Do You Believe Animals Have a Soul or Spirit?

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In a way , I do believe in animal spirits , As well as spirits of trees and stars . My logical side says that without convincing evidence (whatever that is ) spirits and souls do not exist , But my 'spiritual' side says the universe is a mystical place , One us humans will never comprehend through rational means anyways . Perhaps my logical side is saying that too .

If anything I suppose it encourages me to hold respect for other life forms , Not just humans . We 're all in this (life ) together - I can spare some blood for Mrs mosquito . Although I have no proof I suspect that part of the reason today 's culture is so destructive towards nature is that we have become disconnected spiritually from nature . It seems reasonable to suggest that by assuming someone does not have a soul , one can do whatever s/he likes to them (as in the past when women and black people were thought of as not possessing any soul ) . Ultimately it comes down to power -- people deciding what does and doesn 't have a soul with their own best interests in mind .

Anyways . For me having this belief makes the universe feel more alive , Silly as that sounds , Taking great breaths in the forms of nebulae & supernovae , Though that is really just romantic thought ! !

I seem to have written more than necessary *teeters over delete before tumbling into submit *

They're not sentient. They act on instinct, observation, and learned behaviours, more or less. You don't see a cat scratching its head to make moral decisions, try to solve complex problems, or anything like that.
Its curiousity/hunter's brain allows it to observe, investigate, and take action accordingly.

Though many vertebrates feel certain emotions, they cannot think about them, and how much they love something. Most dogs are loyal, protective, and affectionate because their brains are normally hardwired to be like that to their pack mates.

Invertebrates and low-intelligence vertebrates cannot possibly have souls, whether they exist or nay.

More complex animals, well, you have to consider their sentience.

Yes, humans are animals - most humans are able to convince themselves otherwise, but it is true!

I prefer the original meaning for soul - the anima, the living being, the esence. Dogs have a soul, they have a mind, they have intelligence. They can learn. Their intelligence is different from people intelligence and poorly understood by people.

I also worked with a primate colony once doing cognitive research. Rhesus and macaque monkeys can reason, they can abstract. Maybe not as much as people, but the differences between humans and other animals are more quantitative than qualitative.

As to whether or not the soul is eternal ... eh, who knows? I'm not so eager to find out.

Last edited by monty on 09 Oct 2007, 7:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I wasn 't sure if you were talking to me Anubis , or just generally commenting .

My position is a strange one -- For I do not think that souls exist but I choose to believe in them , So it seems ! Perhaps only for reasons of equality , or a little magical thinking . I could just as easily believe that nothing has a soul . In other words , I 'm all words .

It probably stems in part from one of my other beliefs , That we humans have no more purpose for being on Earth than the ants crawling in my lunchbox or the mosquitoes sucking my blood .

Of course , it 's debatable what a soul is . I 'm probably using it more in terms of that rather vague notion of energy being clamped up in a life form then being released as it dies etc The supposed "essence of life " . Whereas you seem to imply that for a soul one requires sentience . Looking up defintions it appears I am being more liberal with the term .

i dont know

Thats interesting, because even rocks exist in a cycle. Its just incredibly slow.

Undecided. It's an open question, but one I'm not sure I really want to answer.

The day my little sister's cat disappeared i woke up "seeing" him standing in tall grass, staring straight at me, with an intense stomach ache. Two weeks later the neighbors said they found him with a big hole in his stomach (he'd been shot in the field behind their house) and buried him. At the time of the dream I called to ask if that cat was alright. I was told "Oh yeah, he was just here this morning." While it was true he was there early in the morning, he never came back that day.

I live about 2 1/2 hours away from them, and hadn't seen or heard about the cat for a few months prior, so there was nothing in my life that would have encouraged such a "dream." I put dream in parenthesis because I didn't feel asleep when I saw the cat. He was not a cat I was ever close to but the last time I had been home (about 6 months before this) I was sitting on the couch with my cat in my lap. My sisters cat, crawled on top of me so that he was sitting on my chest, above my cat, staring straight into my face and loudly purring. He had clearly missed me and I think that's the reason why he came to say "goodbye" to me.

Sadly about a year later, I came home and saw my cat. he'd been ill a long time. Actually, you could say he'd been ill for his enitre 11 year life. I had to leave in a hurry. When i looked at him, I immediately thought, "I'll never see her again." (his thought, not mine). Normally i would have run back and petted him until the last possible moment, especially as i typically only got to see him once or twice a year, but I knew I'd be seeing him again in just a few days, and so it didn't hurt me to leave without running back. I never saw him again - he died the day before I was to come back. I didn't dream about him though.

I'd also once had a strange dream about ten years ago, where all off our cats were dancing wearing socks (various numbers in various stages of completion.) Only one cat had on four full socks and she died horrifically the next day when a cancerous tumor burst. Now that I think about it, I wrote down the cats in the order of how many socks they had on to see if they would in fact die in that order. Only one of the cats is now living. I wonder if this dream was a prediction or just a strange coincidence.

If humans have souls, then animals have them too.

Personally, I do not believe in immaterial souls.

There is no way to derive that logical statement. I think it fails by claiming that if one set of animals has souls then all do, which is a fallacious argument. Really, there is no way to ascribe rules to what has souls given what we know about souls. It could be that rocks have souls but other beings don't or that only George Bush has a soul and that we are soulless beasts. I am a firm believer in the last idea though.

If anything along the idea of a soul exists then surely it resides in everything animated with life?
Even if animals other than humans don't have souls, is the possession of a soul any kind of qualifier to the right to live unmolested and unfettered?
People living with animistic belief systems seem more content within the boundaries of natural law, harmonising with their environments because they don't see themselves as superior in any way, perhaps this is a good thing?
peace j

Why everything? The idea of a soul doesn't define it as belonging to any particular thing. Ragtime stated a belief that animals don't have souls but humans do, there does not seem to be anything contradictory with this belief.

No, a framework of absolute morality in the universe would be that kind of qualifier. A soul merely is a part of what is, and you cannot derive an ought from is.

It is perhaps a good thing if it is a good thing. I don't see any conclusive proof that modern man is in defiance of any law though and as I have stated, there is a difficulty found in proving what is good. I like technology and a system where I get to eat animals, but does that mean that such a system is good? Worlds where everyone is satisfied but in a horrific way are the stuff of dystopias.