God created both humans and animals, and He designed them to be very different types of creatures. He created humans to live eternally, and animals to live only temporally. Because of that, animals have no soul, and do not think in the human sense of the word, nor do they hold beliefs. This is why humans are not animals, since animals have nothing immaterial about them. Animals are stimulus-response artificial intelligence based super-computers. Humans have a greatly enhanced artificial intelligence supercomputer brain, but we also have an immaterial soul connected to it which makes us very different than animals, and also makes us eternal. But since animals have no soul, God gave them something unique which He did not give to humans, as we will see.
The Bible says mankind was created in the image of God, which refers to the soul because it has similar thought and belief capabilities as God expresses through the Bible, but of course on a much different scale. Animals are not said to be created in the image of God because they do not have souls. The real life of a human is in the soul, although the human material body can be viewed as physically alive. But the life of an animal is entirely in the body.
Most people think of human superiority over animals as a given, but that superiority does not come from the physical brain, but rather from the soul of humans. Humans could not be at the top of the animal kingdom without a soul, because the material part of humans is actually inferior to many animals. It is our thinking which makes us superior, not our physical attributes, and that thinking is only in the soul. Animals have been given something uniquely different than humans, namely enhanced instincts, which takes the place of a soul for animals. Humans are virtually devoid of enhanced instincts, and have only a few basic ones to enable newborns to get started in life. Human animals without a soul could not even survive to reproduce since the human brain cannot operate independently from the soul, since it is dependent on the soul, another difference between humans and animals.
However, evolutionary theories assume that humans are animals without souls, and put humans at the top of the evolutionary chain. But this theory does not take into account that a human brain apart from a soul is unable to perform the higher order tasks humans are capable of. Without those higher order capabilities, humans as animals would have become extinct quickly in a body not designed for animalistic living in a wild world. Rather, God made humans far more capable than animals, more capable than any brain could ever become, by putting a soul inside. Therefore the suppositions concerning thought and belief in humans are not the same as for animals. Animals have enhanced instincts which make them highly capable even though they have no soul. But humans have a soul which allows us to figure out how to do things better than animals ever could, because we can think and figure out complex issues, and act in ways which are superior to animals. Beyond that, we hold beliefs, and can believe in God and learn to love Him. We think about the future, and the past. The Bible explains that humans have souls, in the image of God, which makes us very much different than animals.
So is there any possibility of evolution from animals to humans? Science has tried endlessly to find missing links in a theoretical evolutionary chain. But the real missing link is that no animal has a soul, and evolution could never make a leap from no soul to a soul, from purely material to material plus immaterial. Therefore, creatures without souls could never evolve into souled creatures. To go from no soul to a soul is not an evolutionary step. That is an impossible chasm which could never be crossed. Humans think and believe from an immaterial soul. Animals cannot since they have none. Therefore the real missing link of evolution, the wall of impenetrability between animals and humans, is the soul which yields thoughts and beliefs.
Evolutionists cannot allow belief in the existence of a soul since it would destroy their entire theory. Even if we were to consider that somehow animals could evolve from an animal to a human body, which itself defies logic and science, not to mention the Bible, the addition of an immaterial soul is absolutely and literally impossible. This is why the evolutionist must believe that humans are animals with no soul, because the human soul creates an impassable barrier between animal and human, one which evolutionary theory cannot accommodate. The material cannot evolve into the immaterial. Even evolutionists believe this. And if anyone wonders how they can still believe what they believe, that is a later chapter in this book.
Also consider for a moment why no animal species has become dominant on the earth as humans have. No animal comes anywhere near the global dominance humans have exerted on the earth. There is no way they ever could. They do not think and believe in a manner that would allow it to occur. They do not think or believe at all. They instinctively seek food and water and a mate and sleep. Maybe a pat on the head or such. That is about all. No higher order thinking there, just instincts. But advanced animals do have the five senses in common with humans. Since all animals are sensory stimulus-response based supercomputers with artificial intelligence and instincts, they have the same type of senses because those are required to interact with the universe as God created it. But the endpoint for that sensory information is the brain of animals, rather than the soul in humans. They can figure out how to defeat a squirrel-proof bird feeder, but that is simply trial and error. They can also learn tricks, but that is stimulus-response and learned muscle memory, often done for rewards. They do not think and believe as humans can, but their enhanced instincts do give them something which humans lack, and for a good reason as we will discuss.
For the sake of illustration only, if a human body could function with the soul removed, the result would be, at best, a dysfunctional animal. That is because the higher order thoughts and beliefs would be gone without a soul, and since the human brain has almost no instincts, it would have a significant disadvantage for survival. So if a human body could "live" without a soul, it would not function like what we expect from a human. In fact, it would never have consciousness. We see this from people who have lost consciousness due to an accident or illness, and have no brain electrical signals, which shows the soul is gone, yet the body survives physically for some period of time without artificial intervention. This can and does happen. That is what a human is like without a soul -- unconscious. The physical part of humans was not designed to have the brain function as a capable animal apart from the soul, which is much different than how animals are designed. God did not create humans as animals, and He does not want the physical human body to be capable of acting as an animal if a soul is not present. Such creatures would be robots or androids, not humans.
We mentioned how God gave animals something He did not give humans, which is enhanced instinctive programming. Humans have almost no instincts, except for newborns in order to get them started in life -- nursing, swallowing, and a few others. But enhanced instincts are programmed into almost all animals, from large mammals down to tiny insects, to enable them to survive. It is the instincts which make up for their lack of a soul. Some birds find their perfect nesting place 1000 miles away in a place where they have never been. Baby turtles run toward the ocean at birth. Animals in parched areas of Africa find distant water they cannot possibly have known how to reach. Butterflies and hummingbirds migrate to another continent to survive the winter. Mosquitoes find us no matter how we try to avoid them, and they have a "brain" the size of a pinhead. We can see instinctive behaviors in most animals around us, and many other instincts are less obvious. But God did not give humans such instincts because He gave us a soul and requires us to think our way through life, not act on instincts to merely survive. For humans, God wants more from us than mere survival, He wants us to know Him, understand Him, and maybe even learn to love Him. For animals God wants them to do what He programmed them to do, and support humans on many levels. Instincts take the place of a soul in animals, but it is not thinking or even cognitive, and it is not immaterial. It is programming in their brains, often very tiny ones.
But what is it about animals that make us want to believe we share more of a common bond? Possibly their artificial intelligence based brain and instinctive behaviors which make them appear to be capable of loving their human benefactors. But what we actually see from them is God's wondrous programming of an amazing supercomputer. We see something that looks like affection and appreciation from them, but it is not based on thinking. Animal pets like to be fed and scratched on the head and many other things which they enjoy, but they do so because of their programming, not because they think complex thoughts, or any at all. There is a stimulus and they provide a response. Or maybe they ignore it, if they are a cat. They remember a previous stimulus, and they might even respond in anticipation well in advance. Some actions are complex, to be sure. Squirrels can figure out how to defeat the most complex forms of "squirrel-proof" bird feeders and still get the seeds. Fascinating, but simply supercomputer calculations plus a lot of trial and error repetition. They do not think complex thoughts and hold beliefs regarding the materials of the feeder or the nature of seeds or how the poor birds might suffer as a result of their thievery. They just want to eat and will work tirelessly to achieve this basic instinctive goal, even when the ground is covered with acorns. God designed some animals to look somewhat like human shapes, and to have some very advanced instincts and artificial intelligence capabilities. But they do not have a soul. Animals do not have the ability to think in the abstract, or think at all in our use of the term. They want to remain alive due to instincts, but they do not know they are alive. Humans can think the abstract thought "I am alive" and know the profound implications. Animals cannot think at all in the way we view the issue. Humans do not simply think better than animals. We think, and they do not. We have beliefs, and they do not. They have advanced instincts and we do not. The difference is the soul. The only source of thought and beliefs.
It is the human soul which can believe in God, and can learn to love Him. No animal has ever believed in God. And God created animals because of humans. They were put on earth to support humans in numerous ways. God would not use an evolutionary process to create humans. God also would not tell humans it is acceptable to eat animals if they had a soul. The Bible clearly says humans and the current set of animals were created on the same day, and both were created directly and immediately by God, not over time. God gave humans a soul, but not animals because He has different purposes for each.
So do animals go to Heaven? Sorry, no soul. But there will be new types of animals in eternity because we will live on a New Earth with new plant life as described in the Bible, so there will likely be new forms of animal life as well. Just not your former pet because the physics and environment will be very different, not based on atoms and molecules and such.
But before we leave this issue, which includes instincts, we have discussed that God did not create humans with much in the way of instincts. But although God did not create humans with instinctive behaviors, humans chose to become more like animals in the sense of choosing something which would add negative instinctive behaviors apart from God's will. That addition was the Sinful Nature which Adam and Eve acquired at the point of their sin against God. The Sinful Nature is animalistic, because at its core it is instinctive in a negative sense, not in a positive sense. It makes humans capable of anger, hatred, lusts and violence, and therefore it is animalistic. Not what God intended for humans, but because of sin we have it. Some people give in to it, while others control it to a greater or lesser degree. But it affects all humans. And the sin of the first humans led to God making changes to the earth, which went from a perfect environment to one which is much less hospitable. This also affected all animals, as they went from being tame to having wild tendencies. More on these issues later.
Now that we understand the humans vs. animals issue, we see the absurdity of evolution theories, and also appreciate what God did when He created animals with their unique enhanced instincts. Now we will proceed during the next several chapters to dive even deeper into the intricacies of the human soul in ways few have ever explored, let alone understood.