Do animals have souls?

Question

maybe I'm starting at the wrong place. What is a soul? What makes us as humans special that we would consider that we have souls and animals don't?

Answer 1

Every living thing has a soul. Our animals definitely do.

Answer 2

What a great question. Whatever responses you get will just be what people think because no one really knows.

I would have to say that I think animals don't have souls but they are created in a way without one. Since I am a Christian, I know that sin has had an effect on animals and they have been changed from their original state because of sin.

I don't know exactly what that means, but the Bible talks in Isaiah about the Lion and the Lamb lying and sleeping together when Jesus returns and takes sin away.

So, the violence in the animal kingdom isn't going to be happening in heaven.

I do believe that God has a place for animals in heaven. I don't know if it will include my pets that I have loved but have died or not.

I do have hope though. I know God never intended physical death of people or animals but sin has changed that. So, since animals and pets die and it is because of human sin that they do, I have hope that God will have our pets in heaven waiting for us.

Answer 3

Yes They Do Have Souls and I Was an animal in my past life just because some christian preacher says that animals do not have souls doesnt mean that they do not! If humans are superior to animals then they whould treat the earth with more respect than what they do. If humans were superior to animals they whouldnt fight over God.

Answer 4

Animals have souls, they think, they feel, they have volition, all of which is based on instinct, not reason, The Bible explains that in James. But animals have no spirit. the spirit came from the breath of God that He breathed into man. It is eternal. Animals die and cease to exist, humans exist forever. A soul is the part of man that has a will, emotions and a mind. It is where we connect with life, the spirit connects with God.

Answer 5

Gen. 2:7: “Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man came to be a living soul.”
Notice that this does not say that man was given a soul but that he became a soul, a living person.



Gen. 9:5: “Besides that, your blood of your souls [or, “lives”; Hebrew, from ne´phesh] shall I ask back.”
Here the soul is said to have blood.


Josh. 11:11: “They went striking every soul [Hebrew, ne´phesh] that was in it with the edge of the sword.”
The soul is here shown to be something that can be touched by the sword, so these souls could not have been spirits.


Where does the Bible say that animals are souls?
Gen. 1:20, 21, 24, 25: “God went on to say: ‘Let the waters swarm forth a swarm of living souls . . . ’ And God proceeded to create the great sea monsters and every living soul that moves about, which the waters swarmed forth according to their kinds, and every winged flying creature according to its kind. . . . And God went on to say: ‘Let the earth put forth living souls according to their kinds . . . ’ And God proceeded to make the wild beast of the earth according to its kind and the domestic animal according to its kind and every moving animal of the ground according to its kind.”

In Hebrew the word here is ne´phesh. Ro reads “soul.” Some translations use the rendering “creature[s].”




Lev. 24:17, 18: “In case a man strikes any soul [Hebrew, ne´phesh] of mankind fatally, he should be put to death without fail. And the fatal striker of the soul [Hebrew, ne´phesh] of a domestic animal should make compensation for it, soul for soul.”

Notice that the same Hebrew word for soul is applied to both mankind and animals.




Rev. 16:3: “It became blood as of a dead man, and every living soul died, yes, the things in the sea.”

The Christian Greek Scriptures also show animals to be souls.

In Greek the word here is psy·khe´. KJ, AS, and Dy render it “soul.” Some translators use the term “creature” or “thing.”

Answer 6

I think they do. This year on Jan.14 we had to put our faithful black lab down. He was 16 years old and lived a great life.(unusal for a dog to live this long). We got a puppy to help with the healing process but there are times when I can feel our beloved black lab around and our pup seems to have a lot of traits that the Lab had. So, yes, animals have souls.

Answer 7

A soul is not a spirit inside of us. In the Bible it means just our life, our breath. There is alot of confusion on what soul / spirit means in the Bible. But you have to look at the over all consistency in the Bible because it can not contradict itself. Animals are alive and they breath so they are "a living soul" just like we humans are. We don't have immortal souls. I would think that if everyone had immortal souls, we would all have power like the Angels, or we would be immortal ourselves.

Answer 8

Your soul is your non-physical part of your being. There are several subtle bodies that normally reside in our physical bodies. The mental body, the emotional body, the dream body, and the etherical body. Animals do indeed have souls too, but there's are not as developed as ours. They are not sentient and cannot learn to control and use their bodies for different things, for the most part.

Answer 9

Aristotle talks about the souls of animals!
Further, regarding the souls, there are documents and theses of philosophers talking about soul!

Answer 10

the hebrew word for spirit/ breath is nephesh and animals are said to have this in the Bible.
animals cannot sin because they do not know the difference between good and evil because they did not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, so they get into heaven automatically