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Originally Posted by AJ_77
The same quality that allows me to recognize what exceptional and wondrous beasts elephants are tells me that we are indeed a species far apart, and that I may ascertain by this and other "higher faculties" that your life is of infinitely greater consequence than that of an elephant.
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Yes, my life is more important to me than an elephant's life is to me. But to an elephant, I'm sure it's own life is more important to itself than my life is to it. The need to survive and thrive has got to be one of the most basic of all needs in any living entity.
As for the "higher faculties" issue, human animals do not have a way to truly measure the higher faculties of other animals. We only assume that because other animals do not have written language (or spoken/unspoken language that we can understand), do not build monumental cities (with the exception of some species of insects), are not capable of Googling, that they do not have some form of thought or have souls. But in the heaven I go to after this life, there will be mammals, fish, birds, insects, amphibians, et al, and I welcome a heaven populated as such.