Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod!wuarchive!ukma!seismo!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: lums@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu (Andy Lumsdaine) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: do dogs go to heaven ? Message-ID: Date: 15 Jan 91 10:07:13 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics Lines: 56 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article jmoon@lehi3b15.csee.lehigh.edu (Jonggu Moon [890911]) writes: >What about dolphins ? What about chipmunks ? >What makes you so sure ? The Bible never says "Dogs do not have souls". > >^>*<^jmoon > >[ some text deleted ] >If you accept this analysis, then you don't necessarily have the sharp >demarcation between entities that have souls and those that do not. >If you think of the soul as a term for our spiritual functions, rather >than as a separate thing that one could in theory remove surgically if >only the surgeon had an appropriately metaphysical knife, then it >becomes possible to imagine a spectrum of "soulfulness". Different >kinds of animals could have different levels of responsibility and >different qualities of spiritual life. > >Since one of the participants in this group is of the canine >persuation, perhaps he would be interested in commenting on this >issue. As moderator I would certainly not wish to put myself in the >position of denying Brandy a soul. And I confidently expect to meet >him in heaven. Didn't C.S. Lewis speculate in one of his essays (or books) about animals going to heaven? I seem to remember that he made an argument something like: 1) People go to heaven because they are saved through Christ. The mechanism for this could be that association with Christ allows some of God to "rub off" on the Christian, thereby changing his soul and mind so that (s)he can be saved. 2) Animals may go to heaven because they are saved through their owners -- some of the owner's consciousness (and therefore salvation, if the owner is saved) "rubs off" on the animal. I think his argument went something like this. I can't seem to find where he wrote about this, though. Does anyone know for sure? If so, please correct any flaws is my summary! Also, in _The_Great_Divorce_, he portrayed one of the characters as having some animals with her -- presumably saved by her attention. I should also point out that, as with many of his speculations, Lewis was very emphatic that this was only a speculation. Please note that this posting is not any kind of endorsement of Lewis' argument about animals going to heaven -- it's just food for thought. I'm not really sure what I think about animals going to heaven. Lewis' ideas usually give me a pause for consideration, though. Regards, A.L. Andrew Lumsdaine "We don't understand the software, and lums@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu sometimes we don't understand the hardware, MIT RLE but we can *see* the blinking lights!"