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I am religious and believe in free will

70 (27.6%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

113 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (24%)

Total Members Voted: 249

[Rolan7]

And to be clear, I'm not advocating vegetarianism.
I think "living contradiction" is something we all do, a lot.  The human brain thinks soft, not hard.  It excels at insight and guesstimation, and fails at particulars.

I'm saying a rabbit has a bit of soul, just like us, and yet it's fine that it dies.  We all die.  Eating a dead animal can be a sign of respect, if we treat it as such.  That's what the Native American animists believed, and I feel like they were right.

[TD1]

Define "soul?" Under most definitions, I would say you were chasing Ryle's Ghost in the Machine, but if you just mean for example that the animal has a certain level of sentience, that's different.

[UXLZ]

Omnissiah guide us.

Vegetarianism just comes naturally to me, I guess I'm lucky. I occasionally eat fish, but most meat tastes disgusting to me.

[Rolan7]

Yeah I prefer to eat fish.  Mostly because it's lean, but also because it seems less aware.  Still, respect.

@Th4DwArfY1
One answer is consciousness.  Something "looking through the viewport".  Self-awareness.  To lesser and lesser degrees, as you examine more primitive animals.  That would be an acceptable answer to "what is a soul".

What I actually believe goes farther, into the ""supernatural"".  I believe living and unliving things have a soul, currently outside the detection of science.  That living and nonliving phenomena interact in an unknown ("ethereal") way.  That a mountain isn't an organism, but it is alive, and can be heard and subtly (and stupidly) react to stimuli.  That deep forests thrum with a secret energy.  That there are things lurking in the shadows, watching and whispering.  Playing their pranks, avoiding detection with... sylvan expertise.

I believe in fey, like my ancestors did.  I believe in weather and terrain spirits, as our ancestors did.  I believe the hills are alive, in the unscientific sense.

I believe in what we all believed 5000 years ago, and have since denied.  It wasn't SCIENCE that changed our minds, it was other faiths.  Consolidation of thousands of spirits into pantheons of hundreds, or dozens, then eventually into monotheisms.  We STILL feel things whispering to us in the dark.  And in the light, looking over a landscape or deep forest.  We just tried to name and thus know them, or in rare cases ignore them.  But I'm pretty sure we all feel them.

The truth about the natural world doesn't come from mindworms evolved over generations.  It comes from actually listening.  And as proof, the earliest human art is FOURTY THOUSAND years old.  It doesn't support any world religions...  It depicts humans and other creatures.  Without any indoctrination, *that* is what the first artists observed and were moved to depict.

(None of this runs counter to the scientific method.  Intelligent beings with unknown powers could easily avoid us in forests, caves, or the oceans.  For all we monitor, there is so much we can't)

[TD1]

That sounds like a magical belief - I wish I could share it. Unfortunately, whilst we all do have a sense of something in the shadows, it's more likely, in my opinion, to be the result of thousands of years of evolution, from when there was some physical thing in the shadows, and it was more than likely to eat us.

[Helgoland]

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

I may be a vegetarian, but fuck animals. Who gives a shit about them? I'd avoid torturing them more than necessary, but they're certainly not significantly different from the plants that I eat or the rocks that we crush to forge our tools.

[Rolan7]

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

I may be a vegetarian, but fuck animals. Who gives a shit about them? I'd avoid torturing them more than necessary, but they're certainly not significantly different from the plants that I eat or the rocks that we crush to forge our tools.

I respect that, most people behave that way.  But, is there a line you draw?  Monkeys, cats/dogs, parrots?
To be clear I would eat any of those if I felt like I could do it respectfully.  Heck, I don't feel any problem with this:
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/young-outlawz-admit-smoking-tupac-shakur-ashes-mixed-marijuana-1996-article-1.950906
Since a human can clearly express consent...

Edit:  To be honest, I missed the "vegetarian" part.  But what I asked still mostly stands, I guess.

[UXLZ]

Well, maybe not the rocks.

@Rolan: That's the kind of thing I wish I could believe. It's nice, and romantic, but ultimately...

Maybe there are things. Fairies, kobolds, dragons. Hidden away in the deep and the dark places of the earth. But I will never see them, and they will never see me.

[Calidovi]

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

I may be a vegetarian, but fuck animals. Who gives a shit about them? I'd avoid torturing them more than necessary, but they're certainly not significantly different from the plants that I eat or the rocks that we crush to forge our tools.

While I disagree on the rocks, I'm still don't know how the mere fact that we empathize with creatures that communicate and move (note how I'm not saying life in general) is supposed to define our humanity.

[Helgoland]

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

I may be a vegetarian, but fuck animals. Who gives a shit about them? I'd avoid torturing them more than necessary, but they're certainly not significantly different from the plants that I eat or the rocks that we crush to forge our tools.

I respect that, most people behave that way.  But, is there a line you draw?  Monkeys, cats/dogs, parrots?

Fuck dogs, they're smelly and kinda dumb. Monkeys are basically vermin where they occur naturally; and why should parrots be special? Cats I have a certain amount of affection for, but that still doesn't make them special. Why should I draw a line?

Hell, I have enough of a problem drawing the line when it comes to people.

[Descan]

Please don't eat me, Helgy.

[Bohandas]

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

I may be a vegetarian, but fuck animals. Who gives a shit about them? I'd avoid torturing them more than necessary, but they're certainly not significantly different from the plants that I eat or the rocks that we crush to forge our tools.

That's true, but really the same can be said of people as well if you really want to look at things objectively.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

I may be a vegetarian, but fuck animals. Who gives a shit about them? I'd avoid torturing them more than necessary, but they're certainly not significantly different from the plants that I eat or the rocks that we crush to forge our tools.

I respect that, most people behave that way.  But, is there a line you draw?  Monkeys, cats/dogs, parrots?
To be clear I would eat any of those if I felt like I could do it respectfully.  Heck, I don't feel any problem with this:
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/young-outlawz-admit-smoking-tupac-shakur-ashes-mixed-marijuana-1996-article-1.950906
Since a human can clearly express consent...

They're just saying that to cover for the fact that there were no ashes because Tupac is alive, and he and Biggie are working on a collaboration album with Elvis Presley

[Adragis]

If we're talking about spirits, souls and the like, I always wondered how a soul affects the thought process, which is a series of chemical reactions. For instance, how does someone going to Heaven, or Paradise, or Valhalla or what have you, think? They have no brain, and the brain governs the thoughts of their living bodies.
Just throwing it out there.

[Helgoland]

Please don't eat me, Helgy.

Hey, I'm a vegetarian already! There's no need to worry about eating, unless a session of how gay can you go turns out horribly wrong.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

I may be a vegetarian, but fuck animals. Who gives a shit about them? I'd avoid torturing them more than necessary, but they're certainly not significantly different from the plants that I eat or the rocks that we crush to forge our tools.

That's true, but really the same can be said of people as well if you really want to look at things objectively.

Sure! Why do we consider war not to be immoral in general, but just in most particular instances? Because we're not against killing people if it's done in the right context. We're just against killing people in most cases - much like I'm against killing or torturing animals in most cases as well.
The difference is of course quantitative: I care much more for a human being than for a random animal.

[Orange Wizard]

If we're talking about spirits, souls and the like, I always wondered how a soul affects the thought process, which is a series of chemical reactions.

We've definitely had this discussion before, but there's no harm in doing it again.

Personally, I don't see any reason to believe that the soul is a thing in the first place. It's not explicitly described in the Bible, and when it is mentioned it's usually better translated as "inmost being" or "heart", or something to that effect, rather than "intangible spirit thingy bobbing along beside you and directing your thoughts".
Most people I've spoken to seem to think that the soul is kind of like a perfect reflection of yourself/your mind, so after you die stuff like brain damage or whatever isn't carried over, but while you're alive the physical processes are still affected by that stuff.