Animals make choices. Does that mean they have a rational soul?

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WannabeSaint said:
Animals make choices on a regular basis
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[Pasted from another thread.]

The difference between rational choices and intelligent choices is in kind, not degree.


Lion 1: “Hey, how’s the family.”
Lion 2: “All good. Let’s plan dinner.”
Lion 1: “I feel like ‘wildebeest’.”
Lion 2: “Had that last night. How about a nice impala instead?”

Mental mechanisms we share with animals are imagination and memory. In the animal, the reproduction of the images from memory corresponds exactly to the reality perceived before by the senses. So, even In the absence of the exact objects, the imagination drawing on memory reproduces them and moves the animal to act.

Unlike the animal, man can also abstract, that is, unite or separate the images in his imagination from the particulars and combine them in diverse ways. By associating these novel combinations, man develops alternative options to adapting his behaviors in order to satisfy his desires in creative ways not possible for animals.
 
After all the talk.
We all have some realizations of varying animals…
And we do know that Humans are the lord of this planet in several manners.

We shouldn’t be cruel to humans, and, animals.

Yes?
 
Before reading this, I just looked deep into my dogs eyes a couple hours ago and said “bo, you have no soul” lol
 
When all is said and done - rather than subject ourselves to never-ending speculations …
We do accept that whatever God has in store for us is “Super-Perfect”
This way - we can move on to more productive spending of our time, eh?
 
I believe in Him, haven’t always known who he was. I wandered far. I hope you come back to faith. The Lord created you to be with Him and know him.
 
An animal that I usually point to are dolphins. They are clearly rational beings. I also think we have enough neurological evidence that they are in fact having a conscious experience similar to humans. I don’t think that the theologians had the resources to understand the brain in the way we do now!
 
Jragzz123 said:
An animal that I usually point to are dolphins. They are clearly rational beings. I also think we have enough neurological evidence that they are in fact having a conscious experience similar to humans. I don’t think that the theologians had the resources to understand the brain in the way we do now!
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Again, none of that speaks to having a rational soul. When dolphins begin speaking of eternal life and love of God then we might have a different discussion.
 
In this thread it appears intelligence is what makes a soul by what people are implying. It funny that if another species doesn’t act or think like a human it has no soul. Its based on the belief that man is the center of everything and nothing else matters only humans matter. Truth is we live in a symbiotic relation with every other form of life on this planet without them we would not be here. They are to be respected as much as human life without them we don’t exist soul or no soul.
 
Faith and Proof can not dwell within the same domain together…

Those w/o Faith ‘think’ Faith is Blind …

It’s Faith which enables one to See

_
 
jan10000 said:
How do you know humans are not reacting to instinct?
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Avoiding Death is instinctual.

Making Decisions are exercises of the will.

Some humans do this in specific situations and some do that…
 
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jan10000 said:
The challenge is really then, is to explain why creatures that are rational do NOT have souls, while creatures that are not rational (or not yet so) do have souls. A related challenge is to explain how humans gained souls given evolution. Specifically, at some point in the past, a human being MUST have reached a criteria such that God now “infused” their body with a soul. What then was the criteria? Was it a certain number of neurons? A certain behavior? The answer I see most often is that the first human being to recognize God’s existence and then deny it was given the first soul. This of course introduces so many other problems…
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those so-called unknown speculative problems can be avoided by simply ignoring that challenge… ?

_
 
WannabeSaint said:
Animals make choices on a regular basis. They pick one mate over the other. They strategize and set up ambushes on their prey. They play dead in the face of danger. They look for the perfect pebble to attract their mate. They build nests for their offspring. They refuse to go outside during a violent thunderstorm in the winter. They sniff each other’s…well, you get my point.

Animals make choices all the time. So how can it be said they don’t have a rational soul? All of the above activities involve some kind of choice or rationalization, right?
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The ability to make choices a rational soul does not make. If more than one option is available, rational soul or not, a creature will choose one over the other because the state of affairs dictates it.
 
Is it not necessary to have libertarian free will to have a rational soul? That is, is it not necessary to have the power to have done otherwise in a given situation required for one to truly have a rational soul? If animals could only have gone one direction, even though that direction had a cause/set of reasons, then that animal could only have compatibilist free will/choice. If even that, since this isn’t even considering whether they were reflective/conscious of the choice they were making. Did the animal reflectively endorse a course of action? The evidence is lacking. So no, it appears they do not have a truly rational soul in the way humans do. Imago dei for the win.
 
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