Do Animals Have Souls? An Evolutionary Perspective

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of whether animals have souls and the ability to experience God after death within the limitations of their nature. Plausible explanations for the natural origin of life and for the development of subsequent complexity are increasingly being advanced by molecular biologists. Christian tradition and scholasticism teach that the human body is animated by the soul which is the agent of vital activities. This teaching is incompatible with the claim for a natural origin for life. At some stage in the evolution of chordates and cephalopods a sense of self‐awareness and an ability to distinguish between pleasure and the absence of pleasure would have arisen permitting the potential for ensoulment. The premise that evolution was gradual but ensoulment was discontinuous predicates the irrational conclusion that for one generation the parents were animals without souls and their children humans, made in the image of God, and with souls. Biological gradualism is incompatible with a sudden ensoulment dichotomy both in the evolutionary history of humans and for a maturing foetus, human or animal. Gradualism must apply to both body and soul. A Christian interpretation of physicalism, however, provides an alternative to dualism and resolves the paradoxes and difficulties relating to animals.

Evolution, the Origin of Human Persons, and Original Sin: Physical Continuity with an Ontological Leap

“…In a ‘Message … on Evolution’ to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1996 Pope John Paul II speaks of both a physical continuity and an ontological discontinuity or leap regarding the origin of human persons . Alan Porter considers an ontological leap to be contrary to the ‘gradualism’ of evolution . In this paper we first present Pope John Paul II's views on evolution, the origin of human persons, and original sin more fully.…”