cannibalism, when is it okay?

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can nonhuman animals have purposeful behavior?

I have a religious and not scientific answer.

i can't see how there could be a scientific answer to that question

Animal intelligence, vs. do they go to heaven.

There are two ways of looking at it.

Some vegans believe that animal life is sacred, so call any carnivorism an act of cannibalism. They use the word cannibalism.

Is it?

i would only consider cannibalism to be eating ones same species.

i guess i'm not sure what you mean by "purposeful behavior".

In other words, does intelligence come from a physical brain or a spirit.

It comes from the ability to learn.

There is a difference between recording information, and creating that information. In other words, proactive or reactive.

A teacher once said to my class, "The more you know, the more you can know." I have found him to have been right. And I would add that the more you know the more foundation you have for creativity.

AMEN!! !

Then, you believe that the animal is self initiating, and can decide to something completely apart from instinct, after it eats enough bananas or catches enough flies.

I think tool use is the first indicator of learning.

From the Arthur C. Clark movie?

Conscious beings are dynamic systems. Genetic phenotypes for instance don't trace directly back to genotypes in a 1:1 manner and you have the whole epigenetics issue.

Since it's always a give and take game it means that cognition is probably something like a fulcrum where the differences between instinct and environment get hashed out. Probably a good thing we have such imaginations as we do rather than needing to touch every new kind of hot stove and burn our hands. There are people who don't have that faculty cemented in very well and I think of George Clooney's analogy in Michael Clayton where he was telling his son about the dipisht cousin who had no common sense and where consequences just seemed to, in his mind, be raining down on him with no discernible rhyme or reason. While people like that might be able to survive these days, so long as they don't get outfitted with cement overshoes, they would have been a lion or tiger's meal some 20,000 - 30,000 years ago.

I am talking about producing something new, even intellectual property, completely apart from your environment.

Do most people, or, if you like, animals, meet that standard of intelligence.