Do animals have souls?

#1

This might sound like a silly question, but one of my heavily christian friends thinks they don't. I think they do. What do you think?

#2

I guess this depends on what you and your friend consider a soul...Invite him here, so we can burst his brain, LoL...

Ask him if dead things have souls....And if he says no, ask him if living things have souls...And he will say yes, and at that point he should start to feel like an ass...Most people define souls as some sort of life force of sorts...How people begin to distiguish that life force is different in an animal is beyond me, when humans are a member of the animal species themselves...Dominant doesn't translate into holier than thou...

#3

QUOTE(AYHJA)I guess this depends on what you and your friend consider a soul...Invite him here, so we can burst his brain, LoL...

Ask him if dead things have souls....And if he says no, ask him if living things have souls...And he will say yes, and at that point he should start to feel like an ass...Most people define souls as some sort of life force of sorts...How people begin to distiguish that life force is different in an animal is beyond me, when humans are a member of the animal species themselves...Dominant doesn't translate into holier than thou...

Will do, Ayhja!

#4

I swear.. that's sounds like a reply I would make..!

#5

I don't think that animals have souls. I think that's what seperates animals from humans

#6

Here are the distinctions of "soul", in context of Hebrew, which Jesus would have known, as a Jew and a Rabbi.

The soul is a very difficult thing to quantify, but our understanding of it is that there are parts:

The Neshamah is unique to people, and is "sentience" (animals rarely have this). This is the by-product of having eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowlegde of good and evil.

All animate things have a nephesh - the instinct to kill eat and rut - and yield to the natural perpetuation of life and death. The nephesh is the spirit of the animal which perpetuates its life, and is its form after death. This is what is offered in the animal sacrifices. The "Life in the blood." This is the animal soul, and the body of man has a nephesh.

The Neshamah is the spirit of man as a being in dominance of his nephesh. Adam as "Master of the beasts."

The Aish Tamid is the "Eternal Flame" embued within Makind that extends his dominanace even to the Celestial Beings and Angels. This burns within every heart of man, but few ever learn its true power.

The Yechidah is the spirit of man in Wisdom, refined of egoic faults. The soul of a TRUE Rabbin.

Finally, there is the immortal essense of Creator within the fully refined consciousness. Finally, the Messiach (Miseeak) which is the manifest nature of God within Man. This is RARE, and some say UNIQUE. The ideas of "Messianic Judiasm" are what led to the Christian Mythos.

Generallty It is the Yechidah which Man seeks to cultivate and lives eternally in submission and co-habitation with divine providence. This is what is called the "Guardian Angel."

vertical,
raum

#7

QUOTE(trashtalkr)I don't think that animals have souls. I think that's what seperates animals from humans

Seperates us how..?

#8

Well....people say that humans are just a spieces of anmials. I disagree with that and I think the soul is the reason. I believe that it's because of the soul that we get Eternal Life. Without the soul (which I also believe is the "true" person) there would be no life after death. The soul transends the death of the body

#9

three things separate us:
" the imagination"
"knowledge of good and evil"
and
"the belief we are special and above all others."

#10

Makes sense to me...

TT, what is your definition of a soul, and do you disagree with the one raum presented, and why..?