They are not encumbered with a sinful nature.
they also don't have a conscience. or morals.
Or free-will.
It has often been said that if G-d had not given us free-will, we would have been robots, but I think it is more reasonable to imagine that we would just be another form of animal....which we are not.
it depends on whether you believe that animals have free will or not. Saying that animals have no free will is saying that everything an animal does is causally predicted. Even if they dont have free will in the sense that we accept free will to be - they have some form of it. granted, a majority of an animals actions are controlled by the instinct to survive but surely if animals had no free will then an animal would not be capable of any irrational actions that could not be causally determined. if an animal was unable to have any choice within their lives then there would be no irrational actions within their societies. yes, there are casally determined actions within animals, as within humans, wwe both have the innate fear of death (please dont sidetrack onto the heaven and the afterlife here... im on about death as death...) and we all have a survival instinct. this is still here today and innateness leads to fears such as arachnophobia - behavioural theories are not the first to be accepted! but, accepting the fact that animals may not have such an 'evolved' amount of free will, surely you have to accept that there is a difference between some of their actions - and that they do have a choice?
(illustration, the fact that a pregnant rabbit can 're-absorb' the unborn kittens due to lack of food, and other envoronmental factors (causally determined), against the fact that an adult male gorilla pairing with a female gorilla that has an infant may or may not kill that infant, not dependant on anything in the environment, the male, nor the females position within the shrewd (group of apes), nor on the age of the infant in question.)
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and ive just noticed that anyone who believes that animals intelligence varies and has full belief in evolution and thus believes that apes are of a higher intelligence and thus may have more 'free will' than a rabbit, the above example doesnt exactly work, but rabbits can also commit infanticide with no interference from the outside world and to born kits, so yeah...
Let me be more specific so that we don't fudge the issue.
I mean a free will to choose whether to seek after G-d or not, and to live life as if He is irrelevant...thus instinctive...and apparently choosing to live like an animal, in the sense that they live and die content to do what their inherent nature dictates. If we live according to our sin nature and are not changed through rebirth we are not really that different from animals...we eat, we copulate, we work, we sleep, we have family, we have homes, we live and we die....but all without the saving knowledge and presence of G-d. The difference is animals do not need saving...but man does.
haha, fudge...
overall, completely, branch of, specify earlier... haha.
and ok *shrugs*
