Are Humans Simply Animals?
Considerations on man and non-man:
Given that we are now fully into a world of AI and related developments, the Christian must distinguish men from machines. The two are not identical. But not all that long ago the Christian had to distinguish men from animals. Many materialists and naturalists had claimed that we are simply animals, but the Christian knows we are much more.
Sure, we humans are part of the animal world in one sense. Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer used to explain it in these terms: The Roman and Greek gods were personal but not infinite. The gods of the East were infinite but not personal. In Christianity, God is personal as is man, but he is infinite whereas man is not.
So when it comes to the matter of personality, we are like God but unlike the rest of the created order. But when it comes to the matter of infinity, we are unlike god, and share finitude with the rest of created order. Thus mankind is both like and unlike animals and the rest of creation.
Many Christian thinkers, theologians and philosophers have of course discussed these matters over the years. Here I simply offer a few key quotes that look at the various differences between men and animals. In his book on worldviews (A World of Difference, Baker, 2007, pp. 181-185), Ken Samples says this:
“Specific qualities and traits set people apart from all other creatures. According to the Christian worldview, and specifically in light of the imago Dei, these profound differences are expected. Philosophers in particular have noted at least seven ways in which humans differ dramatically and significantly from animals.”
He lists seven such traits which I present in outline form. Human beings:
– have an inherent spiritual and religious nature.
– possess unique intellectual, cultural, and communicative abilities.
– are conscious of time, reality, and truth.
– possess a conscience, identify a value system, and legislate moral laws for society.
– are uniquely inventive and technological.
– possess an intense curiosity to explain and understand the entire created realm.
– possess aesthetic taste and appreciation for more than just practical purposes.
He said this about his first point:
The vast majority of people pursue some form of spiritual truth. They generally have deep-seated religious beliefs and engage in intricate rituals. Common practices such as prayer and worship demonstrate their pursuit of God or the transcendental. This defining characteristic of humankind is so apparent that some have designated humans as homo religiosus–“religious man.”
Formal atheism is largely inconsistent with the overall history of human nature and practice. Even professed nonbelievers (atheists, skeptics) pursue questions concerning life’s ultimate meaning and purpose and are drawn to whatever they consider to be of ultimate importance and value. American philosopher of religion Paul Tillich suggested that there are no true atheists because all people have an “ultimate concern.’ And philosopher Harold H. Titus has said that even agnostics and atheists “tend to replace a personal god with an impersonal one–the state, race, some process in nature, or devotion to the search for truth or some other ideal.”
The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates (ca. 470-399 B.C.) once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Humans alone contemplate what philosophers call “the big questions of life.” Though animals can be very intelligent they show no sign of spirituality or concern with ultimate issues.
David Gooding and John Lennox in Being Truly Human (Myrtlefield House, 2018, p. 99) argue that men and animals have a lot in common, but not when it comes to morality:
[T]here is a whole dimension to human behaviour that is lacking in animals: we have a moral sense, animals, as far as we can observe, do not. You can train your dog, if you have one, not to go into your neighbour’s house and steal meat off the table. You can train it by whacking it every time it attempts to enter the house. Thereafter, entering the house will be associated in its memory with the pain of the whacking and it will desist. But while you can train a dog not to steal the neighbour’s meat, you will never get it to understand why it is morally wrong to steal. It is no good plying it with reasons.
But reasons are precisely what human beings will demand if you tell them they ought to do this, or ought not to do that. Tell some teenager, ‘You should obey your parents’, and you are likely to get the reply ‘Why should I?’ Tell someone else, ‘You shouldn’t tell lies’, and he or she is liable to retort, ‘Why shouldn’t I, if it suits me?’ And if you should insist: ‘It is morally wrong to tell lies, that’s why you shouldn’t’, the retort is likely to be ‘Who are you to impose your moral standards on me?’
Reasons, reasons, reasons—that’s what we all demand to be given when we are told that it is our duty as human beings to behave morally in this way or that.
And Christian Philosopher Peter Kreeft in Summa Philosophica (St. Augustine’s Press, 2012, pp. 108-110), says this: “[N]o society in history has ever treated humans in the same way as it has treated animals, or treated animals in the same way as it has treated humans.”
He offers this list of key differences:
[W]e find at least ten differences in kind between animals and humans. (1) Animals have absolutely no signs of religion, of an awareness of God or immortality. (2) They are conscious of the world of objects, but not of themselves as personal subjects. Their consciousness is not self-reflexive. And therefore (3) though they can be trained to behave in ways that humans find acceptable, they have no moral conscience (they have social shame but not individual guilt). (4) Their creativity is routine and circumscribed by their instincts: e.g. a given species of bird will always build its nest in exactly the same way. (5) Their languages are not articulate, not invented, and do not change or progress through time. (6) Their thought is concrete, not abstract. They have precepts but not concepts. (7) They have immediate intuition, but not demonstrative reasoning. (8) They do not produce technological inventions, because (9) they do not formulate scientific theories. (10) They have no sense of artistic beauty for its own sake.
And even among the biological and nonspiritual attributes such as sex, death, and food, we find that humans imbue these biological activities with spiritual meanings that are incomprehensible to animals. For instance, romance, funerals, ceremonial feasts transform sex, death, and food into spiritually significant mysteries.
Or as Kreeft said in Three Philosophies of Life, when he compared the atheist/materialist worldview with that of the Christian (Ignatius, 1989):
Short-run purpose is no compensation for long-range purposelessness. Many think it is. “Live for the moment.” Who needs a summum bonum except philosophers? But we are all philosophers, unless we are animals. Men live not just in the present but also in the future. We live by hope. Our hearts are a beat ahead of our feet. Half of us is already in the future; we meet ourselves coming at us from up ahead. Our lives are like an arc stretching out to us from the future into the present. Our hopes and ideals move our present lives. Animals’ lives are like an arc coming to them out of their past; they are determined by their past. They are pushed; we are pulled. They are forced; we are free. They are only instinct, heredity, and environment; we are more; we are persons.
The determinists, from Marx and Freud to Skinner, who deny this fact, insult us infinitely more than any preacher who shouts sin and damnation at us. It is a great compliment to call a man a sinner. Only a free man can be a sinner. The determinists mean to steal from us the great treasure of sin. They deny us our freedom, and therefore our hope, our ability to live not just from our determined past but also from our undetermined future.
Further reflections and further reading
Much more can be said about all this. Two brief points: While we Christians argue that some animals might have soul-like attributes (eg., the abilities to choose, feel or think), they do not have eternal souls for which Christ died. Having said this, we can therefore ask questions such as: ‘Will our pets be with us in heaven?’ See here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2019/07/06/will-our-pets-be-with-us-in-heaven/
And here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/11/03/on-pets-in-heaven-again/
Also, the broad issue of animal rights arises here. Can we speak about animal rights in the same way that we speak about human rights? Here are three books penned by philosophers that discuss these issues (the last two books being by Christian philosophers):
Frey, R. G., Rights, Killing and Suffering: Moral Vegetarianism and Applied Ethics. Basil Blackwell, 1983.
Jamison, Wes and Paul Copan, eds., What Would Jesus Really Eat? Castle Quay Books, 2019.
Scruton, Roger, Animal Rights and Wrongs. Metro, 1996, 2000.
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