I know I said that I would talk about the issue of the unborn insofar as to when they exactly bear the image of God. However, I will put that issue on hold till the end of this writing series. Today, I want to briefly talk about a particular issue in the field of biology that has philosophical and theological importance. The issue is centered around the question on whether human beings are qualitatively different from animals, difference in kind rather than degree.

For two things to be different from each other in degree is to say that one of them has *more* of something that the other already has. For example, I weigh about 150 pounds but the former NBA basketball player Shaquille O'Neal weighs well over 300 pounds. He has *more* weight than I do. However, I am white and he is black. It is not as if being white is somehow *more* of a color than being black. These are different colors.

With that being said, the question of whether human beings are qualitatively different from animals or not will affect a few other different but related issues: creationism, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and more recently infanticide. You might rightfully ask, "Why does it matter whether humans are special creatures or not?" and I will attempt to answer that based on each of the different issues that biology touches on.

Once again, as a side note, I do not discuss these issues as having authority on these matters. These areas of discussion I am exploring are only intended to initially stimulate one's mind to probe deeper into them. I also apologize ahead of time for unwittingly not grappling with the subtlety and complexity of these issues based on the short treatment I will give them. Many books have been written on these issues and I do not intend to give the impression that they can be completely adequately discussed here.

If humans are only quantitatively different (difference in degree) from other animals, then that could potentially raise difficult theological problems concerning creationism. All theories of creationism - young earth creationism to theistic evolution - hold that humans are special creations of God. They differ on how much time God took to create human beings and other life forms.

In this context, if human beings evolved gradually over a long period of time in reference to their bodies but were specially created by God with a rational soul in an immediate moment, then that would raise further questions about the relationship between the soul and the body. Do the soul and the body need each other in order to constitute a human person? If the person-hood of the human being is primarily rooted in having an immaterial soul rather than a union of soul and body, then it seems a longer time for evolutionary development for the human body is more plausible.

To make matters even more perplexing, consider the possibility that Adam's body was fully formed when he was created by God. Was that the design blueprint for creating human beings in God's image? If so, then how does that account for the developing human being at the embryonic stage who may not have a fully formed body? Does one need a fully formed - not fully functioning necessarily - body in order to be an image-bearer of God? These were issues that go back to the time of the Medieval period (E.g. Thomas Aquinas) and they are still discussed today.

Advocates for abortion rights, embryonic stem cell research and infanticide (Michael Tooley, Peter Singer and Jeff McMahan) might disagree on the details on what they take a human person to be, but they do seem to agree on one particular point: being human is not enough to make you a human person. The question of difference between us and other animals relates in one specific way.

The question of whether there is a soul will not be of much importance for someone who adopts a materialistic, Darwinian view of human nature because the soul has been historically viewed as something that is not physical and thus cannot be measured in quantities.

In summary, the question about the uniqueness or not-uniqueness of human beings is an ethical question that gets its bearings from how biological questions about us get played out. Are we inherently rational beings as Aristotle once said? Are we just more complex and developed animals than our predecessors? When did God create Adam and Eve with a rational soul? Did He wait a long time for the body to develop to a certain point before creating them with a rational soul or did He create a rational soul and body simultaneously?

All these questions have some point of reference in the field of biology. Next time I will briefly explore some questions that center in the field of neuroscience - the science of the brain - such as the following: Can human beings have free will given the advances in neuroscience? Is consciousness primarily rooted in the brain - rather than the soul - even if certain characteristics of consciousness are different from what the brain consists of?

Stay tuned!