closer toGod ??

[druiaghtagh]

Are sentient animals closer to God than Humans as they have innocence and are born without original sin?

[Squirrel]

Same here, Doni, but can I ask if anyone went to Heaven before Jesus was born? Was God sitting up on his cloud thinking, 'Not yet, not yet, not yet, not yet'wait'NOW mankind is evolved enough to appreciate Heaven, and while I'm at it, I can finally populate this Hell place I've been making'' And then there's the little incident with the dinosaur fossils that keep turning up. Were the dinosaurs a product of 'Divine creation for Dummies', but they got a little too boring for God, so he decided to smash them all to dust? Furthermore, do you believe that God created the slime from which everything evolved, that God created humans (Adam's rib, etc.) and let animals evolve from slime by themselves, or that he created everything and only recently have creatures been allowed to evolve? In any case I don't remember the Bible saying much about prehistoric animals; - presumably Jesus, caught up in dictating a whole religion's worth of facts, forgot to mention them? They were certainly around before Adam and Eve, though, weren't they?

[druiaghtagh]

Thankyou all for your very interesting thoughts on my original topic, i think a bit of digresion has crept in. My original thought ( and i am not so good at expressing thoughts) was that do you all think sentient animals are closer in Gods mind than humans as they are born with a limited free will but with no capacity to delibrately commit evil and so maybe God has a 'soft spot ' for such creatures

[Squirrel]

I don't think humans are capable of deliberately committing "evil" either, because there's no such thing. If someone grew up to be an old grouch who hated all forms of life, deep down we can't hold that against them, because it's just how they were brought up, and their character has been moulded by their life's experiences. For example, if God observed a robin kill a neighbouring robin so that it could have some more territory, and then watched humans do the same thing, would he be so blind as to let the robin off lightly (Not send it to Hell) and then lose his temper because the humans "Should have known better"? It seems so unlikely that a divine being could think like that (like the humans who invented him, perhaps) that it might be better to consider that all sentient animals are in the same boat in terms of sins, no creature any "Closer to God" than another.