More On Animals & Humans

I thought it would be interesting to do a quick rundown of the Bible passages I listed yesterday. A quick exegesis to explain what they mean. 

Genesis 2:29-30
In the Genesis 1 Creation Story, animals are created before people, and humans are given dominion over them. In Genesis 2, animals are created after people as attempts at making companions, and are part of God's attempt to fully wrestle with what He has created. There is this great STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION episode where Geordi La Forge goes to Enterprise's computer and asks it to create a holodeck program capable of effectively challenging Lt Cmdr Data in a game of wits, the ship's artificially intelligent android. In response, the ship creates a holoprogram version of Dr. James Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes series. This holoprogram is artificially intelligent, and must be to effectively challenge Data. The ship's crew is now in a moral quandary as to what to do with this AI Version of Moriarty. Erasing it seems wrong as it is self-aware, but it is dangerous to keep around as it has the ability to threaten the safety of the ship.  

This is similar to what happens to God in the Genesis 2 version of the creation story, and this alternative account sets one of the two predominant themes that determine the rest of scripture. In Genesis 2, God seeks to create a being capable of helping Him care for His creation, the Garden of Eden. What He winds up with is a being that is unlike any other He has made. He begins trying to work out what His relationship with this new being should be. He quickly realizes that human beings need companionship, and so He starts creating other beings, the animals, to find a companion for humanity. When none can be found, God uses Adam's own being to create the companion Eve. But the place of man in the universe is something God continues to work out from that time onward. And the relationship between man and animal is one of the questions God has to answer. Is man more like God? Or more like the animals He created later on. The rest of the Bible can be looked at as God shaping humanity into something more definite, and defining humanity's place in the universe with clarity, while trying to get humanity to accept that place. This is why man is not permitted to eat animals until Genesis 9, for up until this point the relationship between man and animal is not clear, to God. 

On this view, though, animals are created by the same process by which humanity was created, and they were made originally to be our companions. There is every reason to afford animals a spiritual status in some way related to that of human beings. 

Numbers 22:22-40
"The Story of Balaam's Donkey" is one of the funniest things in the entire Bible. Balaam is going to a king to help the king curse the Israelite people. God sends an angel to kill Balaam, and the angel waits sword drawn along the road. Balaam's donkey, seeking to save his master, refuses to continue the way down the road. Balaam goes on to beat the poor animal, to which the animal responds with speech. The animal explains that he can see the angel, whereas Balaam cannot, and he wants to save Balaam's life. The angel then appears and chides Balaam for beating the animal proclaiming that if the donkey had not served her master so well he would've been killed, the animal is praised for it's goodness.

Beneath the silly story are some profound messages about the spiritual status of animals, and our relationship with them. The animal is given a moral status on par with that of a human. The donkey earns the angel's moral respect and has a spiritual vision that the human lacks. There is every reason to see the animal as having a soul.

Jonah 4:11
In Jonah, we focus on Chapter Four. Jonah is angry at God for sparing the people of Nineveh. So God has a tree grow over Jonah, which Jonah comes to love. When the tree dies, Jonah is again angry at God, for taking it away. God's words to Jonah are in essence: "you loved that plant so much that you could get angry at me, God, for taking it away, and you did not create that plant. I created the animals and people who live in Nineveh, how much do you think I love them? Why should it surprise you that I look for any excuse to spare their lives?"

It is a remarkable statement on many levels, not the least of which is God's expression of love for a non-Israelite people. But it uses the love between a human and a plant as it's foundation. And more than that, God includes the animals in Nineveh in His love monologue. One can ask how God could refuse to spare anything that He loves, if it is in His power to spare it.

Habakkuk 2:17
This passage is more about the ecological concern of God in general. Any ecologically minded person should read this passage. Part of what God is condemning Israel for is their clear-cutting of the trees of Lebanon for use in the houses and palaces of the rich and noble. God is angry that Lebanon's countryside was used in this way, and for this purpose. It is relevant that God cares about the environment in general. 

Ecclesiastes 3:16-21 
This is the ultimate passage for any who want to argue scripturally that animals have souls. In it Ecclesiastes says that God allows suffering, in part, to help humans understand that there is no difference between man and animal. He proclaims boldly that animals and humans have the same 'life-breath' and that all come from the same place, and go to the same place. The words breath and spirit are interchangeable in Hebrew. The proclamation that humans and animals have the same life-breath is essentially a proclamation that they have the same soul. And his project is mostly negative. He is not exactly proclaiming that animals go to heaven, but rather that humans can have no confidence in an afterlife. But for all we know, says Ecclesiastes, animals go to heaven and we rot in the ground. 

I would accept none of these Biblical passages uncritically. And they have to be put in the context of the entire Biblical tradition. But when one takes the WHOLE of scripture, and interprets it using reason and experience, I think there are as many good reasons to think that animals experience some kind of heaven as there are reasons to think that humans do. I am not firm in my belief in an afterlife. I am much firmer in my belief in God. But to the degree that I do believe in an afterlife, and it is stronger every day, I believe animals experience it as humans do. I do not think animals and humans are equal. But I think the difference is a matter of degree, and not just kind. As such I think animals have less of a soul than (at least some) humans, but still have one. These Bible passages give me some foundation for thinking this.