Why would they be different than a person?

Didn’t God give all creatures a soul? They have a will to survive they gotta have a soul. What about whale songs? Is that just noise? They are communicating. How does one communicate without a soul? All animals communicate in some way or another. It just seems to reason that they would have a soul. Look at how elephants remember things years later. They gotta have a soul. Just my opinion. And I don’t think I’m alone on that.

And I am of Christian faith. So please, speak for yourself. Talk about offensive. Jeez.

YourPTR!- Different populations of chimps have different learned behaviours and use of tools. By definition, this is culture. Animals exhibit every behaviour we once so ignorantly believed exclusive to our own species- They fight, they love, they hate, they make war on their own kind, they mourn their dead (Elephants collect the bones of their dead, and often return to the site of their relative’s death, even decades later), they have language, even regional dialects, they educate their young, They can do simple arithmetic (Even Rhesus Monkeys have this ability), they have established ways of doing things that differ from group to group (Culture and customs), heck they even seem to have rituals and what one might term religious practices (I believe it was Jane Goodall who noted chimps behaving in a ritual manner towards the moon and rainstorms).

Are there differences, sure. We have written and somewhat more complex languages than they do (Although several species seem to have the ability to learn them, even pictographic representations). Our social structures are much more complex (Often needlessly so, if you ask me), and we have an incredibly vast array of tools that we’ve developed. And we often make distinctions where there are none, and ignore the instincts we share with all the other animals on this planet.

As for being offended, I think most Pagans (And Pet lovers, for that matter) would be offended by your assertion that animals do not have souls. Speaking more theologically, how dull and awful would a heaven be if it were filled with nothing but humans? Heck, it wouldn’t even have trees or grass! Anyplace devoid of nature is no place to spend eternity…

Most Pagans are pretty grounded in reality, and I resent the generalization.

There are a lot of people in the Pagan community who are interested in Bigfoot, Nessie, etc., and they usually approach it in the same method as those embracing any other faith.

So this lady might well be exactly what she purports to be, and thus able to provide genuinely useful information concerning Bigfoot’s existence, but Bigfoot better turn up in person if she expects $95 an hour out of me!