An Interesting Disscussion About Animal Spirits And God

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There is an interesting discussion going on today at a discussion forum, godlikeproductions about animals and whether or not they have a soul. If you’ve read the first chapters of Living With Them, you can see where I stand on the subject. Here are some snippits and quotes from that thread in case you can’t get onto the site – they have an aggresive permission set regarding visitors.

This question is no joke for the scientific community. They allege now that a group of chimps “may be engaging in spiritual practices—and could even believe in God.” This “discovery” may help explain “how human religious rituals started.” What we are being bombarded with is another aspect of the God-defying atheistic evolution theory, which is a foolish abomination in God’s eyes. The Bible proves—and some honest scientists admit—that the entire evolution concept is wrong and a scientific impossibility. We are offering two free booklets, discussing this fact.

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New footage of ritual behaviour by chimpanzees, taken and analysed by researchers, shows they may be engaging in spiritual practices – and could even believe in God…

“The ritualized behavioural display and collection of artefacts at particular locations observed in chimpanzee accumulative stone throwing may have implications for the inferences that can be drawn from archaeological stone assemblages and the origins of ritual sites.”

This discovery is made even more interesting by the fact that Indigenous West African people also collect stones at sacred trees in a way that the resarchers said looks “eerily similar to what we have discovered here”… Link

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I’m a Protestant Christian. I’m not a scholar and I really should be reading my Bible more often but I’d like to try and give my take on the matter.

A good question is: Do animals believe in God, or sense God?

This really is a hard question to answer but it seems to be yes to a certain limit. The Bible has allot of really cool stories about animals. Belem’s donkey, Danial and the Lion, Noah’s raven and dove, and Adam and Eve might have been able to communicate with animals. Everything was designed by God.

The problem lies in the idea if animals have souls. Also, how diverse are animals with thought? A deer is afraid of death, but doesn’t ponder why. Or do they? Also, why are some animals perfectly healthy go on a killing spree (a Val Killmore movie I can’t remember the title was about lion’s senselessly killing people for sport).

So it is a mystery. I’m no expert on the subject but I hope I was able to contribute a little bit from my point of view. This is a very interesting topic to discuss and thanks for sharing the video.

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Here is what I’ve written in that discussion:
I’m writing a book about grieving for pets. Part of my research is regarding animals and whether or not they have a spirit or soul. The Bible is fairly clear that God gives them at the least spirit but is unclear on the soul aspect. I would put forward that sin would come into play if they had a soul. How would animals seek forgivness of sin, do they sin in the eyes of God, etc..

Emotions and spirit may or may not go hand in hand simply because of whether or not animals are able to have a concept right and wrong. It seems to me that also calls into play the concept of original sin and whether or not animals are affected by it. Another aspect is that we have bred animals as pets to achieve a certain set of behaviors.

As far as wild animals go, cases of grief in the wild world are well known from Elephants to Dolphins and even other Homininae (the subset of Hominids that includes gorillas, chimpanzees, apes and humans).

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