Two Gods or One

Quote: Evenbob

Native American cultures respected nature
and everything in it, they in no way felt
superior. They thanked an animal when
they killed it, for giving it's life. A god
person would never do that, he believes
the animal has no soul, his only reason
for existing is to be eaten by superior
man.

Quote: FrGamble

I love and respect nature and everything in it. I believe an animal has a soul, not a human soul, but an animating soul that feels and is to be honored. .

Quote: Evenbob

If you actually felt this way, you would
feel equal to the animal and not superior.
You can't have it both ways. I feel equal
to all living things, even the cockroach.
He's understands the world in ways
I never will, and is just as worthy as I am.

Quote: FrGamble

This is just strange and weird. The cockroach does not understand the world at all and never will, it can't. .

Quote:

Physarum polycephalum has been shown to exhibit intelligent characteristics similar to those seen in single-celled creatures and eusocial insects. For example, a team of Japanese and Hungarian researchers have shown P. polycephalum can solve the Shortest path problem. When grown in a maze with oatmeal at two spots, P. polycephalum retracts from everywhere in the maze, except the shortest route connecting the two food sources.[1] When presented with more than two food sources, P. polycephalum apparently solves a more complicated transportation problem. With more than two sources, the amoeba also produces efficient networks.[2] In a 2010 paper, oatflakes were dispersed to represent Tokyo and 36 surrounding towns.[3][4] P. polycephalum created a network similar to the existing train system, and "with comparable efficiency, fault tolerance, and cost". Similar results have been shown based on road networks in the United Kingdom[5] and the Iberian peninsula (i.e., Spain and Portugal).[6] Some researchers claim that P. polycephalum is even able to solve the NP-hard Steiner minimum tree problem.[7]

P. polycephalum can not only solve these computational problems, but also exhibits some form of memory. By repeatedly making the test environment of a specimen of P. polycephalum cold and dry for 60-minute intervals, Hokkaido University biophysicists discovered that the slime mould appears to anticipate the pattern by reacting to the conditions when they did not repeat the conditions for the next interval. Upon repeating the conditions, it would react to expect the 60-minute intervals, as well as testing with 30- and 90-minute intervals.[8][9]

P. polycephalum have also been shown to dynamically re-allocate to apparently maintain constant levels of different nutrients simultaneously.[10][11] In particular, specimen placed at the center of a petri dish spatially re-allocated over combinations of food sources that each had different protein–carbohydrate ratios. After 60 hours, the slime mould area over each food source was measured. For each specimen, the results were consistent with the hypothesis that the amoeba would balance total protein and carbohydrate intake to reach particular levels that were invariant to the actual ratios presented to the slime mould.

Quote: Evenbob

The same life force that animates him,
animates me and animates you. Don't
you have respect for that? Who are
we to judge that life force as being
superior in one creature and not another.
We're all in this together, you and me
and the cockroaches.

Quote: pew

So now there's a "life force"? And you claim science as an arbiter of truth? Seriously?

Quote: FrGamble

We are different than all the animals in that we wonder. You know we have been domesticating animals and even teaching the smarter ones how to communicate using sign language and the like. Never has an animal ever asked a question.

Quote: pew

So now there's a "life force"?

Quote: Nareed

Dogs wonder all the time.

Two things a dog often does when greeting someone they know is try to sniff their mouth and their legs and feet. This is how dogs wonder, and try to find out: 1) what did you eat? and 2) where have you been and did you meet any other dogs?

If you get any scent from a strange dog on you, your dog will be endlessly fascinated by it and will sniff your clothes for hours if you let her.

Also, if you ever played fetch with any dog, eventually at one time you must have pretended to throw the stick or ball but didn't. the dog will race ahead, stop, and her ears will perk up. That means "What happened? Where's the ball?"

Quote:

We are different from animals because we can abstract, form, and use concepts. In particular we can conceptualize abstract, intangible ideas, principles and quantities.