Animal have souls, too!

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MacMcCarver

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I am really disturbed when I see people crushing insects or killing animals for no reason. I feel that it is very wrong to kill without an outstanding reason. If you pause to consider what life is like for them, perhaps you’ll respect that they just want to live. Outstanding reasons might include killing for meat or killing pests in one’s home that would be impossible to get outside. I do not swat flies; I open the door to let them out. I don’t fish with a rod anymore because after I saw their terrified eyes and their mouths bleeding from the hook (not to mention the worm squirming on the hook). And while I’m on the subject, eating food made from cruelly-treated animals is very harmful for your health as the negative energies present from the cruelty will pass to the one eating it. I think that this is one of the reasons for illnesses today. Bad energies make the body susceptible to illness. So, PLEASE, for the Love of the God who made them, treat animals and plants with respect!!!
 
MacMcCarver said:
I am really disturbed when I see people crushing insects or killing animals for no reason. I feel that it is very wrong to kill without an outstanding reason. If you pause to consider what life is like for them, perhaps you’ll respect that they just want to live. Outstanding reasons might include killing for meat or killing pests in one’s home that would be impossible to get outside. I do not swat flies; I open the door to let them out. I don’t fish with a rod anymore because after I saw their terrified eyes and their mouths bleeding from the hook (not to mention the worm squirming on the hook). And while I’m on the subject, eating food made from cruelly-treated animals is very harmful for your health as the negative energies present from the cruelty will pass to the one eating it. I think that this is one of the reasons for illnesses today. Bad energies make the body susceptible to illness. So, PLEASE, for the Love of the God who made them, treat animals and plants with respect!!!
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I believe God had a purpose in mind for every creature He made.Man should respect God creation.However I think you going a little over the line.We’re not going to run out of flies and i don’t that they feel much when swatted.We can let all creaturs into our homes to cause diesease.Flies have very few sense organs.They feel very little.As ffor meat I don’t kill for the sake of killing however i’m not against someone who kills as long as there is a justifiable reason and the animal doesn’t have to suffer.As to fish your right about when they swallow the hook and some people pull out their stomachs to get it.When I fish I plan on eating it and if he swallows the hhook I just leave it in.If their caught in mouth they don’t feel anything.God did create animals for food as a lot of other reasons.Bottom line:don’t make them suffer.
 
MacMcCarver said:
I am really disturbed when I see people crushing insects or killing animals for no reason. I feel that it is very wrong to kill without an outstanding reason. If you pause to consider what life is like for them, perhaps you’ll respect that they just want to live. Outstanding reasons might include killing for meat or killing pests in one’s home that would be impossible to get outside. I do not swat flies; I open the door to let them out. I don’t fish with a rod anymore because after I saw their terrified eyes and their mouths bleeding from the hook (not to mention the worm squirming on the hook). And while I’m on the subject, eating food made from cruelly-treated animals is very harmful for your health as the negative energies present from the cruelty will pass to the one eating it. I think that this is one of the reasons for illnesses today. Bad energies make the body susceptible to illness. So, PLEASE, for the Love of the God who made them, treat animals and plants with respect!!!
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Agree very much on this 👍
 
I agree that they have souls too. Everyone that has had a pet probably struggles like me with accepting that they just ‘disappear’ upon death.
 
I can’t stand those vile, perverse people who refuse to eat larger animals and live on vegetables so that they can revel in the knowledge that billions of animals starved to death once the food on their plate was harvested from the field. Have a heart, eat a cow, not a vegetable!
 
white_sheep said:
I can’t stand those vile, perverse people who refuse to eat larger animals and live on vegetables so that they can revel in the knowledge that billions of animals starved to death once the food on their plate was harvested from the field. Have a heart, eat a cow, not a vegetable!
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This isn’t funny.
 
I don’t know if links to other Catholic sites are allowed, but here is an EWTN link that talks about that:
ewtn.com/expert/answers/pets_in_heaven.htm

Basically, Dr. Geraghty says that animals have souls which is what makes them live, but that soul stops existing when the animal dies. Our human souls are spiritual and continue living after death. He’s correct about human souls, of course, but I think our understanding of animal souls is incomplete.
 
I agree that they have souls too. Everyone that has had a pet probably struggles like me with accepting that they just ‘disappear’ upon death.
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👍
Plants have vegetative souls (capable of life and growth), animals have sensitive souls (capable of life, growth, and feeling), and humans have rational souls (capable of life, growth, feeling, and rational thought). Only the last kind survives death since only it is made of spirit; souls of plants and animals are made of matter and die when they die.
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catholic.com/thisrock/quickquestions/keyword/soul/page3
 
MacMcCarver said:
I am really disturbed when I see people crushing insects or killing animals for no reason. I feel that it is very wrong to kill without an outstanding reason. If you pause to consider what life is like for them, perhaps you’ll respect that they just want to live. Outstanding reasons might include killing for meat or killing pests in one’s home that would be impossible to get outside. I do not swat flies; I open the door to let them out. I don’t fish with a rod anymore because after I saw their terrified eyes and their mouths bleeding from the hook (not to mention the worm squirming on the hook). And while I’m on the subject, eating food made from cruelly-treated animals is very harmful for your health as the negative energies present from the cruelty will pass to the one eating it. I think that this is one of the reasons for illnesses today. Bad energies make the body susceptible to illness. So, PLEASE, for the Love of the God who made them, treat animals and plants with respect!!!
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I disagree with animals having souls after reading Aristotle and several of the dissertations on various types of souls.

But I wanted to reply because you have FMA in your sig. Dang I love that show!!! You made my day! 👍
white_sheep said:
I can’t stand those vile, perverse people who refuse to eat larger animals and live on vegetables so that they can revel in the knowledge that billions of animals starved to death once the food on their plate was harvested from the field. Have a heart, eat a cow, not a vegetable!
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lol PETA (people eating tasty animals) shirts make me laugh every time I see them. It also makes me laugh when the vegans say “Cows are one of the biggest contributors to global warming” and then get upset when we kill and eat them. Come on man, I am helping end global warming!!!

I agree that we should never treat animals cruelly, but that is more out of my desire to be a good steward for what God has provided. God did not provide us the animals to be cruel to them, but he did give us the animals and the plants for food.

You should go on youtube and look for Arrogant Worms song “Carrot Juice is Murder”. It will make you laugh… depending on how self-deprecating you can be.
 
So I don’t suppose you would have liked the fact that I have killed 1000s of little ants in the past few weeks? They don’t belong in or on my house, so bye-bye.

Let’s see… in the past few days, I’ve also destroyed 2 wasp nests on my house, one over my front door and one over the garage. I’ve crushed and sprayed these little saw fly larvae on my rose bushes. I also swat any fly I find in my house. My kids have rabbits and guinea pigs, so flies could spell disaster in the litter…
 
Just curious as to where you would draw the “right to life” line? Do microbes, bacteria and viruses deserve our respect as well?
 
MacMcCarver said:
And while I’m on the subject, eating food made from cruelly-treated animals is very harmful for your health as the negative energies present from the cruelty will pass to the one eating it. I think that this is one of the reasons for illnesses today. Bad energies make the body susceptible to illness.
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Hmmm… I was with ya up until the part about the negative energies.

Animals have souls…? Energies present in the meat of dead animals…? Energies being passed on from dead animals to humans making them sick…?

I’m wondering if there isn’t some new-age (ish) stuff going on here.

ISo the LORD God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each of them would be its name. (Genesis 2:19)

God gives man his name but leaves man to give the animals their names. Naming something in the OT was a sign of having power over it, of possession, of responsiblity over it and of stewardship for it. The hierarchy of God → Man → Animals is clear in the OT.

For Christians, it is important to remember that animals will not be held accountable for their actions in the way that man is. They are not subject to judgement. Human souls, on the other hand, will be liable to judgement.

Animals do have sould and animals can suffer but they cannot unite their suffeing to Christ’s. For Catholics, it is important to realize that this inablity to unite their suffering to Christ’s suffering renders their suffering no redemptive value in terms of salvation.

The fact that God made the human soul in his divine image and our ability to unite our suffering to Christ’s gives the lowest man infinitely more dignity than the most noble beast.

-Tim-

gives the lowest man infinitely more dignity than the highest and most noble beast.
 
I don’t know if they have souls, but what I know is that they have feelings, they can suffer, feel pain, pleasure and fear, which is enough for me to treat them fine.
And I may not have a soul.
 
RainbowNight said:
I don’t know if they have souls, but what I know is that they have feelings, they can suffer, feel pain, pleasure and fear, which is enough for me to treat them fine.
And **I **may not have a soul.
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If you don’t have a soul than who is the ‘I’ that you refer to? :confused:
 
MacMcCarver said:
I am really disturbed when I see people crushing insects or killing animals for no reason. I feel that it is very wrong to kill without an outstanding reason. If you pause to consider what life is like for them, perhaps you’ll respect that they just want to live. Outstanding reasons might include killing for meat or killing pests in one’s home that would be impossible to get outside. I do not swat flies; I open the door to let them out. I don’t fish with a rod anymore because after I saw their terrified eyes and their mouths bleeding from the hook (not to mention the worm squirming on the hook). And while I’m on the subject, eating food made from cruelly-treated animals is very harmful for your health as the negative energies present from the cruelty will pass to the one eating it. I think that this is one of the reasons for illnesses today. Bad energies make the body susceptible to illness. So, PLEASE, for the Love of the God who made them, treat animals and plants with respect!!!
Click to expand...
I agree with many of your statements about animal cruelty, but as someone said, you’re also going to the extremes a bit. Flies are pests, sure they have an ecological role, but not in your house. Whilst I rather let flies go out the door, more often than not, they came in for a reason and are unlikely to leave, so I’d rather have those fly-zappers that they get attracted to and kills them. Their systems are different to ours, they respond to pressure and stimulus, but they don’t necessarily feel pain the way we do, they don’t interpret things as “ow”. If you hold a fly down, it will squirm and act as if the world is going to end, if you remove its wings it will just go walking around normally, they don’t roll all over in pain, it’s a very simple test of whether they feel pain or not. If you remove someone’s legs they are bound to be doing more than sitting down and smiling.

Of course many animals do feel pain, cattle, dogs, cats, the larger animals with complex nervous systems, but remember all things don’t feel in the same way we do. I don’t advocate going around and removing a fly’s wings because they don’t feel the pain, it was simply an explanation to consider.
 
I agree that we should not kill animals for no reason. However, using them for food is fine. I think pest control is also fine. We have a deal with bugs, I stay out of there house and they stay out of mine. If they don’t then then it stinks for them. But I am just not going out of my way to release an insect into the wild. Especially, if their are ants in the house. You cant possibly relocate 100 ants.

It can also be argued that plants, feel pain and pleasure. They may lack a central nervous system to fully compute the feelings but it is still their. Have you ever seen a small tree grow sideways towards the sun. Plants react to all sorts of stimuli. So is it not Ok for me to eat celery?
 
JoshuaNY said:
It can also be argued that plants, feel pain and pleasure. They may lack a central nervous system to fully compute the feelings but it is still their. Have you ever seen a small tree grow sideways towards the sun. Plants react to all sorts of stimuli. So is it not Ok for me to eat celery?
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No, it can’t be argued that plants feel pain or pleasure. Reacting to stimuli has nothing to do with ‘feeling’ something. Feeling is a more complex process than a cause-and-effect due to stimuli.
 
In order to argue whether animals have souls or not, one must define what exactly is a soul. We all treat souls as generally a good thing to have, but what exactly are they?

I don’t know if animals have souls or not, but they clearly feel emotions. Animals are capable of love and fear. The more I learn about animals, the more I feel that animals are really just dumbed down humans (or humans are hyper advanced animals). Though, if they do have souls, it raises many questions about sin and if there is a heaven for them, etc.

As to insect cruelty, I agree, to a certain extent. I completely sympethize with exterminators who clean their homes of pests. I myself have a zero tolerance policy on any roach or ant I see indoors. However, it can be considered cruel to crush insects for fun. I mean, if they were any other animal, nobody would tolerate the cruelty we put them through. I do not claim to be innocent in this at all; I have caught myself killing bugs for no other reason than they were there.

As for going vegetarian, I won’t do it. In order to function normally, you kinda need some meat. That’s just the way biology works. I do not agree with factory farming, but without such mass production, we wouldn’t be able to feed the masses like we do now.
 
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