I do believe all animals have souls. I am mostly vegetarian, but occasionally I do eat chicken or fish. Some people say there is a collective soul for animals, or that animals don’t have a soul at all. Based on my own experiences, I think every living creature is unique and special and does have a life force that equals that of man. I am not opposed to the raising of livestock or other animals, but I do think we are stewards of the earth and its inhabitants and must have reverence and respect for these important creatures.

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I have pondered the exact same questions and wrestled with the ethics of eating another being with a soul. Wish I knew the answers to this! I’d love o see my beloved dogs that have passed on someday.

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It’s funny, my sister and I were just talking about that a few weeks ago, when we were discussing her Duck Toller.

The dog was following our conversation, looking from one person to another, with those big doggie eyes staring at us, full of intelligence and life. There was no doubt…she has a soul.

As for chickens. Meh. I”m a meat eater. I have no qualms about eating farm animals that are raised to feed us. We’re omnivores…it’s part of our nature.

By the way, I never understood why quasi-vegetarians are okay with eating fish or chicken, but not cows or pigs or sheep.

Maybe it’s because fish and chickens are kinda stupid. And don’t have cute big brown eyes staying at you.

Have you read Cold Noses at the Pearly Gates by Gary Kurz?
An interesting and studied answer to this question.

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I have never even given the idea a second though.
Being humans, we are mammals, which places us in the animal kingdom where All other animals are. Therefore, it is pure ignorance and arrogance oh the part of humans to believe that only their species contains within it, that of a soul. Regardless of how a person defines for themselves exactly what a soul is has no meaning what so ever.
Humans always have and unfortunantly always will, value the lives that they believe to be worthy. Which in the general population, is humans.
Of course their are things that humans are able to do that other animals cannot do. In some cases, I can not even imagine why any other animal would want to do the things humans do. Never the less, most humans, while maintaining superiority due to abilities, forget that there are millions of animals that are capable of doing that which no human can do. That is way to often overlooked. Humans are extremely fearful by nature and to feel secure they must find every way possible to justify the horrific crimes commited against other animals. The first thing someone wants to do upon seeing a snake is to grab a tool to kill it with. Of course if the convience of a tool does not present itself at the time, they leave, often running.
In the end, what humans do not understand, they fear. And anything that causes fear in humans is doomed to destruction. For some reason people wish to remain ignorant and fearful instead of making an attempt to understand and respect. It happens often even among the human society, with each other.
If one animal has a soul, of course every animal does. Why is that such a mystery to everyone? We may differ in appearance and abilities but without each other we would be lost. Every living thing, plants included are deeply intertwined with one another. With humans behaving as they are currently, there will be nothing left on this earth. Including humans. With that said, I will ask, what other animal knowingly destroys it’s enviornment? And yet humans claim higher intelligence? I seriously doubt it.

I would also like to add a response that I noticed to be even a pattern.
Humans are omnivores. Eating meat does not make a human evil. There are many animals that are omnivoures. It is nature. The other animals that share the classification of omnivores do not feel guilt or pride or whatever it is people tend to feel as far as eating meat goes.
There are several reason why I have made a decision not to ingest meat.
First, I honestly never really had much of a taste for it. Especially red meat. I did eat chicken and fish on occasion and then I came to a day where I realized that it had been months since I had eaten meat of any kind.
As one may have already assumed, I am always on the side of those animals other than humans. I have been that way for as far back as I can remember and that would be at the age of 4 or 5. My entire life has been and still is dedicated to that of the weaker species. By weak, in no way do I mean lesser. I mean that on this planet, animals have no voice, no rights, no respect or admiration from the general population of humans. I will stand by them and give my life for them if need be.
I have, in my lifetime learned and related from other animals, more than 16 years of schooling ever gave to me. I have been given so many gifts from other animals than any number of humans could ever offer. I have worked with animals professionally for over 25 years.
I have gone days with the company of that only of dogs and quite honestly, I never in my life felt more calm and relaxed and even healed.
At times I honestly believe that somewhere along the way, nature got confused and placed me in the womb of a human. I am so distant from my own species. And while at times I naturally feel lonely because of it, I would not give it up.
I will never marry and I will never have human children.
I know how selfish and strange all this must sound but where my interest in other animals is concerned, it goes way beyond passion or purpose.
But back on the topic of eating meat. Whether or not you eat meat does not make or break a person as for being inhumane or cruel.
It really is ok to eat meat and still enjoy the company of animals.
I do not run around yelling at everyone because they eat meat, in an attempt to create guilt to others. I normally do not even mention that I do not eat meat to people because quite frankly, I have no desire to discuss the topic or my reasons. It is just part of who I am and another part is to make attempts to not pass judgement on others for whatever it is they choose to engage in. Unless of course I feal a certain injustice is being commited at which point I make no bones about where I stand.
Your hope that humans and their actions will become evident and not destroy the earth is very heartwarming but honestly, look closely at what is happening. We are beyond the time of being close.
If I honestly saw a chance, I would be the first to throw a huge party and invite the entire world to attend, all paid for.
I have worried about this for an extremely long time.For about 39 years or so in fact. I have finally accepted the inevetible and the worry, which was causing severe depression had to cease.
It makes me very sad and when something comes to my attention that validates all those years of worry, I tend to shut down emotionally.
The pain I feel for such a tremendous loss is just too strong to bare.
I attempt instead to focus in the moment and enjoy everything there is for me to indulge my senses in. We have this moment and the next one is that of uncertainty. Knowing that I will be re-united with every animal, human and non, that I have ever loved is what keeps my sanity. I do not pretend to know exactly what the name of this place of meeting is and being a spiritual person, I have no specific religion to push onto anyone else. I just find comfort in the idea that whatever it is that we label as “souls”, is somehow a form of energy, and I see nowhere else for all of this connected energy to go, once the shell ceases to exists, but to rejoin where it began and perhaps start over again at some point.
Dog Bless To You All!!
Dog Bless!

hi again, and I do honestly believe that to say “faith” is not a matter of being pushy in any way. We all, even the most extreme of athiests, have what you call as “blind optimism” regarding one issue or another. It is something we require in order to find a sort of peace in an issue. To me “faith” has absolutely nothing to do with religion but is placed in religion in order to find comfort. All quite natural in my opinion. Believe it or not, even I have put faith at work in my life on many different issues or ideals.
You hit the nail on the head by mentioning knowing first hand about how that pretty meat all dressed in plastic gets into the grocery stores. It is just those type of situations that I am forced to shut my emotions down. I do not mean that I do not care. But I know that this morbid practice is not going to change no matter what the gatehered minorities yell about how terriblly wrong it is.
When I have found myself in a position to actually witness something so horrible being done to such innocent beings I have only found myself in bad trouble and to the point of possibly going to prison.
I really do not care to live the rest of my life in prison so I avoid coming across this type of scenerio at all costs. There is no thought before action when witnessing abuse and cruelty for me. I just react.
I scare myself. When this has happened in the past I see that I am very capable of harming if not killing over such issues. I do also realize this is not healthy. I simply lose all access to my self conrol. My mind knows nothing but getting my hands on the people/person commiting these crimes against animals. So that you understand, the same thing occurs when I am subjected to the situation of such abuse being done to a human as well. There is some tremendous force that takes over and it is “katy bar the door”
I may have mentioned that I am an extremely strong empath. I cannot even watch a movie if it has issues that deal with pain, depression, grief, or any negitive emotion. I pick it up and as of yet I have not completely mastered how to balance it. I have been told it is a gift. I tend to question that. Maybe being able to balance and control it, but sometimes the pain and hurt of others is more overwhelming than that of my own.
But I am blindly optimistic that I will be able to balance it one day and hopefully be able to actually help those who are suffering with those feelings.
Thank you for welcoming my posts. I realize at times I can be way out in Right Field to a lot of people but what can I say? I gotta be me.

I agree. I not only refuse to watch or read the news or anything that may deal with subjects that may cause the empathetic negative feelings to overwhelm me, It is necessary for my well being. To become flooded with other people’s sadness and pain is unexplainable. I am unable to watch this sort of stuff, even if it is fiction. I suffered from extreme anxiety and depression for 11 years and I believe that it was because I did not recognize what was going on with me. I had often thought that it was a bit strange how I could sense a general idea of what another person and/or animal was experiencing emotionally or mentally but I think I just assumed that everyone did that. It has not been until quite recently that the “ability” I have was not one that just anyone could access.
Trust me, I really do not feel I have supernatural powers and I certainly do not think I am in anyway above another person. My understanding is that everyone has this capability in one form or another but for what ever reason, they have not been able or have yet to access it. I am now at a stage where I really would like to put this “genie” back in the bottle. It has become obvious to me that upon being educated about empathy and clairsentinent abilities, there has been an extreme increase in flow. It is as if a flood gate has been open and being relitivly new to all of this I feel overwhelmed and have no one to really talk to about it.
There is no doubt that learning to balance and ground myself is a necessity but to whom do I approach and how do I go about approaching anyone trust worthy enough to share this information with in order to learn how to protect myself?
I am not expecting you or anyone else to be able to give me that answer, I guess I was in effect typing that question to myself.
If you did not think I was absolutely insane before, I am certain you do now. (o:
It is ok however. I completely understand how far fetched this topic is for most people and any judgement of my sanity is well understood.
I know this will seem to once again sound pessimistic to you, but in general, in the world today, it is very difficult to be able to simply dodge those issues that affect me. My current position involves managing and living in a boarding home that serves people suffering from mental illness. After a while working here, I found that I could not leave my room. I could barely get out of bed. My shifts were covered, but it was very frightening for me. I had no contact with anyone for about 3 weeks. One day, I got out of bed, showered, got dressed and stepped back into my role. With time I realized I had become more distanced from the residents. Not in the way of not caring, but in the way of emotional attachments. I think I was flooded with all of their emotions and feelings and it was necessary for me to take that time in order to cleanse and re-gain my self. I did not know which emotions where mine and which were someone else’s.
Currently, I am doing well with balancing the responsibilities I have to my job while maintaining an emotional distance from the people I care for.
I have so much more to work on and I really do not want to have to focus on this stuff at all. The more I think about it, the stronger it seems to get. I really want it to go away.
Safe Journeys to everyone!

dogs do have souls and they do go to heaven; they do not need to accept Christ to be saved… only man..who ate the forbidden apple has begun to sin… animals are not sinners and do not have to be saved to go to heaven… they are pure, natural and in line with God’s creations… and the breath of life brings into the body the SOUL…..

P.S.: I am a vegetarian… to a point; I eat fish and poultry.

Not only do dogs, and all animals have souls, every living thing has a soul…and when their lives are over they go to that same place our human spirits go to. I don’t believe this, I know this…because when I was so remorseful at having to put my pet down I said a prayer to St. Anthony asking if animals had souls and received a message that yes, dogs have souls…all living things have a soul. Later, after a NDE and doing research, I found a website with a translation of a fragment of the Book of Mary Magdalene which literally said the exact same thing.
We need to eat to live. Unfortunately, we must consume other living things to do so. So whether it’s a steak or a fish or a tomato the thing you are eating had a soul. The way to deal with this is to apologize to that which has died to sustain you and thank it for it’s having to die for your need…even if it’s a steak from the supermarket…because it’s consciousness is not still in the steak, but it is in that other dimension and it will be aware (and I’m sure appreciative) of your apology and thanks.