Steven Buri, Wesley Smith: What Is a Human Being?

Angels, animals, Bruce Chapman, Center for Science and Culture, Center for Wealth and Poverty, creator, Culture & Ethics, drug addiction, George Gilder, guerrilla, harm reduction, homelessness, housing first, human being, human exceptionalism, Human Origins, Humanize, humans, Intelligent Design, Jonathan Choe, journalism, mental illness, Steven Buri, think tank, vision, Wesley J. Smith
That politicians and activists can watch their fellow men wallow in degradation this way is itself a twisted tribute to human exceptionalism. Source
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War on Human Exceptionalism Turns to Tool Use

Abigail Desmond, abstraction, animals, archaeologists, bragging rights, capuchin monkeys, chimpanzees, crows, debris, dolphins, environment, hands, Harvard University, human exceptionalism, Human Origins, life forms, Michael Haslam, monkeys, Neuroscience & Mind, octopuses, Oxford University, Saturn V rocket, sea urchins, tool use, tools
As the academic war on human exceptionalism motors on, researchers’ thinking sometimes shorts out — and they don’t even notice. Source
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Dreaming Animals and Human Exceptionalism

abstractions, American Kennel Club, animals, bird song, birds, cats, cuttlefish, David M. Peña-Guzmán, dolphins, dreaming, horses, human exceptionalism, information, jumping spiders, learning, Life Sciences, memory, Neuroscience & Mind, rapid eye movement, sleep, Smithsonian Magazine, spiders, symbols, Teresa Iglesias, thought, whales
Researchers have detected something like REM (rapid eye movement) sleep — which is associated with dreaming in humans — in jumping spiders. Source
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Asking Questions Demonstrates Human Exceptionalism

Albert Einstein, animals, Bible, chatbot, ChatGPT, cosmos, curiosity, DNA, electronic technology, fine-tuning, history, human exceptionalism, Human Origins, humans, imagination, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, metaphysics, natural world, Physics, Earth & Space, prompt engineering, Questions
This human trait of question-asking begins almost as soon as we learn to talk. Young children can confound their parents with their rapid-fire questions. Source
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With Becket Cook, David Berlinski Discusses Speech as a Problem for Darwin, and More

animal life, animals, Becket Cook, Bible, communication, Darwinism, David Berlinski, discontinuity, Dogs, Evolution, externalization, human exceptionalism, Human Origins, humans, Jesuits, Ovid, pets, Science After Babel
Dog owners know that to look into your dog’s eyes is often to see that the dog has something he wishes to say but lacks the “machinery for externalization.” Source
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Scientists Are Skeptical that Intelligence in Homo naledi “Erases Human Exceptionalism”

ABC News, archaeologists, Archaeology, Associated Press, Australia, bioRxiv, burial, cave art, chimpanzees, fire use, Germany, Gibraltar, Griffith University, hominids, Homo naledi, human exceptionalism, Human Origins, intelligence, Kenya, Lee Berger, María Martinón-Torres, Maxime Aubert, Michael Petraglia, National Research Center on Human Evolution, Natural History Museum, Neanderthals, New York Times, Newsweek, paleontology, Phys.org, preprint papers, Rising Star Cave, Science News, Silvia Bello, skeletons, Spain, The Conversation, Wall Street Journal
Berger et al.’s claims about the species have been disputed and their idea that it lived 2-3 million years ago was exaggerated by a factor of 10. Source
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