How close to us do chimps have to be before we acknowledge that they are our cousins?
Presently, the state of New York is wrestling with the question of whether chimpanzees should legally be considered persons, with the right of habeus corpus. What do you think?
Consider that chimps murder, rape, go to war... They even spontaneously began making spears. They have a theory of mind. They can act in compassion. In some ways, such as visual memory, they are superior to us. The latest news is that they prefer cooked food and will delay gratification in order to cook it. I could go on and on with their cognitive skills... You get the point.
Where is the line for you?
I seen a documentary about the worlds smartest orangutang. Back in the 70's when it was born some lady spent the first 10 years of it's life treating it like a human and teaching it American sign language.
It grew to understand the value of currency and the reward of a hard days work.
It's trainers would take it to fast food places like dairy queen and burger joints and with the money it earned around the campus it was being trained on it bought cheese burgers and icecream.
When the staff began to become to broke to pay it, they swapped out washers for money.
From birth it went on to be treated as a human being and was testing at age appropriate material.
It was and is to this day, the only orangutang that can use sign language and use it really well.
Then one day after 11 years had gone by some girl had met up with it in a hallway of the campus he lived on, and claimed that the orangutang assaulted her.
So the school decided to send it back to where it came from and stop all research.
He spent 10 years in a 5x5 cell until his former trainer found a zoo he could go to.
They asked him at the zoo what he thought of the other orangutangs and he asked them, "You mean those ugly orange dogs?"
There were hammocks in the orangutang area and for some unknown reason the hammocks kept falling apart. They discovered what was happening when the orangutang from the school, offered them washers for a cheese burger.
The zoo stopped the orangutangs former trainer special access from seeing him and denied him any human food like icecream or cheese burgers and when his former trainer buys a ticket to the zoo to go see him as a patron, he secretly begs her for cheese burgers and icecream.
Not only that, but he continually asks to go home.
It is totally not this orangutangs fault that he wants to feel the freedom of buying an icream cone or a cheese burger or having the pride that comes from earning your own money.
The sad reality is, that he is being kept from doing these things because evolutionist believe that it is the utmost importance that he get back to his roots so he can feel the most natural.
Which is very obviously never going to happen. He's always going to want a cheeseburger over a leafy stick.
I believe, that there are all kinds of animals like this orangutang that can understand way more then we ever thought possible.
But I also believe that natural selection hasnt proven that a species will evolve outside of itself and at the end of the day animals are just animals.
We should take good care of them and be good caretakers, like the bible says. But we should also do with them as we wish, because its what God told us to do and to offer them their own rights as sentient beings, would be wrong.
They wouldnt understand a thing unless we spent a life time showing them.