Scotsbard, you make good points and ask good questions. But they don't seem related to the "red herring" that got up your craw, namely, whether there is anybody who thinks that the universe was created JUST FOR humans. Perhaps "straw man" would have been a better term for me to use.

You said, and I quote, "assuming that this entire universe was created just for humans seems incredibly arrogant."

Which is true. But nobody believes this.

I asked whether you can show that there is anybody out there in the wide, blue world who really holds this belief.

So far you have not presented evidence that there is.

Whether or not I can define "soul" or if that's the qualitative difference are kinda beside the point. My own personal opinion is that yes we do have souls, but the qualitative difference I spoke to can be seen merely in behavioral terms. What other creatures create art? What other creatures bury their dead with flowers? What other creatures have culture, literature, poetry, bluegrass music? (I mean in the wild, not ones that have been semi-humanized by intensive exposure to humans.) It's not that (say) chimps have really primitive, really lousy bluegrass music/culture/poetry/whatever and ours is more advanced. That would be a quantitative difference. They don't have it at all.

Nevertheless this is all by the bye. The "red herring" was and is: who in God's (Goddess's) green earth really believes that the world was created just for humans? Any attempts to not answer this question by dragging in other questions seem like ... well, fish of a different color.

Alex
O..O
=o=