why do so many still claim animals don't have a soul?

>>2191050
It's so they can justify eating animals. No I'm not a vegan that's just the main reason why I've heard that reasoning.

Because:
1. Anthropomorphizing animals is a thing that many people do.
2. Souls aren't real.

I wouldn't even say that people have souls.
Religion is dumb.

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>tfw you don't have as many rights and freedoms just because humans have more neurons

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>>2191057

>>2191053
that's why only dogs and birbs have souls, cows and pigs and cats don't

>>2191063
cows can have one if they get treated unusually well. I know someone who rides her cow and the cow is unusually intelligent, can tricks, doesn't shit everywhere and mostly in the same places and is cute as fuck.

>>2191053
And the militant vegan has to chime in. Because you know, it's not like they ever force their opinions on people any other time.

>>2191050
If animals had souls, my necromancy level would be higher. Checkmate atheists.

I don't know if a soul exists or not but I do know animals have just as much personality as humans can have. I think the problem (if it really is one) is that people don't spend enough time with either their animals or just animals in general or look at them in a completely different way, like a toy or simply a possession.

>ITT anthromorphization

Animals don't have souls. Neither do humans. There's no proof that souls exist.

I never understood religions that don't believe animals have an afterlife but humans do. Why do the gods like humans so much? Why create animals but not allow them an afterlife?

souls don't exist

we are all meat puppets with preprogrammed behavioral responses so complex and variable that we are all fooled into the thinking the people around us have free will

the same goes for animals

>>2191100
Well, in germanic paganism, it's arguable that humans and animals all went to the underworld and animals that met criteria would be selected to be warriors in the battles to come in the end of the world.

So viking dogs went to Valhalla.

>>2191067
Whatever I've eaten more variety of animals than most people.

>>2191072

The same could be said of the inverse.
People spend too much time with their animals and start seeing things that aren't there.

soul is just the sum of your memories, intelligence, character, etc.

don't know why people make such a fuzz about it.

>>2191149

Fair enough, I reckon, but I personally try to keep it balanced.

>>2191050
souls are bullshit. nobody has one.

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>>2191100
>>2191233
>>2191112
>souls are bullshit. nobody has one.

>>2191050
You just have to reconcile that animals have souls and when you kill them to eat them your going to affect that soul.

I'm fine with it. Even though I don't know what happens to animal souls after an animal dies.

>>2191050
If you mean in a religious sense, animals don't have an immortal soul like humans, but they all come from God, have a soul of their own and thus return and be part of God upon death.

>>2191067
But that IS the reason, a lot of people experience a cognitive dissonance when they cuddle their dog and eat a cow, so they justify it like that.

>>2191050
I dunno, my dad feels this way and it's always been a point of contention. Dogs are GOAT pets though

>>2191160
Because muh religion and muh eternal sprirtual existence and muh special snowflake 'I am superior being and not a mere animal' ego.

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>>2191493
I read an interesting passage of a book about wolves once, that stated how wolves have a certain "dialogue" with their preys just before killing them.

The prey stops moving, it doesn't flee nor panics nor attacks even though it knows the wolf it's going to kill: they stare calmly at each other for a long time, then the wolf strikes and the prey lets it do it, accepting its death.

It's called "conversation of death": spiritually speaking, it's like the prey is letting the wolf take its meat in exchange for the respect of its soul. "I will let you eat me, so you can turn my meat into more life (for you and your pack), thus respecting my sacrifice and existence." The wolves do not have this conversation with dairy animals/human-breed cattle.

This is something many anthropologists believe humans did to, back when they only hunted to survive. They respected the animals, thanked them for their sacrifice which kept the cycle alive, and never wasted anything.

>>2191507
It's called: the elk is too exhausted and is in shock to keep responding to nips and bites to it's bleeding legs and ass.

>>2191507
Yeah i don't believe that but it sounds like a nice thing to say to people.

Indians say a Native American Indians little prayer when they kill an animal out of respect and all that shit.

>>2191407

Thump your Bible against the bullet in your teeth, jackass.

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>>2191050
Animals don't have a soul and neither do humans. Back to >>>/x/

>>2191088
>ITP using words you can't even spell

Do you guys think other animals have religions? I bet orcas and shit have religions. I wonder what the whale gods say about us land animals.

>>2191553

Whales almost assuredly don't have religions because whatever primitive pseudospirituality they have doesn't need to be incorporated into a hierarchical societal structure where you need fear of punishment to keep members in line.

>>2191568
Of course they do. Orcas absolutely have have a hierarchical structure that involves punishment.
They have the makings of a pretty standard religion, they have a leader who guides their pod, is the ancestor of all members in that pod and arguments often result in temporary banishment, not to mention they are of course reliant on weather and other animals' behavior which is key in many religions, probably most even.

>>2191568

I'm surprised people have never made a xenofiction book about orca. I've seen cats, rabbits, badgers, dogs, deer... No dolphins or orca.

>>2191576

That comparison is faulty on the front of scale.
Each pod functions more as a small family than a fully blown society where there is a much smaller genetic connection and members number in the hundreds to thousands.

There's a slight but crucial difference between a father and a priest.

>>2191054
only true answer

>>2191407
you're the one projecting mate

>>2191050
Soul is a bullshit term that means whatever the speaker wants. Basically slanguage. Yes, they have personalities, even my fucking dumb fishes do. Personality = intelligence? Intelligence = the ability to communicate based on personal memory? The hell if I know.

>>2191578
There must be, right? they're so much like us.

>>2191580
Why couldn't they have a religion around that? of course I expect it not to be much like a human religion, but couldn't they have believes based on a higher power ruling the universe around them?

Maybe their religion can have less to do with social structure and more to do with the elements, have a sort of matriarch orca who was the mother of all the orcas and she is so old and large that her tail creates the waves.
Or something.

Do you think orcas are aware that the moon creates the tide? I bet they know. What if they say the moon is like an entity. At the very least that's folklore.

>>2191623

Because that's not how religion works.
Creation myths are a result of a wise figure spouting bullshit to validate their position in "knowing what's best."

Obviously, if you're the leader of a large group, you need to have answers to some pretty big questions, otherwise they probably won't take you so seriously when you say "no, look, stealing is bad, and rape is only okay if you kill the husband first."

If they have a religion, it's probably like the very first proto-religions that came around as a result of hominid hunters telling young men to respect the prey and respect the hunt in order to lesser the probability of them fucking up their chance at food.

>>2191632
No it's not? half the time it's some drunk asshole saying "Hey guys, wouldn't it be funny if..." Have you heard creation myths from other religions? They're ridiculous, and most people didn't believe them, it was just a cool story to tell people. A bulk of religious tales were just stories made around a character many people knew, they weren't meant to teach you anything.

Furthermore... who said a religion NEEDS to be about being good for a reward or being bad for a punishment? That's just the religion YOU were raised under, not all religions.

What about ancient Egyptians, only the pharaoh was subject to judgement, everybody else believed in the religion knowing they'd just die? in b4 slaves, slaves had a different religion.
Or Germanic pagans? Valhalla isn't viking heaven, it's not a reward. Most people went to Hel and were fine with that.

Only now that we've taken out the science, law and most of the philosophy out of religions, they look like they're only based around faith of an afterlife and punishment over some previously established morals. Before that, when people didn't even have a name for their religion, their believes were used most often around shit like medicine or food and shit. Something Orcas regularly have to worry about.

We know hippos and elephants perform rituals with their dead. Why wouldn't they believe in an afterlife? lots of animals have a way of treating wounds or sheltering themselves from the elements. Don't you think some wonder why that works?

>>2191653

>Ancient Egypt
>"In Ancient Egypt, it was believed that upon death, ones fate in the afterlife was determined by the weighing of one’s heart. One’s heart was kept within the body during mummification so that it can travel with the deceased into the afterlife. Upon death, one entered the underworld (Duat), where Anubis, the God of the afterlife, weighed the persons heart on a scale against the feather of Ma’at, the goddess of order, truth, and righteousness. If the heart weighed more than the feather, meaning that the person was more wicked than good, then the heart would be devoured by Ammut, a demon with the head of a crocodile, the front half of the body of a leopard, and the back half of a hippopotamus.[1] If a person's heart was devoured by Ammut, then he would die a second death and be completely annihilated from existence.[2]"

>Hel
>This conception is in stark contrast to Hel's realm, the dreary subterranean abode ruled by its eponymous blue and black giantess Hel. The realm was a shore made of corpses called Náströnd within Hel. Her realm is separated from the world of the living by a rapid river across which leads the Gjallarbrú that the dead have to pass. Hel is the final destination of those who do not die in battle, but of old age or disease. There is reason to assume that the ideas of Hel are coloured by Christian influences which taught that there was a realm of punishment in contrast to paradise. The word Helviti, which still is the name of Hell in modern Scandinavian languages, means "Hel's punishment". It is not certain that the notion of Hel was very dark and dreary to pagan Scandinavians. In Baldrs draumar, we learn that Hel had decorated a lavish feasting table when she waited for Baldr to enter her halls. Still, it was probably not a very attractive destination, as the sagas tell of warriors who cut themselves with spears before dying in order to trick Hel into thinking that they had died heroic deaths in battle.[8]

>>2191653

Ceremonial empathic burials were the beginning of religions - it was later adopted as a means of controlling human impulsion through promises of reqards such as escape from this mundane world or eternal punishment, and high ranking members of the religion were more or less human equivalents of dog trainers.

Get over it.

A Soul is feeling, Memory and Character traits?

Holy shit, my roomba has a soul!

I should have known earlier, the way it always needs two attempts to plug in to its charging dock.. man it sure makes you think!

>>2191050
There are no souls, or we'd find a way to manipulate them for one reason or another.

>>2191679
>Ancient Egypt
No. It wasn't. Originally, only the Pharaoh was judged that way, later everyone was but that doesn't change the fact that for a while, only the highest figure head had this and everybody else would rot in the ground.

>Hel
Your point?
It says right there it wasn't a punishment. Hel was just where most dead people went. Warriors would probably rather go to Valhalla or the other one, the field version, but that was just them, and it's not exactly a reward, just the fruit of their labor. Like a promotion.

>>2191682
Guy, you know about ONE religion. Not all religions have something cool in the afterlife, many just have a life, nothing fancy. Many don't even have an afterlife. Religion was not made to control the masses or keep you down. The concept of a religion itself is pretty modern.
Your understanding of religion starts and ends in realizing they're not real.

>>2191503
What you just said negates your point. Neither dogs or cows have souls, so it should be equally okay to eat/cuddle both.

Even if souls do exist and animals have them, it wouldn't stop me from eating them and it sure as fuck doesn't stop them from eating one another. Eating people is also a possibility.

there are some turbo fedora tippers ITT but I'm glad there's also some counter flak.

>>2191623

I have never found one at least.

Speaking of xenofiction literature, do you guys prefer when they include religion or not? I'd ask /lit/ but they probably don't care. I want to write xenofiction stories one day but I am debating on whether to give the animals religions or not.

>>2191725
you don't seem to understand what cognitive dissonance is.

>>2191781
I do.
My favourite part of Watership Down was the religion, but sometimes religion can be kind of lame, although no example is jumping out at me right now, but that's only when the religion is badly written.

It's part of building their world, I don't see why not include it, but how important it is to the story may put some people off, like those that don't like too much lore in their stories.

>>2191783
I understand it, but it's retarded of you to think A lacks B, and C lacks B as well, therefore C is why we treat them differently.

>>2191781
A quick google search turned this up http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4705108-whale
seems to have good reviews. The author seems to have other books about orcas.

>>2191799
I never said I think that you stupid mong. And if you don't think people are capable of holding logically inconsistent and irrational beliefs you're highly mistaken.

>>2191519
That doesn't make sense. Are you autistic?

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>>2191519

>>2191836
probably

>>2191066
so if we treat a population of humans bad enough they dont develope souls and can be used as farm animals?

>>2191050
>be meat eater
>love my pets
>love my fellow humans
>know that i cause suffering to a being that can feel

i made peace with the fact that i am a hypocrite after all.
when do you accept that little bit of evil within you? there is no justification to do it, and pulling the "soul" card doesnt do shit, souls as they are described in metaphysical terms have never been proven at all.

what you describe as "conscioussnes" is something either only you or everything could have as well. someone can claim he is concious, but i can only know for sure that i am.