Animals are immortal

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GEddie said:
But in relation to animals, Our LORD and the Holy Church both left the issue open, so methinks that’s the best position to.take.
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I thought the CC’s official position is that animals don’t go to Heaven, which I disagree with. Or at least I really hope they go to Heaven. Just today I read the Rainbow Bridge poem or some version of it and thinking about my babies (dogs) who’ve passed saddened me so bad.
 
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The mind does not create matter or bring into existence those things which it observes through its senses. Those things owe their existence to God, who is Existence itself. God creates our minds (to be more specific, our intellect) to be able to be aware of created things through our senses.
 
How about we define mind and intellect. Is one a subset of the other? And might as well add consciousness?
 
dshix said:
The mind does not create matter or bring into existence those things which it observes through its senses. Those things owe their existence to God, who is Existence itself. God creates our minds (to be more specific, our intellect) to be able to be aware of created things through our senses.
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Mind cannot be created since it is free. I have an argument for that:
  1. The causation requires knowledge
  2. Knowledge is structured
  3. Therefore any caused thing is structured
  4. Anything which is structured cannot be free
  5. Therefore one cannot cause a thing which is free
What is left except mind is mental, creation of mind.
 
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I think your biggest problem is your imprecision in use of terms.

Knowledge? What kind of knowledge, who needs to have it?
Structured? What does this even mean, and how can one qualify it?
Free? From what?

Further, you make assertions without any sort of logical steps. Who is to say that “causation requires knowledge”, “knowledge is structured”, or “anything which is structured cannot be free”? You pulled these statements out of nothing, and that, on top of the fact that the terms you used not being clear, makes your post wholly meaningless.
 
The simplest distinction between “mind” and “intellect”, in my thinking, is that “mind” is a somewhat broad term referring in general to the “apparatus of thinking”, and “intellect” refers to a specific part of that apparatus, that is, a spiritual power of the soul.

There are both material and spiritual parts of a human mind, which is clear enough if you take it for granted that a human soul is spiritual. Our physical grey matter certainly has some part in the operation of our mind, since by physical damage the mind can be impaired. But we know that the mind must have a spiritual origin as well, because the mind is capable of turning in on itself; self-reflecting. No material thing can do this.
 
Consciousness is IMNAAHO overrated, it’s just the body state that makes mind & intellect, along with the senses possible.

Vital, but very much physical.

ICXC NIKA
 
A plant takes food and is nourished; it tends to grow to maturity, and to reproduce its kind. Thus the plant faculties are the nutritive faculty, the augmenting or growing faculty, and the generative faculty.

An animal has all the plant faculties; in addition, it has the faculty or power of sensing (that is, knowing by the use of senses), the power of tending to go after what the senses grasp as good or desirable (and away from what the senses grasp as harmful), and the power of moving in accordance with that tendency. Thus an animal has, in addition to the vegetal powers or faculties, the faculties of sensing, appetizing, moving locally.

Man has all the vegetal and the sentient (or animal) faculties; in addition, he has the specifically rational faculties of understanding and choosing in the light of understanding; that is, he has the faculties of intellect (or mind, or understanding) and will.
http://www.catholictheology.info/summa-theologica/summa-part1.php?q=528
 
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