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Pets in theology
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05-12-2010 7:07am#1
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OK, charter read and agreed to. Wheatons Law likewise.
To start out with, my lack of faith in an immortal soul or the supernatural stems in no small degree from my acceptance of the theory of evolution as scientific fact demonstrated through massive amounts of overwhelmingly convincing evidence. It is from this starting point that the reasoning follows: germs and things don't have souls, ants don't have souls, mice don't have souls, cats and dogs don't have souls, monkey's don't have souls, species of African Ape don't have souls. Humans are a species of African Ape. Humans don't have souls. Needless to say, very early on I relinquished the idea of a young earth as espoused in Genisis in favour of an old one, and the rest seemed to follow quite naturally.
The whole idea of evolution is that complexity follows from simplicity. It's a powerful argument, that I cannot refute for my own part, that a creator would be extremely complex, and must be explained by means of a more simple origin. That is, in a nutshell, why I don't believe in God. Obviously it's way more complicated than that and involves a whole lifetime of reflection, contemplation, reading, and repeating.
This is not meant outright to be an attack or what-have-you against anyone's faith. It would be dishonest of me to try to give the impression that I wouldn't consider myself to be doing anyone a favour in divesting them of their faith, but that's not what this is directly, I'm just trying to illustrate my own point of view honestly. It's inevitable that it may seem like an attack on faith or the idea of faith if it is completely honest.
As I hope I have illustrated, it's quite a neat little logical bundle to be of the 'belief', although technically, like all honest atheists I think, belief is the wrong word, and it's really just the possibility held to be most probable, that if all living organisms lack a soul, from microbe to man, then there is no confusion over who gets into heaven and who doesn't. Believe it or not, as a child I used to experience existential worry over the seperation I would have to endure from my beloved pets, whom, like the OP, I knew to be without sin and as deserving of everlasting happiness as any person I knew. I no longer suffer from this worry, but in it's place I have to learn to accept the notion that all things end, they, as I, and all that I will ever know and love. There is still, of course, the existential worry over the reality of oblivion, but at least notions of cosmic injustice, a lack of mercy for beloved pets, of fretting over where to draw the line of belief in souls between one species and the next, are done away with, and only the ultimate question of finding peace with the notion of real mortality remains.0 -
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OK, charter read and agreed to. Wheatons Law likewise.
To start out with, my lack of faith in an immortal soul or the supernatural stems in no small degree from my acceptance of the theory of evolution as scientific fact demonstrated through massive amounts of overwhelmingly convincing evidence. It is from this starting point that the reasoning follows: germs and things don't have souls, ants don't have souls, mice don't have souls, cats and dogs don't have souls, monkey's don't have souls, species of African Ape don't have souls. Humans are a species of African Ape. Humans don't have souls. Needless to say, very early on I relinquished the idea of a young earth as espoused in Genisis in favour of an old one, and the rest seemed to follow quite naturally.
The whole idea of evolution is that complexity follows from simplicity. It's a powerful argument, that I cannot refute for my own part, that a creator would be extremely complex, and must be explained by means of a more simple origin. That is, in a nutshell, why I don't believe in God. Obviously it's way more complicated than that and involves a whole lifetime of reflection, contemplation, reading, and repeating.
This is not meant outright to be an attack or what-have-you against anyone's faith. It would be dishonest of me to try to give the impression that I wouldn't consider myself to be doing anyone a favour in divesting them of their faith, but that's not what this is directly, I'm just trying to illustrate my own point of view honestly. It's inevitable that it may seem like an attack on faith or the idea of faith if it is completely honest.
As I hope I have illustrated, it's quite a neat little logical bundle to be of the 'belief', although technically, like all honest atheists I think, belief is the wrong word, and it's really just the possibility held to be most probable, that if all living organisms lack a soul, from microbe to man, then there is no confusion over who gets into heaven and who doesn't. Believe it or not, as a child I used to experience existential worry over the seperation I would have to endure from my beloved pets, whom, like the OP, I knew to be without sin and as deserving of everlasting happiness as any person I knew. I no longer suffer from this worry, but in it's place I have to learn to accept the notion that all things end, they, as I, and all that I will ever know and love. There is still, of course, the existential worry over the reality of oblivion, but at least notions of cosmic injustice, a lack of mercy for beloved pets, of fretting over where to draw the line of belief in souls between one species and the next, are done away with, and only the ultimate question of finding peace with the notion of real mortality remains.
Maybe you don't understand what a soul is in Christian theology? A soul is simply that which sets animals apart from vegetables. It refers to the mind and emotions and will of a creature. As the owner of a dog (a rather stupid and neurotic border collie) I am pretty sure that he has a mind and a will - and his moods strongly suggest he has emotions. And, I'm pretty sure, a belief in evolution should not stop anyone from believing that we possess a mind, will and emotions - a soul.
That which we believe is unique to man is the spirit, the part of us that was created to share communion with God.
Also, it might be worth pointing out that historical Christianity does not believe in the popular notion (derived more from popular folk religion than from the Bible) of heaven as some sort of otherworldly place where disembodied spirits float around for all eternity.
The historical Christian teaching is that we will be resurrected in new bodies, that there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and that we will live on into eternity in a bodily reality in God's presence. If animals are going to be present in this experience (and I don't think the Bible tells us one way or another whether they will or not) then it would not be necessary for them to have a spirit.0 -
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Oh boy, where to start?!
I certainly don't want to end up trolling unintentionally, even though I disagree with everything so far posited in response to my previous post.
And I didn't really want to come in here and start debating theology, it's just that the pet thing struck a chord. I had simply hoped to provide the OP with another perspective on the separation scenario they introduced.
Just to summarise really quickly, and probably leave out a lot of important stuff, I think the idea of animals having souls in Christian theology is a fairly modern phenomenon, and quite a departure from traditional teachings and interpretations of doctrine.
Observe PDN's definition of a soul:
"Maybe you don't understand what a soul is in Christian theology? A soul is simply that which sets animals apart from vegetables."
I guess I understand a soul in terms of Christian theology as much as any lay Christian, being that I was one for 12-16 years (that's leaving out the first 4 years of life during which I wouldn't really have had the capacity to consider things reflectively, and providing for a gradual fading out of faith from my world-view over the ages of 16-20). And my understanding of that concept, fashioned as it was from an entire education in the Church sponsored national curriculum, which is to say religion class and some other classes delivered by brothers and priests, and weekly attendance at mass, and discussions at home with parents and family members of a Christian persuasion also, probably not unlike most Christians upbringings within the religion, and so what I would consider to be not unwell informed, was that humans had them, and plants and animals didn't, and that they amounted to more than the sum of the electrical activity of neurons in a brain, the firing patterns of which resulted in a mind, or 'soul'. I presume this is what's meant by the above statement that "A soul is simply that which sets animals apart from vegetables." Is that a statement all other persons in here concur with, or is there disagreement as to what actually constitutes the definition of a soul? Because I would imagine that that's somewhat important in determining if animals have them.
I would agree that if the mind, as defined above, is the soul, then yes, animals have them and that includes humans, but I wouldn't call that an immortal soul, having no evidence that there is a continuation of this pattern in any recognisable form after the expiration of the medium - brain death. I would just say that in that case soul is just another name for mind, which does not continue to exist after death.
Festus:
I think you are indeed reading that somewhat incorrectly. I would consider it not a bad thing to talk someone out of their faith, directly or indirectly, if they had the constitution to deal with life without it. It would be dishonest to try to give the impression that I would consider it a bad thing to have done that, even if my intention in a given conversation was to do something other than that. I realise that's still a bit convoluted.
Going back to PDN:
There seems to be a lot of complicated figuring in whether animals have a soul but no spirit, both, neither, what humans have in comparison to that, what you need to get into heaven, what heaven is, where and when you get there, what form you take, what's there as well as humans, etc. What's the OP's view on this? Is it in concordance?
If you'll forgive me, all of these considerations and definitions seem to be rather arbitrary. There seem to be a lot of labels going around without clear definitions, making discussion difficult.
Your comments about historical interpretations versus popular ones are interesting. To me they illustrate a divergence that seems to have no clear criteria on either side for deciding which is true, if either. If the popular interpretation is that spirits float around in heaven, or on white clouds in robes strumming harps like the comic book illustrations, what's to indicate this is incorrect other than a differing interpretation of scripture. It sounds like just different phrases in the Bible being taken literally or metaphorically on different sides, but no clear indicator of which is the correct decision on what's literal and what's metaphorical. And if faith is the final arbiter, who's faith is to be trusted? Say I believed that (which I don't of course), and you believed the idea of new bodies, eternal physical existence etc, and we're at loggerheads over it. Can you see that there is no way to demonstrate one theory's supremacy over the other? And to bring it back to the topic, my own view is that this inability to decide or agree on definitions and criteria etc presents problems in addressing the OP's original concerns.
Plowman:
I know what you're saying, not too many fundie's round these parts. But I did indicate that that was only skimming the surface, and that it was considerations of such things as evolution over a lifetime that has resulted in my held views. I was just trying to add some colour to the character of my position. And like all atheists, my belief is a belief insofar as a consideration of a probability to be by far the most likely of all possibilities whose truth value is ultimately unknowable can be considered to be a belief. Calling it a belief just makes it easier to write more sentences about it in less time, but it should be read as shorthand for the above.
Considerations of evolution and faith might be tangential in this discussion but I think are quite relevant, since it resonates with the idea of whether animals have a soul, which leads us to consider which animals do and which don't - do microbes, bacteria? Will there be germs in heaven? If so, why? What value to their existence. Can they even appreciate their own existence with whatever they have that corresponds to a mind in us? Is a calculator more 'conscious' than a bacterium? Should it have a soul and live in heaven? (I'm not trying to be facetious here, sorry if it sounds that way.) No need to answer any of these directly, they're just to illustrate.
And I'm sure some Christians will say animals don't have souls, but believe in evolution, so how to reconcile the introduction of the soul into the human species when there is no sharp line between our species and those that came before, for no mother ever gives birth to a creature of another species; evolution happens slowly and gradually over great swathes of time, and only after (usually) thousands of generations could a new species that would be unable to breed with its forbears (were they to live at the same time) be said to exist. But at no time was there a generation that was a different species and could not interbreed with its parent’s generation. Ring species illustrate this point particularly well.
So when I think of things like this, and souls and animals, I wonder, would there be Neanderthals in Heaven? Homo erectus spirits? Not necessarily direct ancestors of ours I'm aware, but illustrative of the concept under consideration. Christians who believe in evolution, but not that animals have souls, spirits, what-have-you, basically an immortal preservation of individual identity by any other name, would presumably have to reconcile this issue of where and when the soul entered into the human line. Naturally I don't have to reconcile this issue personally, because my own considered position is that it never did.
Anyway, that's why evolution
Fanny:
When I say complexity necessarily follows simplicity, I mean it in a way that is best understood in terms of building, or building blocks. To make a complicated castle, it usually helps, indeed is quite necessary, to begin simply by laying one block of stone on the ground, followed by another, and another, in steps simple relative to the complexity of the final whole, rather than try to lay all blocks simultaneously and arrive at the complex final whole in one step.
Biological evolution follows this pattern elegantly, starting from simple origins of replicating molecules with organisms getting progressively more complex with subsequent generations, the reason being mutations conferring advantageous variations from the original being selected for by survival rates and those advantageous characteristics being propagated to future generations, with occasional further advantageous mutations being added and increasing the complexity of the resulting organisms as time goes by. Naturally disadvantageous mutations also happen and are selected against by the same mechanism so do not propagate. Just to diverge a little I feel compelled to point out the beautiful elegance of this mechanism, which operates entirely unguided and yet results in the appearance of exquisitely designed organisms of inestimable complexity, like your good selves and I.
"In the case of God, the orthodox understanding is that there is no regress to something before God. In other words, once can't go back further than God because God is uncreated."
I must risk being rude here and simply point out that I hold the orthodox understanding to be wholly wrong. To say that there is 'nothing' before God, and that he exists outside of our normal causal conversational rules, is to sabotage the discussion. This is why I've gone through the whole rigmarole of saying why and how complexity follows simplicity, not verse-vica, and asserting that a creator must be more complex than its creation (which I'll come back to). Thinking this way means I naturally conclude that if God created the universe, he must have been even more complex than it, and must therefore have an explainable origin in simplicity. I simply don't think any other way. To say 'God did it' doesn't answer anything for me or other atheists, as I'm sure you're aware, it just raises further questions, and pushes the question back to, essentially, 'well, what did God?' That's just how people like me think.
"As for the dogmatic assertion that a creator must be more complex than its creation, well, I don't see why we should believe that this is necessarily true. I can at least imagine a machine that give rise to a more complex machine. Or parents who produce progeny that are demonstrably superior in all manner of areas."
Ok, I really don't want to be dogmatic, but this idea just makes sense to me this way and no other. I'll try to illustrate how and why it makes sense to me this way, and if you want you can try to illustrate how it might make sense to you in another, opposing way. Fair?
A good example is to think of an aeroplane, which is a rather complex piece of technology. Now, this item is the result of a lot of experts in various fields such as aerodynamics, metallurgy, physics, chemistry, electronics, logical systems, ergonomics, computer networking, and probably many more, applying their expertise in a coordinated fashion to make something that probably none of them individually understand in its entirety. It's a very complex piece of engineering, and yet, compared to any one of those experts, with their mind-bogglingly complex bodies and brains, with their fantastically coordinated musculature and skeletal systems, their hundreds of billions of highly organised neurons, the carefully organised information resident within the framework of their minds, this amazing piece of engineering pales to insignificance. That's actually probably understating it. The creators outweigh the creation in complexity by, many, many, many....many, many, many orders of magnitude. The aeroplane is the product of the intellect of the aforementioned experts, but those intellects are far more complex than their creation, and even they cannot fully comprehend the totality of the complexity of their own creation, but need to be experts in isolation in their various fields. Even with that level of complexity.
You say you can imagine a machine that gives rise to a more complex machine by way of example, but I think that might be off the mark. What designed and created this machine? To say it simply exists is a meaningless abstraction. It must have had a creator, and if that was another machine, whether of more or less complexity, it must also have been created and therefore have had a creator. This is where to infamous 'infinite regression' comes into play, but it's not a bogey man, it's just a logical progression of this concept, and for people like me it applies to any creator, God included.
So far, the only mechanism that has been demonstrated to increase complexity over time is biological evolution my means of natural selection, which acts on hereditary variations introduced by mutation, both advantageous and disadvantageous, which are selected for and against respectively by nothing more than survival rates.
Aquinas' suggestions are of little value to me, they are nebulous interpretations of ambiguous texts, and rely heavily on unsubstantiated assumptions. I'm not really into that.0 -
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If being a Catholic for 12-16 years is sufficient to grasp this stuff then the mnajority of the Irish population would be adept in theology.
That's just arrogant. You presume much about the experiences of others.The Greek word translated 'soul' is psyche. Now think of any English words that are derived from that:
Psychological - Pertaining to the mind
Psychiatric - Sickness of the mind
Psychadelic - Blows your mind!
Does that tell you anything?
Nothing I don't already know. Should it tell me anything specific? Also it's psychosis.Fanny Cradock wrote: »I don't know why you feel the need to describe evolutionary processes to me. Having studied biology at 3rd level, I am as familiar with the theory as I'll ever likely want to be. I'm afraid that my passions wont be stirred however many times you assure me of the beauty and elegance involved. I accept evolution. I've moved on. Perhaps your cultured description will receive more attention elsewhere.
Thank you for the compliment. Perhaps it will even receive more attention here than expected, should there be other readers passing through of a curious frame of mind?Fanny Cradock wrote: »Well that is hardly a staggering admission coming from an atheist. Would a heterodox Christian understanding be less than wholly wrong, I wonder?
Depends.Fanny Cradock wrote: »It is not to sabotage the discussion. It is to describe God. You have just informed us that your way is the only way. This is not conducive to debate. And I'd rather just stop typing if this is how it's going to be.
My way is the only way? Is that in reference to how to frame the question of what made God?Fanny Cradock wrote: »Yes, you said that complexity follows simplicity. But you didn't provide much in the way of information beyond this assertion. One man's rigmarole is another man's bald statement, I guess.
In fact you quoted quite a big chunk of what I provided beyond my assertion at the very start of your post. You know, all the stuff about evolution you feel was quite unnecessary to outline? And then there was all the stuff about the aeroplane, but that was later on, after I mentioned the rigmarole, so maybe you'd quoted and typed before you got to it. I did say I'd get back to it though. You should have waited, it was good.Fanny Cradock wrote: »And all swans are white, right?
Really? CoolFanny Cradock wrote: »It "makes sense" may be a personally satisfactory response but there is no obligation on either God or the universe to operate within the boundaries of your understanding.
Now, you know I was trying to excuse why I might have been read as being dogmatic by your good self in my previous assertion, not that I was asserting that because something only makes sense to me in a certain way that it must therefore by that way. There's no need to intentionally misrepresent my sentiments. I've exlained as clearly as I am able, in good faith, why I hold the views on complexity and simplicity that I do. You're free to agree or disagree of course, and I would be delighted to hear you expand on your own views on the matter, so that I might better understand them, but I would only ask that you do so in equally good faith.Fanny Cradock wrote: »You example is neither good nor fair. You have taken the most complex collocation of atoms known to us and compared everything else against that.
And this in response to:
Originally Posted by H1ppy
"I'll try to illustrate how and why it makes sense to me this way, and if you want you can try to illustrate how it might make sense to you in another, opposing way. Fair?"
But nothing by way of explanation of your own views, just crits. How unsporting. I was just trying to encourage a real conversation. Don't fear, I shan't persist for long if it starts to look like I'm wasting my time.
Fanny Cradock wrote: »My point was simple: complexity can give rise to simplicity and simplicity can give rise to complexity.
Are you applying the same burdon of provision of backing-up information to your own assertions that you're applying to mine?Fanny Cradock wrote: »Yes, you said that complexity follows simplicity. But you didn't provide much in the way of information beyond this assertion.Fanny Cradock wrote: »Well that rather leaves you in the lurch when considering existence. Why something rather than nothing? Infinite regression is mute in the face of such a question.
Not at all. That's the beauty of philosophy as opposed to religion. You get to ask the questions even in the near certitude that you may never know the answers. It's extremely rewarding, I highly recommend it.Fanny Cradock wrote: »It doesn't matter if you are "into it" or not. The point was that the objections you raise are not of concern to the Judeo-Christian understanding of God. You don't have to be into it to understand that both traditions maintain that God is uncreated.
That's the short version. But the long version in the link you provided is all the so-called proofs for these conclusions. These so-called proofs are not actual proofs in the sense that is normally understood to be meant by 'proof'. Their acceptence hinges on faith in an unfalsifiable hypothesis, the existence of God, in the first place, as opposed to actual evidence. It's this kind of misappropriation of the term 'proof' that I'm 'not into'.0 -
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Quite a coincidence that the parked cars, and the petals of the flowers, remained in exactly the same place in every single one of the photos that were supposedly taken over an extended period of time.
As a piece of humor it would be entertaining - but when it purports to be factual it is nothing but old-fashioned lying.
Seems quite obviously meant to be a joke to me. Even the comments help clue one in, should they be unsure. Although comment 1 is probably a lie, but pretty transparent it has to be said. 0 -
steamengine wrote: »Recently dozens of sycamore seeds came flying into my back garden from a tree some distance off. These rotating flying seeds are shaped like a wing of an aircraft and could be described as single bladed gyro-copters. Gyro-copters were 'discovered' or invented by man approximately 50 years ago. Sycamore trees are thousands of years old I imagine. Some intelligent force got there before us !!!
Holy Chumba-Womba, you just wrinkled my brain! 0 -
Seems quite obviously meant to be a joke to me. Even the comments help clue one in, should they be unsure. Although comment 1 is probably a lie, but pretty transparent it has to be said.
Unfortunately common sense is not so common, and what seems pretty obvious to you and me is not so obvious to those who are intellectually challenged. Every now and again some poor moron crops up on the A&A forum who can't grasp that 'Intelligent Falling' is a spoof: http://www.theonion.com/articles/evangelical-scientists-refute-gravity-with-new-int,1778/0 -
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OK, charter read and agreed to. Wheatons Law likewise.
To start out with, my lack of faith in an immortal soul or the supernatural stems in no small degree from my acceptance of the theory of evolution as scientific fact demonstrated through massive amounts of overwhelmingly convincing evidence. It is from this starting point that the reasoning follows: germs and things don't have souls, ants don't have souls, mice don't have souls, cats and dogs don't have souls, monkey's don't have souls, species of African Ape don't have souls. Humans are a species of African Ape. Humans don't have souls..........
I would look at it another way. If humans have souls then why not the African ape, then on down the line until consciousness does not exist. Interestingly enough there are reported apparitions of dead pets re-appearing to their owners. One such book on apparitions I have was forwarded by the Dean of St. Pauls who obviously had an open mind on this matter. One thing that puzzles me about atheists, like yourself, is why are they so definite about their non-belief.0 -
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