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Do animals pray to God ?
- Thread starter chinu
- Start date
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
It depends on how sentient they are and they are not all equally sentient. For example, I do not think a virus is sentient at all. I am not even sure it is alive. A chimp, on the other hand, has a lot of sentience. In fact, chimps are already displaying behavior that for want of better explanation scientists are calling religious, such as dancing in thunderstorms and collecting rock piles at the base of certain trees. IOW if it were humans doing these things, we would say it was religious behavior.Do you think animals, insects, bacteria, viruses pray/can pray to God for their requirements, desires etc ?
Thoughts
Samael_Khan
Goosebender
Do you think animals, insects, bacteria, viruses pray/can pray to God for their requirements, desires etc ?
Thoughts
I think that with enough evolution that might happen as theism might be a logical step in societal development.
At the moment it has been suggested that certain animals have proto-religious behaviour:
Religious behavior in animals - Wikipedia
But I would need to see full studies on it to be fully convinced. Apparently Elephants wave branches at the moon which might indicate moon worship or that they just love the moon. The problem is that we cannot determine an animals motives behind their actions, so to us what might seem religious might actually not be to the animals.
Tit-for-tat behaviour? Which is one of the basic ingedients of human behaviour, and which involves nothing other than what might be best for both parties in most cases. That is, encouragement to continue such (good behaviour), especially when the birds are likely to understand what artificial objects are and that they are associated with humans.
And as to rituals - in other posts - loss might explain all such rather than anything else, and why would we not see this as the most likely explanation when we do know that many animal species do have social structures and friendships much like humans and would miss them as much as we do when they die?
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I spent the entire month of Yam praying to Dog for a cure for dyslexia. The schnauzer tilted his head, as dogs do when they don't understand. (Joke, of course).
Animals not only have smaller brains (except elephants, whales, octopuses, etc.) but also have brains that are structured differently.
A 1 year old chimp is actually much smarter than a 1 year old human because some animals mature faster. But, in the long run, it appears that humans are more intelligent.
Arrogantly, we assume that we have the only language skills, and wonder why the animal kingdom is slow to understand. Yet, dolphins (and other creatures) seem to have a genetically programmed language set to warn about danger, and, until recently humans didn't think that was important. Yet, many sea creatures hunt in packs (as do wolves and lions), and use advanced strategies to outsmart herds of food fish.
A Chinese lady said goodbye to me in Chinese. I said "COVID," which is goodbye in any language (dark humor).
It has been hotly debated whether or not cats can understand pointing. Some swear that cats can follow your finger when you point to food.
Four Things You Didn’t Know About Your Cat’s Brain
Link above: Researchers recently realized that cats can follow fingers.
Do cats understand when people point? - Quora
Link above: Claims that cats don't fully understand finger pointing.
Apes lack a region of the brain (speech center) to speak. Yet, that doesn't prevent them from knowing the language, as Koko the gorilla clearly proved. Koko was trained to operate a computer, and he was capable of speaking in full sentences (by pressing keys, not using his voice).
Listening to Koko | Commonweal Magazine
Patterson: “Who is God?”
Koko: “Me.”
Patterson: “Who created the world?”
Koko: “Another woman.”
If humans evolved from simians, that would make simians (apes) the creators of mankind (but isn't God the creator?). It is not clear if Koko really understood the concept of a creator (God), or if Koko merely got the concepts from humans and repeated back.
Parrots, mynah birds, and even ravens can talk (ravens require an operation on their tongues), but it is not clear that they understand the words. But, like many pets, they can be taught to do things when they hear certain words.
Animals not only have smaller brains (except elephants, whales, octopuses, etc.) but also have brains that are structured differently.
A 1 year old chimp is actually much smarter than a 1 year old human because some animals mature faster. But, in the long run, it appears that humans are more intelligent.
Arrogantly, we assume that we have the only language skills, and wonder why the animal kingdom is slow to understand. Yet, dolphins (and other creatures) seem to have a genetically programmed language set to warn about danger, and, until recently humans didn't think that was important. Yet, many sea creatures hunt in packs (as do wolves and lions), and use advanced strategies to outsmart herds of food fish.
A Chinese lady said goodbye to me in Chinese. I said "COVID," which is goodbye in any language (dark humor).
It has been hotly debated whether or not cats can understand pointing. Some swear that cats can follow your finger when you point to food.
Four Things You Didn’t Know About Your Cat’s Brain
Link above: Researchers recently realized that cats can follow fingers.
Do cats understand when people point? - Quora
Link above: Claims that cats don't fully understand finger pointing.
Apes lack a region of the brain (speech center) to speak. Yet, that doesn't prevent them from knowing the language, as Koko the gorilla clearly proved. Koko was trained to operate a computer, and he was capable of speaking in full sentences (by pressing keys, not using his voice).
Listening to Koko | Commonweal Magazine
Patterson: “Who is God?”
Koko: “Me.”
Patterson: “Who created the world?”
Koko: “Another woman.”
If humans evolved from simians, that would make simians (apes) the creators of mankind (but isn't God the creator?). It is not clear if Koko really understood the concept of a creator (God), or if Koko merely got the concepts from humans and repeated back.
Parrots, mynah birds, and even ravens can talk (ravens require an operation on their tongues), but it is not clear that they understand the words. But, like many pets, they can be taught to do things when they hear certain words.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
No.Do you think animals, insects, bacteria, viruses pray/can pray to God for their requirements, desires etc ?
Thoughts
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
Interesting website.
Samael_Khan
Goosebender
I know right! It would be cool to get my hands on one of the references in the bibliography to see the studies.
Not as such, no.Do you think animals, insects, bacteria, viruses pray/can pray to God for their requirements, desires etc ?
Thoughts
The closest thing to it that occurs to me is that some of the most intelligent species grieve for their alphas, male or female, which points to a sense of bonding and a recognition of death.
But it's a bi-i-i-ig step from there to an elephant-recognized God of Elephants, a theology developed by Bonobos, or Dolphins holding Sunday services.
oldbadger
Skanky Old Mongrel!
Everything is part of the same diety as me imo.Do you think animals, insects, bacteria, viruses pray/can pray to God for their requirements, desires etc ?
Thoughts
Do they pray? Well, I don't, but they can if they want to.
oldbadger
Skanky Old Mongrel!
Meh.......
.....badgers......
Bear Wild
Well-Known Member
Do you think animals, insects, bacteria, viruses pray/can pray to God for their requirements, desires etc ?
Thoughts
That depends on the animal I would think. There are primates and other animals that certainty have the neurologic capacity to be aware of death, have desires and requirements, and the theory of mind capacity to attribute to personality to things outside of their own kind. Unfortunately I only no one primate we have sufficient evidence for such behaviors. The others we cannot say yes or no at this point. Much harder to make an argument for bacteria and viruses with their limited cognitive abilities.
The only exception I can think of is Covid-19 which prayed to their god to provide a leader who would help spread them to as many hosts as possible and clearly the Covid-19 God gave them Trump.
Bear Wild
Well-Known Member
Actually, at least vertebrate thought processes have been severely underestimated by humans. The more we learn the smarter they get.
Bear Wild
Well-Known Member
My cats certainty do. I should never have let them see Disney's movie
"The Three Lives of Thomasina"
They now know that god at least looks like a cat despite my attempts to convince them otherwise.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Disney creatures are 'anthropomorphized'
It's an ugly word, should be replaced with 'humanized.'
Bamby, for instance, couldn't speak, act or think like humans.
Bear Wild
Well-Known Member
We know that social animals show displays that have no direct benefit to the animal itself often at times when they are alone not intended for another to be seen. There is no direct benefit to the survival of the individual. We know they are aware of the unpredictability of the environment they live in, and we know they recognize death and the places where death has occurred.
On the neurologic side many social animals contain the neurons called von economo neurons that seem to play a role in empathetic behavior and this is backed by increasing observations of altruistic like behaviors of one animal to another. Many social animals have the mirror neurons necessary to relate to the activities of others in understanding their actions and increasing evidence for theory of mind to attribute an understanding of another individual in their group increasing the complexity of social interactions.
We know from humans that these same pathways allow us to attribute human characteristics to non-human living and non-living things. There is no reason not to believe that other animals with these same capacities can do the same. The ultimate attribution of human characteristics is to parent like being which can be described as a god. Without any evidence of god presenting themselves humans have no difficulty attributing human and superhuman characteristics to a god without any evidence of existence. Since other animals have these same evolutionary derived neurological abilities there is no reason to consider that they could not also have the same ability.
It was not long ago that we thought that tool use made humans different but that has long been proven incorrect, then we believed that humans only contained von economo neurons as a sign that humans were separate, then it was theory of mind. Each has failed as evidence that separates humans animals from other animals, Only language, especially written language remains the sole priority of humans but is that absolutely necessary for a belief in a god?
Samael_Khan
Goosebender
Certainly written language does not need to precede belief, since there have been illiterate human societies that belief in deities. I think that the problem many of us have is that we think that humans are unique in certain ways and that animals are driven purely by instinct. If we believe in evolution and follow the biology and actions of animals then we should expect animals to develop higher levels of intellect and creativity, both which are needed for philosophy and theism.
Thief
Rogue Theologian
start a thread....let's explore the extent of God's awareness
Do you think animals, insects, bacteria, viruses pray/can pray to God for their requirements, desires etc ?
Thoughts
Aside from humans?
Just dogs.
