Souls

We're not talking about how long it takes to get to the mechanism but actual application of the mechanism which differentiates the classes of creatures.

Do those three statements have any relevance, or did you just feel like saying them? They don't conflict with what I said.

 

I believe humans and animals have souls--at any rate, whatever human's have animals have too. I don't know how someone can believe humans have souls but not animals--whoever believes that has never looked into the eyes of a dog.

I think DMT is a big indicator of the presence of a soul. All living things make DMT, including plants, and we know it causes similar visions in everyone who consumes it in high doses, yet there's no evolutionary benefit to this. It's released in high doses at birth and death, but why? If it's all physical/biological, what's the point of your body causing euphoria and visions when you're about to die anyway? Evolutionarily speaking, it doesn't make much sense for our brains to reward us for dying, if that's supposedly what we should be avoiding.

Just my 2 cents.

 

If the method is abstraction, it is not a distinction as all creatures emerge presently on the strength of potentiality. Creatures are classed by the virtue of biological similarity, not differences in behavior. I think you are making a false distinction as to how we fit in the animal kingdom. The mammalian brain rides on the back of the lizard brain.

They have to do with your claim that the immediate use of abstraction is distinctive to humans, and the claim that communicating abstraction is quicker than instinct or nurture. Communication is nurture and human beings have the longest period of juvenile development of any animal.

 

That's a zoological definition of class. The original statement was about whether we differ from animals, and different behavior is a difference. A very big one.

 

plants seem a bit unlikely. but do we have the capacity to judge this? that's the part i doubt.
most mammels however, do seem as likely to as we do ourselves. some reptiles and other creatures may as well.

 

How is behavior different?

 

the only OBSERVABLE difference, is the degree to which we surround ourselves with our artifacts. the only observable likely cause of this being a greater drive to express ourselves creatively. not that it is universal among humans, nor completely absent in other life forms of our planet. we do, however, live in a statistical universe, and that is the thing. statistically, more humans have this drive to be creative, then can be observed in the other species.

as far as anything observable is concerned, that is the beginning and end of it.

aside from this one observable distinction, we simply are animals. just like any other.

 

You all had very interesting things to say about this, thank you for contributing. I enjoyed reading it.
Namaste eace:

 

I believe the whole universe has a soul and that that soul can be channeled into different forms. The universal essence, as far as we know, is most focused and concentrated in entities like us and less concentrated in plants, and even less concentrated in something like a rock. I believe our awareness is actually layered on top of a cellular level of awareness. Plants and fungi have a more pure form of that cellular awareness than what we experience.

Though our egos can be used as a valuable tool to understand ourselves, currently were caught up so much in our human identities that we forget our connection to a Gaian consciousness. Just as cancerous cells in a body have an identity crisis where they fail to identify with the body around them, we too have an identity crisis where we fail to identify ourselves as being a part of the whole around us. By trying to better control the human ego, I believe we can find a place of integration with the soul of the planet. If we don't we will kill the planet along with our selves. I hear this cliche that the planet will get along just fine when were gone, but I don't even know about that. We have technologies that can kill off the entire biosphere along with ourselves.