Does your Pet have a soul?

There is nothing wrong with having a service like that for a loved pet, but it is for your benefit, not the pet’s. Same goes for humans- funerals are for the living, not the dead. People do not have souls, so I doubt that animals do.

My pet opossum was human to me. I loved her more than anything. When she died, I wanted her cremated, but my mom buried her while I was gone. I marked her grave with a stone and I go to see her every day. Writing this now is making me tear up. I still miss my Sylvia. All I can say is yes, she had a soul. That soul mended my heart for a while. :”(

Well if soul equates to personality, then you betcha she has :¬)

I don’t believe in souls.

My dogs definitely have soul and, I believe, they have souls as well.

Having a soul means you experience an Afterlife, right? I don’t know much about souls and I do not have an opinion , yet, if pets “go anywhere” after death. I do like to think they have souls whatever that means.

You know where dogs end up don’t you?

@ucme I just lurve you for that!

I know my dog has a soul, I can look in his eyes and tell. Also I remember this place I visited that was haunted and one of the ghosts was a dog. I remember the experiences I had there, dog barking with no dog anywhere near and that whine you get when they need to go outside.

@Kayak8 Boom Boom Boom ruff! Oops, sorry wrong movie :¬)

yes… pets have souls. to me, anything with a personality has a soul. but, like @aster, i don’t know much about souls.

@Harold How do you know that people do not have souls. Do you even know what a soul is? I definitely have one and so do many people. Granted there are those that do not have one and probably never will. So what I hear you saying is nobody has a sense of morals, or integrity.
Do you know what a soul is or represents?

If one believes humans have souls and humans are evolved animals, ergo, all animals must have souls.

No, they’re minions of the antichrist ~

I think pets often take on human characteristics. They don’t have a soul though, and neither do humans.

When some of you say, no human don’t have a soul, makes me wonder what definition of soul you are referring to.
Soul is a noun (person, place, or thing) If you don’t have a soul, why is it in the dictionary?

@RANGIEBABY Right, cause that’s how we should evaluate whether something is true or not – by looking in the dictionary, another book written by men.

I’m sure “ghost” is also in the dictionary, doesn’t mean I believe in those, either. Just means that there is a word for it.

Dogs and cats, our most common pets, were raised and bred over many years to be dependent on us. If you raise a wolf and a dog in an identical environment and then introduce them to an identical problem: the wolf will attempt to solve the problem on its own. Even when failing it will not turn to the human. A dog, however, when they can not solve it on their own, will automatically turn to the human. This doesn’t mean that the dog has a soul, or even that it loves us.. but that we have essentially created dogs to depend on us. Many people read that as love. I’m sure there are plenty of people who believe all living creatures have souls, but that is a completely different story from placing our pets on a pedestal over any other animal in the world. It is all in our heads. Or all animals have souls. Whichever way you choose to run with it.
I am an animal lover, and I am a pet owner. I tell everyone that my pets love me, and I know that I love them. What it really boils down to is a mutually beneficial relationship. I need them and they need me, and that seems to work just fine.

I always felt my wonderful dogs had souls. Each time I had to put them down and comfort them as they left this world….I felt their “souls” or as I see it, their energy leave their lifeless bodies. That is a feeling I have never ever forgotten.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I already said, some people don’t have a soul, and if you are setting yourself up as example, I will be happy to believe that. However, I have integrity and morals to live and die by, so I do have a soul. So I will put myself up as an example in the way I live my life. Nobody says you have to, have a soul, it is a choice like everything else in life. Pets are so amazingly loyal, beyond belief. I choose to believe they do have a soul, no matter what has been written by men in books.
I am sure there are some books that are written by men that you believe in, I guess it is a matter of if the subject is something you believe in, then it is a believable book. If you don’t believe, then you laugh off the fact that it was written by men.

@RANGIEBABY Okay, all joking aside, I never heard a believer say that having a soul is a choice – I find that fascinating. I live my life with morals and integrity and I make zero choice about my soul – I never picked one way or another – how does one even learn that they can ‘choose to have a soul’?

@RANGIEBABY – a soul is a spiritual entity that exists separately from the human body, according to most definitions. I would like to put to you that a living being IS a soul, they do not HAVE one. The teaching of the soul as most people believe it allows for consciousness in death, which is a fallacy. When we die (or an animal if you like), our “soul” dies too.

I don’t have one, you don’t have one, our pets don’t have one. There is no such thing. It is nothing but wishful thinking that there is an existence beyond the one we can all see.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir , A soul is an intangible thing, but nonetheless a part of who you are. *
1 the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.
• a person’s moral or emotional nature or sense of identity : in the depths of her soul, she knew he would betray her.
• the essence of something : integrity is the soul of intellectual life.
• emotional or intellectual energy or intensity, esp. as revealed in a work of art or an artistic performance :*
I believe you make your choice unknowingly, but becomes evident as you live your life and how and who you are.
So if you believe you have morals and integrity, then you have a soul. However, since you are not a spiritual believer, you will not accept this belief, as the soul is spiritual.
@Harold Why do you say it is a spiritual entity that exist spearately from the human body? There are living beings that live the life of the devil. They have no morals, integrity, therefore no soul. I never believed that there is consciousness in death, but in death perhaps a 4th dimension that we will not be privy to until the time comes. I believe our soul lives on as does our memory.

@RANGIEBABY – that may not be how you see it, but it IS the commonly accepted belief, at least in the Western world. If you see it differently, I apologise if I misinterpreted you.

@Harold No problem. We all see things differently. Especially, things like this, where we cannot touch, see, hear or otherwise be concrete about how we see this. I do love hearing everyone else and their opinions though. Not by any means do I think I am the only one that is right.

The word “soul” is just a metaphor and a semantic. Depending on how one defines it shapes whether they believe in it or not.

Using a definition of soul that is related to human spirit… then yes, absolutely and without a doubt, animals have souls.

I understand “soul” as a consciousness, especially one that is intelligent and can experience rich emotions. So yes, my pet definitely has a soul. In fact he is the one true god

Yes they do. At least, i believe that they’re no less likely to have a soul if we have souls. There’s no real difference between them and us that would preclude them from having souls while we do have ones.

If a soul is “something that survives after the death of the body and goes to some kind of afterlife” then no, I don’t rationally think that pets or people have souls.

But if a soul is something akin to personality, or self-identity, and dies when the brain dies, then yes. I’m not sure how advanced an animal has to be, to have self-awareness, but I think any animal that is capable of being self-aware would have that kind of a soul.