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Do animals have souls?
Scroffus
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This may sound odd, but I remember from an old psychology class many years ago, hearing about someone who shot animals while looking into their eyes to determine if they have a soul. Does anyone know if this is a real thing or if I'm just remembering it wrong? Do you know the name of the person?
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It's saddening to think that in another 100 years, some of our own modern experiments might be as horribly embarrassing as that one. :x
Could that 21grams Duncan measured be something else? Expelled air or something?
They would have to give a better name though like Necroreanimation
Yes, it could have been someone making stuff up and finding any excuse to fit the facts to his hypothesis.
http://www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp
"the soul's weight is removed from the body virtually at the instant of last breath, though in persons of sluggish temperament it may remain in the body for a full minute."
All of those strands from philotes in that structure are twined into a single philotic thread that connects to the next largest structure. The threads twine into a yarn to the next largest structure, and then into a greater rope of larger structures. This has nothing to do with nuclear forces or gravity, nothing to do with chemical bonds. Philotes are beneath all observable manifestations of matter and energy.
The individual philotic rays are always there, present in the twines, going on apparently forever. The rays twine together to the planet, and each planet's philotic twine reaches to its star, and each star to the center of the galaxy — and who knows where after that.
The philotic twines from substances like rock or sand all connect directly from each molecule to the center of the planet. But when a molecule is incorporated into a living organism, its ray shifts. Instead of reaching to the planet, it gets twined up into the individual cells, the rays from all the cells are all twined together so that each organism sends a single fiber of philotic connections to twine up with the central philotic rope of the planet.
Okay, but for real. I don't know if animals have souls. I also don't know if people do. Quite honestly, I tend to find the idea of a soul to be pretty ridiculous, but who knows? Humans have some tendencies and characteristics that are vastly different from animals.
He's looking for information on a very specific (though possibly fictitious) person and "experiment", so as long as everyone focuses on answering his specific question and not the broader philosophic one, it's fine here.
Yeah, this. Wasn't really looking to spark up a big discussion, just looking for the name of this person.
EDIT: The thing about weighing the soul was quite interesting though, thanks for that.
I'm going to start a D&D thread about this.
Didn't the pope say once that animals had souls?
This made me laugh more than it should have. I suppose being brought up as a catholic makes this more appropriate (to every situation, I swear it makes me laugh when ever anything I've believed when in when I was growing up is challenged. I'll watch for the DnD thread, I do enjoy reading other peoples responses to various situations.
No, animals do not have souls.
1) Because souls aren't real, we made them up
2) Because animals, especially lower animals like insects and microbes, don't experience the same consciousness that you and I do (which is the major thing attributed to a soul, typically). The neocortex defines much of our consciousness and our ability to not only think clearly but also grasp concepts like past present and future. Many animals lack the physical components necessary for this except a few breeds of primate. Most household animals like cats and dogs have, at best, a limbic system. Which, based on my reading, is likely closer to a sort of dream state.
If you want some interesting reading on consciousness and its relation to biology, read The Dragons of Eden, by Carl Sagan, from which most of #2 is derived from.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Are you positive this was a scientific study? The "looking into an animal's eyes" thing immediately brought to mind Mowgli in The Jungle Book, who found that if he stared into a wolf's eyes long enough, the wolf would drop his gaze (and so he used to stare at them for fun.) Is there any possibility you kind of combined that with the study where the guy poisoned dogs to weigh their "soul" on death?
(By coincidence, I am currently reading through a pile of books/scientific papers on animal behavior for a paper and can tell you there is absolutely no solid consensus that says, "No, animals don't experience thoughts/feelings like humans." Or that says that they do. There are arguments in every direction on animal cognitive behavior and no single accepted theory. No one currently studies whether animals have souls because no one studies (scientifically) if anything has a soul. Christianity typically (currently) does NOT associate a soul with consciousness, which is why the abortion debate rages on. "That fetus may not have been conscious/thinking/feeling but it had a soul and you murdered it," etc.
But that does not seem to be the OP's original question--he is trying to find out about this one particular study--so I will say no more about it.)
Things exist even before they're proven to exist.
Thank you, Rubacava!