Three times here you've mentioned these abilities - qualities that are properly applied to a Creature that is MORE than an 'animal' - a Creature that is God-like.
If we are more that 'animals', it is because we were created that way: by a God, for His OWN reason, wished to do so.
The 'religious' understand this fact - our forefathers did, for it is engraved in stone (oops - that flexible, living document, that has been so massaged to be almost unrecognizable now) reading...
WHEN, in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands, which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's GOD entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation.
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their CREATOR, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.--
Without a 'religion', the non-religious cannot hold on the the Self-Evident Truth, so the foundation is very shaky.
You say that because you have been taught it. Pure faith notwithstanding, I see a highly evolved animal that has reached the point of assuming such qualities as a part of his makeup. Some call it God-given; some call it natural progression. But those qualities do exist. And I maintain they do not exist because of Christianity.
Without a 'religion', the non-religious cannot hold on the the Self-Evident Truth, so the foundation is very shaky.
Not at all. Nonbelievers in a higher being still believe that certain natural rights exist in all humans that are part of the human makeup. These rights are not trumped by the state, nor are they given by the state. Whether they are given by a higher power is irrelevant to many.
And we know that Christians throughout their history have systematically deprived human beings of those rights. Did they do that under the auspices of God? Slave owners (Christians) showed Bible passages that justified their ownership of fellow humans.