Could Animals Have A Soul?

[sandyRoe]

The house must have been coming down with mice. The new traps have killed six in only two days.
If animals do have a soul is it fair to dispatch them unshriven from this world?

[sandyRoe]

Imagine a rat carries Weil's Disease into your house. Someone in that household could become infected with a potentially fatal illness. The little critter has no awareness that it has done wrong and caused great harm.
Is it then an unwitting sinner?

[jno]

many dogs give soulful looks (though cats seem not to, and I'm not sure about elephants).

[modeller]

What are we ' seeing ' when we look into eyes ? How about those wearing contact lenses or those who have had their's replaced completely because of cataract surgery.

[sandyRoe]

"...the endless, repetitious, cycle of birth, life, and death. "

Please excuse that line^. The Hari Krishna spammers seem to have left an earworm.

[Octavius]

sandy, it would probably depend on the religious affiliation of the household. If they were infidels or heretics, then no, quite the opposite, the rat would be a martyr!

[pixie373]

That's how it works, sandy! :-)

[jim360]

"Energy cannot be destroyed...so therefore [I] wonder what becomes of that energy not only once the brain ceases to function, but whilst the brain is still functioning."

Like all other energy, it becomes heat eventually.

[modeller]

Please excuse my copy and paste but this sums it up much better than me.

//Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle: the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and there’s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die. If you claim that some form of soul persists beyond death, what particles is that soul made of? What forces are holding it together? How does it interact with ordinary matter?//

Ted

[jim360]

Incidentally, in terms of the original question, I'm inclined to think that if you identify a soul with individuality -- so that the Soul is what makes you "you" -- then there are many animals that do have souls in this way. Even birds can seem to have individual characters, although there is obviously a risk that I'm reading traits into them that aren't there (and my sample size is, so far, only six chickens).

There is probably some sort of fuzzy line between animals that are complex enough to have individuality, and those who do not. Don't know where the line is drawn, but at a rough guess most mammals and birds are on one side, and most insects on the other. On the other hand this doesn't coincide with animals that have brains and those that do not, so either there is some particular structure lacking in insects/ arthropods but not in mammals, or more likely this entire paragraph is filled with utter rubbish.

[mibn2cweus]

Can we actually communicate with spirits . . . or is that just the alcohol talking?

Oh, for heaven's sake. Send the little devils on to meet their maker and let Him sort them out.

[pixie373]

Lol, Jim. Birds definitely have individual characters. I've kept budgies.
That is exactly what i don't understand about ghosts. Where is their consciousness kept?

[Octavius]

Under the sheets.

[pixie373]

Lol!! Of course! :-)

[Brinjal]

Animals know more than you think and think more than you know.

[LazyGun]

Size matters, when it comes to matters of thought, intelligence, abstract thought, conceptualisation and self-awareness.

Relative size of the brain when compared to body mass, known as the degree of encephalisation. So human brains are approximately 3x larger than a chimp brain.
Relative size of the cortex in comparison to the mass of the brain. The human cerebral cortex is roughly 10 times greater in size/surface area than a chimpanzee, and roughly 1000 times greater than the size/surface area of a mouse, for instance.
Number of neurons.
Perhaps more importantly, number of synapses, the interconnections between neurons.
And likely most importantly of all - neural architecture. The degree of interconnectedness between the anterior and posterior cortex; the interconnectedness of the cortex and the cerebellum are uniquely distinctive in humans.

[starone]

Where do you stop? I don't worry if I kill a fly, or a spider even and during the last few days I have killed a couple of moths. I have killed several mice, one with my slipper, and rats are not desirable either. Oh well, if they are spreading diseases they have to go.

[mibn2cweus]

Brinjal
Animals know more than you think and think more than you know.
12:42 Tue 03rd Sep 2013

And this is no less true of humans. We know much more than we realise . . . and much less than we think we do.

[Brinjal]

Very true mibn2.

[modeller]

If we are to believe in a soul then where would or could we draw a line ?
The term animal is in general terms anything living that is not a plant.
So that includes mico organisms.

[pixie373]

I'd say anything that's conscious.