Like the parrot and the dolphin, my shiatsu dog can understand a number of my words as to what they relate to and responds accordingly. He even acts like he's trying to talk on occasion when he gets highly emotional.
Unlike your dog, the parrot in question actually could talk, or at any rate, it certainly could if Dr Pepperberg's research is to be believed. It could use specific words to communicate specific ideas. It could use words for number values up to six. Your dog can't do that.
Perhaps the soulish difference in humans is that humans express themselves with words, create logical thought expressed by words etc.
Yet this is exactly what the parrot seems to have been doing. In what way is "I want X" not a logical thought expressed in words? This suggests either that Alex had a soul or that souls are not necessary for speech.
All the parrot can do is make word sounds, mimicking what the creature hears, often relating those word sounds to physical things which the person does when using those words.
No, that is exactly what Alex was not doing. Did you even read that article?
quote:
quantities up to and including 6 and a zero-like concept. He used phrases such as “I want X” and “Wanna go Y”, where X and Y were appropriate object and location labels. He acquired concepts of categories, bigger and smaller, same-different, and absence.
That is not just mimicry or object recognition. Pepperberg even believes that Alex was able to coin new words for new objects. Perhaps she is wrong, but her work with parrots forces us to take these ideas seriously.
Animals have many traits similar to humans as well as to other animal species. Some of these traits like emotion are even somewhat soulish, but nothing compared to the capability of humans who the Bible says are fashioned in the image of God. Imo, this is evidence that the same designer designed them all.
Actually, we are not that far apart here, we just attribute the process to different agencies. I would say that many animals show human-like mental capacities. I would also say that there are many examples of what might be considered primitive language use, emotion or intelligence amongst animals. I however see this as being an obvious implication of evolutionary theory rather than the work of a designer. It isn't at all surprising to me that a range of animals should show a varying range of cognitive abilities.
Certainly Baalam's talking beast of burden's ability to talk was miraculous.
But is God opening the parrot's mouth?
Mutate and Survive
"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade