Christianity says we’re made in the image and likeness of God. Yet our DNA is more than 95 percent the same as Chimpanzees! When I watch the human like behaviour of these close relatives of ours it is uncanny. Are we just animals in advanced evolution, or has Chimp DNA been altered by a Higher Intelligence to create us? Three distinct differences seem to stand out, perhaps by intentional design….Check out Chapter Two in my book, The Celestial Proposal: Our Invitation to Join the God Kind, available from Amazon.com What will you find there? The following excerpt:
In my beautiful Canada, I have been most privileged to see the river run so thick with the return of spawning salmon I wanted to walk across their backs, walk on that blue-green and red underwater carpet of churning motion. I have trampled the wild flowers glistening in the morning dew and crunched the snow on the same path in the middle of winter. But what does it all mean? When we choose to connect with nature and allow its color, pattern, and energy enlighten our minds, it all witnesses to a passionate designer. My question is, “who designed us and why are we in this earth garden?”
They say God designed us, but what is God you might ask? Why, God is Love. Most people can agree with this standard definition. And humans do have a great ability to love. We are motivated and touched by warmth feelings because really, a smile is a smile no matter where you live in the world. But wait, animals can actually love too, sometimes with even more devotion then people!
But after some pondering, I came up with three god-like traits that elevate us from our planet’s animal kingdom.
- We create just like a Creator
Animals are programmed with very limited creative powers. For example, beavers build dams and create ponds to live in. These animals fall huge trees to the ground and build intricate underwater homes, but they cannot choose instead to design a teepee! It’s as though by installing different programs, each class of animal was created with a set of characteristics acting as boundaries to their behaviours. We call these patterns instinct.
The human drive to create things is greater than instinct. It is innate and compulsive behaviour for us. We relentlessly produce new things, new methods, and even new philosophies. From the imaginary conversations of the toddler to the autobiographies of the aged, we create our personal worlds. We get to choose how we interpret our surroundings and then we use this data to decide how we want to live. In this sense, we create our own realities.
- Secondly, we are the most powerful life form on earth!
God is said to be all-powerful, and we also have an innate drive and desire for power. We strive to become rich, to be the fastest, to be the first, to be the best.
From the small gatherings of tribal herdsmen to empire-building CEOs in the corporate world, humans are driven to achieve great powerful dominions. In today’s world, the strong countries strive to take over earth’s resources in relentless wars to rule the world.
In fact, we have the power to create plains of fertility or dust bowls of wastelands; to harness wind and water for power or to pollute it to poison; to split atoms for energy, or to use in devastating destruction. We now even have the power to destroy our very planet within our universe.
We control and breed all forms of life down to the smallest virus, and to the very DNA of our own genetic code. How must we appear to the lowly beasts on earth that seem to cringe, stare in awe of us, and run away? We can love them or kill them at our whim. Of course, we are gods on earth to them!
All this convinces me that yes, we are designed to be gods and to be like God. Genesis, the first book in the Bible quotes God as saying: “Let us make man in our own image and likeness…and let them fill the earth and subdue it”. Jesus Christ acknowledged our status when he asked his followers, “Is it not written in your Law, I have said you are gods?” From the very beginning then, we were designed to be gods! But there’s yet another godly trait:
- We set our own moral standards!
The ultimate god-like characteristic is having a free moral agency to choose for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. This autonomy of choice is the unique difference between human beings and all other animals created. Animals are not troubled by this choice because they behave the way they have been programmed. We alone have the God-given power to make our own rules and choose our own morals.
I will leave you with a closing thought however, because with empowerment there is always a problem. How does one control the proper use of this power? That is the moral question we might ask ourselves every day. How do you control the sometimes insane use of power that some people have? And perhaps the solution to this foremost question is currently being worked out on our planet …by the cosmic Gods themselves!
––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ♥ Heart Thought –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Straight from the big black book:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” Genesis 1:26 NIV Bible
Check out more in Chapter Two of the author's book: The Celestial Proposal: Our Invitation to Join the God Kind
Jane Catherine Rozek 
Interesting blog. I understand the soul as the conscious and subconscious minds. Perhaps there are more similarities than we gather with the great apes who apparently are dreaming. “After identifying REM sleep in humans, scientists soon began studying it in animals. Almost all mammals and birds that have been studied – from dogs and cats to duck-billed platypuses, and even reptiles – seem to go into this stage of Rapid Eye Movement sleep. The patterns of electrical activity in the animals’ brains during this stage are similar to those of humans. So, if these patterns show that humans are dreaming, then it might be that these animals are dreaming, too.” (https://earthsky.org/earth/animal-dreams#:~:text=But%2C%20since%20the%201950s%2C%20scientists,which%20was%20discovered%20in%201953.) I do believe in a God-guided evolution. I also think the tight constraints on the requirements for life and earth, as we know it, make the absence of an all powerful God a non-sensical position.
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Yes! There’s still the question of the ‘Missing Link” between primate and human entities! Thanks for your input. I’m enjoying your blog too!
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