Animals and Reason

Mostly through Aristotle's influence many Christian sects today renounce animals as soulless beings. Aristotle in his books described animals as being without a rational soul, and therefore below and subject to humans. Christians took this to mean that animals had no soul and were therefore intrinsically evil, and would never reach "Heaven." Strangely enough though, animals fell with the rest of creation due to the folly of man, and it is because of man that all of creation is fallen. Free will is something that God according to the Bible only gave man, and man abused this gift and disobeyed God. It is man's fault that the world has fallen. We are not above animals, plants, or the rest of the creation. In this sense, it is a show of humanity's extreme stupidity compared to the rest of creation that Jesus was a human. We were given responsibility and abused it while the rest of creation was not and are now dependent on us to rectify our mistake.