For millennia, the human race has attempted to figure out the meaning of life and what is waiting for us after, by way of religion, science, or conjecture. In the case of religion, the boiled down version of Christian belief is that when you die your soul goes to heaven. Therefore, for someone or something to go to heaven it must possess a soul. To say someone has a soul is to say that they have a deeply felt emotional nature, cause of individual life, or moral force. When we are little and a beloved pet dies, most parents will say something along the lines of, “(s)he is in a better place” or “(s)he is in animal heaven.” Being children, with powerful imaginations and the ability to question everything, the gears in our minds would start to spin with questions. As adults, those questions still nag at us due to the strong relationship we have with our pets. Philosophers, Scientists, Authors, and many other people have strived to find the truth on an animal’s immortality and their possession of a soul, and their views, while confusing at times, are important to the future of understanding of animals. Friederike Range, a German scientist with a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, was featured in Virginia Morell's book Animal Wise. Morell wrote of Range's belief in our yearning to understand the connection between humans, dogs, and wolves. She stated, "We want to understand this triad. People say many things about wolves, dogs, and humans-how they're alike or how they're different. But the truth is we're only at the beginning of understanding the minds of wolves and dogs" (251).
To better understand the idea of the connection between animal morality and their possession of a soul, we must learn more about not just the animals of...
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...ct. 2013. Balcombe, Jonathan P. Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Print.
Bekoff, Marc, and Jessica Pierce. Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2009. Print.
Bradshaw, John. Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet. New York: Basic, 2011. Print.
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Morell, Virginia. Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures. New York: Crown, Random, 2013. Print.
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Stein, Garth. The Art of Racing in the Rain. New York: Harper, 2008. Print.
Considering the many challenges animals face in the wild, it is understandable that people may be eager to support zoos and may feel that they are protective facilities necessary for animal life. In the article “ Zoos Are Not Prisons. They Improve the Lives of Animals”, Author Robin Ganzert argues that Zoos are ethical institutions that enrich the lives of animals and ultimately protect them. Statistics have shown that animals held in captivity have limited utilitarian function resulting in cramped quarters, poor diets, depression, and early death for the animals thus, proving that Zoos are not ethical institutions that support and better the lives of animals as author Robin Ganzert stated (Cokal 491). Ganzert exposes the false premise in stating
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Regan, Tom. “The Case for Animal Rights.” In Animal Rights and Human Obligations, 2 ed.. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.
Four journalists named Helen Jones, Larry Andrews, Marcia Glaser, and Fred Myers thought it would be a good idea to create a nonprofit organization to help animals that have are treated cruelly by either abuse or when they are left alone. The Humane Society has been helping animals since November 24, 1954(2). Their mission since the beginning has been celebrating animals and confronting cruelty. There are a great number of things that the Humane Society has been doing for the animals, like saving them from people who want to harm them. The list of animals that the Humane Society helps is very long, because they don’t just help the household pets that you might have thought. The conditions of the Humane Society change due to the types of animals
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Dogs are common throughout the world, either as a domestic pet, a protector on a farm, or an assistant for hunting amongst others. Regardless of the reason for having a dog, most people have either owned one for themselves or have known somebody who has owned one at some point in their life. Despite the relative normality of having a dog in your life in one way or another, the reasons for dogs coming into existence are not common knowledge among most people. Throughout a great portion of mankind’s history, dogs have been an essential part of life. The truth is, dogs were actually created in part by man.
In his essay “Religion and Animal Rights," the writer Tom Regan maintains the place that animals are "subjects-of-a-life”, like humans. If we value all beings regardless of the degree of human rationality that are able to act, we must also attribute to animals or as it is called non-human animals as well. All practices involving abuse of animals should be abolished. The animals have an intrinsic value as humans, and stresses that Christian theology has brought unbridled land on the brink of an ecological catastrophe.
“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”(Arthur Schopenhauer)
Morrison, Nick. "Animal Rights and Wrongs." Northern Echo, 24 Feb. 2001: n. pag. elibrary. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.
Regan T. The Struggle for Animal Rights. International Society for Animal Rights. Inc. darks Summit, PA. 1987.
“... the right question for animals is not ‘Can they reason?’ ‘Can they talk?’, but ‘Can they suffer?’ ”
Tom Regan, “The Case for Animal Rights,” in In Defense of Animals, ed. Peter Singer (Oxford:
Washington D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1978. Call Number: HV4711O5. Regan, Tom, and Peter Singer, eds. Animal Rights and Human Obligations.
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