Animals are referred to as "souls" in scripture. I believe this is deliberate.

NOTE: In studying scripture for years, I have learned how important it is to understand each word. The accuracy of scripture is amazing when you understand what each word is actually saying without imposing our own colored beliefs... So...

Animals are called souls. I believe a soul can be thought of as the center of emotions. According to the Bible, animals have souls, and they obviously have a body.

In the Old Testament, you have God represented as "The Father" who is obviously an emotional Person. His representation to us is through a full range of emotions.

In the New Testament, you have the four gospels at the beginning. These tell the story of Christ "come in the flesh", that is, attaining a body to fulfill the needs of the law for the redemption of mankind.

Finally, starting with Acts, you have a collection of writings which continually adjure us to "walk in the Spirit".

If you take a careful look, you will find one of those "macro" patterns here (there are many of them in the Bible).

First, you have the Father, who is emotional and often refers to His own soul. Second, you have the gospel of Christ in the body. Finally, you have the adjuration to walk in the Spirit.

I believe God is three parts, just as we are, as we are "made in His image", or likeness.

Soul, Body, Spirit.

The soul is where we begin our existence. A created entity that is "sent" to be "born of water", that is, born through the placental water into a body.

In the soul, we only "know" what what we feel. There is no discernment. There is no planning. There is no future. There is only what we feel "now", and what we "want" now.

As we mature, we begin to (hopefully and under healthy conditions) explore the fact that we are in a body. We may lift up our arm and look at our hand and say, "That's really weird". I experienced this when I was young. I would marvel at that fact that I had control of this body that would so whatever I "told" it to do. I realized that it was a complex machine with moving parts and intricate design.

Finally, as we mature, we begin to think about the future. We begin to make plans. We begin to consider concepts, ideas. We hope and dream and use our imagination. We begin to explore outside of ourselves. We may even want to study the cosmos. This intellectual activity is a function of the spirit. This is the "missing" component in animals that prevents them from doing such things as we do.

The spirit is the home of our intellect. When we are Biblically told to walk in the spirit, most Christians get the notion that we are to walk in this detached state, listening to a voice from the sky. Although I believe it is possible to hear the voice of God for some, I believe the broad command to walk in the spirit is a reasonable command to live a reasonable, logical, and moral life (morality is logical).

The spirit is the source of faith, therefore all things that require faith are not possible for animals who lack this component. For example, the act of designing a building is an act of faith. In this act we are using knowledge that we have attained—often not through personal experience—and applying it to something that does not exist yet but will... in the future. This ability to explore and utilize this fourth dimension of space (time) is a function of faith which is a product of—or "fruit" of—the spirit.

Most evolutionists confuse the act of a bird building a nest, for example, with a truly intellectual act. It is not. This kind of activity is called instinct, which is best compared to the "BOOT-ROM" system in a computer.

The BOOT-ROM in a computer is a "pre-programmed" (designed-in) chunk of knowledge (or instructions) that tells the computer what to do when it starts up. This knowledge is designed into the computer by the computer designer.

Why is the BOOT-ROM necessary?

In order to do anything useful in a complex world, there is a certain amount of base knowledge that is necessary to get started.

For example, a computer needs to know how to communicate with a hard drive before it can attain knowledge from the hard drive. The computer also needs to know how to listen to and interpret the strokes from a keyboard and/or mouse in order to be controllable by the user during the boot process.

This is the same mechanism that is used to give birds the "knowledge" they need to build a nest, or gather food. It is the same mechanism that gives the knowledge of how to suckle to young mammals. This is vital knowledge that these souls need to survive. Again, this is called instinct.

There have been speculations about computers gaining "self-awareness". This will never happen. Computers can not gain this attribute because this is a function of the spirit, and mankind cannot create a spirit. Each person is delivered a "measure of faith" as the Bible says, to invest as they please. The way they invest this faith will determine whether the "fruit" of that investment is beneficial or harmful.

To produce a beneficial harvest of this fruit of the Spirit, we must follow the rules that God provides to us. If we do, we are saved. If we don't, we are destroyed. This is the element that we have called "free will".

So, whether or not we invest according to the rules determines our salvation. In short, this life is a filter. It separates the wheat from the chaff. God wants royalty in His kingdom that is productive, obedient, and beneficial to all. Those who choose not to be fruitful according to His rules actually take part in destroying the whole organism just as cancer does. Just as you, if you were a business owner would not want disobedient and destructive people working for you, God does not allow them to work in His organization either. In fact this ethic is modeled in this life as another of many symbols to help us understand what this life is all about.

Now, interestingly, the computer is being designed directly after existing complex life. After some thought, however, this is not so amazing when you discover that the natural laws that guide the physical universe almost dictate the most efficient and effective designs for physical, mobile beings.

The computer, who's development is pushed by the purchasing power of the public, will continue to improve in its design and ability to mimic humans and to mimic intellectual processes, but this is only a design feature that is built into the machine by those truly having intellect, and this design will take this direction because those having intellect (humans) most desire companionship (in most cases) and if that companionship can be mass-produced and sold, it will indeed sell well. It's important to distinguish that, no matter how emotionally convincing these machines are at modeling intelligent behavior, they will by no means gain true faith, which is the heart of a true intellect.

When you step back and look at the big picture, you can see the evidence of the idea that the universe was created for mankind to inhabit and explore for a very long time to come. This is, I believe, the long-term plan of God himself for mankind.

Many people think ahead into the future and try to image what God has in store. I have through about this extensively and have concluded that the times to come will be much more diverse and exciting than most imagine.

Many Christians imagine eternal choirs singing forever and doing nothing else. I don't see it this way. Although many will undoubtedly be in a choir, others will do other things. There will be eating, laughing, and enjoying each others company. It's also possible that we will be constantly exploring new technologies that will glorify God and improve the quality of life. It will be quite an existence and I would not want to miss it.

As for now, it's only a shame that there is so much greed in the world. I believe that, with the level of machinery and technology that we currently have, we could live in a world with almost no disease and we would only have to work 1 or 2 hours per day to produce enough to live a rich and luxurious life.

Unfortunately, because we have allowed the evil people of this world to have their way by ignoring the laws of God, they, working together over multiple generations have pooled their resources to protect their selfish interests and keep the middle class impoverished. It does not have to be this way, but because of apathy (sin), it is, despite the fact that the middle class could easily change this if they only worked together (we wander right next door to the promise land year after year). The "ruling elite"—the Bible calls them the "great merchants of the Earth" (great does not mean good in this context, it means powerful)—control and deceive the nations of the Earth by dividing and conquering.

I hope this helps some discern the common mistakes that evolutionists make in trying to figure out how things work.

"...For your merchants were the great men of the earth, for by your sorcery all the nations were deceived."

—Revelation 18:23

The word 'sorcery' (Strongs # 5331) in this passage is the Greek word 'pharmakeia' (far-mak-i'-ah). It is defined in Strong's Greek Dictionary of the New Testament as follows:

medication ("pharmacy")

http://herballure.com/bibledeceived

I want to disclaim this message by letting people know that it in no way devalues animals. Animals are to be enjoyed and treated well. This article is only intended to point out why differences between humans and animals exist.