POPE FRANCIS SAYS "ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN".

In a recent address at the Vatican, Pope Francis issued a statement that is sure to comfort those of faith who have lost a beloved pet. He stated that all animals go to heaven.
"The Holy Scriptures teach us that the realization of this wonderful plan covers all that is around us, and that came out of the thought and the heart of God," Francis was quoted  as saying by the Italian News site Rsapubblica. "Heaven is open to all creatures, and there [they] will be vested with the joy and love of God, without limits."
Francis is a known animal lover. He adopted his papal name Francis, in honor of the patron saint of animals, St. Francis of Assisi. 
Over his term, the Pope has demonstrated his love of animals. He has given an impromptu blessing to a guide dog of a journalist and also welcomed the dog of a homeless man to celebrate his birthday. Source Blog “Welcome to DogHeirs, where Dogs Are Family. http://www.dogheirs.com.


The French Philosopher Renee Descartes must be turning in his grave. His idea about dogs was that they had no degree of intelligence and merely related and reacted to their immediate environments. And they did not possess the ability to problem solve or reason, Biological robots if you like. This view was borne out by religious beliefs of this time that held that ‘with intelligence comes consciousness and consciousness meant having a soul. Any being having a soul had to be admitted to heaven and the thought of dogs being admitted to heaven had an influence on Descartes point of view with regards to the intelligence of dogs. It wasn’t until Charles Darwins theory of evolution that it was the degrees of intelligence that separated all species. And that all species possessed some intelligence. The difficulty was in measuring that intelligence. Measuring intelligence in dogs is not easy. We could point to how quickly a dog can learn. But if during training the reward is not perceived to be high enough then a dog may take longer to learn the behaviour. For the best results we not only have to match the reward with the behaviour but possibly also the type of dog. Is he a chaser, digger, herder, guarder? Unfortunately training is not a “One size fits all” thing. But then thats what makes it interesting.  See you soon……..

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