The Breath Of Life In Animals

I am conscious, and this is something absolutely certain: I cannot doubt or reject my existence without necessarily existing in order to do so.  Although I cannot in any way be sure if most of my memories or sensory experiences correspond to anything but mere mental perceptions, or in other words, do not pertain to external events and objects, other people also seem to have minds of their own.  The unverifiability means this seeming consciousness of theirs could be an illusion.  Mine cannot be, for one cannot misperceive the existence of their own mind; they could only at most go about life merely assuming that they exist or never thinking about it, which, as a rationalist, I gave up numerous years ago.

According to the Bible, human consciousness is/is caused by the divine breath of life, which transformed Adam from an inanimate mass of dirt into a living being, a soul (Genesis 2:7).  It is not just other humans that seem to be conscious as I observe them move, react, and express noise and supposed emotions and intentionality.  Non-human animals also appear outwardly to have this immaterial mind within them, from ants to whales.  This seems to be the case from ordinary perception of them, not that I can know from unverifiable perceptions if these stimuli actually exist outside of my own consciousness.

The Bible plainly teaches that animals, too, are conscious despite lacking God's image (Genesis 1:26-27).  When the first book of the Torah says that the flood of Noah's day killed all of the living things on the world except for what was carried on the ark.  Genesis 7:20-23 says that everything on dry land in which there was the breath of life died (7:22), the animals being among those that perished and had life in their nostrils (7:21).  Also noteworthy here is that these living things perished, or died, as the text says.  John 3:16 would not mean the wicked are tortured forever in hell! 

Now, Genesis does not specifically say that God gave the breathe of life to non-human creatures in its very initial chapters, but it would still necessarily follow that if the breath of life is required for consciousness, and animals appear conscious, then on the Biblical worldview they appear to have received this breath of life from God.  It is only Genesis 7 that outright says they possess this as humans do.  As living things created by a being whose nature is goodness, being lesser than human does not make them worthless.  No, they, too, are very good (Genesis 1:20-25, 31).  Biblically, they have some sort of basic consciousness even if it is potentially more passive and limited, secondary to that of humans but still morally valuable.