[174] in Vegetarian_Support_Group
do animals have souls?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (elsiedee@MIT.EDU)
Thu Sep 22 17:02:49 1994
From: elsiedee@MIT.EDU
To: seta@MIT.EDU, vsg@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 22 Sep 94 16:59:11 EDT
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Date: Wed, 21 Sep 1994 02:13:08 -0500 (EST)
From: "Brian A. Luke" <LUKE@checkov.hm.udayton.edu>
Subject: Re: SOULS
To: ar-talk@cygnus.com
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> At the recent meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of
> Science, the Archbishop of York Dr John Habgood said that
> experiments on apes and other primates are a matter of concern
> because the animals could have souls and go to heaven. The Archdeacon
> of York, the Venerable George Austin, said he had no objection to the
> idea. "I should be very disappointed", he said "if I got to heaven and
> found my dog wasn't there."
>
A number of students have told me recently that they remember
(catholic) religion teachers telling them as kids that their pets
would go to heaven. The reasoning was very anthropocentric (as
above)--heaven is a place of perfect happiness, for many of us
perfect happiness is impossible without our pets, therefore pets (ie,
cats and dogs, hamsters, etc.) must go to heaven. It follows from
this (if you have a dualistic metaphysics of body and soul) that
cats, dogs and hamsters must have souls. It is not at all clear how
you infer from this that nonhuman primates have souls, since we don't
normally keep nonhuman primates as pets.
One student told me that his religion teacher said that dogs get
in but cows DO NOT go to heaven because they don't have souls. No
explanation was given for cows lacking souls, but it can be inferred
from the above--heaven is a state of perfect happiness, confronting
those we previously killed and ate would NOT contribute to our
happiness, thus cows have no afterlife, and therefore no immortal
souls.
>
> We'll let ar-talk discuss whether it would be all right to do
> experiments on animals if they don't have souls and don't go to heaven.
>
According to the above logic, it might work this way--animals we
experiment on would not be present in heaven (they'd provoke too much
guilt in us, spoiling our happiness), therefore animals we experiment
on do not have immortal souls.
Alternatively, animals we experiment on might get into heaven as
recompense for their sacrifice.
Hard one to call.
Brian
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