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Do you believe all other forms of life have souls? I'm curious because you made the vegetarian and vegan argument which I always find interesting. I was raised

Do you believe all other forms of life have souls? I'm curious because you made the vegetarian and vegan argument which I always find interesting. I was raised Hindu (now atheist) and the religion has a belief that all forms of life have a soul and have consciousness. As a consequence of this you accept that in order to live, your life relies on extinguishing other forms of life. I always find it weird that when people talk about diet, animal rights, and souls, there is an arbitrary distinction between animals and the rest of organism (plants, fungi, bacteria, etc.). The concept of a soul is an abstract non-scientific belief, so given its an abstract concept with no scientific basis, why do we make a distinction between one form of life and another?

whatshisface 8y ago
Because I don't want to be eaten if I become mentally disabled in an accident, but I want to eat things that could perform equivalently on some tests.
- coginawheel 8y ago
  I don't understand your comment. Can you explain further?
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    In the west, the generally accepted public narrative is that only humans have souls, not other organisms. And whether or not it is acceptable to eat something is frequently more or less tied to intelligence. I really enjoyed your above comment. I sometimes give push back to the vegan moral superiority stance where they act like eating animals is evil, but eating plants is totally fine. I tend to view all organisms as "having a soul" so to speak and I don't think there is anything inherently morally superior from that perspective in eating only plants, not animals. (I think there are some other bases for arguing that it is morally superior wrt to preventing war, etc.) But when you see these arguments in public (among "westerners," for lack of a better word), they are almost always based on the idea that plants don't have brains, thus they don't have awareness, so this somehow makes it not a problem to kill them that we might live, where killing animals is posited to be a bad thing. If you take that argument to its logical conclusion, than perhaps it is morally acceptable to eat other people if they are in a vegetative state. It is one of my objections to such framing.
    - coginawheel 8y ago
      Yes, I've had similar viewpoints. I personally think tying of the soul to intelligence seems a weird distinction. Does that mean that if person goes into a vegetative state, they have lost their soul? Do animals that are less intelligent have a less likelihood of a soul? If you can breed animals without mental faculties are they soul-less? Does the fact that we can't understand if plants are intelligent meant they lack souls? These seem like petty distinctions. To me there is a notion that life has some intrinsic value to it. In parallel there is a notion that to exist as life, humans have to rely on destroying life. To me these are equally important, recognizing that life has worth but also to exist you must end life. I find this paradoxical duality to be beautiful. Now from a practical point of view there are social rules for how you end life. So some cultures thought it was ok to eat all forms of life as long as that life wasn't part of your tribe (societies with cannibalism), other societies thought it was ok to eat all forms of life except for your pets (most Americans), some exclude animals based on religious beliefs (pork in Islam and judaism, meat and beef in Hinduism), and some think it is ok to eat all forms of life that are non-animals (vegetarians). I think its hard for any of these groups to claim moral superiority. The truth is in order to exist we need to destroy life, but at the same time, most can see that life is precious.
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        My feeling is that the practice of saying grace before a meal is rooted in the awareness that "something died that I might live -- and there but for the grace of god go I." When we die, unless we are intentionally preserved, we also get consumed, even if only by microorganisms and plants growing in the soil where our body decomposed. As far as I know, other animals don't give pause over that detail. We seem to be the only animal who has this uncomfortable awareness and wrestles with it in various forms.
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      There is no reason to believe anything that would be described as a soul exists. Logically everything is an emergent property of complex systems including plants, animals, and us. Not being able to distinguish eating an orange, a chicken, a human, a human in a vegetative state etc is just a failure of analysis. There is no moral dimension to eating an orange and we don't eat people even when their brain is irretrievably ruined out of inherent disgust,desire not to catch a disease, and moral respect for those they may have left behind. Eating animals is legitimately complicated. We probably shouldn't do it any more
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
hessenwolf 8y ago
I had the fortune to grow up simultaneously in a few variations of christianity. None of them dealt adequately with the argument why animals don't have souls, nor referred to the bible. It was just stated. Also, none of the dealt with why a person who had never encountered the bible would go de facto to hell. If we were really made in god's image, then he'd expect us to follow logic, thank you.
- klibertp 8y ago
  > If we were really made in god's image, then he'd expect us to follow logic, thank you. There's literally nothing in the scriptures (that I've read) supporting this, while there's plenty of evidence God itself is batshit insane, or at least suffers from bipolar disorder, paranoia, and obsessive jealousy. As such, it's entirely plausible to me that we are, indeed, made in such a god's image...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
sonnyblarney 8y ago
" The concept of a soul is an abstract non-scientific belief, so given its an abstract concept with no scientific basis, why do we make a distinction between one form of life and another?" A 'soul' is a rational and scientific concept, it's just not materialist or rather, the kind of science we are used to daily. As far as souls, more complicated, but maybe one simple answer is that more complex and intelligent forms of life have a deeper access to 'the soul' and that it's not like a step function, rather ... some kind of increasing gradient from inanimate matter, to plants, to animals, to humans, to the 'next level' of life. My second answer relates to the first, i.e. 'Scientific' in sense that his is literally how we divide the universe at least biologically, i.e. life/not life, then domain, kingdom etc.. Please reconsider the notion that 'soul' has no scientific basis, as many would consider that the 'soul' or 'spirit' or 'animus' or whatever is literally the thing that distinguishes us from inanimate material - otherwise - according to a purely materialist perspective you cannot be alive i.e. there is no such thing as life - you are merely a random bag of particles that appears to be alive :). If you believe that you are alive, that there is love, intelligence, happiness, experience, consciousness, and that you are not simply a purely random bag of particles, then it logically follows you must 'believe in something' that is not bound by strict materialist ideals. This metaphysical concept is not new, and we have some words for that, usually: 'soul' or 'animus' or 'spirit' or whatever. It's not irrational and it's not unscientific, it just by definition does not fit within materialist framework. And to be more clear - materialist science holds as a presupposition that 'everything is a random wave/particle/big of energy' - it is not a 'proof' kind of thing. It holds as a presupposition that 'there is nothing more'. In essence, materialist science starts with a premise of denying all other views, and then goes on to try to explain everything through the lego-blocks of matter type theories. Which don't explain life very well at all. Sorry for all that. Short answer: Animals are on the spectrum of life, as are we, and there's clearly a relationship there and we can therefore infer a degree of their experience and status in all of this to some extent.
- coginawheel 8y ago
  As a sidepoint, I'm going to have to argue that while a soul can be considered a rational concept, it is by know means scientific. I have not aware of any peer reviewed research utilizing the scientific method to show that a soul exists. But to get to your main point, my question again is why are plants excluded from this state? I really don't get it. You call out that animals are different because they aren't inanimate beings, but neither are plants. Plants are complex, highly evolved multi cellular organisms that are certainly not inanimate. If the argument is that animals are a life form that are closer form of life to humans so that's why you shouldn't eat them, I can buy that argument. It's a similar moral argument for why you shouldn't eat humans. But that's a lot different from claiming that animals have souls/spirit/animus and plants don't. From any biological perspective plants are just as alive as animals. Plants communicate, respond to touch, many even actively kill other organisms (venus fly traps, bird catcher trees, etc.), they've been experimentally verified to exhibit some type of memory, and they respond to all sorts of stimuli (for example, turning towards the sun). Rationally, isn't that pretty darn alive? It seems shortsighted to think that plants lack a spirit/soul.

whatshisface 8y ago

Because I don't want to be eaten if I become mentally disabled in an accident, but I want to eat things that could perform equivalently on some tests.

coginawheel 8y ago
I don't understand your comment. Can you explain further?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  In the west, the generally accepted public narrative is that only humans have souls, not other organisms. And whether or not it is acceptable to eat something is frequently more or less tied to intelligence. I really enjoyed your above comment. I sometimes give push back to the vegan moral superiority stance where they act like eating animals is evil, but eating plants is totally fine. I tend to view all organisms as "having a soul" so to speak and I don't think there is anything inherently morally superior from that perspective in eating only plants, not animals. (I think there are some other bases for arguing that it is morally superior wrt to preventing war, etc.) But when you see these arguments in public (among "westerners," for lack of a better word), they are almost always based on the idea that plants don't have brains, thus they don't have awareness, so this somehow makes it not a problem to kill them that we might live, where killing animals is posited to be a bad thing. If you take that argument to its logical conclusion, than perhaps it is morally acceptable to eat other people if they are in a vegetative state. It is one of my objections to such framing.
  - coginawheel 8y ago
    Yes, I've had similar viewpoints. I personally think tying of the soul to intelligence seems a weird distinction. Does that mean that if person goes into a vegetative state, they have lost their soul? Do animals that are less intelligent have a less likelihood of a soul? If you can breed animals without mental faculties are they soul-less? Does the fact that we can't understand if plants are intelligent meant they lack souls? These seem like petty distinctions. To me there is a notion that life has some intrinsic value to it. In parallel there is a notion that to exist as life, humans have to rely on destroying life. To me these are equally important, recognizing that life has worth but also to exist you must end life. I find this paradoxical duality to be beautiful. Now from a practical point of view there are social rules for how you end life. So some cultures thought it was ok to eat all forms of life as long as that life wasn't part of your tribe (societies with cannibalism), other societies thought it was ok to eat all forms of life except for your pets (most Americans), some exclude animals based on religious beliefs (pork in Islam and judaism, meat and beef in Hinduism), and some think it is ok to eat all forms of life that are non-animals (vegetarians). I think its hard for any of these groups to claim moral superiority. The truth is in order to exist we need to destroy life, but at the same time, most can see that life is precious.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      My feeling is that the practice of saying grace before a meal is rooted in the awareness that "something died that I might live -- and there but for the grace of god go I." When we die, unless we are intentionally preserved, we also get consumed, even if only by microorganisms and plants growing in the soil where our body decomposed. As far as I know, other animals don't give pause over that detail. We seem to be the only animal who has this uncomfortable awareness and wrestles with it in various forms.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    There is no reason to believe anything that would be described as a soul exists. Logically everything is an emergent property of complex systems including plants, animals, and us. Not being able to distinguish eating an orange, a chicken, a human, a human in a vegetative state etc is just a failure of analysis. There is no moral dimension to eating an orange and we don't eat people even when their brain is irretrievably ruined out of inherent disgust,desire not to catch a disease, and moral respect for those they may have left behind. Eating animals is legitimately complicated. We probably shouldn't do it any more
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

hessenwolf 8y ago

I had the fortune to grow up simultaneously in a few variations of christianity. None of them dealt adequately with the argument why animals don't have souls, nor referred to the bible. It was just stated. Also, none of the dealt with why a person who had never encountered the bible would go de facto to hell. If we were really made in god's image, then he'd expect us to follow logic, thank you.

klibertp 8y ago
> If we were really made in god's image, then he'd expect us to follow logic, thank you. There's literally nothing in the scriptures (that I've read) supporting this, while there's plenty of evidence God itself is batshit insane, or at least suffers from bipolar disorder, paranoia, and obsessive jealousy. As such, it's entirely plausible to me that we are, indeed, made in such a god's image...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

sonnyblarney 8y ago

" The concept of a soul is an abstract non-scientific belief, so given its an abstract concept with no scientific basis, why do we make a distinction between one form of life and another?" A 'soul' is a rational and scientific concept, it's just not materialist or rather, the kind of science we are used to daily. As far as souls, more complicated, but maybe one simple answer is that more complex and intelligent forms of life have a deeper access to 'the soul' and that it's not like a step function, rather ... some kind of increasing gradient from inanimate matter, to plants, to animals, to humans, to the 'next level' of life. My second answer relates to the first, i.e. 'Scientific' in sense that his is literally how we divide the universe at least biologically, i.e. life/not life, then domain, kingdom etc.. Please reconsider the notion that 'soul' has no scientific basis, as many would consider that the 'soul' or 'spirit' or 'animus' or whatever is literally the thing that distinguishes us from inanimate material - otherwise - according to a purely materialist perspective you cannot be alive i.e. there is no such thing as life - you are merely a random bag of particles that appears to be alive :). If you believe that you are alive, that there is love, intelligence, happiness, experience, consciousness, and that you are not simply a purely random bag of particles, then it logically follows you must 'believe in something' that is not bound by strict materialist ideals. This metaphysical concept is not new, and we have some words for that, usually: 'soul' or 'animus' or 'spirit' or whatever. It's not irrational and it's not unscientific, it just by definition does not fit within materialist framework. And to be more clear - materialist science holds as a presupposition that 'everything is a random wave/particle/big of energy' - it is not a 'proof' kind of thing. It holds as a presupposition that 'there is nothing more'. In essence, materialist science starts with a premise of denying all other views, and then goes on to try to explain everything through the lego-blocks of matter type theories. Which don't explain life very well at all. Sorry for all that. Short answer: Animals are on the spectrum of life, as are we, and there's clearly a relationship there and we can therefore infer a degree of their experience and status in all of this to some extent.

coginawheel 8y ago
As a sidepoint, I'm going to have to argue that while a soul can be considered a rational concept, it is by know means scientific. I have not aware of any peer reviewed research utilizing the scientific method to show that a soul exists. But to get to your main point, my question again is why are plants excluded from this state? I really don't get it. You call out that animals are different because they aren't inanimate beings, but neither are plants. Plants are complex, highly evolved multi cellular organisms that are certainly not inanimate. If the argument is that animals are a life form that are closer form of life to humans so that's why you shouldn't eat them, I can buy that argument. It's a similar moral argument for why you shouldn't eat humans. But that's a lot different from claiming that animals have souls/spirit/animus and plants don't. From any biological perspective plants are just as alive as animals. Plants communicate, respond to touch, many even actively kill other organisms (venus fly traps, bird catcher trees, etc.), they've been experimentally verified to exhibit some type of memory, and they respond to all sorts of stimuli (for example, turning towards the sun). Rationally, isn't that pretty darn alive? It seems shortsighted to think that plants lack a spirit/soul.