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Thread: Animals Going to Heaven

  1. #1

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    Default Animals Going to Heaven

    Hello everyone. IF you believe in God, do you think animals go to heaven? And do you think they have souls?

    I believe they do. (Have souls.) They can hurt and feel, not that that's the only part of having a soul. And I believe that animals SHOULD go and be in Heaven. If not, Heaven couldn't be perfect.
    Think occasionally of the suffering in which you spare yourself the sight. -Albert Schweitzer

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    I eve's Avatar
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    I don't believe in a god, but I do believe that all living beings have a consciousness that does not die when the body dies, but is reborn into a suitable environment. For example if a human being lives like a monster, then quite likely he/she will be reborn as some sort of monster. Moreover, if a nonhuman lives decently, and suffers the same as humans do etc, then that nonhuman could be reborn as a human. But as for heaven, the only heaven I know about - or hell for that matter - is here on earth.
    Eve

  4. #4
    tails4wagging
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    Although I dont believe in a God I do believe in an afterlife. I have always said if they is a heaven and no animals there, I aint stopping!!.
    I think our consciousness, does go on to a different plane or dimension. During nursing I have seen death many times and am convinced that there is something after death as a body looks empty like a shell, something missing.

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    I'm no longer sure if I believe in God, but I believe in Spirit, and think that we all have a Life-force which cannot be extinguished even when we die.
    I am not sure about re-birth, but think it's a strong possibilty.
    I have had a reading from a Psychic Clairvoyant before who saw animals around me, including my Rat friend, (Zanzi, R.I.P!), whom he could see, playing around my feet!
    I believe in the 'Summerlands' where we go, and meet with our friends, both animal and human, when our bodies die.

  6. #6

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    firstly, I do not believe in god. (at least, not in the christian sense of the word)

    second, isn't the idea of heaven and hell to do with choice?
    the good and bad things you do go up on a scoreboard to decide where you go?

    and isn't choice what seperates us from animals?
    example: we can CHOOSE to be vegan or not. we can decide if we want to kill animals and eat them.

    does a lion have that choice?

    no. lions just do what they're made to do, what they have to do. so I don't see how the heaven/hell concept can be applied to them.
    We must be the change we wish to see. ~ Ghandi
    I'm calm like a bomb.

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    I eve's Avatar
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    I wish you'd learn how to spell Gandhi Perhaps you could also explain the meaning of the poem?
    Eve

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    Rhino, the concept of the Summerlands is a place where we all go on to learn more. Some have more to learn than others - whatever we didn't learn in this life.
    I would say that animals have more purpose in teaching US things, rather than learning themselves!

  9. #9
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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    I don't have any interest in organised religion, I believe it's just stuff made up by people and is no more likely to be true than anything anyone else makes up.
    I do passionately believe in recognising the limits of human knowledge, and acknowledging that an afterlife or many other things could be possible. And in the possiblity that our intuitive feelings may have more to tell us than science can so far.
    So I don't so much believe in Heaven or any kind of afterlife, rather I accept that for all we know, anything could be possible - so I love to think of all the cats and dogs I've had in the past are up there in some kind of Heaven playign together and that I'll see them again one day.
    ...set black streamers in the sky and ride against the kingdom of the gods. Christopher Marlowe

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    cross barer
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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    Why do we even need an afterlife? Surely if we were meant to continue existing we wouldn't ever die. I think if there is an afterlife that means there must be something which drives it. If this was the case it would be representative of the force which drives us here, life. Life is completely fkn merciless so I don't think the afterlife (if there is one) would be much different.

    The only thing I am 100% sure of is that when I die the atoms that I am made of will become new compunds and provide nutrients for anything left alive to consume them. Anything else is just hopefulness. It strikes me as amusing that some people will laugh at the idea of alien existence, but firmly believe when they die an all powerful entity is lurking around waiting to look after them and make everything nice a warm and fuzzy for them, despite not bothering to do so when they were alive and able to feel pain and suffer... I mean whats the difference? Flying saucers or jesus, flip a coin. Both equally probable that neither exist (although I do think aliens may perhaps exist, just not sure about flying saucers )

    My tissues and organs are made from proteins which didn't come from thin air, they are made from the same elements that the plants and animals I ate when I was growing up were made of. I don't know why it is that sometimes I know what is going to happen. Perhaps my intuition is evidence that there is a universal network of energy woven together, as some believe. I don't think it matters. The bottom line is, nobody can know any more about what you believe than you. People who spend their entire lives studying religion or magic can still only tell you what they believe, and nothing more.

    I realised some years back that the only thing I ever truly own is how I feel. That helped me accept that it is alright to not feel like I am being looked after by some higher fkn power, because the evidence suggests I am not, nor are the countless animals I've seen suffering.

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    John's Avatar
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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    Quote adam antichrist
    Why do we even need an afterlife?
    Because I want to know the truth about everything. But I suppose that after I become a shade, I might not care about the truth. And the passage of time is most likely an illusion created by our brains anyhow.

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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    Quote eve
    Moreover, if a nonhuman lives decently, and suffers the same as humans do etc, then that nonhuman could be reborn as a human.
    That sounds a bit anthropocentric to me, I must say. You can 'earn' to be born as a human. Why is it better to be a human than it is to be a sparrow or an oak tree? But maybe you didn't mean to imply that it was...?

    But anyway. I'm an atheist, I don't believe in afterlife or in reincarnation. I sort of believe in the interconnectedness of all things, but sometimes I wonder if this interconnectedness isn't just a human invention (I don't know! I'm confused... ). But yeah. I like to think that when I die, my energy will be released into the universe, the particles that make up my body will be recycled. But my consciousness will be gone. I will no longer exist as a subject, as a unique being. Same with any other animal.

  13. #13
    Gliondrach
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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    I believe that God created the universe. I believe that we go on after our bodies die. Humans are nothing special - just another type of animal - so the other animals will continue, too. I don't believe in reincarnation. It is said that there are more people alive today than there have been throughout history. Where would all the reincarnated souls have come from?

    What's the purpose of it all? I don't know. One theory of mine is that we are all characters in God's dream. As such, as we are all God, it is God who is suffering, and feeling everything that everything in the universe is feeling. Mad? Perhaps. But it is the best theory that I can think of. I don't believe that the universe and life came from nothing, without magical/divine planning.

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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    I'm with Adam on this one

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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    Quote Veggie4Life139
    Hello everyone. IF you believe in God, do you think animals go to heaven? And do you think they have souls?
    I believe in God. I think animals go to heaven. I think they have souls.

  16. #16
    Seaside
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    I hope so. I'm not going if they aren't.

  17. #17
    cross barer
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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    Apparantly heaven is the back seat of some seventies guy's cadillac. Couldn't fit very many animals in there...

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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    Hasha, you ask "Why is it better to be a human than it is to be a sparrow or an oak tree?" What would your choice be if it were possible?
    Eve

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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    If you don't understand the beginning how can you understand the end? (Metaphysics class:2005)

  20. #20
    Pilaf
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    I would imagine that most animals, as higher and purer beings than Humans in that they are better able to perform the natural functions nature laid out for them without compromise, would be very welcome in any concept of "heaven".

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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    Quote eve
    Hasha, you ask "Why is it better to be a human than it is to be a sparrow or an oak tree?" What would your choice be if it were possible?
    I am human, I'm already engaged in this world as such, so I wouldn't want to be instantly turned into an oak tree or into anything else for that matter. But if you're asking whether I would like my life force (or whatever) to settle in an oak tree or in a human after my body has decomposed, well, I'd probably go for an oak tree: there are way too many humans on this poor planet and we've already caused so much damage...

    And then, there's just something about trees...

    I do hasten to add, though, that I don't think that my life force/energy/whatever will settle into anything particular. I think it'll just be dispersed. Perhaps some of it will be captured by (a number of) living beings, but most of it will just be dissipated in the atmosphere, in the universe...

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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    Quote eve
    Hasha, you ask "Why is it better to be a human than it is to be a sparrow or an oak tree?" What would your choice be if it were possible?
    I'm with you on this Eve -I'm sure you weren't suggesting for ONE moment that humans are better than ie sparrows or trees just that to have any chance of living some kind of decent life you had better hope to be a human.....

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    Quote Barley
    to have any chance of living some kind of decent life you had better hope to be a human.....
    I don't believe that. Wild animals are not miserable. And just imagine the freedom! We live by the clock, most of us are exhausted by unstimulating work that we need to do in order to feed ourselves; no such thing in the wild. It's true that, of all animals, it is the civilized humans who have the best chances of reaching old age, and they don't have to worry about being eaten by a predator. But we have our car crashes. And I'd far rather be eaten by a predator than be kept alive by machines, growing ever weaker, with pain dumbed down by increasing amounts of morphine.

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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    Well I should think if there is an after life I would like to have conversations with my dog in that afterlife. Oh indeed I should.
    "Its bad karma to fuck with the stoned"- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Comentary (found on criterion collection)

  25. #25
    Gliondrach
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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    Hello, Phil. All those accounts of what happens after someone's body dies are fascinating. I would like to believe them but, ever the sceptic, I try to think of some rational answer. Even when these people know what is going on out of their sight I still am not convinced, entirely. I begin to think that they have received some sort of telepathic information about the things that they couldn't see. I do believe in continued life, but there are still niggling doubts. I suppose I'll just have to wait until it's my time, to find out that it's all true.

    Regards,

    Martin.

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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    In my opinion there is no valid evidence of an afterlife

    I think people want to believe it so when they come across information that allude to it, or experiences that infer it then you have something to cling to.

    Mind is in epiphenomena of body. Anything the mind percieves is widely open to debate.

    The universe is alive and conscious and that is why we can posses life and consciousness, but there is no reliable evidence for the existence of a self or a soul. Infact quite the opposite there is an increasing amount of evidence for no self and there never has been and evidence for a soul. If you look into it the modern perception of soul is quite different than the ancient perception. Soul was originally a reference to a body, not a force that animates a body. The life force that anomates you is no different to the life force that animates and other creature or a plant or a bolt of electricity.

    I think one of the problems we face is one of perception, we percieve there is a beginning and end to things, so we think there was something before the particular beginning we percieve and logic would then say there can be something after the end if it existed before our percieved beginning.

    But there is no real evidence for beginings and ends. Every molecule of you existed before you were "born", and will continue to exist after you "die".

    It's my opinion that you weren't born and you don't die because you aren't anything seperate from all the rest, you just appear to be because of our limited perception.

    We are also learning about space a lot more than we have before, what space is. It is not a void as we have always thought, it is full of something that we can't identify as it has no qualities that we can identify it by except to say that that everything comes out of it. When scientists look deep into at matter it is nothing like we percieve it to be. It continues to blink on and off, disapearing into the background and appearing again.

    It seems like this, there is no space between us and we do not move in space, what we are made of comes and goes every second a million times, and every single particle that exists is aware of the existence and position and quality of every other particle. Scientific research suggest this.

    The belief of going to heaven is a fairly recent phenomena religiously speaking.

    So I don't think you and your animal friends are going to heaven but what you ARE doesn't appear to go anywhere, it just reforms and becomes other things. Initially most of us will become soil via worms, if we are buried, then those molecules will be eaten by other creatures, formed into plants that may be eaten by other people or animals, or returned to the soil where the cycle starts again.

    The perception of self is what leads us off to produce a variety of concepts to explain it's existence but there is no evidence for it being at all. When you remove it from the picture you can see how things can be quite different to how we usually percieve them to be.

    I could go for a spirit in which we are all, all of life not just humans, a participate and return to over and over, call it what you will, but the personality and individuality only exist on this side of the phenomena and is secondry to the wholeness that is reality on the other side. Bit I din't go for heaven and hall and pergatory ar levels of heaven and hell, or eternal damnation or reward. Because when your brain ceases to function there is no person, there is the energy that appears as matter but you didn't own that, you congealed it along the way by continuing to eat things.

    I don't deny you your beliefs, that would be unfair of me. I just don't believe in them myself. I don't even devalue religion as a concept, I think it might just save us fro ourlselves yet, not in it's current form however. The form of religion has changed completely over the millenia and I see no let up in that I have hope that it will eventually form a unifying force that will bring people together to see things as they are and to act apropriately.

    That might sound like a contradiction but lifes full of them

    Antony contradiction

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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    I know that when I die I will not be going to heaven as it sounds really dull, at least the Christian etc concept does. All those harps and angels and hymns would really do my head in and Oh my Gawd, I wouldn't know anyone there .I spent my entire childhood having to attend mass and I'm sure God (if there is one) would disapprove and be bored of the whole concept and not allow many of those people into the pearlys.

    I don't care if there's a heaven I just wish more people would consentrate on making our earth a better place, we should respect it and enjoy it for the now it could be our now heaven. I'm sure if there is a god they would approve of this much more than church and so would our animals.

  28. #28

    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    abrennan, I found your opinions very interesting. I've entertained many of them myself, especially about consciousness.

    I think I (my mind) may just be experience, and everyone else is just experience, and as feeling organisms we just channel experience through to the consciousness that is shared by all. When we meditate on existence we can experience what it's like to 'be' without external stimulation, and that's what the pure consciousness is. It will still be there when our bodies die, and with them our personalities, but consciousness is always there - even when we sleep we are still conscious, some believe, but very few remember what we experience while in the deepest stages of sleep. Is that anything like what you were talking about?
    Quote abrennan
    It seems like this, there is no space between us and we do not move in space, what we are made of comes and goes every second a million times, and every single particle that exists is aware of the existence and position and quality of every other particle. Scientific research suggest this.
    Any idea where I can read about this? I'm sure I've seen documentaries talking about it but even those few years ago I was just too young to get it...


    I also consider myself a Christian, based on evidence I believe there to be for Jesus and miracles, but am not sure about the Bible as a faultless record. Some books of it display uncanny prophetic accuracy and are backed up by archeology, I've read, but I wonder if the way they came to be put together with others over time into one book could be coincidental. Whatever the truth may be, I believe in a God that's just and good, and trust that the outcome of creation must be good too. Everything that happens must be necessary, whether we understand it at the time or not, and only goodness will result. To me this most likely means that animals will get recompense for whatever they've had to suffer. There are other theories, such as them not being sentient at all, but I don't consider this the most likely (can see why it might seem logical if you believe in a God who is both good and only recompenses one species, though). For those people that do believe in Biblical inerrancy, there's an interesting interpretation here about animals in heaven: http://www.all-creatures.org/ach/book-toc.html
    Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
    ~ William James

  29. #29
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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    my ideas are very open for right now... but if there IS a god and he/she/it has created a heaven, of course animals will be welcome. I believe humans are an animal level to any other animal.

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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    Heaven would not be heaven if there were no animals. I think they must come then.

  31. #31
    Blix
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    I am a Catholic. Their are apparitions of Our Blessed Mother Mary in Medjugorje in the former Yugoslavia,She has been appearing there since 1981. In answer to a question, she said that, when we die, we are in full consience, like we are now, and that we are aware of the separation of our souls from our bodies. Our judgement comes immediately and we are given our transfigured bodies straight away. Our old bodies decay into dust and is not resurrected again as the old belief that our old bodies will rise again. They will not be used again. She also said that God loves his creatures very dearly. She encourages people to 'go out into nature and experience God in all that He has created. He created everything and is in everything. I believe that all life goes back to God. When you read the bible and understand it. you have the answer.

  32. #32
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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven


    Genesis 1:29,30 -- Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground -everything that has the breath of life in it- I give every green plant for food. And it was so

    yep, all animals have souls.

    a prophecy of Isaiah:
    Isaiah 11:6-9 -- The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

    a glimpse of heaven maybe?

    I think alot of christians have a problem with believing animals have souls because if animals have souls then... wait... maybe it would be wrong to torture them and eat them. The slightest thought that a cow has a soul would cause them all sorts of mental distress.

    Its ok for the family dog to go to heaven, but not cows.



    "Beauty will save the world" - Fyodor Dostoevsky

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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    Surrounding the idea of heaven: I don't believe that humans have the capacity to understand truly what an eternal exsistance is. It would be like explaining calculus to a kittin. You can try all you want, explain it a million ways, but the only thing its going to want to do is take a nap.

    I'm sure it will be different then waking up/going to sleep/walking on clouds/hangin out with angels/playing poker with elvis. Who knows what heaven holds. An eternal burst of energy and thought bathed in the light of God? whatever it is, im sure the thoughts and consiousness of animals will be there too.
    "Beauty will save the world" - Fyodor Dostoevsky

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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    Quote Troub
    Surrounding the idea of heaven: I don't believe that humans have the capacity to understand truly what an eternal exsistance is. It would be like explaining calculus to a kittin. You can try all you want, explain it a million ways, but the only thing its going to want to do is take a nap.
    I agree. The ineffability of God is such that we cannot grasp the afterlife, in a similar way we cannot really grasp how big the universe is or what came before God, or that time is a concept we put in place to order the world. The human race has alot of difficulty understanding such huge concepts and as such I don't think we are meant to understand the afterlife until we get there. I'm not sure what I believe, I do beleive in God but organised religion is unsatisfying to me. What I do think is telling is that millions of people find something extra in religion, a peace or a fulfillment, that they do not find in atheism. I think this need for spirituality of some kind (be it organised religion or otherwise) is rather telling, I think we need to beleive something.

  35. #35

    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    I'm always fascinated that some people claim to have such specific knowledge of what happens after we die. I feel that belief systems which encourage a belief in projecting the "bad" outside of yourself and being only "good" can be problematic for those with mental illness. Whatever we are "spritually", animals are made of the same stuff I feel.
    When the water is still, it can behold the moon.

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    Default Re: Animals Going to Heaven

    Quote Veggie4Life139
    IF you believe in God, do you think animals go to heaven? And do you think they have souls?
    Yes, I believe in God ... and Goddess ... and I sincerely hope that animals go to heaven. And yes, I believe they have souls.

    Quote Veggie4Life139
    I believe they do. (Have souls.) They can hurt and feel, not that that's the only part of having a soul. And I believe that animals SHOULD go and be in Heaven. If not, Heaven couldn't be perfect.
    If I make it to heaven, I believe that it will be full of plants and trees, animals, birds, fish and other life forms too. I hope to see all my (late) animal friends again ... eventually.

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