It is "special" only because it's the result of millions of years of evolution, not because some reassuring omnipotent being from another plane selected it to be so. Dozens of species are using tools, building things, solving problems, and feeling things (however small and nascent!). Our species is just early to the party by a fraction of a million years, which is, geologically and cosmologically, peanuts (Not even talking about the time we've been actually toying with electricity and transistors).
Carl Sagan sums up how deceitful an anthropocentric point of view is quite nicely in Pale Blue Dot. Although applied to science and cosmologies, it definitely applies to anything we deem sacred just because it's us.
“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.”
“Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.“
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.”
“Once we lose our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe which dwarfs -- in time, in space, and in potential -- the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.”
