AmounrA said:
I do not think that our fellow creatures lack a 'soul'. It is true that we on the surface appear more sophisticated than our fellow creatures, but I feel that this is dellusion. For all our tools we have nothing which leads me to believe we are more special in 'soul' than a Bonobo .
(
http://www.bonobo.org/whatisabonobo.html ). We are in many ways as predictable as every other creature in our behaviors.
Perhaps it was misleading of me to say animals lack a soul, in that of course it must be by the agency of a soul that it has senses and a great many other things in common with man. But no animal has an indwelling soul in the sense of upright stature, this based not on modern nebulous 'definitions' of soul but on Thomas Aquinas's definition of it as man's 'substantial form' (I believe is the proper term). What I am trying to get at is that the psyches of man and beast are a single stew, not separate little pods (species), in that in man the complexes are gathered into one being whereas in animals they are separated or distilled out for individual 'treatment' (by what I once in a song called 'Concentration Camp Earth') through experience in a body designed especially for (actually by) one particular complex. That animal types exist in human thinking is what enables the shaman to draw power and knowledge (or at least understanding) from their spirits.
It is my belief that homo primates, lived by the sea, and this has led to our differences from other primates. I think it dellusional to think that the homo primate (us) have a soul and all the others do not.
Come now, do you not think it might have just a little bit to do with the definition of
soul one brings to the table?
There can be no doubt that we are primates.
This unfortunately merely states a truism, as in academic circles man is
defined as such.
I can not think of any model were by 'god' considers us special compared to the others.
I will give you one: the
Kabbalistic model, in which Adam Qadmon represents the divine Form -- the One Form, source of the Sefirot themselves -- because it is in seeking the One Form, which is (according to this model) Upright Sentience, that
all forms come into existence. As teleological cause of all change and progression, it
creates and rules all that is,
without Itself changing in any way, and it is omniscient as well in the sense of being knowledge's Form (in the Platonic sense). The active, dynamic
hand of God would of course be those forms that have achieved oneness, or at least virtual unison,
with the One Form: such beings would by definition transcend sex and all other limitations separating
us from It. And the logical likelihood of their existence would preclude the whole neo-Darwinian model, which beyond the predictable scarcity of more advanced (hence less numerous) forms farther back in time has virtually no evidence to support it: it is based solely on
similarity of form (physical, though no animal has an upright spine, and behavioral) between man and the animals, which as you can see from the Kabbalistic model is capable of having a very different cause than simply our having
evolved from them.
The Bonobo , which I give a link for above, is a wonderful fellow ape. If ever you meet one I think you would find it impossible to deny it has 'soul'.
Of course. I simply would hesitate to put an
a in front of it.
As for God, I see no evidence that 'it' has taken any special notice of us.
Interesting you should say this. Having just read my first Vonnegut (sp?) in a long time,
The Sirens of Titan, and encountered in it the idea of an
absolutely indifferent God, I suddenly realized the full implications
of the Adam Qadmon model outlined above, that is, that God -- whose form is the One Form, Upright Sentience, that which all seek but no-one
we know has achieved -- is
quite indifferent, in the sense that it is our inability to be indifferent towards the One Form (being universally drawn
by or
to it), not Its inability to be indifferent towards us, that determines what is. I hope this concept helps clarify the Kabbalistic counterargument to modern nihilism and materialism.
The bible is obviously a man written book. And if it does (shock horror) turn out to be truth, I would suspect that the gods metioned in it were more advanced species from the void. Mistaken for gods. Universe is very old, . . .
Ageless, in fact, else all the conservation laws of physics are mere hot air. But I stopped you here only to point out that it has been shown that flying saucers are an emanation from quartz-bearing rock under seismic pressure, not vessels, and I would suggest that those more advanced species you and I agree must exist are probably even more advanced than is envisioned by UFO enthusiasts! and must include the most advanced of all, namely those who are actually of the Adam Qadmon
type!
My personnal view is that the energy released in the big bang(or whatever started it) is 'god'. It was released blind and has grown with time.
The babe in the abyss. It is this which means 'god' is in everything. But god not in the sense of a jehovah or a quetzelcoatal, which I consider to be man created ideas or at a reality stretch aliens.
Quite so: these are masks we give 'It' (though yod-heh-vav-heh relates to the very first mask given it, so to speak, and thus has special power as a name). I should point out, though, that a Gnostic view (based on gnosis, meaning grasp of the changeless) separates the demiurge-creator (which is really just a scapegoat-image for man himself) from the ultimate 'Deity', which would be the changeless divine Form: the One Form, sought by all. But really, if the Creator in the sense of the creating-and-ruling potency of the One Form is eternal, how can the
field of that creative power, the universe,
not be?