What Does it Mean to be Human?

I found this weird song by Rich Mullins I had not heard before. The song is lame (very 80's INXS wanna-be with heavy usage of sax), but this is the intro to the song, which is spoken.

I don't know if Rich got this from someone else, or if he wrote it, but I like it.

"What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be human?

I cannot help but suspect that at one time in the history of thinking
that people believed that it meant that we were spiritual and that we
could make choices and were capable of aspiring to higher ideals...
like maybe loyalty or maybe faith... or maybe even love.

But now we are told by people who think they know, that we vary from
amoeba only in the complexity of our makeup and not in what we
essentially are. They would have us think as Dysart said that we are
forever bound up in certain genetic reigns - that we are merely products
of the way things are and not free - not free to be the people who make
them that way. They would have us see ourselves as products so that
we could believe that we were something to be made - something to
be used and then something to be disposed of. Used in their wars -
used for their gains and then set aside when we get in their way.

Well, who are they? They are the few who sit at the top of the heap -
dung heap though it is - and who say it is better to reign in Hell than
to serve in Heaven. Well, I do not know that we can have a Heaven
here on earth, but I am sure we need not have a Hell either.

What does it mean to be human? I cannot help but believe that it means
we are spiritual - that we are responsible and that we are free - that
we are responsible to be free."