Will my dog go to heaven?

Christianity requires that to be saved, one must accept Jesus as his/her saviour.

In my upbringing, the salvation of those who never heard the word of Christ such as aborted fetuses, people born before Jesus’ time, and remote tribes; or individuals mentally incapable of making such a commitment were/will be judged differently. Fine. All will be revealed, right? But what about animals?

Other animals have thinking abilities and can make choices, though not nearly as adequately as we humans. Still, we speak of them as having personalities and I would say they have souls. (See In dog's image for more details).

Isaiah 11:6-9 indicate that animals will be in heaven. (See this heavenly picture). Perhaps those verses are metaphorical. Still, I want to know, will my dog go to heaven?

That is, does he have an eternal soul? If he does, what happens to that soul when he dies? If he goes to heaven, what will be the form of his spirit? What will be the form of mine? Will our spirits be equal in terms of what we continue to experience and learn? If he has been deemed to have chased too many cats and scared away too many proselytizers at my door that could have otherwise saved me, will he go to hell? Will he be in limbo?

Are these not ridiculous questions?

Yes and no. I suppose it depends on who you ask. What we are really asking is what it means to be alive and human and how that is different from the rest of the natural and living world. To atheists these are ridiculous questions. When my dog dies, just like it was before he was born, his spirit will cease to exist. It's the way it is with all of us. Fine. Next topic.

All theologies are constructed from perceptions of the natural and living world. Unsurprisingly, many theologies are human-centric. Judeo-Christian theologies are built around the human condition, first delineating what it means to be alive and human apart from the rest of the natural and living world and from there, God’s role toward humanity and the remainder of the living and natural world can also be defined.

Well, that’s the goal anyway. Given other living creatures, is there a theology out there that is justifiable in any way?

Let’s consider the question of other animals’ salvation. Let’s say that my dog goes to heaven and that I don’t. How is that in any way fair? I’d have been much better off being a dog or to have never existed. Let’s say he goes to hell. How is that in any way fair to him? What did he do wrong? Let’s say he just stays in limbo. You might as well send him to hell unless there are frisbees in limbo. Oh, but wait, then that would be heaven.

You can probably also see where this slippery slope is leading. If my dog has an eternal soul, then so do other critters including rats, snakes, bugs, and even each of the trillion E-coli bacterium that leave my gut and get flushed down the toilet every day. Think of the massive genocide I’m performing with each SWOOSH! The way out of this conundrum is to simply believe that my dog’s soul is not eternal.

Okay, so let’s just say that when he’s gone he’s gone. That also opens up a can of worms. First of all, we can ask “Why is he even here?” What’s the meaning of life for my dog? Why would God create him for some blip in time and then let him disappear? Is it to test me in some way? Is he just a gift from God? I suppose Genesis 1:26 can be interpreted that way, but it still seems pretty unfair. A little too human-centric for my tastes, literally, if animals are also here so that we can eat them as promoted in this link by Answers in Genesis.

Now, the “E” word, evolution, does not muck up this muddiness really any further. There was a moment when pre-humans transcended from having a temporal soul to an eternal soul. If you want to believe in a literal, hand-crafted-from-dirt Adam and Eve, it’s this same moment that discriminates us from the other animals. What is peculiar is that it seems that the moment we realized our mortality is the same moment we became immortal. It was at this moment that we also realized there was a God that we chose evil which severed the relationship. Hence, the need for salvation.

Huh? Theists, help me out here.

Fire-breathing gods

I once had the opportunity to summit the Villarica volcano in Chile and peer into its mouth. The mountain felt alive, expelling pulses of hot air like it was breathing out of its fiery gut. It evoked such mystery and splendor! Who was this massive soul who breathed fire? It was easy to understand how the Incas could build a theology around such a real, natural phenomenon operating on a much grander plane than us piddly humans. For all anybody could tell, the mountain had obviously been there forever and always would be with its searing heart.

From the post "Why does faith = redemption?", theists and atheists seem to agree that our respective belief systems are built on underlying assumptions. Given an initial framework, life becomes a cycle of world view -> behavior -> world's response -> adapting our world view -> adapting our behavior, etc. Sounds like evolution to me! It also offers a simplistic explanation for the creation of any belief system.

One of the classic Richard Dawkins quotes is, "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." Why is it so easy for religious folk of a particular faith to see the splinter in the eye of other religions, but not the log in their own? (And here’s a bone for the theists) What trees are in the atheist’s eyes?

I would say that it is due to history and culture. Any belief system, even atheism, is subject to seeing what we want to see. Because assumptions are all tied together, starting with some basis, reinforcing and expanding it is rather straightforward. Opposing it takes a whole lot of work. Indeed, human nature seems to direct us to become "set in our ways". We become self-protective and defensive when we see a threat to our cultures and ideologies. The young earth creationist, for example, recognizing the threat of evolution to his assumptions is likely to turn a blind ear and give the knee-jerk response that all the information necessary to understand creation is in the Bible.

What brings us to blows or at least not to see eye to eye (with all that wood we’ve go in there!) is the subjective nature of the argument. Given the same embodiment of our opponent, the same genetic make-up, thinking ability, family, and history, would we not have the ideology and behavior of our opponent?

Why does faith = redemption?

If I am correctly interpreting my Christian commentors, their faith is a trust in God that is separate from theology. By that I mean "theology" is what someone knows about God (which is obviously subjective). On the other hand, faith is a trust that God is in control, has a plan, is living through the person, and will reveal all things (throughout eternity), when really parts of the theology appear incongruent, incompatible, or haven't yet been pieced together.

By its nature, then, faith should be uncomfortable. This cognitive dissonance pushes the theologian to question, challenge, and find out more about God. Ironically, the more the theologian pushes and seeks, the more complex the deity must become to take into account the newfound complexities of the natural world, including animal behavior. (This is not unlike the recursion of most scientific discoveries that only provoke more questions). It seems the dutiful natural scientist-theist, while making an ever-more complex image of God will perpetually require more and more faith.

For me, a young earth creationist-turned evolutionist, evolution was just too incongruent with any theology I could imagine so it broke my faith. (Perhaps baby steps could have worked, but how you do baby steps on evolution with a YEC, I don't know). Nevertheless, I have to ask, "Why faith?"

In my previous post, it was (somewhat) established that God was not necessary for morality and then my question "What good is God?" was answered as "for redemption."

Why is it that humans, the only rational animals on the planet, the ones that took of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the ones created in the omniscient God's image, what was it about that rationality that separated us from God and why is irrationality the only way to redeem that relationship?

Paley's moral compass

As a follow-up to the Ecclesiastes book review post, it seems the construct for morality for Christians (or other religions) falls into Paley's watchmaker analogy. This is heard in Christianity as "But for the grace of God, there too go I". Christianity is rife with demeaning humanity as amoral and evil with the single exception of accepting Jesus as one's savior to both forgive transgressions and begin to live a more moral life as Jesus lives through him or her.

If this is true, then the Christian who believes in evolution has drawn a dangerous line. Obviously, behavior as well as physiology is under evolutionary pressures, but the religious moralist presumes high levels of morality can only be attained via divine providence. This is a dangerous line because behavior has a natural basis. As behavioral studies begin to show more genetic, cultural, and environmental forces at play, moral codes will also start to be teased out, and the Christian evolutionist will have to continually adjust his or her concept of the natural/supernatural boundary. (Check out this site for examples of biological altruism). The young earth creationist does not have this problem. They simply consider evolution bogus.

In short, this is another form of Intelligent Design, accepting the physiological components of evolution, but disregarding the behavioral as too complex to be completely natural.

I see two alternatives. 1) God is not necessary for morality or 2) God still uses evolution as His primary tool for mucking with the natural world.

Option 1 is easily accepted by atheists, but hard to swallow for the theist because it starts to beg the question "What good is God?"

Option 2 is something that I will be addressing in future posts as I read and become more familiar with proponents of this theory, including Richard Colling's Random Designer.

Mission statement and welcome

Hello. My name is Tom, and I'm a recovering young earther.

I grew up a young earth creationist. Along with this belief came a whole culture of religion where I was happy, had beautiful friends, and a world that had direction and meaning. I took up the study of evolution to challenge my faith and to adequately challenge evolutionists. What I found was that evolutionary theory made sense!

My world turned upside down.

For the fundamentalist, even though there is a degree of picking and choosing which parts of the bible really do apply, the creation story was not to be tampered with. Even if it wasn't a literal 6 day creation and the earth was a million years old, God still created us in His image, right? But evolution says that all creatures grew out of pond scum.

Which do I more likely want to believe?

1. That I am a hand-crafted person by the creator of all the universe and that He has a master plan for me filled with love and meaning forever.
2. I am the agglomeration of molecules that have occurred through random, naturally cooperative and competitive interactions and these molecules have been able to develop systems to form ever-more complex structures and to replicate themselves.

Option 1 sounds good. It has the answer already in place. You accept it, live it, and enjoy it. End of story. And you can bet people are going to want to protect that.

Option 2 sounds empty, hopeless, and meaningless.

Here is the dilemma. Can you believe in both evolution and God at the same time? Probably so for the non-fundamentalist. But the fundamentalist view is more binary. If evolution is true, then what does it mean to be created in God's image? Was there an Adam and Eve? If not, then what is original sin? If you do not have original sin, then who was Jesus?

This forum is not intended as a way of bridging evolution and fundamentalist Christian beliefs. No. It is to expose the issues and to have clear communication on the fears and frustrations with accepting each and to explain why they are diametrically opposed.

For me, I wanted to debunk evolution. When I could not ignore evolution, I found I could not substantiate a belief in God either. This left a hole. I had a whole culture that was upended. This blog will be my story, how I rationalize atheism, and what I hope will be a good discussion of how people can find the world makes a lot of sense when viewed through the eyes of evolution. Moreover, it is a forum to discuss the pursuit of life's meaning and purpose after shedding a belief in God.

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