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Gregory Koukl Sunday, June 12, 1994 |
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I can prove to you that animals have souls, and
it's actually not very difficult. There are certain
activities of our mental life that are clearly defined and are clearly
not physical, therefore they cannot reside in our physical bodies. Those
activities include beliefs, intentions, desires and sensations. In other
words, we experience feelings. We have beliefs about things. Based on
those beliefs we may have a desire that we feel also, and that desire
brings forth an intention to fulfill that desire.
Now an intention or a belief or a desire or
a sensation are not the kind of things you are going to bump into in
the hall. It doesn't have weight, it doesn't occupy any space. You don't
brake for these things. They are non-physical things, like ideas and
numbers and propositions, and things like that. Since they don't exist
in the physical world they cannot be accessed by the physical senses.
So, since you have beliefs, intentions, desires and sensations--and
you are clearly accessing them, and you are accessing them in a way
that is not physical--then part of you is not physical either. The part
of you that is non-physical is your soul.
A characteristic of soulish beings is to have
mental activity that consist of beliefs, intentions, desires, sensations
and one other which I can't recall. The point being, anything that has
beliefs, intentions, desires or sensations must also have a soul to
possess those things.
It doesn't seem to make any sense to say that
a plant has beliefs about its world, or that it has intentions. One
would ask, if it had an intention how would it ever fulfill it? It doesn't
pick things up and eat them. It doesn't move to a new location where
it's more comfortable, therefore it doesn't seem to have desires about
things. It's not even clear that plants have sensations. Now, when I
say a sensation, what I mean is the felt quality of a thing. It is possible
for a plant to be cut in one portion of it and for another portion to
wither, but because it withers it doesn't mean that it's experiencing
pain. That may be merely a physical response to a physical stimulus.
It is possible to have stimulus response relationships in non-animate
objects, but only animate, living objects can even have pain. So, if
inanimate objects can have stimulus response kinds of things, then animate
objects can have stimulus response reactions with no felt pain either.
So it may be that there's a physical stimulus that goes through the
plant's system that results in the wilting of the leaves even though
the plant is not consciously feeling any pain. In any event, it seems
to make no sense, given the qualities of the mental life that I've just
mentioned, to talk about plants having them. And therefore, it does
not seem to make sense to argue that plants have souls. However, it
seems to make entire sense that animals have those things--that animals
have beliefs about things, that they have intentions, that they have
desires, that they have sensations.
When Pavlov rang his famous bell, the dog salivated
because it believed it was about to get some food. As a result of that
belief it set up a response in its body to produce the saliva. When
the dog sees the food placed before him, it moves toward the food because
it has an intention to eat, and there is desire of hunger inside of
it that motivates the intention. As it eats, it chooses one food rather
than another -- and you cat owners know about that -- because one food
tastes better than another to the cat. Therefore it has sensation, too.
In other words, animals have all of these things that are qualities
and characteristics of the mental life. They have beliefs, they have
intentions, they have desires, they have sensations--or they appear
to. Since these things are not physical things, they are non- physical
things and they must exist in the animal in the non-physical space that
is real. That non-physical place is a soul. Ergo, animals have souls
like human beings have souls.
But there are different kinds of souls--even
in human beings. I think female souls are different than male souls.
This is what encourages our valid generalizations about the differences
between male and female, because the differences that we point out are
soulish differences, not differences merely in plumbing or chemistry.
Also, animals have different kind of souls than human beings. Human
being souls are made in the image of God and they live forever, they
are everlasting. Animal souls are not made in the image of God, and
we have no evidence that I can tell that they are everlasting.
Just some fun thinking about the nature of the
soul.
This is a transcript of a commentary from the
radio show
"Stand to Reason," with Gregory Koukl. It is made available to you at
no charge through the faithful giving of those who support Stand to
Reason. Reproduction permitted for non-commercial use only.
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