tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6920271329589936347.post1181575625184206610..comments2023-04-25T11:15:08.515-04:00Comments on Science & Religion Today: Do Persons Have Souls?Heather Waxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15610116462331794810noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6920271329589936347.post-70686622578010114452008-11-02T12:04:00.000-05:002008-11-02T12:04:00.000-05:00On the ABC Evening News some years ago, we saw a w...On the ABC Evening News some years ago, we saw a woman in profound grief, saying good-bye to her deceased dog which was neatly laid in an elegant coffin. She placed a flower on the pet in peace, along with what seemed like a little velvety bag, filled perhaps with beef-biscuits. Tears rolled down her eyes in profusion even as sympathetic friends and relatives tried to console her aching heart.<BR/><BR/>Another person in the news declared something to the effect that if anybody deserved to go to heaven, it was his very faithful and loving Labrador. Yet another expressed the judgment that Heaven wouldn’t be Heaven if there were no chihuahuas there. All this was related to the profound theological question as to whether dogs have souls.<BR/><BR/>Among the ancients, Pythagoras and Brothers (like many of their Hindu cousins even to this day) had little doubt that not just dogs but all animals have souls: indeed that some of these could well have inhabited other human beings in their previous terrestrial trips. On the other hand, Christianity and Islam deny entry into Heaven for animals, as well as to non-Christians and non-Muslims: to the former because they have no souls, to the latter because they have not accepted the only Savior/Messenger of God there ever was or will be.<BR/><BR/>Descartes gave a death blow to dog-dignity by declaring those lowly creatures to be mere automata. Today some animal-rights groups conduct funeral services for deceased dogs and cats in caskets. All of which brought the reporter to an eminent theologian of the Judeo-Christian persuasion who reasoned that animals simply cannot have souls because they have no free-will, and that therefore there was no question of having pets in paradise. This must have broken the heart of the lady who was lamenting at the mortal remains of her dear departed dog.<BR/><BR/>If the question had been posed to a biologist, he/she too would have definitely denied souls to dogs, but more curtly, by asking: “Are you kidding?” This is one issue on which modern scientists and thoughtful theologians of certain traditions concur without blinking an eye: that animals have no souls, except that most modern biologists deny it to humans also.<BR/><BR/>One may of course ask, if there are flora in Heaven, why not fauna? But that just complicates the debate.<BR/><BR/>It was also reported that more than 40% of Americans believe animals have souls. We need less than 10 more percent to prove that the proposition is true.<BR/><BR/>The moral of the story, it seems to me, is that contradictions and confrontations are inevitable when we mix up metaphysical understandings of the human condition with physical descriptions of the same. The two are truths of two very different categories.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com