(Watches the world burn for the purposes of getting 4 +1's)

gOd iS DeAD

So is Nietzsche

Would any other animal species have this type of discussion ? Yes there are other animals that communicate with their own kind, and occasionally "monitor" the communications of other species... The example is reacting to warning signals from other species to the threat of a predator.
But it's only us homo sapiens who have taken the development of language to the level we have... So although Darwin's observation about differences being in degrees is imho correct, the degree to which humans have evolved languages is profound, and we can probably include mathematics as perhaps the most significant "language" we have created/developed.

Totally quoting Nietzsche out of context.

I believe the full quote is more like: 'God is dead; we have killed him, and we'll never be able to clean the stain from our hands'

Very much not the triumphant statement it sounds when you only read the first three words.

Nietzsche explicitly warned about the potential impact of the Church losing power, in a european culture. He warned of the risk that people would substitute something else where the church was missing, and the subsequent rise of Fascism and Communism in Europe both realised his fears. I believe Nietzsche warned specifically about Anarchism and/or Authoritarianism, and the Anarchists of the Spanish civil war did leave some small mark on history.

I haven’t been following the discussion closely, so forgive me if you have already covered this. It seems to me that the fundamental difference is sentience. That by itself is a biased notion because you have to define it and come up with a good argument that humans are the only sentient life on the planet. It opens up artificial intelligence as a comparison for the intelligence of “lower” animals though. If you can say that robots and computers are simply following their programs and cannot act outside of their parameters, then you could say that animals are simply following their instincts in a similar manner without any evidence that they are truly putting thought into their actions. Perhaps talk about humans as the aggressors in a war against two alien races. A sentient race would see the humans as a threat to their existence and most likely band together to counter the threat (definite anthropomorphic bias here since that is what humans would do). On the other hand a non-sentient race may individually defend themselves, but never act on the bigger picture.

Disclaimer: It seems I went the Star Trek route and confused sentience with Sapience.

You are all saps!

You are a creep with mental problems

@damo

"Are you mad?"

Lol, no but I am Crazy :-)

@CA, Show me a definition of sentience, and i'll show you something AI or animals have... But you're right entirely about making up a definition.

What is it that proves humans are sentient?

Collective action (like in your alien war scenario) is a sign that you have a culture which has connected people over a large group (which requires some social skills, maybe some serious cognitive processing dedicated to those skills). But is this fundamentally different from other social animals?

Hardly, Octavious. Athiests don't try to force people to follow their beliefs because God told them to. In highly secular societies, no one is running around trying to stamp out religion. That's a strictly one way street. I can tell already from your sneering attitude that no you wouldn't win that argument because you already exemplify the problem

Never mind that racism has deep routes in religious tradition

Sorry, fascism has deep roots, but religion has also contributed strongly to racism as well, to be sure

Fair go Ogion, Islamic sects and Christian Churches are prepared to oppress & persecute heretics and non believers irrespective of their race. It's a feature of most religions, to be non discriminatory in their persecution of non believers. For example the race of homosexuals was/is irrelevant, as are the homosexual's political opinions to any Mullah or Fundamentalist Christian condemning them

Actually that..Religion is perhaps a defining difference between good old homo sapiens and other animals.. Like chimpanzees don't fight each other to the death over religious differences.

Maybe that's a demonstration of our superiority (?) over other animal species.. the iniquities humans will commit upon each other in the service of various Gods.

So far as we know, MM. chimps definitely fight wars. Are they over religion? I'm not sure we know

Our capacity to see the Abyss is what separates us from other animals.
For most people this is a curse. They would be more content as pack animals incapable of perceiving the Abyss. They turn to the very basic religious ideals to delude themselves that the Abyss does not really exist, they are deathly afraid of losing the illusion and they turn violent when it's challenged. Or they turn to any number of nihilistic hedonic pursuits to cover it up and tear away at those who do still believe, envious of the fact that someone else has found the escape their empty materialism will never serve as.

For the few who can find the means to stare into the Abyss and through creativity and force of will seize meaning from it, our ability to perceive the Abyss is the greatest blessing we could receive. Total freedom to become who we will ourselves to be, to seize whatever meaning we think is best and live in dedication to the ideals we forge for ourselves, what could be better?

I think not Ogion.. It's more likely to be simple territorial and resources fights between chimpanzees. Or perhaps for political power..factions within larger groups ?.. Do they build shrines ? Do they construct symbols of religious beliefs ?

kThen again, is religion really distinct from those things? It's mostly about social control, power and tribalism. Funny how there are philosophical ideas that people mostly ignore but they get very worked up about how is on what team. Protestants and Catholics get heated to the point of slaughtering each other, but how often do people get that worked up about offering love or being generouse to the poor?

Well Ogion Christians cannot waste sympathy on the wretched undeserving poor. Only the piously humble deserving poor are worthy of charity with pompously delivered homilies. As satarised by G Bernard Shaw.
Getting back to the question of whether animals such as primates have organised religions. One of the features of religions is the existence of a priveliged elite, eg the priests, bishops & red hatted Cardinals of a well known Church.
Do we see the existence of this elite group amongst chimpanzees, baboons etc ? Busy extorting bananas & other food from the primate laity ? Secretly molesting junior members of their parishioners ? I suggest we do not. So no shrines, no trade in holy relics, no elite caste of priests etc. Do we see any of these in the social structure of elephants..the mammals with very large brains who do seem to understand the death of family members ? I don't think so.
So a mania for having Gods is I would suggest an exclusively human behaviour.

Humans have souls and we're saved by Christ. Animals were not.

Animals have souls too, but not decision power. No hell or heaven for them. But we're responsible for our decisions so we will go to either hell or heaven.

the only difference between non human animals and human animals that i can see, especially in this thread, is that human animals are capable of inventing mythologies and stories that can't be experienced, known, or verified in real life, but canbe used to base entire societies and cultures (positive and negative) around them.

If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything.

Well that Mr Ed was one savvy horse & so was that pig on Petticoat Junction.
Seriously, some animals have been taught to count, but I think quadratic equations let alone calculus might be a stretch for them.
A useful thing to teach a smart young dog is to recognise money and retrieve it, I had one friend who got one of those Japanese fighting dogs, but registered it with the local Council as a husky to avoid the complications of them knowing he had one of the breeds they get fussy about.. Like they get fussy about pitbulls. It used to be fun watching local thugs with vicious pitbulls dragging their dogs away from his dog before it munched their pitbulls. He taught, at my suggestion, all his commands for his Japanese dog in Japanese..so for example he used "Yami" as the command for "down".. So any intruder to his property who might try to use " sit", "down" or "go away" on his dog would get nowhere with that crittur.
He also trained an Australian Kelpie to recognise money, coins and notes, and retrieve money and bring it to him. That dog got so well trained with money that Michael could lay out a variety of coins on the floor and tell the Kelpie which coin to bring him..eg the dog learnt which coin was a five cent coin, a ten cent coin, a twenty cent coin, fifty cent coin, one dollar coin and two dollar coin..all Australian coins..an excellent party trick to win bets with. And the dog would literally turn up with money it had found in its wanderings several times each week.

"If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything." It sounds poetic so it must be true!

trump supporters seem to stand for selfishness, but they still fell for trump so i don't think that phrase should carry much weight.