Are Humans Considered Animals In The Bible

With the dilution of America's Christian values has come an array of nonsensical, outlandish, and illogical beliefs. One example is seen in the way Americans have come up to place an undue value on animals. Millions of dollars have been spent on causes that assign an inordinate value to animals—from dolphins, whales, and bounding main turtles, to birds, beavers, and spotted owls. Pet mega-supermarket bondage accept sprung upwards around the country. Pet dentists, pet nutritionists, pet sitters, and pet therapists offer their expensive services to people whose pets have become "part of the family." All this attention to animals may seem harmless and enjoyable to many, just there are hidden dangers when we fail to harmonize our priorities with God's priorities. It is certainly true that humans should run across the proper created role for animals and non inflict cruelty and unnecessary harm upon them (Proverbs 12:x). However, a return to the listen of God enables a person to accept the proper perspective on animals and their relative importance, and then every bit not to overemphasize that which God does not overemphasize. Having that proper perspective will enable a person to assess properly cultural trends and non be "tossed to and fro and carried almost with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of mendacious plotting" (Ephesians 4:14, ESV).

To run into where the disconnect from Christian values will lead people, simply peruse the People for the Ethical Handling of Animals (PETA) Spider web site. Consider the following statements found at the site:^one

Upstanding treatment—the Aureate Rule—must be extended toall living beings: reptiles, mammals, fish, insects, birds, amphibians, and crustaceans…. We must abandon the archaic and incorrect boundary of "human," which nosotros use to justify the ongoing massacre ofbillions of beings…. More than a century ago, Charles Darwin showed thatall beings had the same common ancestor. All beings share the want toalive. We all experience pain, joy, grief, and pleasure. We all have worth…. Animals are not ours to experiment on, swallow, wearable, use for entertainment, or corruption in whatever other mode…. We work difficult to deceive ourselves and each other in order to maintain the illusion of a existent boundary around "human being." …We are all animals. Man beings accept few, if any, unique capabilities—many beings tin learn languages, enjoy complex social bonds, cede pleasure for the expert of others, use tools, imagine, and dream. Many beings remember information, play with friends, savour intimacy, gossip, and mourn their deceased. Some beings have enormous capabilities beyond our own—in navigation, endurance, communication, and detection of natural phenomena. We don't nevertheless fully empathise how all beings remember—or what they think—but dismissing their mental globe equally less adult, rational, moral, or intelligent than our ain is conspicuously a mistake…. We share the same evolutionary origins, nosotros inhabit the same Earth, and we are ruled by the same laws of nature. We are all the same.

These remarks incorporate so very many egregious errors. Consider the following comments on five.

First and foremost, observe that such misguided thinking constitutes an attack on the definition of what it means to be man. It completely obliterates the stardom laid down by the Creator Who "created all things, and past [whose] will they be and were created" (Revelation 4:11). The chasm that exists between humans and animals is and then deep and wide that for anyone to misfile the two suggests a reliance on emotion and extreme bias rather than logic and reason. Afterwards all, different animals, humans were created "in the image of God" (Genesis i:27). Hither are 10 attributes that aid to analyze what it means to be "human"—attributes that animals cannot and never volition possess:ⁱⁱ

Humans possess capability of speech that is dissimilar animals.
Humans can write, meliorate their educational activity, accrue knowledge, and build on past achievements.
Humans are creative and possess artistic expression.
Humans possess an intellectual chapters for thinking and reasoning that transcends animal intelligence.
Humans have gratis-will capacity to brand rational choices.
Only humans have the power to choose between correct and wrong.
Humans possess a conscience.
Humans can experience heart-felt emotions and emotional experience.
Humans lone possess a unique, inherent religious inclination, with a want and ability to worship.
Just humans carry the spiritual imprint of God due to the fact that they possess an immortal soul.

A neat deal may exist said about each of these attributes in contrast to the illusion that is sometimes created past animal sentience. Nevertheless, information technology tin can exist shown that humans stand autonomously from animals in their inherent, inbuilt possession of these spiritual qualities.

2d, notice that the animal rights calendar is rooted in a Darwinian evolutionary worldview. If all creatures and plants are simply evolved species, then one is non "superior" to some other—just different. Hence, a rose and a scorpion are as valuable and worthy of care as a human baby or a bull. This inane thinking is the direct consequence of buying into the thoroughly debunked theory of evolution and dismissing the arable evidence in the created order of a supernatural Creator Who has revealed Himself to humans via nature and His written Give-and-take in the Bible.³ Once a person rejects the Christian worldview, animism becomes conceivable and there is no end to the outlandish, illogical conclusions that will be championed.⁴ But the evidence is available that decisively proves the reality of the God of the Bible, and the authenticity of His communication to flesh via the Bible.⁵ Such beingness the case, no fauna on Earth—be it reptile, mammal (except humans), fish, insect, bird, amphibian, or crustacean—is every bit valuable as man beings. Speaking to half-way sensible individuals who could follow the logic, Jesus asked: "Of how much more than value then is a man than a sheep?" (Matthew 12:12). Those who accept been duped past the animal rights philosophy would have been completely unconvinced by Jesus' rationale. But those who alive in an agriculturally-based lodge easily comprehend the sense of Jesus' logic. Creature rights advocates have been treated to such overwhelming prosperity, convenience, and easy access to food and clothes that they take hypocritically dismissed their opponents while simultaneously partaking of the results of their opponents' provisions.

Third, animals were given by God for food and other uses. If the Bible is of supernatural origin (and it may exist proven to be such), then the Bible'due south depiction of the purpose of animals is true. The Bible plainly indicates the interrelationship between humans and animals when it states apropos humans: "[Fifty]et them havedominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth" (Genesis 1:26). God instructed humans to "fill up the earth andsubdue it; takerule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Genesis 1:28). The Hebrew term for "dominion" (rah-dah) ways to dominion over.⁶ The word for "subdue" (kah-vash) means to bring into submission past force.^vii The psalmist echoed these very directives when he praised God past proverb, "You [God] have made him [man] to haverule over the works of Your hands; You accept put all thingsunder his feet, all sheep and oxen—fifty-fifty the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the ocean that laissez passer through the paths of the seas" (Psalm viii:6-8). God stressed human domination in even stronger terms after the Flood: "[T]he fear of you [humans] and the dread of yous shall be on every fauna of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that moves on the globe, and on all the fish of the sea.They are given into your hand. Every moving affair that lives shall befood for y'all. I accept given you lot all things, even as the light-green herbs" (Genesis 9:2-3). The only restriction that God placed on the consumption of beast meat was that the blood was to be tuckered from the beast before information technology was eaten (Genesis ix:iv; cf. Leviticus 17:ten-14; Deuteronomy 12:xvi,23-24; one Samuel 14:32-34; Acts 15:20). Animals can too be used for clothing (Genesis three:21). If the Bible is, in fact, the inspired Word of God, then animals are not humans.

4th, in those characteristics where animals are superior to humans, the reason is not due to evolution, nor does such superiority imply a sharing of what information technology means to be human. Rather, the Creator invested all His creatures with separate capabilities and skills to equip them to function as they were designed to function. Eagles have sharper eyesight than humans due to the fact that they were designed to exist able to come across their necessary prey from lofty heights. Just they are non human and will not evolve into humans.

Fifth, information technology is telling that the PETA quotation admits that both humans and animals "are ruled past the same laws of nature." Where practice such laws come up from? Did they evolve from rocks and dirt? The admission that firm laws of nature exist is a concession that a lawmaker must be. The evolutionary viewpoint cannot consistently or adequately explain this fact. Fixed laws in the Universe and on Globe shout the reality of the God of the Bible (cf. Psalm 19:1ff.; Acts 14:17). That Creator made animals and humans, but He created them very differently. Only humans are made in His image and will stand up before Him in judgment and requite account for their behavior. Animals volition not.

A farther irony is the disingenuous call for the application of the "Aureate Rule" to animals. The "Aureate Rule" is a straight reference to a directive made past Jesus Christ. One tin can be certain that Jesus did not have animals in listen when He declared: "And just as yous desire men to do to you, you as well do to them likewise" (Luke six:31). The fact is that, at its centre, PETA pits itself against Christianity and the God of the Bible.

Conclusion

Before the animal rights folks lecture humans about their declared inhumane handling of animals, they would practice well to spend their fourth dimension addressing animal "mistreatment" of other animals. That, too, would be a vain, superfluous, and absurd pursuit, since the nutrient chain was created past God. Withal, at least they would cease wasting the time, coin, and efforts of those who provide humanity with food, medicine, wear, and other benefits that relieve suffering and sickness, and brand man life more livable.

Endnotes

^one PETA (2019), "What PETA REALLY Stands For," https://www.peta.org/features/what-peta-actually-stands-for/, italics in orig.

² Taken from the following article which contains the inquiry and facts that show the unbridgeable gap between humans and animals: Eric Lyons, et al. (2002), "In the 'Image and Likeness of God' [Role Ii]," Reason & Revelation, 22[4]:25-31, https://apologeticspress.org/apPubPage.aspx?pub=1&outcome=528.

³ Indeed, the PETA claim that "Charles Darwin showed thatall beings had the same common antecedent" is completely faux. Darwin proved no such affair. The scientific evidence is overwhelming that humans did not evolve from a non-human ancestor. See, for example, Jeff Miller (2014), "God and the Laws of Science: Genetics vs. Evolution [Part I&Two]," Apologetics Press, https://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=ix&commodity=4779&topic=281.

^four For example, Hinduism, Buddhism, and all other forms of paganism.

⁵ See ApologeticsPress.org for extensive testify.

⁶ (Harris, et al., 1980, 2:833; Gesenius, 1847, p. 758)

⁷ (Harris, 1:430)

Published April 28, 2019

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