Is Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior?

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No. The meaning of life is to love God first and to love those made in the image of God second.

No

Really?

Even if you don't get a payoff?

Do you get a payoff for being someone's friend?

Seconded. The meaning of life has nothing to do with god. We are born, we live, we live, we die. As do all animals. The only thing that makes us different is that animals use instinct and we use cognitive thought. Therefore animals know nothing of god, and all they are interested in is eating, sleeping, pooping and making more animals. All god is is a thought process, nothing more. it's just that some cults and sects have deified this thought process into something 'real' to them. Alright if it stops the heebee-jeebees, but it won't stop them from getting shot in a war or killed by a bus.

I gave you my answer.

My seconder was to you.

Maybe we should all curl up with a good book.... Something by Stephen King, or Tolstoy, or Terry Pratchett. Hey, it's all fiction, but so is the bible.

Amen to that, brother.

Jesus Christ? Good guy. Lord & Saviour? Nope.

I find it interesting that the bible and science seem to agree on this.

I think it's awfully selfish to believe that humans are the only beings capable of cognitive thought.
I disagree with your statement above.
From my experiences with other animals (humans being animals also), they are capable and interested in things other than, "...eating, sleeping, pooping and making more animals."

I find this whole thread interesting although the arguments are the same old tired ones that have been going on for a very long time.

I also find it interesting the varied texts that are quoted here to shore up one's beliefs/arguments.

The Gideon's bible is such a poorly written text if used for debate. I have one, among other bibles, and it seems to have been written purely for a quick emotional lift of some sad traveler in a hotel room. Not written for scholars, or students of religion.

What causes me to shake my head with regards to religions such as Christianity, is the sheer number of differing translations of the bible, the exclusion of other books written by people of those times, and the difficulty people as a whole seem to have in understanding and accepting one version totally and exclusively.

I'm not sure I agree that "Science Says" that animals are not capable of cognition. We have witnessed birds and other primates use tools. When a student, I worked in a primate colony (rhesus monkeys, mostly), doing cognitive experiments. 3 holes were covered by different objects (square, circle, triangle, etc) of different primary colors. The monkeys were presented a 'pattern' where they were rewarded with a raisin. Then another 'challenge' was given and they got a chance to lift only one of the colored shapes. They were highly motivated to get raisins, and they did have an ability to form memorys, abstract, and reason.

Not to say that other animals are cognizant to the level of humans, but they do have cognitive abilities.

Biocentrism is a big question when evaluating the intelligence of others. Just as ethnocentrism has led to some spectacular underestimation of other cultures. "Advanced" people dismissed the Inca as primitive because they had no wheels (which are not very advantageous in the rugged Andes where they lived) and because they had no 'written' language (they did use quipu, or knotted strings to record information, but that was initially written-off as macrame art by the advanced Conquistadors).

Here's an >> Interesting article on Animal Intelligence. <<

Yes, perhaps I should have said the general population?

I do know that there have been studies such as what you describe.

It still does seem to me that too many people, professional and not, take the stand that humans are not animals and animals are inferior to humans. We seem to measure this by all we can do with science and the visible nature or our religions.

Anyway, this is off topic and I forgot to answer the original question...

No. there, I did it.

Yes, humans are animals, homo sapiens being one of the branches of Primates which belongs to Mammalia. Animals such as dogs and cats do not communicate in the same way as us, and birds only mimic what is going on around them. Because of some fluke of evolution the homo sapien brain developed to a higher level than other animals, it must therefore be presumed that we are the only ones capable of thinking cognitively, and therefore the only ones able to create a thought process like religion. Sure, it may be possible for 1000 chimps to type out 1000 pages, but does that mean that the result will become a book? For all we know it will be 1000 pages of gibberish.

I find it a bit narcissistic to believe that our way of thinking, of creating, of communicating are the standards by which to measure greatness, or progression, or righteousness!

In our own little world, humans have faired better because of what we've learned to do.
But in the grand scheme of things... have we made the world a better place because of it?

Probably not, looking at what is going on with wars over religion, hatred of our neighbours because of their culture, murders becuase of envy etc. But the thing is, dogs, cats, lions, elephants just go throughout their day to day existence without worrying about god or an afterlife, so the mere fact that man created this god means that man also created the worry about what is going to happen. So as far as any argumen as to whether the universe was created by a higher being, the answer is that the universe since inception is eternal, and god is only a passing phase in mankind's history.