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If they behave a certain way socially, that could just as well be completely dictated by their genes



Genes dont "dictate" behavior...because genes play no active role in how an organism functions on a day-to-day basis, something else must guide it.

I agree that this is a contentious issue, and maybe not fully solvable. However, I think the concept of human uniqueness is species chauvinism; just because a chimp cant talk to us, doesnt mean they dont have some kind of self-awareness and sense of being. I think that many animals have emotions, and form attachments to other animals (including poeple), as most pet owners would agree.

Certainly this is subjective in the extreme, but then so is all emotion, and even the whole concept of consciousness. A perfectly logical argument can be made by any idividual that he/she is the only self-aware person in existence, because there is no real way to prove otherwise. This is a called sollipsism. While I doubt anyone actually believes this, there is no rational way to prove absolutely that any other person is truely conscious or self-aware. A typical arguement can go like this:

"for all I know, everyone else is an android or a gollum created by an evil spirit, etc. They can insist that they aren't but they could be lying."

There is no real way to actually refute this arguement logically, but it seems extremely unlikely to actually be the case, so we assume that it is false.

This relates to the idea of whether animals have consciouness because it shows that the question of the consciousness of the "other" is entirely subjective, and must be based on observations of behavior alone. While I'm not a true bahviorist, I do think there is really no way to actually view a consciouness seperated from its outward behavior.

Thus most poeple observing animals like great apes, and certain other mammals and even birds can easily conclude that these creatures have must have some consciousness, even if it is different than ours. While they may not think symbolically, they may certainly think emotionally. And then of course, there is some good evidence that a gorilla can learn some language skills.

This makes good sense--if we use evolutionary theory. In the modern evolutionary framework, the great apes like gorillas are fairly closely related to humans, having seperated from the human line some few millions of years ago. While evolution provides a good explanation for the compelling similarities in physical morphology AND social behavior bewteen humans and apes, creationism does NOT.

To conclude: there are observable similarities between apes and humans that seem too close to be purely chance coincidences. When combined with the genetic evidence that show we share about 98% of our genes with chimpanzees, the evidence for a close and receent ancestral link is undeniable. This then naturally requires a process of biological change, which is provided by Darwin.

Given the strength of these arguements, the result seems strong, and any problems and seeming paradoxes are far more likely to be products of an incomplete understanding of the highly complex nature of life, or a poor understanding of the facts and theory itself, by those who desire to attack it for emotional or philosophical reasons.

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