Dear Cofty,
I'm not trying to actually argue with you, or try and make anything you say seem unimportant.
Perhaps what I am getting at is that here in this thread, as we discuss whether or not an animal has a soul, there is an important opportunity to look deeper within ourselves. What is the essence of us?
How can we honestly and meaningfully discuss anything without knowing ourselves first?
Certainly we can just look at everything “metaphorically” as you say. Which makes everything we think and say twice removed from anything meaningful or real. So then what?
It's just another – in an endless amount of threads that equate to nothing more than mental masturbation. Nothing learned. Nothing gained. Just killing time. Same old, same old. Just throwing out meaningless opinions as if they mean something. On and on it goes, year after year. And then we die.
I basically said that humanity judged by thousands of years of mans inhumanity to man, nature and the planet, proves clearly that MAN HAS NO SOUL.
If it were otherwise would we be finding ourselves in the self-destructive polluted mess in which we presently are? The earth gives witness to the fact that humanity move through life as if we are soullessly insane...with only rare brief moments of sanity. But, there is hope.
Now, when we actually see this, and acknowledge it, we are now awake and aware. We can move on. We can perhaps discover the reality of a deeper self recognition. One that moves in harmony with nature.
This thread, no thread, is about animals or anything else, it's always about us. It always comes back to us. Everything we have ever thought, is about ourselves, no matter how removed it may appear.
If we see this, then we learn, we evolve, we grow. Unfortunately, 99% of the time we never shift the gaze inward. We just keep mindlessly blabbering. We go nowhere.
I am only feebly attempting to shift the focus. Chances are, it will just seem like the ramblings of a stupid fool. Which kind of proves my point.
