Do animals have souls?

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READ my lips - there was education before writing was invented. There was education before schools.

There are even today illiterates better educated than you or I.

boys boys, do not let semantics kill us.
People did become educated back in the old days. But they never learned the same stuff, and they most certainly did not learn a whole deal on the subject we are talking about.

Yeah exactly. Not as many had formal education as we do nowadays, so religion basically brought structure to those who weren't formally educated. Anyways, I hate arguing over anything petty whether it's spelling, semantics, etc.

Well, no contest on that.

same stuff - I assume you mean the same as one another - no, not across national [tribal if you prefer, same difference pretty much] boundaries. The science and art of the Pau-Dunq would be very different from that of the Real People. But within each unit, education certainly - book or no - involved and involves socialization [according to my mama the REAL reason to get eddicated] and a degree of shared knowledge if not uniformity.

The subject in question - again, no, the curriculum was and in the right places still is very different. But that should not be an issue in a culture where what the engineer learns over his academic career overlaps so little with what the musician - or the linguist - learns. Fact is, LEARNING in discipline A, if carefully scrutinized, will often contradict the learning of discipline B.

And yes, you can think of it if you will as semantic quibbling, and I have a weakness in that direction, being - part of my izibongo - a lifelong academic son of two Classicists, grandson of two lawyers.

But - are we going to be so ethnocentric as to say there is no education but what goes on in OUR schools?

I don't know why I am involved in this discussion. I do not want to be involved in this discussion anymore. I hereby leave this discussion.

There's a difference between rote learning thousands of pages of oral tradition, and understanding something so intricately connected as systems biology, or quantum physics. I see where you are coming from, however.

No one has souls.

To make that assertion you must first say what a soul is.

One can say there are no unicorns but first one must say what a unicorn is.

ruveyn

According to Wikipedia:



All of that, at least as far as I'm concerned, is complete and utter rubbish.

that is a question i asked myself years ago, and of the thousands that i have cut up to find out, i never once found a soul inside any of them.

I did the same with humans and had the same result

actually i must hastily say that my last post was my idea of a sick joke. i can not leave people stew over whether i meant it.

i believe that animals are just as aware of their world as we are of ours, and i believe they feel pain to the same excruciating degree as we do, and i believe that if there is a god he would love every animal in the same way he loves humans.

humans are animals.

i think non human animals are innocent. even the killer whales that toss seals in the air for fun. even the cats that toy with mice until they are dead when they are not intending to eat them.

even the lions that stalk and kill a feeble lame fawn that has fallen behind and struggled to keep up, but is now hopelessly alone and afraid.

they are innocent because they are driven by instinct, and they can not help what they do.

there are some animals that will even rise above instinct, but most are just doing as their brains determine.

i think cold and calculating intelligence condemns humans to a lower place in heaven if there is a heaven, than the honest and unknowing animals who see no wrong.

humans see the concept of wrong, and they are condemned if they trespass beyond that threshold because they knew and decided what they would do. animals see no wrongness and can not be blamed for anything they do.

i do not know what a soul is, but if it is the essence of being, then of course animals have it to the same degree as humans do.

i thought you may freak at me because of what i said, but i also was going to say what you said, but i have no idea of boundaries of appropriateness and i thought i may get into trouble as i do in real life constantly by treading over the line of peoples tolerance.

in real life people's tolerances are expendable because there is only one of them at a time. i do not want to get barred from this site though because i use it to get tired and bored so i can go to sleep.

I like "inappropriate" jokes anyway, but I don't think yours was too bad at all, just a little graphic is all.

If dogs are as consious as people, why not cats?
If cats, why not mice?
If mice, why not earthworms ?
If earthworms, why not nematode ?
If nematode, why not E. Coli?

Pain is in the brain, so the less brain an animal has the less you have to assume it suffers. Consciousness likely only arises in large-brained animals, so it's likely that when someone kills a chicken they are killing little more than a beautiful bundle of reflexes.

you have preordained the hierarchy of what lives you think are important in descending order, and therefore you have assumed the authority of god in doing so.

i am not god, but i agree that nematodes are probably not really conscious to a degree that i would consider organized, and so i have to admit that there is a cut off point in my mind that precludes earlier forms of life to be worthy of my attention. i am not god, so my love cannot extend further down the tree than mice.

i love every individual mouse i have ever encountered. there is a world of difference between a mouse and an earth worm. but still, earth worms seem to make some crude type of decisions, so i will not interrupt their lives even though i do not understand them.

but nematodes are not able to be viewed by me with my ordinate eye. i have no residual attitude to them. i therefore could not really care what a singular nematode's saga entails.

but if i knew that an action i undertook with little benefit to me would wipe all of them out, i would refrain from that action.

e-coli makes us sick. i would hate to be an e-coli bacterium if i had my present state of mind, but e-coli bacteria all have no idea that they are injurious to higher forms of life.

every life is innocent.

every life just tries to stay alive in the way that it knows. e-coli know very little compared to us, but their mission is the same as ours, and that is to stay alive.

i am not a bleeding heart that will allow contaminants to overcome me. i want to live very strongly, and if it becomes a war between me and e-coli then i will ensure i win.

i am just saying i think all forms of life have a struggle ahead of them and i care for them, but if they struggle against me, then i will wipe them out. survival of the fitter organism is something i can fell no guilt about.