Not long after human beings first started to believe in an afterlife, they started to divide up who is “in” from who is “out” – that is, who qualifies for an eternal soul and who doesn’t, who gets admitted to the afterlife and who gets consigned to the dust bin. 

I’m most familiar with the Judeo-Christian faith, so it’s easy to reel off examples there.  At one time, people of different races were “out;” people of different religious faiths were out, atheists were out; gay people were out; people who didn’t say a particular creed were out; etc.  Either they didn’t have a soul, or else their soul was so wayward that they didn’t qualify for heaven.  I don’t mean to pick on Christianity; other faiths probably have similar stories.  You can see it in politics, too, although without the eternal aspects. This is a human phenomenon, not a specifically Christian one.

The Give Away

When you look at the pattern of these judgments, you immediately notice something that gives away the game.  The people who make the decisions about who is “in” vs who is “out” always end up on the winning end.  They are “in,” and the other group, however defined, is “out.”  Funny how that works. 

There are a lot of names for this.  In-group bias.  Confirmation bias.  Social proof.  Anthropocentrism.  Egotism.  Self-serving bias. Whatever you want to call it, it is one of the oldest games in the book.  The committee that decides who is “in” and who is “out” somehow figure out that they are on the right side, and the others, the ones not on the committee, are wrong. Go figure.    

These sorts of discriminations – who is out, who is in – have a lot of advantages, which is why they are so popular.  For example, it is a great way of consolidating power and enforcing conformity.  It gives people formulas that tell them how to live their lives and how to ensure eternal salvation, which make people feel better about themselves and more secure.  It boosts self-esteem, since you can feel better than the schmucks who are on the outs.   

Animal Souls

These “who’s in, who’s out” judgments also get made about animals. Animals have traditionally been part of the “out” group, seen as not smart enough, moral enough, or Godly enough to qualify for souls and the afterlife. 

In a nutshell, the traditional Christian doctrine has been that two attributes — reason and moral behavior — distinguish human beings from animals. These attributes are shared by God and thus demonstrate we are “made in the image of God” and destined for eternal life. However, animals do not possess reason or moral behavior, and so they are not made in the image of God, and therefore do not have an eternal soul or afterlife.

Turns out, both of those distinctions have been refuted by research in animal behavior. Animals do think and reason, and they do exhibit moral behavior. I’ll say more about that in subsequent posts.     

For now, just notice the same pattern we mentioned earlier. The ones doing the judging (in this case, the humans) decide they are “in,” and the others (in this case, the animals) are “out.”  Human beings decide that human beings are the special and deserving ones. Animals, who don’t have a voice in the discussion, are deemed inadequate and consigned to the dust bin.  Same old story — the ones making the judgment decide that they are “in,” and the rest are “out.”

The Trajectory of History

Fortunately — and this is important to recognize – the trend over time has been for these discriminatory judgments to fall, one by one.  Sometimes it takes many generations; sometimes it takes millennia. But eventually, these sharp divisions collapse.  For example, few people today would argue that the biblical injunctions I cited above are morally sensible.  In fact, most people would regard them as immoral, not moral. 

Over the course of history, people have recognized that all of these “we’re in, you’re out” discriminations about souls and afterlife are just anthropomorphic projections of their own culture prejudices on to God, not accurate pictures of God or the afterlife.   Later generations look back on these judgments with embarrassment.  They say more about the people and culture making the judgments than they do about God or the afterlife. 

The same thing will happen with the human/animal divide, too.  It will eventually fall.  There are signs it is happening already.  For example, Pope Francis recently told a young distraught boy whose dog had died, “Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”  That contradicts standard Catholic doctrine about animals not having souls, but he’s the Pope, and his word carries a lot of weight for Catholics.  It was a good sign.       

Eventually, people will stop arrogating souls and the afterlife to just themselves.  They will recognize that animals, too, have souls and an afterlife, just like we do.  That is the trend of history.

It may take some time, but we’ll get there.