Of course, to think this TWD, you have to disagree somewhat with evolution. You are effectively saying animals could never do what we can do, because of some supernatural bonus only we get, a idea with no basis in reality.

You've also made a ton of absolute negative claims. I could not bother to respond because making a absolute negative claim is impossible, because you are claiming omniscience about the subject. I will anyway, though.

You have made the claim that NO animal has any type of moral compass. Prove it.

Many social animals such as monkeys have been observed helping eachother, avoiding harming those in their group. Dolphins often rescue drowning humans. Termites, of their own volition, will sacrifice themselves to defend their hive. None of those things are from a moral compass of some kind?

Humans ALSO make decisions based on instinct. How else would an infant function?

Mice can make plenty of logical choices. They learn from experience, reason out basic logic problems like mazes. How is that any different than a more limited version of what humans do?

Many animals are quite capable of emotions, albeit a more limited range. Dogs are an obvious example.

Wrong.

Human behavior has many unpredictable aspects, however it has many parts that are quite predictable. Emotional needs and responses to stimuli are very similair across the board, for most people.

Animal behavior is somewhat predictable, given that we have greater intelligence, and lots of data. Predictability is very subjective. Human behavior gets less predictable every day as science learns things about us. Humans are just harder to predict, because we are more complex. This is a relevant difference, but not a sign that we are somehow fundamentally different.

Not true. More social animals desire companionship, pets often desire to please their masters. Animals interact in complex ways not at all covered by sleeping, eating, and mating. a 'need for self-identity' does not prove anything about humans other than the fact that they desire identity.

How does this give credence to the claim that we are not much more intelligent and complex animals?

Really really wrong.

Primates have a significant capacity for creativity. They can do many things small children do, such as fit the right shape blocks in the holes, or build with small blocks. They can learn to sing with certain tones they can speak properly, and more than just repeating things they have heard.

Ants, who have very little intelligence, have amazing problem-solving abilities. Problem-solving requires creativity, in case you didn't know. Ants build giant hives, create living-ant bridges and ant super-highways. No creativity? Really?

Humans also kill by instinct and in self-defense. They protect their own as well. Social animals will defend members of their group.

You would have to prove that traits of violence and cruelty cannot develop naturally as a result of greater intelligence.

Wrong again. You are just on a roll.

Human desire for aesthetics develops out of having a comfortable environment. When humans lose that they don't really mind the lack of aesthetics anymore. Some primates can create paintings (another blow against animals having no creativity) and enjoy music and many other aesthetics. No differences here except a greater capacity to understand more complex aesthetics, which you would have to prove cannot come from natural increase in intelligence.

You had to learn a complicated social requirement. Big whoop.

Obviously you have never seen dogs or cats teach their children things? Lions and tigers do this as well, with one of the parents bringing the children along on hunts to show them how it is done. Elephants will teach their children how to itch their backs on trees, or shower themselves in water. A kitten has no concept of 'not pooing random places' because it has no reason to. When you teach it not to do that, they are doing the exact same thing you claim humans mostly have to do.

I do not have to degrade my humanity to be honest with myself. My humanity does not rely on some false notion that I am somehow fundamentally superior than animals.

I have relevant differences than other animals, like greater intelligence, greater capacity for creativity and emotions, imagination, etc.

You seem to just think animals are fundamentally less than yourself, a idea without basis. A human life is worth more than an animals, but not because of some intrinsic quality, but because of the many relevant differences of a human that grew out of high intelligence and natural selection. Just because a human life is valuable does not mean a human is not an species of animal.

  Funny, I've been rescuing cats since 1991 and I've only had two of them that wouldn't take to the kitty box.  They were both very alpha personality types ( one male named TK and a female named Mako ) and would just go to the door or scratch on the window to tell me they needed to take care of business.  They're stubborn but I love them anyway.

Well, it wasn't so much that they weren't box trained, but that they were really too young to have been already trained by their mom.  I've watched momma cat show the babies where the box is, and how to use it.

I haven't had the problem, but I have heard of people whose cat all of a sudden decided to not use their box.  Maybe they changed litter brands, maybe they moved, maybe nothing was different.  And my husband tells stories of a Siamese who would torture my husband's younger brother by deliberately defecating on the younger boy's bed. 

We are not in a position to rescue cats now.  It is too dangerous at my house with all the dogs.  I miss not having cats.

I was merely quoting back the exact terminology that was hurled at me.  It was not a creation of my own expression or thought.   If you are going to hold that ridiculous standard of legalism then a person would be a racist for quoting a racial term used in a speech by a racist. 

The word itself is harmless.  It's the context, intent and heart of the man behind the word which enters the realm of sin nature.   In this instance, the poster used this word to insult my intelligence.

 I don't have to use profanity as a crutch to get a reaction out of my opponent.  On that basis alone, Christians are much better people than atheists.

 You are free to believe that . .

It seems we're all guilty of pointless ad hominem insults at times.

One of the things you've implied I have trouble with TWD, is that skeptics of religion make their decisions not to believe because they are evil, or blinded by satan or some other thing that is inevitably an assertion and an insult in lockstep. There are no things I believe in implicitly, except that human understanding is fallible.

To me things like praying are talking to myself. There is no voice of satan. There's just me, in this space. Confused but refusing to be cowed by a cadre of monotheistic religious doctrines that consist of insults (humans are born evil, god hates them!) and threats (believe these improbable assertions or spend eternity screaming in the waters of fire lake!).

While it's obviously not the same for you as a believer TWD, these threats are like me walking up to you rocking on your verandah at home with a bucket of petrol in one hand and a lit match in the other and screaming: "Accept there's no god or die!!!"

If you can manage for even the tiniest second to allow yourself to own how this outrageous, disgusting and unsubstantiated threat would make you feel, and then project that feeling onto us as non believers and equal human beings, then you would go some way to understanding a key element of our position. 

As a country person even though you tend to be conservative, you must also have a sense of community and a feeling of care for those people that live around you. Can you project this sense of oneness onto us, onto all life? Again, despite the mutual frustrations bubbling away here, we would never accept or submit to a power who threatened to harm you, TWD39. Never, ever, ever. 

     Since your claimed innocence is that you chose to simply "hurl" it back,.... if the person you targeted uses the same profanity back at you, can they use you as an excuse as well and simply say "Oh mercy, it wasn't a creation of my own expression or thought! I was just taking TWD39's terminology and hurling it back at him.   I'm not actually guilty of using profanity !"

            Christians like you are too weak to even own up to you own guilt so you blame it on someone else. 

I've raised several cats growing up, even kittens without a mother to teach them.  We kept them outside, and they all performed the same behavior.  They would look for dirt or leaves to do their business, try to cover it up, and then sniff around to make sure they did a good job.  That's instinct.  I've had dozens of cats, and they all pretty much act the same.  They hunt the same way, climb trees the same way and play the same way with small variations.   Training a cat to use a litter box is completely different.  OTOH, every human being is a distinct personality with unpredictable patterns. 

I also noticed how if I threw a piece of meat near the kitten, the mother would smack their kid out of the way, grab the meat and growl if their kid tried to get near the meat.  When it comes to basic survival in animals, you don't see human traits like love and compassion.   Where's the morality?  Oh the morality. 

There is still much of the Middle East that has not been excavated and certainly part of the problem is you have hostile governments controlling the lands in those areas.  How do you explain that our first evidences of language occur in Mesopotamia?  Why not in Central America or China?

Depends on what you are calling written language.  Symbols, without evidence of grammar, are much older than the Middle Eastern examples -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiahu_symbols - China 6600 bce

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin%C4%8Da_symbols - Southeastern Europe (Hungary) 6-5 century BCE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispilio_Tablet - Greece about 5300 BCE

What we know is that Sanskrit is the oldest written language with a true written grammar.  This does not mean it was the oldest spoken language.  We don't know what the oldest true grammatical spoken language is and we have no way to find out.  That doesn't mean the biblical story has any truth whatsoever.  And given the lack of archaeological evidence for said tower, it is likely just a myth.  A "Just So" story like many others in the bible.

Linguists do not count collections of words to be languages.  So pidgin, as spoken by non-native speakers, is defined to be not a language as it does not have a grammar.  Creole is a term for languages that have grammar but are an amalgam of other languages.  Hawaiian "pidgin" is an example of a creole language.

http://www.amazon.com/Bastard-Tongues-Trailblazing-Linguist-Languages/dp/0809028166/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346177994&sr=1...

Bastard Tongues, by Derek Bickerton

Interesting book even though I found it a little tedious at times.  Bickerton is a linguist and professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii.  I am not saying he is an expert in the Middle Eastern languages, but that his book had a lot of good information about how linguists classify and analyze languages.

i-ronyyy...

Are you saying god built the pyramids now?

              What the fuck ?  As an evil atheist I at one time had an ounce of credibility with you ?  I'm fucking shocked !

                                         Are you talking about me, or yourself ?  I'm fucking confused ?

                                                                  These are fucking "hollow points"....

               Now it is you who are resorting to "legalistical" games.  That fucking pisses me off.

         Wait, you are inferring that YOU possess a non-biased brain ?  That's fucking hilarious !  Fuck, fuck, fuck !!!

  { Oh, by the way, I wasn't being profane by using the word "fuck" over and over because, like you said, I wasn't using it "against someone". Isn't that just fucking hilarious !!! }

  Let's avoid the foul language for a moment, K ?  Bluntly, Speaking of the fertile land between two rivers, of *the Sumerians  ..

Thorkild Jacobsen's translation from one of the oldest bodies of religious texts in the world:  " .. could address EnLil, verily, in  but a single tongue. In those days (having) lordly bouts, princely bouts .. (did) EnKi, (having) lordly bouts, .. having princely bouts fought, having princely bouts fought, .. did EnKi, lord of abundance, lord of effective command, did the lord of intelligence, ..the country's clever one, did the leader of the gods, did the sagacious omen-revealed; lord of Eridu 'estrange the tongues of their mouths as many as were there. The tongues of men which were one'. (taking in, then sending an envoy to Aratta)." 

  For anyone who can but does not. With a quick internet search on 'google', one finds this . .

  In those days...the people entrusted [to him] could address Enlil, verily, in but a single tongue. In those days...did Enki...estrange the tongues in their mouths as many as were put there.. The tongues of men which were one (Jacobsen 1997; cf. Kramer 1968, 1970; Cohen 1973).

  Though a lot to take in but you do realize these accounts, of the region, both pre-date and precede the biblical account ?