The Fifth Level of Evolution

The theory of evolution is well established by scientific evidence, but is far from explaining everything. Some puzzles remain pending whose resolution does not seem to be immediate:

• The origin of life. We do not know how, when and where it happened. There are many theories, but none has been proven and are very difficult to prove, because the origin of life, rather than a scientific fact, is a historical fact. It is not enough if we were able to reproduce it in the laboratory, it’s necessary to find documentary evidence that this is how it happened, not otherwise. It’s very likely that these tests cannot be found, because the paleontological traces of the origin of life have surely been lost.
• The mystery of the change in level. Throughout the history of life on Earth, living things have gone through several successive levels:

Why I am not an animalist

Bullfight in Benavente
in honor of Philip I.
Attributed to the Flemish painter
Jacob van Laethem

I have written two previous posts in this blog (this one and this one) attacking animalism in its inflamed form, which occasionally makes its way into the media. These two posts have given rise to many comments in their Spanish version, as some of my readers identify themselves rather with the animalistic position than with mine. In this post I’ll try to explain some of the reasons why I think as I do.

First, as my readers know (for it’s the subject of the most read post in this blog, about 35,000 visits), I don’t consider man as just another animal (as some, but not all, animalists think, and they use this argument to deny that man can have more rights than other animals, or to assert that animals should have the same rights as we do).