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As a Catholic, I do not believe in a soul-body duality. The human person is not a "spirit" that inhabits a vessel of flesh. The person is flesh and spirit. The rest of the world is the same, existing both in an eternal and temporal way. The major difference between the world and human beings is that human beings are open to transformative grace for the very reason that we are moral beings. Animals and plants and rocks and so on do not require moral transformation. They already are as they should be or, to put it another way, they have no moral capacity. This is why it makes no sense to say an animal is guilty of a crime or that an animal has rights. It's not a matter of it not having a soul in some kind of childish (or Gnostic) sense. It's a matter of it not being a moral being, a person.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Not really ... at best, "soul" could be used as a kind of placeholder word for the apparent qualities of human beings that make usunique in creation, which is what I'm actually talking about. There is no other animal that is also a person. I think that if we start talking about "souls" we're getting into some weird connotations about evolution and intelligent design, which to me is a huge red herring. Besides, it's not as if the rest of creation has no "spiritual" aspect. In any case, as a Catholic, I completely reject that the soul is like the driver inside the vehicle of the body.

And we come full circle to the fundamental difference.

You believe person/soul/humanity is a separate thing, an existing thing that remains a whole and definite. I believe person/soul/humanity is a construct, an existing thing that dwells, constructed, in the human brain, as part of the construct we call the mind. You have no evidence to prove me wrong, I have no argument to sway you from your position.

Irresistible force, I give you the immovable object.

Well, I guess there are two ways of looking at it. First, if animals have no soul, but we do. One could say we then have the responsibility to treat animals properly, as "shepherds of the earth". Second, animals do have souls or share some sort of spiritual force. That then gives them certain rights we should respect.

At least that's the logic I came up with.

 Manchu wrote:
As a Catholic, I do not believe in a soul-body duality. The human person is not a "spirit" that inhabits a vessel of flesh. The person is flesh and spirit. The rest of the world is the same, existing both in an eternal and temporal way. The major difference between the world and human beings is that human beings are open to transformative grace for the very reason that we are moral beings. Animals and plants and rocks and so on do not require moral transformation. They already are as they should be or, to put it another way, they have no moral capacity. This is why it makes no sense to say an animal is guilty of a crime or that an animal has rights. It's not a matter of it not having a soul in some kind of childish (or Gnostic) sense. It's a matter of it not being a moral being, a person.

Interesting...thanks.

I need to get educated on this... both boyz are asking me questions (they go to Catholic church/school) and I'm only a heathen. Luckily, I know a local Deacon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr Nobody wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Not really ... at best, "soul" could be used as a kind of placeholder word for the apparent qualities of human beings that make usunique in creation, which is what I'm actually talking about. There is no other animal that is also a person. I think that if we start talking about "souls" we're getting into some weird connotations about evolution and intelligent design, which to me is a huge red herring. Besides, it's not as if the rest of creation has no "spiritual" aspect. In any case, as a Catholic, I completely reject that the soul is like the driver inside the vehicle of the body.

And we come full circle to the fundamental difference.

You believe person/soul/humanity is a separate thing, an existing thing that remains a whole and definite. I believe person/soul/humanity is a construct, an existing thing that dwells, constructed, in the human brain, as part of the construct we call the mind. You have no evidence to prove me wrong, I have no argument to sway you from your position.

Irresistible force, I give you the immovable object.

Well, I guess there are two ways of looking at it. First, if animals have no soul, but we do. One could say we then have the responsibility to treat animals properly, as "shepherds of the earth". Second, animals do have souls or share some sort of spiritual force. That then gives them certain rights we should respect.

At least that's the logic I came up with.

Or...take the Darwinism approach.

 whembly wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
As a Catholic, I do not believe in a soul-body duality. The human person is not a "spirit" that inhabits a vessel of flesh. The person is flesh and spirit. The rest of the world is the same, existing both in an eternal and temporal way. The major difference between the world and human beings is that human beings are open to transformative grace for the very reason that we are moral beings. Animals and plants and rocks and so on do not require moral transformation. They already are as they should be or, to put it another way, they have no moral capacity. This is why it makes no sense to say an animal is guilty of a crime or that an animal has rights. It's not a matter of it not having a soul in some kind of childish (or Gnostic) sense. It's a matter of it not being a moral being, a person.

Interesting...thanks.

I need to get educated on this... both boyz are asking me questions (they go to Catholic church/school) and I'm only a heathen. Luckily, I know a local Deacon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr Nobody wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Not really ... at best, "soul" could be used as a kind of placeholder word for the apparent qualities of human beings that make usunique in creation, which is what I'm actually talking about. There is no other animal that is also a person. I think that if we start talking about "souls" we're getting into some weird connotations about evolution and intelligent design, which to me is a huge red herring. Besides, it's not as if the rest of creation has no "spiritual" aspect. In any case, as a Catholic, I completely reject that the soul is like the driver inside the vehicle of the body.

And we come full circle to the fundamental difference.

You believe person/soul/humanity is a separate thing, an existing thing that remains a whole and definite. I believe person/soul/humanity is a construct, an existing thing that dwells, constructed, in the human brain, as part of the construct we call the mind. You have no evidence to prove me wrong, I have no argument to sway you from your position.

Irresistible force, I give you the immovable object.

Well, I guess there are two ways of looking at it. First, if animals have no soul, but we do. One could say we then have the responsibility to treat animals properly, as "shepherds of the earth". Second, animals do have souls or share some sort of spiritual force. That then gives them certain rights we should respect.

At least that's the logic I came up with.

Or...take the Darwinism approach.

Everyone takes the darwinism approach until a bigger fish comes along.

 Mr Nobody wrote:


Everyone takes the darwinism approach until a bigger fish comes along.

Or, knowing darwinism, you don't go swimming where the wrong big fishes swim.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Not really ... at best, "soul" could be used as a kind of placeholder word for the apparent qualities of human beings that make usunique in creation, which is what I'm actually talking about. There is no other animal that is also a person. I think that if we start talking about "souls" we're getting into some weird connotations about evolution and intelligent design, which to me is a huge red herring. Besides, it's not as if the rest of creation has no "spiritual" aspect. In any case, as a Catholic, I completely reject that the soul is like the driver inside the vehicle of the body.

And we come full circle to the fundamental difference.

You believe person/soul/humanity is a separate thing, an existing thing that remains a whole and definite. I believe person/soul/humanity is a construct, an existing thing that dwells, constructed, in the human brain, as part of the construct we call the mind. You have no evidence to prove me wrong, I have no argument to sway you from your position.

Irresistible force, I give you the immovable object.

In case this is not known (I would assume Manchu knows this), but 'soul' comes from 'aenima' or 'anima', which originally meant 'breath', and by semantical evolution, soon came to mean 'mouvement'. It served, for ancient greeks, and particularly Aristotle, as a definition of life, and applied to everything that moved, from plants to humans. The soul had 'parts' with corresponding qualities : the vegetative soul gave reproduction, growth and nutrition, the animal soul gave all that and sensitivity and mobility, and the human soul gave all that and rationality (or language). The concept of soul corresponded to a proto-scientific classification of life.

Of course religion couldn't keep itself from corrupting this. But even D'Aquinas accorded that animals and plants had souls. Just not an immortal one.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
What is it with the far eastern countries finding the least ecologically suitable things to eat or use as impotence remedies.

"Wow, that tiger burger and tamarin fries was awesome, I'm off to the toilet to do a few lines of rhino horn!"

"I can't do magic. Therefore magic is hard. Tigers are hard to find. TIGERS MUST BE MAGIC!"?

Less facetiously, rarity is probably a big part of it. If something's hard to find or procure, the extra effort makes you think it's better than it is, or at least would lead to you not refuting its quality/magicness lest you lose face for having so wasted your time/resources. I mean, about 90% of wine's quality is derived from the number printed on its pricetag, because thinking it's valuable makes you think it's good (scientifically proven).

Or the fact that a tiger can easily kill a man, that it's a huge animal? They've been doing for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

 Ouze wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:
Thrown back into the sea, finless.

That's the most barbaric practice. If you're going to hunt them, fine, but at least kill them humanely.

I also feel the same way about lobster fisherman who snap lobster in two and throw the front end overboard. At least kill it first.

The common practice for lobsters is to keep them alive until you cook them. Snapping them in half on a boat seems like nothing but a good way to ensure food poisoning in the customer.


And why do they only eat the fins? Throwing away 99% of the meat just seems ridiculously stupid. I can't really care about the "dropping them back in to die" thing, because they're sharks, which are no more intelligent than a particularly savvy roomba, but the inefficiency and waste is offensive.

How'd moral relativism get into a thread about great whites?

Pernicious stuff, by the way, that relativism.