Quote Originally Posted by Sonya610 View Post
Yes, I see the difference. Though I am not sure in the big scheme of things it really does make a difference, we do the same things animals do we just have wordier justifications for those things.

I guess I just get a bit sensitive when people start saying "intellect" is what matters, or diminishing the unknown experiences of other beings. I am not saying you are diminishing anything, it is not directed at you, but when one can intellectualize that the "other" has no feelings or higher thought it can justify lots of bad things. For me it is not about how snakes perceive things, but about how people do; I don't stress over what snakes might do. : )
It does make a difference. We have the mental capacity to make decisions, debate, decide what we do with our lives, fall in love, we can think through the consequences of what we do. We're not guided through our lives purely by impulse. We have "wordier justifications," as you put it, because we have the capacity for spoken communication and we have science.

I'm not saying this makes us any better than reptiles, period. They were here before us and will likely outlive us. But the comparisons you're making just seem completely out of proportion. Compare us with primates, not reptiles. They are snakes and we are humans and the differences are too vast to make a neurological comparison.