Do animals have souls? [View All]

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Other than humans, that is. And by soul I mean something that exists outside of one's physical body that helps determine who you are as a person/being.

I should start off by saying that I'm an agnostic and I'm not 100% convinced that souls exist. However, I think it's a good deal more likely that souls exist than that God exists. My father and I have had a number of conversations regarding souls and he's firmly convinced that they exist. He's made a number of convincing arguments. I'm not a fatalist, I strongly believe in free will. Through our discussions, I've come very much to believe that a belief in free will should strongly correlate with a belief in the soul. Considering how little is left to chance in the physical world, I almost have to believe in a soul to still believe that everything in the world isn't predetermined.

So, I had come very close to becoming convinced that souls exist when a troubling thought entered my head. Why wouldn't animals have souls? If you believe in souls, you have to believe one of three possibilities:

1) Only humans have souls.
2) Humans have souls as well as a select group of other animals (perhaps simians and cetaceans). Or
3) All life regardless of how complex has some form of a soul.

I've found that the great majority of people who believe in souls believe that they're exclusive to humans. If that was the case, wouldn't it stand to reason that humans evolved their soul? At one point in the history of human evolution, there would have to have been some point where one of our predecessors had to have lacked a soul because all life stems from some ancient single-celled organism. If you consider that, is it possible that other animals will evolve a soul in time? Is #3 correct and human bodies contain trillions of simple organisms each with their own souls?

So, what do you think? If you believe in the soul, do you think option 1, 2 or 3 is most likely? Why do you believe so? If you don't believe in the soul or think it's very unlikely that the soul exist and have a reasoning for that, I'd love to hear that too.