Do Animals Have Souls???

if i were to believe in souls i'd believe that animals have them before i'd believe human beings do

Hi,
My sentiments exactly, friends excluded, of course.
Thank you.
Mark...

Thank you too. We use to have a THANKS symbol on the old forum, so we could accredit each other. I used a lot of them because I am grateful that anyone spares the time to type out a reply, critical or not. I'll miss that feature. So I'll thank in type.
Have a great day, sir.
Mark...

How are you defining soul mark?

I mean, besides Aretha Franklin.

Hi Chai,
I don't believe that their is anything beyond the anatomical. It is up to the observer to define. In belief-systems that apply a soul characteristic, I am interested to see if any, other than asian, african or S.american, applies it to animals.
Thank you for asking though, Have a great day.
Mark...

Yes


WELCOME to the forum!

Has it ever been proved by reasonable doubt that humans have them in the first place? If human have them, animals have them.

Hi David,
You could have condensed it a little, such long drawn-out replies are typically tedious to fully appreciate.
Have a great day.
Mark...

Hi Hexhammer,
It's nice to see you here, And, of course - If one, then all.
Journey well, sir.
Mark.

ha

after a bit of a rocky start, OSD has become one of my favourite posters, so much so he got a coveted spot in my sig line

I think this may go some to proving the soul has no intelligence.

So would you say friends are more like pets? (sun smile)

It would of course be a most prudent thing to give at least a working definition for the term 'soul'--or the concept carried by it. If we were to use a good English dictionary, it'd soon enough become understood that the senses involved with that word do vary, and are very much determined by the field, or discipline, one is using the term relative to.

I reason, through keeping your general posting habits in mind, mark noble, that you are more likely holding the word 'soul' in its sense which will be interchangeable with the common conception carried by the word 'spirit' (when this refers to some immaterial, ethereal-of-a something). This is an outdated conception, I always argue, and I use the word 'soul' only in the sense of the physical body of an organism. In this sense, therefore, I would always argue that the bulk of the best evidence we have empirically acquired over time, quite securely show us that all life forms are souls--which just becomes another word for 'a living thing.'

To give a little information for you, since you also seem to be asking, this concept is exactly that which can be seen to have been generally held by the writers of some of the earliest Hebrew texts and writings of the monotheistic movement among those of the early Israeli nation. The 'nephesh' is exactly the living organism itself. ( I have written a little about it in this post and you might want to check that out too)

So to answer towards the OP, both ALL animals are souls . . . and of course, without any real error of understanding, the H. sapiens is no less animal than my hungry little cats, screaming outside the kitchen door.

Most definitely, yes.

When we feel that two people are really meant for each other, we say that they are "soul mates". The idea being that out of all the people in the world, the most essential part of their humanity matched up perfectly. Soul means something deep, complex, and powerful. I think we would agree that robots have no soul (in their current state of programming). It's also seen as something immaterial which I would say means we should not say it exists in the literal sense. But that seems separate from this debate.

But given what soul means, why do people think animals would have a soul at all, much less before humans? I suspect it's the "humans do evil things, animals don't" line of thinking. But that would suggest that they don't have souls.

This is a materialist view, which is, of course, your prerogative.

I believe Aristotle said 'the soul is the form of the body' - form in the Platonic sense of an ideal, of which the body is a physical realisation.

Incidentally, soul and spirit are different.

My understanding is that the soul is immortal but not eternal.

The spirit is both immortal and eternal, but it doesn't belong to anyone. It is the same in all beings. The spirit is not a thing, not an essence, and not an 'obsolete idea'. We can never really know what it is, but if we turn towards it, we can ascertain some of its characteristics.

Anyway my little brown dog is a dear little soul. But I would never try and win an argument about it.

Are slime moulds animals?

I'm sure their mothers love 'em....