My own belief re: Evolution tends toward the Micro evolutionary scale. Whilst I DO believe that Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens neandertalis ARE related to other higher Primates, particularly the Common Chimpanzee (in fact, in his book The Third Chimpanzee scientist Jared Diamond recommends classifying Pan troglodytes, the Common Chimpanzee, as Homo troglodytes instead; alternatively and preferably he considers humans a third species of Chimpanzee), I do NOT believe all life developed from primordial ooze.
If J. Diamond is right, what it means is not that humans are a species of Pan. It means that Pan paniscus and Pan troglodytes join us and Homo sapiens neandertalis (and Homo erectus, for that matter) as members of the family Man. Pan simply does not exist.
But then another question pops up. When was Homo sapiens sapiens given the breath of life, and in what manner did this make him different than the other Primates, including other members of Homo?
"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Gen. 2:7, KJV.
Clearly we distinguish between human rights and animal rights. My dog does not have the right to vote, serve in a public capacity (although some dogs do work for the handicapped, the military, and the police), and do many other things humans can do.
On the other hand, I freely admit that if I ever met FLATEARTHDENIAL, I would consider it my duty to let and encourage my dog to chew him up.
Does a Chimpanzee have a soul? I don't know. I have certainly never talked to one. Unless we count FLATEARTH, but that would probably be doing a great disservice to Chimpanzees to compare them to the GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) that is his daily existence.
I would suggest to you that in fact Chimpanzees are in fact properly categorised in the class Pan. While Mr. Diamond makes an interesting case, ultimately, it fails to convince, except PERHAPS in the case of FLATEARTH. We realise that he has been reclassified so he can post here. Otherwise, anyone could be encouraged to remove the Chimpanzee.
All that having been said, what makes this Homo sapiens sapiens better than OTHER members of family Homo? Well, bigger brains for one thing. That can be used to turn pictures on a cave wall into a stylised picture into a symbol that is then regularised into an alphabet that is then used to develop Writing. And that example is just one like it.
Now, back to Genesis. How do we estimate the Six Days to have taken place? Well, the Sun and the Moon and the Stars were not created until the Fourth Day. Until then, the light that radiated to the Earth must have been from another source. The Rabbis say that it was from the Throne of G-d. HOWEVER, this being the key word, how would you get 24 hour time periods without the Sun? So it is my contention that the first three days could each have been as long as G-d wanted them to be.The last four days would have 24 hours most likely.
Did other members of the Homo family have a soul? Likely they did on some level And the whole question of what Neanderthal was is still questionable. Was he Homo sapiens neandertalis? A subspecies of our species? Or Homo neandertalis, a separate species? Probabably the first since we know that every human ethnic group except the Negro has 2% to 4% Neanderthal DNA in their genome sequence. And the reason Negroes don't is because no Neanderthal lived in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since they could breed with us, and those offspring were obviously able to breed, it appears that they were Homo sapiens neandertalis.
Now did they have souls? I would think so. We could argue all day. If one lived today, would it have human rights? It should, in my mind. Their brains were actually larger than ours. But they were larger in the rear where cognitive memory is. They had to memorise EVERYTHING. Their frontal lobes were not well developed. Original thinking and new ideas was not their thing.
So, circling back to Genesis. Adam and Eve. Was there a first set of Homo sapiens sapiens? Well, yeah. At some point, you have to make a new model of something. You might even call them the prototype.
G-d didn't intend for anything to go wrong. He gave us Free Will and the knowledge of what would happen if we chose disobedience. Death has been our lot ever since.
Human rights, I would think, would apply to anything that has the word Homo as a Family name to it. So Homo sapiens sapiens, Homo erectus, Homo sapiens neandertalis, and anything else they were to find alive or to (G-d forbid) clone in that category would have to be extended the same rights and privileges we take for ourselves.
Cloning is just a horrible idea in general. Pretending to be G-d is REALLY fucking with shit, and payback is a bitch, people. Its called karma.
As for FLATEARTH, he deserves no human rights. In fact, its too bad he's not kosher. I would recommend using him as an animal sacrifice.