Serious question for Christians who do not accept evolution.

[Ryukil]

I feel as if this question is a clincher, and am surprised it is not asked more often. You may be underwhelmed at first, but here we go:
Why are human beings mammals?

Christianity for centuries has supposed that human beings are above animals, totally different to them. Well then why is our anatomy so similar to a chimpanzee? Why do we have mammary glands?

Now I'm assuming you all agree that humans can be classified as mammals since we fall under that definition in every single way.

This is kind of an important thing. This is what evolution explains. Evolution explains why certain animals are classified as mammals, some are classified as reptiles, etc.

Jumping off of the question of why God made us mammals, why did God make us physical beings at all? What I mean is, why are we trapped in these flesh-and-blood bodies when Christianity teaches that we are ultimately spiritual beings? I mean, why would God trap us in bodies that he programmed to want to have sex, just like every other animal, if he didn't want us to have sex outside of marriage? I mean...it's very strange. Why is the impulse to have sex with another human being sinful? Why is it not sinful for my dog to have sex with another dog? Is it "sinful" when a chimp kills another chimp in some alpha-male struggle? Is that "murder"? Why do these rules apply to us but not other animals?

These questions may sound silly, but I think they really get to the center of this debate. We have the physical bodies of ANIMALS, and no one can deny this.

Please, if you think that human beings are not physically (emphasis on the word physically here) ANIMALS, and MAMMALS, please explain why.

 

[ChetSinger]

Please, if you think that human beings are not physically (emphasis on the word physically here) ANIMALS, and MAMMALS, please explain why.

I don't know if you'll find anyone here who doesn't consider us animals and mammals in the way we've defined those words.

So I think you're seeing a dilemma that doesn't actually exist.

In the Bible we're classified as "flesh", just as other kinds of living things are. We're different because we were made in the image of God and have been placed in charge of the place.

Has this been helpful?

 

[Ryukil]

Why did God make us animal beings in the first place? I mean why not plant beings? Was it because he needed an advanced brain to facilitate speech and creativity and all that stuff? I mean is the part of us that is creative our souls or our physical bodies (brains)? If you took your soul out of your body, would it have the same level of intelligence and creativity and awareness that it has when it is in your body? If yes, why do we have bodies at all?

 

[ebia]

Why did God make us animal beings in the first place? I mean why not plant beings? Was it because he needed an advanced brain to facilitate speech and creativity and all that stuff? I mean is the part of us that is creative our souls or our physical bodies (brains)? If you took your soul out of your body, would it have the same level of intelligence and creativity and awareness that it has when it is in your body? If yes, why do we have bodies at all?

You seem to be addressing something more akin to Gnosticism than historical christianity which asserts that our physical being is part of our humanness. We aren't souls temporarily stuck in a physical body eventually to escape it, but fully physical beings to be resurrected as fully physical beings in a physical creation put to rights.


In that context your question might be better phrased as "why are other mammals so much like us" rather than "why are we like other mammals".

That all said, a good deal of modern christianity is pseudo-gnostic, and that does tend to correlate with evolution denial.

 

[ChetSinger]

Why did God make us animal beings in the first place? I mean why not plant beings? Was it because he needed an advanced brain to facilitate speech and creativity and all that stuff? I mean is the part of us that is creative our souls or our physical bodies (brains)? If you took your soul out of your body, would it have the same level of intelligence and creativity and awareness that it has when it is in your body? If yes, why do we have bodies at all?

Wow, six questions in one post is too many for me!

The creation is a beautiful place and everything in it has it's purpose. I think the purpose of some things is just to be beautiful. Our purpose was to exercise authority here on God's behalf. So we've been supplied with the brains and bodies to do it. And we're part of the earth; we come from it and return to it.

Btw, in the resurrection we'll again physical bodies and be living on a new, physical earth. We won't be spirits, as some believe. If you want a picture of the next age, check out the last two chapters of the Bible.

 

[Ryukil]

Okay...but why are we specifically mammals and not reptiles? If we have no relation to other animals, why are we so much like them to the point that we can be grouped in with a specific group of animals?

This question can be taken further to, why did God make human DNA to be 99 % similar to chimpanzee DNA? Is he deliberately trying to confuse us?

 

[ebia]

Okay...but why are we specifically mammals and not reptiles? If we have no relation to other animals, why are we so much like them to the point that we can be grouped in with a specific group of animals?

This question can be taken further to, why did God make human DNA to be 99 % similar to chimpanzee DNA? Is he deliberately trying to confuse us?

If we are God's image in and for creation, created to represent God in creation and to sum up creation back to God, isn't it fitting that we are congruent with the design of the rest of creation?

(Not that I deny evolution)

 

[ChetSinger]

Okay...but why are we specifically mammals and not reptiles?

Beats me.

If we have no relation to other animals, why are we so much like them to the point that we can be grouped in with a specific group of animals?

I answered earlier that we do have a relation to them. We're all considered "flesh".

This question can be taken further to, why did God make human DNA to be 99 % similar to chimpanzee DNA? Is he deliberately trying to confuse us?

If it matters, we're not 99% similar.

 

[Ryukil]

Well evolution explains why we are mammals. This is part of my problem with this line of questioning...."He just made us mammals because" doesn't really satisfy me....It doesn't seem to make any sense. But yeah.

 

[ChetSinger]

Well evolution explains why we are mammals. This is part of my problem with this line of questioning...."He just made us mammals because" doesn't really satisfy me....It doesn't seem to make any sense. But yeah.

You're a 21-year-old guy, right? Here's one reason to be a mammal and not a reptile:

 

[Ryukil]

Are you serious? The only reason I'm attracted to that woman is BECAUSE we're of the same species.

If I were a lizard, the same hormones that are now flowing around in my body would be flowing around looking at a sexy female lizard (haha...). The same. Exact. Hormones.

This is why it never makes sense in science-fiction movies when alien men want human women. A human woman would be just as ugly to the lizard people as a lizard woman would be to you.

I mean, you never found it strange that men are attracted to large breasts? We are attracted to large milk producing glands....wait, what? It's very gross when you think about it.

 

[ChetSinger]

Are you serious? The only reason I'm attracted to that woman is BECAUSE we're of the same species.

If I were a lizard, the same hormones that are now flowing around in my body would be flowing around looking at a sexy female lizard (haha...). The same. Exact. Hormones.

This is why it never makes sense in science-fiction movies when alien men want human women. A human woman would be just as ugly to the lizard people as a lizard woman would be to you.

I mean, you never found it strange that men are attracted to large breasts? We are attracted to large milk producing glands....wait, what? It's very gross when you think about it.

Umm, I think some of you guys really need to keep your sense of humor when you come here.

 

[com7fy8]

Why are human beings mammals?

I don't think of humans as being mammals. Having mammary glands is a very small part of who and what humans are. You could also ask why do we have feet . . . like bugs?

Christianity for centuries has supposed that human beings are above animals, totally different to them. Well then why is our anatomy so similar to a chimpanzee?

There is poetic similarity, but humans in a variety of ways are not like chimpanzees.

Why do we have mammary glands?

So a mother can feed milk to her baby and give her baby nutrition and immune substances, and so they can bond with each other, I would say

I notice how DNA can be so similar and yet humans have so much more abilities and other things. How do you account for humans looking so different from each other, unlike how animals and plants tend to look quite alike? I think God made us in His image, and He is the only One like Him; and so He makes each person, usually, looking unlike any other He's our Creator, not a copier

Now I'm assuming you all agree that humans can be classified as mammals since we fall under that definition in every single way.

I don't go there. Humans have feet, skin, and other things like other creatures; but this does not at all make them similar.

Chimpanzees have abilities and are social, but with only a little bit more DNA humans can fly to the moon, discover medical things, debate > I think there is more to humans than only a little extra DNA.

Evolution explains why certain animals are classified as mammals, some are classified as reptiles, etc.

They are classified because certain humans want to classify them And how, ever, did they evolve DNA enough to produce their classifying behavior? According to the genetics I studied, ones believe that behaviors come with evolution of genes.

But I understand that humans in sin can have a way of wanting to put people and things into groups that are all alike, so they can understand and control those people and things in a certain group. So, their classifying tendency is not genetic, but from selfishness and being willing to try to use people for what they want.

Jumping off of the question of why God made us mammals, why did God make us physical beings at all?

I understand that, at first . . . before the fall of Adam and Eve . . . they were spiritual. But with the fall into sin, things "hardened" so now we see the physical stuff we see > I consider Romans 8:20-21.

What I mean is, why are we trapped in these flesh-and-blood bodies when Christianity teaches that we are ultimately spiritual beings?

Because in sin we started in our physical bodies. Now we stay here so we can reach ones who still need God. Philippians 1:23-24.

I mean, why would God trap us in bodies that he programmed to want to have sex, just like every other animal, if he didn't want us to have sex outside of marriage?

Real sex means having children for God, ones who know how to relate with God as our Father and how to love any and all people. So, the true "drive" for sex means we seek God to have us successful in bringing forth and bringing up children who are pleasing to Him

Therefore, the dominating and nagging "thing" for sexual pleasure is not truly a sexual drive. It is a push for the pleasure.

Of course, sex can be an expression of deep love together. And this love is what can help the children to become children of God's love; or else, they have not been reproduced for Him!!

I mean...it's very strange. Why is the impulse to have sex with another human being sinful?

Not "why", but how it can be sinful > if you are using it to get pleasure, using the other person for pleasure . . . instead of learning together how to love and enjoy God while bringing up your children to know how to love with Him and you and other people.

Why is it not sinful for my dog to have sex with another dog? Is it "sinful" when a chimp kills another chimp in some alpha-male struggle? Is that "murder"? Why do these rules apply to us but not other animals?

I have seen how doggies can be so about their pleasures . . . of sex and food and sniffing their p-mail. They can be very into themselves and what they want. And I consider this is part of the corruption of sin which has come into this world.

However . . . . . . we have enough to deal with, without trying to convert doggies, don't we ? ?

These questions may sound silly, but I think they really get to the center of this debate. We have the physical bodies of ANIMALS, and no one can deny this.

Even if I had the perfect body of a doggie and I was me, the way I am now, able to think and pray and love unselfishly and not be so about food and sex and p-mail, my identity would be with how I am in God's love, with Jesus. My identity has nothing, really, to do with what is true about my physical body. My identity has to do with who has my heart and what I do from my heart.

So, classifying me with humans has very little to do with who I really am, because each other human has many different things true of that person, unlike me. So, putting me in a group because of a few limited characteristics does not mean much.

Please, if you think that human beings are not physically (emphasis on the word physically here) ANIMALS, and MAMMALS, please explain why.

I just think that is a very limiting thing to say about humans. It is like how you can say something is a "computer", but knowing its category still tells you nothing about a particular computer and what it can do and is doing.

"What's happening in it is what matters."

 

[Ryukil]

Mammal: a warm-blooded vertebrate animal of a class that is distinguished by the possession of hair or fur, the secretion of milk by females for the nourishment of the young, and the birth of live young

If you don't agree that humans are mammals, then you disagree with basic observational reality. As Ken Ham would say, establishing humans as mammals is OBSERVATIONAL SCIENCE as opposed to historical science.

Not that I acknowledge these distinctions, but this is something that can be observed in the present. Humans have mammary glands, give birth to live young, are covered in hair, etc. Just look in your mirror. Really.

 

[Ryukil]

Umm, I think some of you guys really need to keep your sense of humor when you come here.

Humans are attracted to humans, iguanas are attracted to iguanas, dogs are attracted to dogs, cats are attracted to cats. Why is that funny?

All I'm saying is that the only reason I am attracted to human women is because I am a human male...............

Do you think that human sexual reproduction does not work the same way it works in other animals? Because it does........

 

[ChetSinger]

Humans are attracted to humans, iguanas are attracted to iguanas, dogs are attracted to dogs, cats are attracted to cats. Why is that funny?

All I'm saying is that the only reason I am attracted to human women is because I am a human male...............

Do you think that human sexual reproduction does not work the same way it works in other animals? Because it does........

Oh, you're so much more serious than I. But you did say this was a serious thread, so I was warned.

Cheers! Carry on!

 

[Ryukil]

Um...well...it's a real question. I think it's a legitimate question. That's what I meant by "serious". It gets right to the core of this whole issue.
Many people are made uncomfortable by the idea that humans are a type of animal, but everyone who acknowledges that we are mammals know that we are a type of animal.

No need to get upset.

 

[SkyWriting]

. duplicate

 

[SkyWriting]

We have the physical bodies of ANIMALS, and no one can deny this.

Please, if you think that human beings are not physically (emphasis on the word physically here) ANIMALS, and MAMMALS, please explain why.

The difference is our soul and spiritual nature we were created with.
Your two categories are both biological classifications.
Note that we are not minerals, so one can expect some similarities to
other living things we were created with.

We are different from aluminum by quite a margin.

Glad to help!

 

[SkyWriting]

Why are human beings mammals?.....please explain why.

There are other choices. Do you have a preference?

Moon dust?