Do humans deserve to endure?
What can be said of a species that valorizes proficiency in killing and derides reflection and justice?
Genesis 1:26 relates: “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 wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’”
Genesis 1:28 adds: “God blessed [male and female] and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’”
Natural law, discerned with our reflective faculties, establishes a moral hierarchy among species. Species that exalt justice, wisdom, and every benevolent instinct of the heart sit at the top of the hierarchy. Species that squander their existence in hormonal gratifications by choosing philosophical emptiness occupy the bottom of the hierarchy. The fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, livestock, wild animals, and creatures that move along the ground occupy intermediate positions.
Genesis pontificates that humans are superior to the latter and should thus rule them. But all experience is against that biblical hierarchy.
The human species valorizes proficiency in killing other members of the species on an industrial for the sake of killing or gratifying the hormonal lust for power or domination. The armored knight leaps from the pages of poetry and romance. No other species kills other members on the scale of human carnage. And they characteristically kill for food, shelter, or other bare necessities not to dominate the world.
Humans have the capacity to subordinate their hormonal lusts to their reflective faculties that exalt justice, learning, kindness, and critical thinking. But they bypass that wonderful opportunity in favor of hormonally driven sordid lives through free will. That choice is not ordained at birth.
Species narcissism prevents humans from seeing what all other species can see. We are morally and philosophically inferior and have forfeited any right to rule over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, livestock, wild animals, and creatures that move along the ground.
The Bible underestimated the lures of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.