have little time left on this Earth. Can I have a reasonable expectation of knowing my departed child, and will the spirit of that child make itself known to my wife and myself?
I would suggest these possible criteria for thinking about the differences between human and animal intelligence. First of all, I think there are different aspects of consciousness and mental function and rationality. These can be thought of as emotional, relational, and pain reactive, and then also as language, communication, and the ability to render concepts into symbolic forms. One super great difference that humans have is the ability to write, to speak, and to iterate story, meaning, and history across generations. As far as I know, no non-human living creature does that. The second thing is that humans can, aided by these language abilities, deduce complex and abstract things about the environment and manipulate the material world in highly complex ways. Now, even though some animals do things like that to some extent, like building nests and dams and so forth, humans are building computers and rockets, so there is an order of magnitude difference going on there which is significant. Humans are the only biological creatures on earth with philosophy and the only one's asking questions like -what separates us from the other animals. Humans are the only animals with moral responsibility. I think we share with many other creatures the capacity for pain and fear, and it seems evident that many animals are capable of developing the kinds of social relationships with humans which seems, on the surface, like human type of emotional connections. Also, there are lots of videos online which suggest that even wild animals have an understanding of humans that lets them know we will help them when asked. This is very weird. We owe a duty of care to animals as creations of God not to subject them to undo suffering, and this does raise ethical questions about present day factory farming, which is highly productive by nightmarish in its reality. Being rational, I think, means having both the ability to perceive reality, and to then conceptualize that reality into its abstract, practical, concrete, and spiritual parts (which we do rather automatically), and to then also be aware of choice. I don't think animals generally really have the ability to make choice, but rather they are driven by instincts and experience in ways which makes somewhat automatic. Or at least, though they may have the ability to be deliberating in action, they do not have the ability to conceptualize choice as choice, or to imagine the effects of choices as they iterate through time.