So what is your test to separate chimps from dogs? You still haven't given a definition of kind. Postulating a "soul" is no better unless you can distinguish entities with a soul from those without.
Some things are spiritual. Our soul gives us the opportunity for eternal life (through God's Son, Jesus Christ). It is essentially your "mind." It will come down to "proof," but, how many animals are wondering about their origin, purpose and future existence?
"There is a great, uncrossable gulf between animal brain and human mind. The evolutionary theory assumes that humans are animals. But one thing evolution can never explain is the total difference between animal brain equipped with instinct, and the human mind with creative reasoning powers of intellect and devoid of instinct in the strict sense that animals possess it.
Some animals have physical brains as large or larger than man's brain, and with similar cerebral cortex complexity--but none has the powers of intellect, logic, self-consciousness and creativity.
The physical brain of a dolphin, whale or elephant is larger than the human brain, while a chimp's is slightly smaller. Qualitatively the difference between them and the human brain is very little--not enough to remotely account for the vastly superior intelligence and output of the human brain. The gap between animal brain and human mind is incredibly vast!
But man's mind is vastly different from animal instinct. Man is able to devise various ways to do any one thing or to achieve a predetermined goal. Man can acquire knowledge and reason from it. He can draw conclusions, make decisions, will to act according to a thought-out plan.
Man can choose--he has free moral agency. He can devise codes of conduct and exercise self-discipline. Man can originate ideas and evaluate knowledge because he has a MIND which is patterned after God's own mind!
Man alone can wonder, " Why was I born? What is life? What is death? Is there a purpose in human existence?" Man, unlike the animals, not only knows how to do certain things, but he also KNOWS that he knows--that is, he is aware that he has "knowledge." He is conscious of the fact. He is self-conscious, aware of his own existence as a unique being."
soul-less placemarker