To think that animals do have souls........

[milou2]

even though Xenia says they don't. Discuss!

of course they don't. And they don't have religion or incest either. They're animals.

I think you first have to define what a soul is don't you?

I am non-religious but I believe we have souls, I also believe that animals have spirits (is that a soul?) I think the closer an animal is to people the more likely it is to have a soul... so a beloved family dog would have a spirit or soul but a fish in a river would not have a soul.

Define soul....

I don't know - does it matter one way or another?

Some certainly seem to have personalities.

no one has a soul animal or human.we are physiological matter not some ethereal undefined composition

YANBU - I believe animals have souls

I don't believe anybody or anything has a soul.

YABU.

oohb you need to read some medieval theology- loadsa stuff on this and on the body and the soul and their relationship to each other and all that good stuff.

imo, no. But if I thought humans did, then I'd think animals did too, so YANBU. Presumably plants don't?

I don't know if anyone or anything has a soul.

The very fact that an animal has a personality is enough for me to want to treat them well.

I think that respecting the life of an animal by not buying one that has lived her life caged is the humane thing to do.

There is fundamentally something abhorrent about not caring about animals and allowing them to suffer.

I don't believe in the supernatural, but I cried buckets reading that rainbow bridge poem after my dog died.

Kingcanute - Why would an animal have a soul the closer it is to people? That makes no sense.

Agree soul needs to be defined.

Not sure why we would have something that an animal wouldn't though.

Well I on't, but then I don't think anyone or anythign has a soul. Most living things have consciousness (don't think that plants have anything you could really describe as consciousness though).

isn't the point that man is made in God's image (unlike animals)? So that is meant to put us above animals in Christian theology?

I agree Juuule, it is just a quirk of my belief. I can see a family pet having a soul or a wild bear/lion but not a fish. Perhaps it is actually a mammal thing?

what is a soul? It is a human idea which adds some gravitas to religion. As such, it has no bearing at all on how we should or shouldn't treat animals.

soul? spirit? both? either?

yes. i think everything has something.

I wonder what a soul is meant to be too.

Presumably we are deemed to have one each whether we want it or not.

Soul, personality, consciousness, life..all these words have slightly different meanings.

I think they do.

I think that anything that lives, and can therefore die, has a soul.

cabbages dont have a soul

Lettuces dont have a soul

Cats have a soul

Fish have souls

Humans have souls

Who knows what a 'soul' is? I don't. I suppose it's a consciousness, in which case I think all living creatures have one.

Many people like to think that human beings are somehow special. I don't agree. Much of our behaviour is not that different from what we see in the rest of the animal kingdom, tbh.

We're streets ahead in the technology department, that's true! but the rest? Not so different.

re the lives and can die thing .. maybe cabbages DO have souls!! - plants are 'born' - insofar as first they were a seed, or a part of another plant, then they grew into a separate plant - they live and they die. Trees for example, live for many hundreds of years, but eventually they die and rot.

They are 'alive'.

Perhaps the criteria for a soul is sentience?

Plants are alive though, msspent, and they die...

They could be sentient, just not in a way that we understand it.

That's part of the problem, we think we're so great, we can't accept that other ways of being could be just as valid.

MisSpentYoof sorry to burst your bubble but plants live!

So there goes your theory.

YAbu. Peaple have souls animals don't.