Animals can manifest empathy?
What would you call it, when a dog refuses to leave the side of his dead master? Or a longtime companion, human or canine?
You've never seen a photo of an animal who's "adopted" an infant of a different species, and nurtured it? Who taught it do do that?
What next, apes sitting around in Laz-a-boy chairs, smoking cigars and reading the newspaper?
Haha 
- but that'd be better than some of what they are likely to do at the zoo, in public.
Like the misinformed reporter I saw on TV showing a gorilla whose offspring died. The gorilla was trying to make the dead offspring move, because that is how animals avoid predators. The reporter was trying to establish a parallel between the gorilla's actions and the nurturing given to a human child by a human mother. The reporter actually said, "..like our cousins, the gorillas." None of my relatives swing by their tails from trees!
It'd sure liven up the family get togethers, though, wouldn't it?
Look, I have pets. I enjoy the company of my parrot.
His snuggles, cooing and cute behaviors are not because he can rationally determine to do such; it is an reaction taught via repetition.
So who 'taught' the dogs who have saved peoples' lives? And I can assure you that no one taught the Rottweiler who served as protector to my daughter from infancy through adolescence - it was entirely the dog's idea!
Mankind has a living soul. Animals do not.
That may be a theory, conjecture, or dogma, but it's NOT a fact.
Any attempt to give human attritubutes to animals is a subtle method of disavowing God's creation; hence, no God...anything goes.
Atheism being a well known defense for antisocial behavior, huh?
Ask liberals about how they arrive at their conclusions and their response will be predicated by, “Because I feel...”
On the other hand, ask conservatives, and their response will be predicated by, “Because I think...”
