In a message dated 9/2/2007 11:33:21 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Make sure you read Tommy's article about Michael Vicks as well. He's got it all figured out.He reminds us how great we humans are, that dogs are cute but otherwise insignificant...While I completely understand the point Tommy was trying to raise, unfortunately he made a poor choice to illustrate his point.... Tom's point/argument "that we over-evaluate beasts" became convoluted when it dragged in Byrd's ancient KKK history, condemns Byrd to Hell, the human fetus abortion debate, Vick as keynote speaker at the Democratic Convention, and declares that animals have no souls. All hot buttons which confuse the issue. All heat and no light; a mile wide but an inch shallow; all off topic. Regarding "soul": I'll always be thankful to those teachers who required us students to read Aristotle who proposed three forms of soul: 1. the vegetative soul possessed by plants in that they grow and decay and enjoy nutriment, but they do not have motion and sensation, 2. the animal soul which bestows animals with motion and sensation, the capacity to interact in the world through sense experience. and 3. the rational soul which is the conscious and intellectual soul peculiar to man. Each higher form possesses in full the attributes of the lower souls, which makes human beings the only possessor of all three types. It helped to explain the human affinity for their pets. Tom's "Him" seems quite different from Francis of Assisi's "Him," Blessing All Creatures, Great and Small: "All praise to you, Oh Lord, for all these brother and sister creatures"; and "My sister birds, ...although you neither know how to spin or weave, God dresses you and your children, for the Creator loves you [dogs and ideologues included] greatly and He blesses you abundantly." Maybe those prayers are too sissy-ish when one needs to affect machismo.
