Why do we value human life?

[Jack D Ripper]

I too feel that human life has innate value; I think it's very common among us. But, for myself, I feel that limiting this view to human life, instead of all life, warps the subject into something incomplete, and maybe even damaged. But that's just me.... 😉

Would you then agree with the statement that if we looked at all life and had to rank its worth, that human life would be the most valuable out of all? ...

Although you did not ask me the question, I will answer anyway. Humans are apt to judge that human life is the most valuable. That, however, does not mean that they are right. Very likely, tigers have a different opinion, as do other life forms.

[Jack D Ripper]

The opening post to a very old thread is relevant to this thread:

The dot in this picture is Earth:



Of the picture, astronomer Carl Sagan said the following:

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Looking at a picture like that can be humbling. I think most of the time it makes us think that we are "unimportant" or mostly "meaningless" in comparison to the vastness of the universe.

Many people look at it and say, why does what happens on Earth matter? What is important about the events on this relatively minuscule pebble?

What do you think? Why does it matter?

I think it matters to us. 'Importance' is relative and subjective. It does not matter much to me or to us what is going on in some other planet millions of light years away. But consider what happens to ourselves, our friends, our families, our fellow humans, the future of our kind, and even the creatures on this planet; that matters to us. That's what we live and work for. Some may think some god or such gave these concerns and values to us through his own concerns and values; I think it was just evolution. But it does not matter much what gave it to us; either way, we have these concerns, and those concerns determine what matters to us.

Whatever the reason, I love being alive, I love myself, I love my friends, I love humanity, and I love loving these things. That's what matters to me. And I think most people feel the same.

Whatever you value, that is of little or no importance to the universe.

[Steve3007]

Several of us have repeated that old Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot" quote quite a few times. It's a good 'un isn't it.

[Terrapin Station]

But yeah, I'm sure that valuing one's own species tends to be the case because there was an evolutionary advantage to that. Many creatures need to protect enough of their own species at least to the point of reproduction in order for the species in question to survive, and humans are certainly one of those sorts of creatures. We're long down an evolutionary chain where individuals can not survive on their own, without some sort of protection/nurturing, to a reproduction stage.

So would you suspect that if we were somehow able to revert to a pre-societal (Hobbes/Rousseau -esque state of nature) that we would have a weaker instinct to assume an innate value for human life? In other words, has our interdependence as a species increased out egotistical idea of human value?

You seem like you're thinking that everyone values things the same, for the same reasons.

[Pattern-chaser]

I too feel that human life has innate value; I think it's very common among us. But, for myself, I feel that limiting this view to human life, instead of all life, warps the subject into something incomplete, and maybe even damaged. But that's just me....

Would you then agree with the statement that if we looked at all life and had to rank its worth, that human life would be the most valuable out of all?

No, I wouldn't. But I need to qualify this carefully. I don't believe or assume that humans have more value than other creatures, but I also don't believe our value is any less either. In the words of the old proverb, we're comparing apples and oranges. How do you assign one or the other a greater value? After all, our assignment of such values appears, from an external viewpoint, wholly arbitrary.

You referred in another note to the "moral reasoning" we have applied to get where we are today. I can't see how this reasoning was/is "moral". Morality is just a way in which we humans choose to behave; it has no more (or less) justification than that.

I'm not convinced that belief in God is sufficient to assign innate value to our lives. But it may well be a factor in the personal beliefs of many.

So if there is a God, and we are created by this God, what conception of this God do you believe would leave our value up to question? I can think of some ideas, but i'd like to hear yours.

I believe God is an emergent phenomenon. Her (figurative) body is the physical space-time universe - all of it - and She is its soul. She is not a creator-God; She is Life personified*. In the context of your question, She is the God of all living creatures. I cannot see that She would spend time ranking Her creatures in terms of 'value', but who am I to anticipate Her doings?

* - and non-life too. She is the God of Everything. And besides, perhaps the stone has 'Buddha nature' anyway?

I confess there is no part of the above argument that appeals to me, or that I would feel happy defending. It seems to say "We look at ourselves, and see that we're great; we are the best there is. Therefore our lives have value." I see no merit in this position.

I push back against this portrayal of my argument, in reference to my previous points about why we can (with what I believe to be some level of objectivity) state that humans actually are pretty impressive, and that could ascribe us special value.

I cannot agree. There is no objectivity whatever in your presentation. There are interesting ideas to discuss, for sure, but they aren't objective. And I can see no justification for assigning the value that you do to humans and humanity. What about fungal mycelia? Or dolphins? Or the oldest living creature on our planet, which we believe is a tree? Is there really a way to compare these things? More than that, is there really a way to compare these things objectively? I don't think there is.

[HJCarden]

Whatever you value, that is of little or no importance to the universe.

Yes, the vastness of the universe is very intimidating. However, is it not a possibility that instead of just being this small tiny corner of the universe, that we are in fact on a pedestal? Unlikely, but I do believe that it is possible that we are the very apex of the universe.

[HJCarden]

Would you then agree with the statement that if we looked at all life and had to rank its worth, that human life would be the most valuable out of all?

No, I wouldn't. But I need to qualify this carefully. I don't believe or assume that humans have more value than other creatures, but I also don't believe our value is any less either. In the words of the old proverb, we're comparing apples and oranges. How do you assign one or the other a greater value? After all, our assignment of such values appears, from an external viewpoint, wholly arbitrary.

You referred in another note to the "moral reasoning" we have applied to get where we are today. I can't see how this reasoning was/is "moral". Morality is just a way in which we humans choose to behave; it has no more (or less) justification than that.

I would feel comfortable ranking the life of a human ahead of other species for 1 our raw logical capabilities and 2 our moral capabilities. Human history is a rapid takeover and domination of the planet, our reasoning capabilities (one of which that is not appreciated enough is our ability to contemplate alternative scenarios using our own monologues--exclusive to humans) are so incredibly successful. What other life form has made it off the planet? As for our moral reasoning, yes this is a way that we choose to behave but I tend to believe that the core of morality is self sacrifice. It goes further than just "mother animal sacrifices life for babies", we morally contemplate and seek to promote the lives of humans who we have never had and never will have contact with. This is my part of the reasoning I hold for human egotism.

So if there is a God, and we are created by this God, what conception of this God do you believe would leave our value up to question? I can think of some ideas, but i'd like to hear yours.

I believe God is an emergent phenomenon. Her (figurative) body is the physical space-time universe - all of it - and She is its soul. She is not a creator-God; She is Life personified*. In the context of your question, She is the God of all living creatures. I cannot see that She would spend time ranking Her creatures in terms of 'value', but who am I to anticipate Her doings?

* - and non-life too. She is the God of Everything. And besides, perhaps the stone has 'Buddha nature' anyway?

I am admittedly quite uneducated in the idea of God as an emergent phenomenon. If you can point me to any beginner resources that would be greatly appreciated.

I push back against this portrayal of my argument, in reference to my previous points about why we can (with what I believe to be some level of objectivity) state that humans actually are pretty impressive, and that could ascribe us special value.

I cannot agree. There is no objectivity whatever in your presentation. There are interesting ideas to discuss, for sure, but they aren't objective. And I can see no justification for assigning the value that you do to humans and humanity. What about fungal mycelia? Or dolphins? Or the oldest living creature on our planet, which we believe is a tree? Is there really a way to compare these things? More than that, is there really a way to compare these things objectively? I don't think there is.

I would respond to this in a similar manner to my justification for ranking humans as higher beings. Of course my reasoning is biased towards humans, but I think there are commonalities between all forms on this planet that we can strive for objectivity in this type of discussion.

[HJCarden]

Would you then agree with the statement that if we looked at all life and had to rank its worth, that human life would be the most valuable out of all? ...

Although you did not ask me the question, I will answer anyway. Humans are apt to judge that human life is the most valuable. That, however, does not mean that they are right. Very likely, tigers have a different opinion, as do other life forms.

I agree with you that tigers are apt to have a different opinion, but have tigers replicated life? have they headed for to the moon? I am frankly very impressed with humanity as a species, and the list of things that I would point to that places us a nose above the rest of life on this planet goes on and on.

[HJCarden]

As for the pragmatic elements of Christianity, of course they seem foolish if you do not believe in God, but IF there is a creator of the universe, Id suspect that this creator could pull a few strings to create a virgin birth if so needed.

You are missing the point. Do you have any temptation to believe the story of my wife and an angel telling me in a dream that she was a virgin? If not, do you believe that god is no longer powerful enough to do this?

It is not simply a question of whether a god could or could not do a thing. There is the all important issue of what you have reason to believe and what you don't have reason to believe.

Do you believe the miracles of Islam? If not, why not? Do you not believe that god is powerful enough to do those things?

Your initial questioning lead me to believe that you were arguing as such
P1. Virgin birth as we know of it is entirely unbelievable
P2. Christianity and its followers (and other religions that have miracles) believe in something very unbelievable.

C1. The god of these religions does not exist

I do think it boils down to a question of IF God exists or not. IF a traditionally Abrahamic God exists, all of the miracles of whatever religion are believable. God's existence is the entire paradigm, God's reasons are invariably intertwined with God's existence.

Yes by human standards we are a pretty big deal. We are the best reasoning form of life that we have observed.

So if by platypus standards, the duck-billed platypus is the best reasoning form of life that has been observed, would that impress you?

We have discovered vast quantities of information and explored away from our home planet. I'm not saying that theres nothing else that COULD do what humans do, but if you ask me its nothing to sneeze at, my intuition stems from how impressive I consider our reasoning capabilites+their products to be.

Your human intuition tells you that humans are smart. And if the intuition of the platypus is that the platypus is the smartest, does that make the platypus the smartest?

Fair, this wording is a bit off. Substitute "observable universe", and I believe the argument is not affected.

The argument is still the same as if a platypus thought that the platypus was the smartest and concluded that the platypus is what has innate value, not humans. It is just a different animal being prejudiced in its own favor.

A platypus for all of its potential egoism does not measure up to humans in the following manner.
1. Never left Earth, puts us in a pretty elite category.
2. Never replicated life in a laboratory. (not claiming this to be good, but its pretttty impressive)
3. Although they star in a very good TV show, platypus do not have the ability to contemplate alternative scenarios with their own internal monologue. This is exclusive to humans, even the smartest sign language talking apes cannot do this.
4. Platypus do not have a system of morals (and human morals I believe have this characteristic) that is broadly self sacrificial.

For these reasons and others, I think we have the right to hold ourselves over platypi (platypuses?)

Broadly, while one could say humans compared to any other thing is apples to oranges, I think that is precisely why we are entitled to a bit of egotism here. We can compare apples and oranges and while the oranges might not have to agree I think the apples make some good points.

[Jack D Ripper]

Whatever you value, that is of little or no importance to the universe.

Yes, the vastness of the universe is very intimidating. However, is it not a possibility that instead of just being this small tiny corner of the universe, that we are in fact on a pedestal? Unlikely, but I do believe that it is possible that we are the very apex of the universe.

People have often had delusions of grandeur. We have no particular reason to suppose that you are not one of those people.

[Jack D Ripper]

You are missing the point. Do you have any temptation to believe the story of my wife and an angel telling me in a dream that she was a virgin? If not, do you believe that god is no longer powerful enough to do this?

It is not simply a question of whether a god could or could not do a thing. There is the all important issue of what you have reason to believe and what you don't have reason to believe.

Do you believe the miracles of Islam? If not, why not? Do you not believe that god is powerful enough to do those things?

Your initial questioning lead me to believe that you were arguing as such
P1. Virgin birth as we know of it is entirely unbelievable
P2. Christianity and its followers (and other religions that have miracles) believe in something very unbelievable.

C1. The god of these religions does not exist

I do think it boils down to a question of IF God exists or not. IF a traditionally Abrahamic God exists, all of the miracles of whatever religion are believable. God's existence is the entire paradigm, God's reasons are invariably intertwined with God's existence.

...

You are still missing the point. Your argument that you present as mine is not my argument at all.


Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that there is a god that can work miracles. With that assumption, consider my story. If I told you that my wife was pregnant when we married, but that she was a virgin, and that I knew this because an angel, sent by god, told me in a dream that my wife was a virgin, would you believe my wife was a virgin while pregnant?

That is a simple question for you. Obviously, we have assumed that there is a god who can make this happen. So, we have assumed that it could happen. The question for you is, did it happen? Would you believe the story or not?


After considering that, apply the same reasoning to the Biblical story.


Then consider the fact that we have no reason to believe that there is such a god.

[HJCarden]

You are still missing the point. Your argument that you present as mine is not my argument at all.


Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that there is a god that can work miracles. With that assumption, consider my story. If I told you that my wife was pregnant when we married, but that she was a virgin, and that I knew this because an angel, sent by god, told me in a dream that my wife was a virgin, would you believe my wife was a virgin while pregnant?

That is a simple question for you. Obviously, we have assumed that there is a god who can make this happen. So, we have assumed that it could happen. The question for you is, did it happen? Would you believe the story or not?


After considering that, apply the same reasoning to the Biblical story.


Then consider the fact that we have no reason to believe that there is such a god.

I would be skeptical of your story, in the same way I have a healthy skepticism that God might not exist. You saying it is a fact that there is no reason at all to believe in God shows either a lack of any substantive research into the well defended and plausible arguments that many philosophers have given, or a dogmatic stance that is equivalent to that of any religious zealot.

[Jack D Ripper]

You are still missing the point. Your argument that you present as mine is not my argument at all.


Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that there is a god that can work miracles. With that assumption, consider my story. If I told you that my wife was pregnant when we married, but that she was a virgin, and that I knew this because an angel, sent by god, told me in a dream that my wife was a virgin, would you believe my wife was a virgin while pregnant?

That is a simple question for you. Obviously, we have assumed that there is a god who can make this happen. So, we have assumed that it could happen. The question for you is, did it happen? Would you believe the story or not?


After considering that, apply the same reasoning to the Biblical story.


Then consider the fact that we have no reason to believe that there is such a god.

I would be skeptical of your story, in the same way I have a healthy skepticism that God might not exist.

The point of my story is as I stated above:

...Almost no Christian is stupid enough to believe the stories of Christianity if brought into the modern world, but they are pathetically stupid when they look into the distant past. ...

Many who believe the story when told in an ancient book, written by primitive and barbarous people, would not believe the exact same story if told today. This means they are inconsistent in how they reason regarding religious stories.

You saying it is a fact that there is no reason at all to believe in God shows either a lack of any substantive research into the well defended and plausible arguments that many philosophers have given, or a dogmatic stance that is equivalent to that of any religious zealot.

You seem to be unaware of the fact that all of the traditional arguments for the existence of god are regarded by most philosophers as fallacious. In several cases, it has been Christian philosophers who have shown that some of the arguments are utter crap (e.g., Kant). One can read about many of the problems of the various arguments in encyclopedias. What I am stating is common knowledge, not something obscure and hidden.

[Pattern-chaser]

I don't believe or assume that humans have more value than other creatures, but I also don't believe our value is any less either. In the words of the old proverb, we're comparing apples and oranges. How do you assign one or the other a greater value? After all, our assignment of such values appears, from an external viewpoint, wholly arbitrary.

You referred in another note to the "moral reasoning" we have applied to get where we are today. I can't see how this reasoning was/is "moral". Morality is just a way in which we humans choose to behave; it has no more (or less) justification than that.

Human history is a rapid takeover and domination of the planet...

Yes, like locusts we are a plague species. We range over the whole planet leaving only destruction in our wake. Our greed has destroyed our own habitat. Even as the environment collapses around us, we cannot even stop accelerating the damage we do! We have consumed our home. And this is a reason why you rate our species highest of all?

As for our moral reasoning, yes this is a way that we choose to behave but I tend to believe that the core of morality is self sacrifice. It goes further than just "mother animal sacrifices life for babies", we morally contemplate and seek to promote the lives of humans who we have never had and never will have contact with. This is my part of the reasoning I hold for human egotism.

"Self sacrifice"? No, we sacrifice many things, but they are nearly always someone else, or some other species. It is not self-sacrifice that characterises us, but greed.

I believe God is an emergent phenomenon. Her (figurative) body is the physical space-time universe - all of it - and She is its soul. She is not a creator-God; She is Life personified*. In the context of your question, She is the God of all living creatures. I cannot see that She would spend time ranking Her creatures in terms of 'value', but who am I to anticipate Her doings?

* - and non-life too. She is the God of Everything. And besides, perhaps the stone has 'Buddha nature' anyway?

I am admittedly quite uneducated in the idea of God as an emergent phenomenon. If you can point me to any beginner resources that would be greatly appreciated.

I'm not really aware of any such resources. Religious beliefs like mine tend to be personal ones; there are no churches (that I know of) that preach what I believe. But you could try searching for panpsychism or pantheism, for a start.

[HJCarden]

Yes, like locusts we are a plague species. We range over the whole planet leaving only destruction in our wake. Our greed has destroyed our own habitat. Even as the environment collapses around us, we cannot even stop accelerating the damage we do! We have consumed our home. And this is a reason why you rate our species highest of all?

I'd say that it certainly makes us unique in what we've been able to accomplish. A species that advances so quickly that it rapidly outstrips its habitat's ability to sustain even itself. Our shortsightedness could very well be our downfall, a Greek tragedy-esque hero our species could become.

"Self sacrifice"? No, we sacrifice many things, but they are nearly always someone else, or some other species. It is not self-sacrifice that characterises us, but greed.

I think greed is a great human motivator, but I do not believe that all human actions have been motivated entirely by greed. I believe that there is a vast range of small and large behaviors that can simply not be chalked up to our often insatiable desires for things such as power and wealth.