Yeah I prefer to eat fish. Mostly because it's lean, but also because it seems less aware. Still, respect.
@Th4DwArfY1
One answer is consciousness. Something "looking through the viewport". Self-awareness. To lesser and lesser degrees, as you examine more primitive animals. That would be an acceptable answer to "what is a soul".
What I actually believe goes farther, into the ""supernatural"". I believe living and unliving things have a soul, currently outside the detection of science. That living and nonliving phenomena interact in an unknown ("ethereal") way. That a mountain isn't an organism, but it is alive, and can be heard and subtly (and stupidly) react to stimuli. That deep forests thrum with a secret energy. That there are things lurking in the shadows, watching and whispering. Playing their pranks, avoiding detection with... sylvan expertise.
I believe in fey, like my ancestors did. I believe in weather and terrain spirits, as our ancestors did. I believe the hills are alive, in the unscientific sense.
I believe in what we all believed 5000 years ago, and have since denied. It wasn't SCIENCE that changed our minds, it was other faiths. Consolidation of thousands of spirits into pantheons of hundreds, or dozens, then eventually into monotheisms. We STILL feel things whispering to us in the dark. And in the light, looking over a landscape or deep forest. We just tried to name and thus know them, or in rare cases ignore them. But I'm pretty sure we all feel them.
The truth about the natural world doesn't come from mindworms evolved over generations. It comes from actually listening. And as proof, the earliest human art is FOURTY THOUSAND years old. It doesn't support any world religions... It depicts humans and other creatures. Without any indoctrination, *that* is what the first artists observed and were moved to depict.
(None of this runs counter to the scientific method. Intelligent beings with unknown powers could easily avoid us in forests, caves, or the oceans. For all we monitor, there is so much we can't)