But has certain practices that clearly deal with animals as conscious, experiencing subject. I also notice that you do not acknowledge that your generalization was wrong.
You are not aware of how many so called pagan religions considered animals to have spirits, souls, consciousness, etc? Many 'regular' people considered it obvious and spoke about their pets and farm animals this way. I know, I remember how common this was, all over the West. Let alone all those in religions that do not fit your model.
It's a clear misunderstanding of science on my part AND there is nothing wrong with the fact that science sees things this way. Not sure what you are trying to say. It seems like I understand what science is trying to say. And I am well aware of how scientists see emotions, including those scientists who see them in mechanistic terms. I happen to think the view is limited. My disagreeing does not mean I misunderstand it.
Are you really so invested in not admitting you are off here? If there was a thread discussing baseball, would you start making comments AS IF we were talking about football (soccer) since this is a more popular sport worldwide? Though if you add up the religions that do posit consciousness in animals the JudaoC. trad is outnumbered. Further the JC adherents are rarely pantheists, though some mystics are.
Don't ask me what we're arguing, I just thought your post was interesting. I'm not a religious type, but I don't think blanket statements about religions calling animals soulless are accurate. Some animals are even considered holy (cows in Hinduism?)Well, the serpent was really the devil in disguise, was it not?
Also, I'm not even sure what we're arguing anymore...is it that science didn't believe animals had a level of intelligence? I mean, so what if that's true? Maybe science was too busy gloating that it finally got you religious types to understand that the sun doesn't revolve around the Earth. Ever think of THAT!?
Well it wouldnät be an external deity. It is an immanent one which you are a part of. Though their seem to be other versions of pantheism where there is no deity, but a universe that is divine. And then you have to spend some time defining that term.
I donät know if that counts as a 'you'.
I think that is compatible with some forms of pantheism.
I think one can conceive one's nonexistence but it is not easy to do and the brain (or the soul or whatever) tends to shunt away from such thoughts. I think it is different from conceiving one's death, or not necessarily included in that experience.
To answer a non-facetious question like this can still be pretty problematic. I want to make it clear that in answering I am not trying to convince. I do not think there is anything I could say that could (or should) convince someone who does not experience things the way I do. I need to make that very clear. There are people here, and elsewhere, who take descriptions of experience and someone's sense of things as something like the missionary practices of Christians or even the Inquisition. You know what I mean. If I say I believe this or that, then some people will take that as 'and you should believe it too' bringing their bagage from interactions with monotheists, especially Christians. As a kind of a pantheist/animist/pagan, my experience of and knowledge about monotheists leads me to be rather cranky with them also, so I have sympathy for this reaction, but it should be pretty clear to everyone that, for example, pantheist/animist/pagan groups have suffered rather badly at the hands of both monotheists and secular regimes.
