If we fiddle with the genes of chimps and give them human level sentience and speech, would they believe they suddenly have a soul?

I think the sentience would lead to a belief system not that far off from what many people believe, that all sentient beings have a connection to their creator, whether they consider it a “life force” or a “soul” depend on one’s theology. Children and many others believe in “doggy heaven” and “kitty heaven” as a way of understanding the death of pets.

And I think a sentient chimp or other primate that would begin to have abstract thought would not look at humans as their creator, but as a separate creation by a common Creator.

They do already have a soul whether they believe it or not.

They know in their own monkey way that they have a soul.

Hopefully they wouldn’t concern themselves with such nonsense.

@zenvelo I imagine you are right. If they knew of the gene tampering, the less scientific of them would arm-wave it away as just part of the divine creator’s plan for creating sentient chimps.

@marinelife & @trailsillustrated extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Without that, they are nothing more substantial than fairy tales.

@FutureMemory Given our own record, that seems to me too much to hope for.

To the last question, no… they wouldn’t assume we were their creator unless we lied to them. And even still, with the intelligence of humans they could deduce and perhaps even study history and science to determine the truth (man did not create monkeys).

To the former question, I also believe the answer would be no. Such a ‘newborn’ sentient being, without having had the influences of faith-based belief systems, emotional experiences and the conveyance of the concept of a separate consciousness apart from the physical form designed to live in eternity (the soul), a human-level monkey would do little more than ask a bazillion questions.

I’m not sure how you’re using the word sentience. Rudimentary sentience is simply self awareness which some animals have; chimps and gorillas come to mind. Some animals keep pets, which requires a differentiation from themselves and their chosen pets, and empathy.

The gorilla, Koko, has been taught over 1,000 ASL signs, understands over 2,000 words in English, and communicates with humans. She has also invented a few signs to describe things when she finds ASL lacking. She has been able to choose mates from video, differentiating one from the other in a two dimensional format without any other senses in play, such as smell. She has chosen one intended pet cat from the other in a litter. Then she names her pets. She mourns the loss of loved ones, suffers separation anxiety from friends, and becomes depressed, such as when her pet cat was killed by a car. She experiences loneliness. An adult male companion gorilla, Michael, learned over 600 ASL signs, with Koko’s assistance, and was able to describe decades-old childhood memories of the murder of his mother by west African poachers. After doing so, he signed “bad, sad, bad,” then retreated to a corner and was quiet for the rest of the session. These gorillas also exhibit evidence of pride, modesty, and embarrassment.

I believe all of this requires sentience. So, the leap isn’t very far at all, at least in the case of gorillas. The will to communicate is there and the FOXp2 speech gene might provide very interesting revelations, if transferable and if gorillas have the equipment for speech as we know it.

At no time has Koko or any other of the communicative gorillas considered humans as higher beings, or god-like. Only providers of food, conversation, and amusement. I haven’t seen anything on Dr. Paterson discussing a gorilla origin story or the idea of a creator with these gorillas, but I would be surprised if the subject hasn’t come up. Maybe gorillas don’t concern themselves with such things. I never did until I reached my late 40s and witnessed an inordinate amount of mortality. Maybe Dr. Paterson’s gorillas wouldn’t know anything of traditional gorilla lore, if it exists, because they were all removed from their societies at a very young age. However, Michael’s exhibition of long memory and apparent reflexion upon a perplexing personal tragedy certainly appears to be the seed of rationale and introduces the possibility rudimentary philosophizing. A lot of this is on YouTube. It is quite amazing to watch. Quite poignant.

Sorry, I forgot to tie all the above into a conclusion. I think that self awareness, long memory, introspection and rationalization, and empathy for other beings all represent the tools required to understand a connection with all other beings. I believe Dr, Paterson’s work has shown that gorillas have those tools. It would not be unusual, therefore, for a gorilla to give a name to this connection where one was lacking. Koko has exhibited this ability to invent names and terms when her learned vocabulary is inadequate.

And if this were true of one isolated gorilla, it could be true of a whole society of gorillas and a natural tendency of lore would develop, possibly an origin story, simple parables if you will, which could give hope and solace to gorillas like Michael. After reading about Dr. Paterson’s gorillas, this doesn’t seem too far fetched at this point.

In my opinion, every animal already has a ‘soul’.

First, who is to say we have a soul? Secondly if you accept there is such a thing as a soul, who’s to say animals don’t have one?

http://www.news.com.au/features/chimps-mourn-death-of-fellow-primate-in-display-of-grief/story-e6frflor-1225792369187

If all ‘life’ is part of the collective conscious, then chimps would eventually be in the same boat as humans: some would believe, some would disbelieve and the majority would just follow the Golden Rule to the best of their abilities.

@gambitking Can I read into that answer that you think that the human feeling of having a soul is divinely inspired?

@Espiritus_Corvus You’re quite right. I should have said an ability to think and to reason equal to that of humans. Star Trek used to use sentient beings as beings able to think and reason at levels at least as high as humans living in early civilizations. I just went with that, not bothering to look up the actual meaning of the word.

And yes, I have seen some of the work with Koko. It’s fascinating. I didn’t know about Michael and his distant memory. Amazing. And he is right in his characterization of it.

@Linda_Owl If there is such a thing, perhaps they do.

@uberbatman Certainly, I didn’t say we did. I see no evidence that such is so, and I go where evidence leads me. By the same token, I didn’t say animals do not. I can, however, imagine how someone or some animal could grieve without having to have an immortal soul to do so.

@ibstubro True, but that is a very big IF.

@ETpro

Collective conscious is a smaller ‘if’ in Eastern religions. Reincarnation could hold that chimps already have the same life force as humans, just different spiritual needs and forms of expression. :-)

@ibstubro No, it’s no smaller an if. The evidence for either is the same—nonexistent.

@ETpro as an agnostic, I find it interesting that science and infer the existence or a quark and teach it as fact. Religion infers the existence of a collective conscious and it’s superstition.

I do the best with what I’ve got, knowing that neither science nor religion is going to find the meaning of the universe in my lifetime.

@ibstubro Actually, there is a very large expanse of evidence for the existence of quarks. Their existence also pointed to a number of other things that should exist as well and that particle accelerators let us test for. In every case, right down to the growing confirmation of the Higgs Boson, those predictions all proved to be observable facts. There’s a world of difference between that and “evidence” for the existence of a god or gods, angels, souls, ghosts, werewolves, fairies, unicorns and such.

@ETpro I’m agnostic so I don’t have a horse in the race.

However, I’m starting to see the hypocrisy “a very large expanse of evidence for the existence of” being called a “fact” only when applied to science, and not religion. It was once an observable and provable ‘fact’ that the sun revolved around the Earth. Who’s to say that modern science, while more detailed, doesn’t have a flaw just as inherent?

@ibstubro Nobody that has much understanding of science says that. Here’s an interesting video from NOVA. It’s a little over 50 minutes long, so view it when you have time.

It focuses on the battle that went on in the mid 1900s between Einstein and classical physics and the growing understanding of quantum mechanics pioneered by Neils Bohr and others. Einstein died still convinced that the equations showing that quantum entanglement worked by what he derided as “spooky action” were wrong. He was certain that the very requirement for “spooky action” proved that our understanding of quantum mechanics was somehow flawed.

Subsequent to his death, scientists perfected experiments to test whether Bohr’s equations were right, and there really is spooky action, or whether Einstein was right that classical understandings of cause and effect, and communication over distance being limited to the speed of light had to rule. Turns out spooky action, as absurd as it seems to the human mind, is real. And it acts over distances instantaneously. It’s as if distance is an illusion.

At the dawn of the 20th century, Einstein shattered the earlier Newtonian understanding of the orbital motion of planets and stars with his contribution of General and Special Relativity. Bohr and the new league of quantum mechanics researchers have refined our understanding yet again, and in doing so have raised far more questions than they resolved.

But it would be a great mistake for humanity to reject the scientific method because it hasn’t produced a completely unassailable result. Religion purports to deliver absolute truth, and yet it has been shown to often rely on absolute bunk. Science doesn’t claim to deliver absolute truth. It is properly used to constantly refine our understanding and reveal more and more about our Universe and how it works. Even the Newtonian understanding of physics, flawed as we now know it was, gave us a powerful set of tools to see how our solar system was ordered, and to absolutely dismiss the false notion that the Earth was its center, a notion that is still supported in Genesis.