Do Animals Have Souls?

You have no doubt that you're conscious. But what about your dog? Does your dog or cat experience life the way you do? Sure your dog can't read, but does he experience pain, love, hot, cold, joy and sorrow? Or is he a biological machine?

Most of us would probably say our dog or cat is conscious, at least on some level. But throughout history many so-called great thinkers (Descartes and more recently Daniel Dennett) would say no, animals are not conscious, they just appear to be so. To them, an animal is nothing more than an automaton. A complex molecular machine that gives the appearance of having a spirit. Descartes believed that humans had a non-material mind/soul. Dennett, on the other hand being an atheist believes humans are automatons too, but have consciousness that arises from "complexity". So to him we are akin to nothing more than complex biologically based computer programs. Animals may or may not be complex enough to have consciousness "arise" from "complexity", in one interview he boldly asserted dogs and cats were not conscious in any way.

Philosophers aside, its obvious that animals have consciousness. Anyone who owns a dog or cat or horse knows this. Perhaps people try to convince themselves animals don't have conscious minds because it makes it OK for us to abuse them. If dogs are biological machines, no different than the computer on your desk, then Michael Vick can fight and kill them, and Chinese fur traders can skin them alive without feeling an ounce of guilt. To recognize that animals have consciousness and by extension souls means humans have perpetuated great crimes on this planet by abusing the life that shares it with us.

Well let's look at the basic facts. What is consciousness? It can be described in a loose way as you're experiencing life, kind of sitting in a movie theater in which the external world is played for you on a screen. As this happens, you have feelings-love, hate, fear, joy. You have memories of the past, and hopes for the future. You feel as though there is an "I" that exists and flows through time, and you can form transcendant connections with others. Notice none of this has anything to do with "intelligence", at least once a certain threshold is reached. Does that threshold only happen when we reach humans?

It is hard to verify if another being shares these characteristics, indeed some philosophers have gone so far as suggesting we can't even know if other human "beings" are conscious. That's a bit silly, and I think although you can't verify it with 100% certainty, to most people its self-evident ("obvious") that animals share many aspects of consciousness with us.

For example, its obvious that dogs experience fear. Its obvious dogs experience happiness. Its obvious dogs form connections, with people and other dogs. Its obvious dogs remember the past, including people who were in it. Dogs see the world through their own two eyes. Who can doubt there isn't an "I" behind those eyes? Otherwise why would they have them?

I single out dogs only because many people have owned them and this is their direct experience with animal life. The same paragraph applies to cats, to horses, and also to rabbits, pigs, and cows. Maybe even snakes.

The existence of the "senses" is a clue that a conscious mind exists. The senses are a connection between the external world and the internal mind. This calls into question many of our abusive behaviors. If you hit a rabbit on the road, you've ended a life. If pigs are crowded into a factory farm, these are living minds enduring torture.

This isn't to say we should never eat meat or hold a funeral if you run over a snake on the highway. But why not treat animals better? Let animals on farms live free range lives, so that they can enjoy a life in the field before they are "slaughtered" so that we might eat and live. Drive more carefully on the highway so that if possible, you can avoid hitting that rabbit trying to cross the road.

Do animals have souls? As much as we can connect the mind to a soul, the answer is yes.

The painting shown in this article is available here.

Does the Mind Survive Death?

Does the conscious mind survive death? If so does it ALL survive death, or just our "core" self?

 

Consider that the brain is closely tied to conscious experience. And we know that upon death, the brain disintegrates and dies. With it goes all of our memories and things we've learned, like how to ride a bike or do algebra.

 

But what about things of a more personal nature? When you think about what's really important, you're probably going to lean towards matters of the heart. Psychic phenomena and interpersonal connections cut to the core of who we are a lot more than algebra or calculus does. Is it possible that interpersonal, emotional part of our being survives death? Do the connections between a mother and child exist outside of time and space?

 

Thinking about the mind, it seems like my core "inner" self, what we call "I" exists unchanging throughout life. Yes, tastes may change and you may learn something new like how to speak French or ride a skateboard and form new memories. Learning French might make you more interesting at a party or useful on a trip to Europe, but does it fundamentally change who you are? The answer seems to be no. You are still you after learning French. These extra things, like learning French seem to be tied to higher parts of the brain. But maybe consciousness resides somewhere else.

If the higher parts of the brain are involved in learning complicated activities, maybe its the lower centers, the limbic system say-that's involved in the generation of conscious experience.

 

One interesting theory is that the brain doesn't actually cause consciousness. Instead its a receiver of some sort--just like a radio receiver. In this view, consciousness exists as part of the universe as a whole.  Or maybe saying its a "part" of the universe isn't accurate, maybe its woven into the universe at a fundamental level. The brain, or at least some part of it, taps into consciousness by somehow receiving a signal from the universe at large. In this theory, your soul or conscious mind transcends time and space and is not separate or distinct from the universe at large. Its manifested in the physical here and now by the receiver, which is the brain structured to "tune in" to your consiousness the way a radio can be tuned in to a particular frequency, and then picking up a specific radio station.

 

The part of the brain that does this must be in the so-called lower centers. "Knowing" (learning French or calculus) isn't the same as being more conscious. A man who doesn't know calculus is equally as conscious as a man who does, although the latter has more knowledge. This applies whether comparing two individuals or the same individual through time. In other words, I am equally conscious before and after learning French, its the same "me" even if I'm able to chat with people who don't speak English that I couldn't converse with directly before. I feel as if I have the same "me" inside that I did at age 5, age 12, and age 20.

 

If the conscious reciever of the brain is in the so-called lower part of the brain, this would indicate most if not all animals are conscious. Yes a rabbit can't speak French, but that doesn't mean the rabbit doesn't experience its life, along with happiness, excitement, or fear, the way you and I do.

 

Something else that's interesting about viewing the brain as a receiver is that death becomes irrelevant. If you smash up the radio on your desk, that radio can't pick up 98.3 FM anymore, but the signal generated by 98.3 FM is still there-all around you and ready to be picked up by another radio that tunes into the station's signal. Is your consciousness always there, able to be picked up if only the right receiver is constructed? This makes the possibility of reincarnation make sense from a physical perspective. Or another idea: a synthetic reciever could be constructed somehow out of some currently uknown technology that could do the same thing. Then a persons mind could remanifest in the physical. Certain people such as Ray Kurzweil have proposed that a person's mind could be "downloaded" to an advanced computer system allowing for a type of immortality. 

 

Right now our scientific knowledge on these topics is limited at best. 

Dr. Joye Pugh Interview : parts 3 & 4

Parts 3 & 4 of interview with Joye Pugh. 

UFO Filmed Off British Coastline

Film of strange cylindrically shaped craft flying by British coastline. 

Caravaners were left baffled when the mysterious cylinder hovered over a busy campsite in Brean, Somerset. They claimed the unidentified black metal object stands out clearly against the blue sky, where it can be seen darting up and down for more than 10 minutes. 
Local police reported no unusual activity, but witnesses were left convinced they had seen an extra-terrestrial spectacle.

Original Source

John Hogue's Prophecies : War with Iran?

Dreamland interview with John Hogue discussing war with Iran. A year and a half old, and maybe a bit dated since the Republicans are out. But could war with Iran still happen? 

According to Hogue, Nostradamus often spoke of Iran and the importance of the re-emergence of Israel in the modern era. Nostradamus referred to the "True Serpent" in his writings, which Hogue says is a reference to the United States Navy. In 2002, George W. Bush asked the Navy to fly a revolutionary era flag with a rattlesnake on it that says "Don't Tread on Me". Nostradamus said the True Serpent would attack Persia when allied with Turkey. The U.S. is of course, allied with Turkey, and Persia is modern-day Iran. Fascinating stuff. Listen to the interviews below. 

Nostradamus

Born in 1503 in St. Remy, France, Nostradamus whose formal name was Michel de Nostradame, made his mark on history with a series of prophecies. His predictions were wide ranging covering everything from crop failures to wars and the fates of dictators. Many references are believed to be to the modern era. Indeed one of his most intriguing, if not vague references, is to a "Hister" that many take to be Hitler himself.

Nostradamus started his adult life as a physician who specialized in treating the plague, probably not the best line of work to be in during the 1500s. No effective medical remedies existed at the time, so its no wonder that Nostradamus resorted to astrology and divination, making predictions in writings called quatrains, which are short poetic verses. Nostradamus published his seminole work, a collection of quatrains called The Prophecies in 1555. The book has remained in print ever since, and has forever made Nostradamus famous. This monumental work followed a series of almanacs he had written from 1550 onwards that had made Europe's nobility take notice. Many often called on him to make predictions and cast horoscopes.

To be completely honest, the quatrains are very vague and open to a lot of interpretation. As mentioned above, one of the most controversial if not promising references is to "Hister", which believers have taken to represent Adolph Hitler. Here is a translation of the quatrain provided by author Erika Cheetham:

Beasts wild with hunger will cross the rivers, the greater part of the battle will be against Hister. He will cause great men to be dragged in a cage of iron, when the son of Germany obeys no law.

Cheetham substitutes "Hitler" for "Hister", but I've left the original word in there since its subject to interpretation. Hister referred to a region of Germany near the Danube river (which flows through Austria, Hitler's birthplace). Much is left to interpretation, so I'll let you be the judge. 

Interestingly Nostradamus claimed, or shall we say admitted that he got his prophecies from "divination". According to Cheetham, he read "secret forbidden books" and used a bowl of water placed on a brass tripod. Who could have forbidden the books other than the Catholic church? Sounds like something out of the movie the Ninth Gate. Anyway, Nostradamus would stare into the water until he saw a vision of the future. As he wrote:

Sitting alone at night in a secret study; it is placed on the brass tripod. A slight flame comes out of the emptiness and makes successful that which should not be believed in vain.

Skeptics will say that if you dim the lights and stare at the reflection of a flame in a bowl of water, you're going to see what you want. Your mind is going to create a bunch of crap is what they're basically saying. Believers, on the other hand, might view this as a way of opening the door, so to speak. A method that enabled Nostradamus to extract information about the future. This method of prediction was known in the middle ages as divination or "Scrying", a term which means "reveal". Critics at the time would say this was a method used by witches. 

Nostradamus was born into Judaism but his family converted to the Roman Catholic church in 1512 (gee I wonder why?). Later in life, he suffered from gout which eventually led to his death in 1566. 

Top Secret UFO's with Bob Lazar -Parts 1 & 2 of 6

In the early 90's the name Bob Lazar became synonymous with Area 51-the top secret location in the Nevada desert where tests on alien spacecraft supposedly took place. Lazar, who claims to have degrees in physics and electronics from MIT and Cal Tech, was a "propulsion expert" brought in to help reverse engineer UFO's. 

Lazar sounds incredibly competent, but there has to be some suspicion he's a fraud. For one, skeptics haven't been able to dig up any information that Lazar actually attended Cal Tech. At one point there were rumors that the CIA "erased" his past there, in what sounds to me like a silly attempt to explain his fake story. Did Lazar make it up, that he went to Cal Tech, thinking nobody would check into it? 

After attending these stellar schools, Lazar ended up getting a job at the highly secretive Los Alamos national laboratories. According to the interview, he got the job after meeting acclaimed hydrogen bomb inventor Edward Teller. Lazar had a hobby at the time, making jet powered cars (with 22,000 HP-pretty impressive) and Teller happened to read about it before meeting Lazar in person. 

From there Lazar went to work at Area 51. He says he got his checks from the office of Naval Intelligence. Has anyone reading this ever worked for the government as a contractor? Individual employees don't typically get paid by the customer. The company E G & G was mentioned in the interview, presumably Lazar worked for them. The way it works is if Naval Intelligence was sponsoring some kind of research, they would pay the facility (Area 51 in this case) who would in turn pay E G & G, who would in turn pay Lazar. I could be wrong but this part of the story doesn't add up. 

Lazar has recently moved to New Mexico and maintains his own website. At one point, Lazar actually ran into some minor problems with the law, but now details the layout and operations at Area 51, including the proposal that alien spacecraft use "Element 115" for propulsion. He talks about Gravity A and B waves, but nobody I know who's studied physics can say what those are. Element 115 is a synthetic element that goes by the strange name (on earth) of Ununpentium. The most stable isotope of element 115 known has a half-life of 87 milliseconds! That makes it a strange choice for the "triangles" Lazar describes. Element 115 would not last very long if you manufactured something out of it. 

Well I'd like to find out Lazar's story is true to the last detail. But right now, I'm having a hard time swallowing his UFO story. Watch the interviews and judge for yourself. 
Part 1:



Part 2: