Hepzeba
San no mai Shirafune
like humans, animals also have choices, what choices they make determine whether or not they go to heaven
Emphatically, NO.
stare Non-humans do not abstract --- with the possible exception of dolphins --- animals are not subject to judgement and cannot make the choice to reject God, for they never would I assure you. Animals have more sense when it comes to God than humans do.
No, non human Animals, can not make religious, Political, and Technological choices, but they are more then capable of making every day basic Instinctual, survival, and recreational choices. They choose which way to go, they choose where to build a nest, where to Bury a bone, when to attack that mouse, so on and so forth. Just because something can't make a Religious, political or Technical choice, does NOT automatically mean they are incapable of choice.
animals are NOT the mindless machines we are taught to believe they are.
It is not unreasonable to assume that animals do think. After all, each species has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to be perfect in their own way. Humans are very good at being human, a dog is good at being a dog and a chicken is good at being a chicken.
One step on from "thinking" is the idea of feelings - sensations such as pain or nausea, or emotions such as fear and anxiety.
A sentient animal is one that has the capacity to have feelings. Sentience means a level of conscious awareness. Humans are undoubtedly sentient - we consciously experience feelings of many different types. But what of other animals? While the mind of a human is much more complex than the minds of other animals this is only a question of degree. There are people that say that not all animals are sentient. However, without proof in either direction, and with evidence that many animals are sentient, we believe it is important to assume that all living creatures are sentient to some degree. After all, if we assume they are not and treat them accordingly, there is a moral issue to face if we are wrong.
One of the oldest ideas in philosophy is that animals act in a machine-like fashion with no conscious thought processes of any kind. The more we find out about animals, the more this idea is disappearing. Evidence is growing that animals have far more cognitive abilities than has traditionally been believed - they are sentient creatures.
