I have a basic treatment of human as opposed to animals. I treat them as cognitive beings like myself. Meaning I won't start barking at another person and wagging a dog treat at them. I will talk to them. I will interact with them as if they are human. Do you not do the same?
I certainly do also, and glad you are civil minded in this way. So we differ from the animals, what is that difference? In asking I clearly agree we do, but want to qualify the difference from your viewpoint.
Are they human? Rhetorical question because there is no other answer: YES.
I agree.
I have also - did you find the
medical doctor helpful? - I have found psychotherapist or pastoral minister helpful in a quite different manner, without dismissing the medical doctor's time-limited help and understanding of medication.
I don't know if you know, but different kind of doctors for these two issues.
Yes in many places there would be specialists in each. But at first someone might go to their general practitoner. But following your correct observation of there being two kinds of doctor, the medical doctor would recognise which condition it was and refer his patient to the proper specialist - in the case of depression to a psychotherapist of some sort usually.
How does this in any way, shape, or form differentiate one human from another?
Well in themselves people differ as you are well aware, hence there would be different medical records for each patient.
In shape - height, weight, previous history of a condition, improvement, set backs, general level of health, other conditions.
It also differentiates a human being whose condition is not due merely to biological or chemical or organic factors, from one whose condition is. But even in both cases both patients can be called souls.
It would be even more important in psychotherapy that a history is taken to some extent.
You also have a perception of an individual's character and personality and recognise a continuity in these from one week to the next, particularly with someone if you have known them for a long time. You know with some people there are things they are highly unlikely to say or do. This continuity is an aspect of the soul - not that people can't change, but there is a degree of continuity for the most part.
Understanding that people are souls doesn't make one treat them less than human. It allows one greater insight into those conditions that are outside the domain of the medical doctor - this is my point.
I don't hold the soul and the body to be neatly separate however. But since its part of humanness to be a soul, I don't see why someone would deny it.
Most of the problems people are having come from a only partial recogition of the soul and its capacities to some extent it seems to me, loss of understanding of our humanness,
made in the image of God.
Silly question to end, and I know the answer, but are you human?
Again, how do we know we have a soul? A soul, in case you are wondering, as described in the Bible.
