Re: Did God make animals wrong?
Originally posted by King Castle
i bn thinking if humans were the only ones that steal, cheat, lie and murder b/c they are corrupted by evil then why do many animals exhibit many of the same moral issues?... is it b/c of a lack of soul? that cant be it since we have a soul and still fail in many moral dilemmas.does God get mad when a pet steals items from its owners or when a dog kills birds or cats out of pleasure rather then necessity?
i had a ferret that would steal jewelery from me even though i taught it, it was wrong to steal and hide them... my ferret simply changed his approach and became sneakier and changed his hiding spot... it was aware when i caught him and it would get sad or pretend it didnt do it...
it knew it was wrong b/c he would hide when i would find out what he had bn up too by simply watching what i had discovered..i had no need to raise my voice in order to illicit a response from it..
overall my question is this if god simply smiles at the animals actions and simply finds it amusing shouldnt he feel the same way when we humans do it too?
also anybody think animals should go to heaven too?
From the ferret's perspective this may be a territorial master-follower dilemma. Animal's are possessive and playful, thus it might have a natural desire to take that which it finds attractive but these things belong to its pack leader (you).
So when you find the jewelery the ferret has no option but to to acquiesce to the pack leader but its desire still remains.
So its behaviour has more to do with having to be submissive in the end against its desire to posses the jewelery, it's not good/bad with animals since they don't have sapience (they have sentience but not sapience).
my ferret has never bn submissive to me... he bit through my nail once and dragged me about the house while i screamed..
yeh, he is playful but when he gets pissed he doesnt care who u r and i dont punish my pets ever even when they attack me.
if he wanted something that he thought was his he would fight for it and jump scratch and bite me submissive my @$$,,, maybe 1/10 but it was never his norm to back down... he would fight my lil dogs and even my wolf dog and chase the cocktail who could seriously injure him if it pecked him..
Eh! You know your pet better than I could but animals are by their nature, running on instinct, not some awareness of good and evil. In a sense they are all quite innocent, not having sapience, which is really what seperates humans from animals.
So its behaviour as I see it is instinctual, as aggressive as it might be you're still its pack leader and instinctively it might sense what value you place on those jewels and will acquiesce against its desire, it doesn't know 'bad', it knows mood and disposition.
Originally posted by Allankles
Eh! You know your pet better than I could but animals are by their nature, running on instinct, not some awareness of good and evil. In a sense they are all quite innocent, not having sapience, which is really what seperates humans from animals.So its behaviour as I see it is instinctual, as aggressive as it might be you're still its pack leader and instinctively it might sense what value you place on those jewels and will acquiesce against its desire, it doesn't know 'bad', it knows mood and disposition.
My cat knows when she has done something wrong. She acts guilty, and hides.
Originally posted by Shakyamunison
My cat knows when she has done something wrong. She acts guilty, and hides.
Does a fighting animal know its doing bad things when it mauls and even kills other animals? I doubt it. Its all instinct, because of that I beleive animals are innocent of good and evil. When a cat spills food or breaks something does it really think it did an evil/bad thing? Or is it simply instinctively responding to the rules you've impressed on it?
Originally posted by Allankles
Does a fighting animal know its doing bad things when it mauls and even kills other animals? I doubt it. Its all instinct, because of that I beleive animals are innocent of good and evil. When a cat spills food or breaks something does it really think it did an evil/bad thing? Or is it simply instinctively responding to the rules you've impressed on it?
Originally posted by Mindship
Animals respond to consequences, frightening or pleasurable. They can even anticipate as long as it's concrete. People too respond to consequences, but we also operate on a symbolic/abstract level, which expands (sometimes erroneously) our grasp of cause and effect.
That is very true. I would have to say that my cat does not have a good grasp on cause and effect.
Originally posted by Shakyamunison
My cat knows it has does bad because I have shown her that it was bad. Just like we show a child that something is bad. If a child were to be raised by wolves, then that child would not understand bad/evil from a human point of view. Therefore, bad/evil is a learned understanding that we are not born with, just like all other animals. Good and evil are not universal, but they are cultural.
We disagree, a feral human would have judgement - on a primitive level for sure - but it would still be there. Also good and evil only exists for a person with judgement.
Animals don't have judgement, they have self awareness (the smarter ones) but they are still driven by instincts, any control they have over those instincts are based on the impressions of their environment (in this regard they are similar to us).
Originally posted by Allankles
We disagree, a feral human would have judgement - on a primitive level for sure - but it would still be there. Also good and evil only exists for a person with judgement.Animals don't have judgment, they have self awareness (the smarter ones) but they are still driven by instincts, any control they have over those instincts are based on the impressions of their environment (in this regard they are similar to us).
So, what you are saying is that only humans have the ability to make judgments?
So, a wolf can't look at a heard of antelope and judge which antelope is the weakest? They just randomly pick from the heard?
So, my cat can't judge the distance from the window sill to the bed and jump the distance? She just blindly jumps by instinct?
Animals in a heard can't make a judgment about the predator in the grass, and move to protect themselves only by instinct?
Ether you are not using the word judgment correctly, or you are over emphasizing the role of instinct in all of us animals.
Did you know that humans also have instinct?
yes, my instincts have bn to procreate and have sex with a lot of women and get them pregnant.
also to not tolerate other men which causes fights from time to time..
all instincts and i am okay with it.
also i think scientist are wrong when they say only apes have high lvl self awareness and use a mirror to prove their point.
my ferret and dog know what a mirror and their reflection is, it just took them a while to figure it out.
Originally posted by Shakyamunison
So, what you are saying is that only humans have the ability to make judgments?So, a wolf can't look at a heard of antelope and judge which antelope is the weakest? They just randomly pick from the heard?
So, my cat can't judge the distance from the window sill to the bed and jump the distance? She just blindly jumps by instinct?
Animals in a heard can't make a judgment about the predator in the grass, and move to protect themselves only by instinct?
Ether you are not using the word judgment correctly, or you are over emphasizing the role of instinct in all of us animals.
Did you know that humans also have instinct?
You're extending 'judgement' to refer to any situation where an animal will use its mental faculties to act, I'm not talking about their intelligence but their ability to make precise, abstract determinations of, and about themselves and the environment around them. Animals don't have that, and thus are wholly innocent, whether they're man-eaters or otherwise.
Does a lion feel guilty about killing prey? Does a male primate regret driving away a rival primate with violence? Do elephants, killer whales, hippos and other non-man eating intelligent mammals feel guilty about the people they've killed by accident or in territorial aggression?
The answer is no. They lack that sensitive sapience to determine right and wrong. This chimes with Genesis where humans were built to be stewards of animals and the natural world as a whole. Animals have emotions, a kind of intelligence, instinct but they don't have human sapience.
Our intelligence, curiosity, depth of understanding make us unique and allow us to judge good and evil, an animal doesn't know evil except that evil is totally alien to it.
Why is that many animal experts talk about not treating animals from the wild like pets? Because as much as a human's discipline might impress itself on the formely wild lion/killer whale/tiger the animal is still instinctively a predator, its instincts can never be completely tamed. Most herbivores don't have that problem of course.
If the animals had a knowledge of good and evil this concern wouldn't be the same, we would be categorizing them as evil animal-good animal, not simply wild animal. And if we could determine and sperate them as good or evil, then we would be justified in treating them like humans, even going as far as executing the ones that show any aggression during human contact, or putting them in restraining chains for the rest of their natural lives.
i think you need to go watch some animal youtube videos if you think wild animals dont know right from wrong and can and do express guilt when they harm one another whether purposely or accidentally.
also a rogue animal is rarely tolerated inside a family group... an ape that eats and kills its own family unit will hide what it is doing from the rest of the group of its actions...
animals also feel sad and mourn for various reasons including the elephant, whale and whatnot.
Originally posted by The Dark CloudIs that a proven fact? Or is that a theory that you've taken up repeating like it's a fact? You weren't here 100 years ago and you won't be around after 100 more give or take twenty. How can you prove that you're exact about things that happened even 100,000 years ago much less start explaining how life formed like you watched it with your own two eyes. The origin of life is scientifically unexplainable though attempts have made to explain what's obviously impossible. Matter and energy exploded out of nothingness and then non-living things began giving birth. 🙄
"god" had nothing to do with it. All animals. like humans, are the product of evolution and their behavior is a combination of genetics and adapting to their current environment.
And somehow a spiritual world and an intelligent living creator is farfetched. 😮💨
Originally posted by The MISTER
Is that a proven fact? Or is that a theory that you've taken up repeating like it's a fact? You weren't here 100 years ago and you won't be around after 100 more give or take twenty. How can you prove that you're exact about things that happened even 100,000 years ago much less start explaining how life formed like you watched it with your own two eyes. The origin of life is scientifically unexplainable though attempts have made to explain what's obviously impossible. Matter and energy exploded out of nothingness and then non-living things began giving birth. 🙄And somehow a spiritual world and an intelligent living creator is farfetched. 😮💨
You walk into a room with a dead body and blood splatters on the walls. Now, you could guess that a murder had taken place, but you were not there, and that would just be a theory. There is a possibility that the room was created with a dead body in it. You have to follow the evidence. We dig into the Earth, and we find the bones of animals that have died in the past. These animals do not exist today. You have to follow the evidence. Some time in the past these animals did exist. You can look at sedimentary rock, and like tree rings you can line them up around the world. You can look at what is found with the bones, and you will find plants that do not exist today, also. There is no way that all of these animals existed at the same time, because they are found in different layers of the Earth.
The strange thing is, we do not find anything alive today with these bones found in the Earth. That means that 100 million years ago, all of the animals and plants on the Earth were different then today. 100 million years before that, again all of the live on the planet was different. You have to follow the evidence.
So, the Earth is like a room with a dead body in it. Ether these animals lived long ago and changed over time, or the Earth was created with dead bodies in it. You have to follow the evidence.
Originally posted by Shakyamunison
You walk into a room with a dead body and blood splatters on the walls. Now, you could guess that a murder had taken place, but you were not there, and that would just be a theory. There is a possibility that the room was created with a dead body in it. You have to follow the evidence. We dig into the Earth, and we find the bones of animals that have died in the past. These animals do not exist today. You have to follow the evidence. Some time in the past these animals did exist. You can look at sedimentary rock, and like tree rings you can line them up around the world. You can look at what is found with the bones, and you will find plants that do not exist today, also. There is no way that all of these animals existed at the same time, because they are found in different layers of the Earth.The strange thing is, we do not find anything alive today with these bones found in the Earth. That means that 100 million years ago, all of the animals and plants on the Earth were different then today. 100 million years before that, again all of the live on the planet was different. You have to follow the evidence.
So, the Earth is like a room with a dead body in it. Ether these animals lived long ago and changed over time, or the Earth was created with dead bodies in it. You have to follow the evidence.
I agree with you about following the evidence and I also agree that we should explore the universe that we've been given. I just believe that existence is a miracle and the evidence is there to support that in that everything has an origin including time itself. We cannot scientifically explain this but to me our ability to explain anything is very limited due to our lack of ability to truely interact with the universe. The Bibles explanation of creation may seem farfetched but not so much if miracles are as real to a person as the laws of physics are to someone else. Using timelines to track history is useful in building solid theories but the past and the future are mysterious in this life. I hope that this at least somewhat explains why people have faith in things other than mankinds interpretation of how history unfolded. 😮💨
Originally posted by The MISTER
I agree with you about following the evidence and I also agree that we should explore the universe that we've been given. I just believe that existence is a miracle and the evidence is there to support that in that everything has an origin including time itself. We cannot scientifically explain this but to me our ability to explain anything is very limited due to our lack of ability to truely interact with the universe. The Bibles explanation of creation may seem farfetched but not so much if miracles are as real to a person as the laws of physics are to someone else. Using timelines to track history is useful in building solid theories but the past and the future are mysterious in this life. I hope that this at least somewhat explains why people have faith in things other than mankinds interpretation of how history unfolded. 😮💨
To say "we cannot understand" includes you and I. The true nature of reality is beyond the understanding of this small primate living on this planet. The bible was written by humans. Therefore you cannot point to the bible as if it somehow understands the true nature of reality.