Souls

But, babs, the butterfly has such a short life. c.i.

New Haven, I misread your post as "All orgasms have souls...." c.i.

I was just directed to this thread, I don't know how I missed it before now, but it's a very interesting topic.

I certainly believe pets have a soul, there is no other way a pet and a human being could bond the way they do without a soul.

Sometimes I think pets are way more in tune with humans than humans are with humans, and with the Universe.

For instance, think about the pets who are with people who take seizures, and the pets know before the seizure happens and alerts the person to lay on the floor. No human being can do that.

We could take lessons on living from our pets, because they know so much more than we do, and it's not from their mind, it's from their soul and their intuition.

Misti, Isn't it also true that dogs know when an earthquake is immenent? Dogs have also saved children from drowning. c.i.

Yes, I would say that animals have souls, in my own view of what a soul encompasses. But I might even go further. I think that pantheism is an interesting viewpoint, though one I don't know a lot about. Personally I feel 'presence' not only from people and animals, but also from the environment, especially in plant life, and up in the hills, and by the sea, a feeling of peace, as of being one with the world. I believe that there is much in this world we do not recognise the nature of thus far.

c.i., yes it is true, animals know when there's a storm brewing, they're tuned in to our personalities and know when something bothers us, they are in tune with nature. There is so much evidence of this, nobody could dispute it. I love to watch those shows about animals, I think one of them is called "Miracles", and it's all about how animals/pets save their owners from all kinds of disasters. Also, the Discovery channel, very interesting.

I think animals are spirit, as are we all including plants, rocks, trees. Humans are each given a soul and, as someone said (JLNobody?) all our souls are connected with the whole of that connected with the master soul. One author I read suggests that animals will have a group soul, such as all dogs are connected with one soul, where humans each have a soul.

Anyone with a loved pet can see, sometimes feel, the spirit there, see it in their eyes. Animals are in our care, but we are learning in just the past few decades that we have a lot to learn from these precious creatures. After all, this planet belongs to them, we are the interlopers.

Animals used to have meager, boring, even tortuous lives. Now, look, they practice and play games with their owners, even go to restaurants with them. Recall when dogs sat on the end of a chain, horses were beat into submission.

souls
Tex-star, thanks for remembering. Yes, I suggested that PERHAPS there is a concept of soul that I could endorse (without, of course, knowing if it is factual or not) that ALL the universe is a grand soul, like the Hindu Brahman, and that each human can be aware of his portion of it (his Atman) by means of mystical practice. Maybe!!!
I cannot vouch for the existence or non-existence of purely conceptual (that is to say purely thought up, but not empirically experienced) entities like souls. But they ARE real as thoughts, and thoughts rule the world--fortunately and unfortunately.

I BELIEVE THAT PEOPLE READ THINGS
AND TRY TO FIND "THE TRUTH" IN ORDER
TO QUELL THE INTENSE FEAR WITHIN
that they are nothing...or maybe that
they are really something...but I DO
believe it to be a fear based
phenomenom.

I SO VERY EMPHATICALLY must agree with
Craven about humans insisting upon creating
"Gods" that have all the basest of human
instincts....
and that humans create these Gods based
on their pompous image of themselves - a
concept, a construct that is doomed to
failure no matter how you slice it.
IS there another way? We will see won't
we?

Souls
You know something, if animals have souls then so must frogs, lizards and the like. Once in awhile I am completely unnerved by something a small thing like these will do. On the way to my front door, along the nice cement sidewalk I often see salamanders. Now and then, in the early morning I find a toad on my door step, too.

The salamander, when I pass, will look straight up and into my eyes. Now, that's something. I notice dogs, even very small ones, will do the same. In the name of laziness, even, you'd have to wonder why they don't look at, say, the knees?

Yes, they have souls. Notice, sometime, that all animals who haven't had a negative experience with humans, will have the same expression.

souls
Interesting observation, Tex-star about animals looking at our eyes. You are, apparently drawing a parallel between their eye-focusing behavior and ours in order to suggest their possession of a soul. Is that right? Well, I have never observed a theologian to argue that a proof for the possession by humans of souls is that we look one another in the eyes.

I wonder if the lion has a soul. He'll stare at you before he takes his meal. c.i.

I believe that souls reside only in humans. I believe God breathes life into all things living, but that man is the only entity he gave a souls. I love my pets, and have had several. I think that in the afterlife, the attributes we saw that we loved in our pets simply become a part of us. I've had occasion to think about this often during my life, and that's just the idea I came up with.
As far as "Is there a God?", it is far easier for me to believe that God created man, than that man created God.

souls
Snood, why isn't it "easier' to believe where the evidence points--that man creates his gods?

JLNobody, I missed your Dec.31 post. No, I am just amazed that a lizard would have the intelligence to look into a person's eyes. It is what's IN THERE that is intelligent - spirit. You know, that spark, not just flesh & bone crawling along. "The eyes are windows to the soul," somebody said but can't remember who.

Babs, In order for man to create God, where would the idea have come from in the first place? I spent 10 years in a children's home and all (300) of us new there was God (or whatever name) even though we sure (as hell) never discussed it. There was a lot of love in the place. Perhaps, like animals, if we are not abused by caretakers the negative is not awakened within us.

The first biblical scripture, the one that encouraged me to get up and get that bible book, just to make sure it was there, was quoted by Taylor Caldwell in one of her books. 'Twas Jeremiah 31:31, saying the knowledge of God is IN us, we do not need to be told this by anyone. I'm not sure, but I think that's only since Jesus.

I just found this thread. Hello, All. JLN, you said or quoted: I would suggest that we do not HAVE souls but that we ARE souls, actually we are all facets of one universal soul.

C.S. Lewis wrote: "You do not have a soul..you are a soul. You have a body."

It is interesting to speculate about what a soul is. If matter is neither created nor destroyed, then every atom of our physical bodies will continue to exist, in one form or another. If a "soul" is pure energy, then perhaps it goes to join a universal source of energy, which may be what some people call God. I don't think of the soul in a religious way but in an actual realistic way. No one has ever explained how the mind can leave the body on an excursion -- as many sources and stories attest -- and then come back to the body. There is obviously much we do not understand about things we cannot see or detect or measure with instruments. How, for example, did my father know that my sister, three thousand miles away, was in desperate trouble and perhaps dead?

souls
Kara, nice--nay beautiful post--your equation of soul with energy that will eventually return or join a universe source of energy is poetically moving. If you ever start a religion, please let me know. The "evidence" of your father's sense of his daughter's danger is, however, the kind of anectotal rhetorical question that leads us astray.

JLN, just what I need. A following. I've never thought of myself as a cult leader but things could change.

I know perfectly well what you mean about anecdotal evidence and such, but I love spooky things and concepts, and want to believe that there is another dimension...chaos, string theory, all of that. I don't want that dimension to have anything to do with God, because we have created her in our own image, and she is, therefore, necessarily small potatoes. If there is a god, she is pure energy, unchanging, and has existed always, and she has no personality, of course...that would tie her down to emotion, error, etc., just as we are tied down by our personalities.

I love talking about it, though, and listening to what other people think.

philosophy
Good, Kara, you are not a fundamentalist. But do be careful, the surest way to acquire a large following is to assert that you do not want followers.
JLN, the apostle