Human exceptionalism

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Human exceptionalism refers to a belief that human beings have special status in nature based on their unique capacities. This special status conveys special rights, such as the right to life, and also unique responsibilities, for example, the duty to maintain a healthy environment and to protect endangered species. Some, not all, believers in human exceptionalism base the concept of human exceptionalism in religion, such as the verse in Genesis 1:26 "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Others take a distinctly secular approach, such as pointing to evidence of unusual rapid evolution of the brain and the emergence of "extraordinary" capacities. As one commentator put it, "Over the course of human history, we have been successful in cultivating our faculties, shaping our development, and impacting upon the wider world in a deliberate fashion, quite distinct from evolutionary processes."^[1] Whether based on science, philosophy, religion, or a combination of all three, human exceptionalism believes that human beings are unlike any other species in the known universe.