Why is 'human life' so important?

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I still don't understand why anyone would have to ask. Questioning the value of human life is pretty cold-blooded and it makes me uncomfortable just to imagine the person who started this thread. I don't want to meet the person who doesn't understand the value of human life.

Our ancestors bravely hunted the wooly mammoths and saber tooth tigers with spears. Simply put, it's not our strength but our intellect and creativity that has put us above the rest.

Since I'm not a Finn I wouldn't know but they do make delicious sausages.

There seems to be a good deal of enthusiasm throughout the world for killing people and one of the most prosperous industries worldwide is concerned with doing this very efficiently. That's why it's worth asking.

But to a large extent no doubt we're weak because we use tools. Since the emergence of obvious tool based weaponry in H. erectus several hundred thousand years ago, humans have gotten significantly less robust.

And weak is quite relative. Yes, an unarmed person *may* be pwned by a grizzly bear, but we're still a lot more dangerous than the vast majority of animals simply because of our large size.

It is absolute poppycock to start excluding human tool use from any evaluation of our abilities because tool use is inextricably tied to our entire evolutionary lineage for at least like, what, 2 million years?

To whomever asked this question in the OP:

After your parents are killed in the street by a drunk driver, the importance of human life should sink in.

You don't know what you've got till it's gone ...

I still answer all of this with my own original post.

This entire matter of "top of the food chain" has nothing to do with our actions. It is clearly an unwarranted move from "is" to "ought", as just because we have the power to kill anything in our way and eat it, does not mean that we *should* kill anything in our way and eat it. It does not matter whether we have guns, or whether a set of guns were found by a pack of monkeys who did the same, or even cattle if they could hold guns, Krem's question stands because it was an ethical question about value.

In any case, to go back to the "top of the food chain" argument, if an alien race showed up with bigger brains, and better technology than we had, should we surrender and become farm animals or what? If we *should* become their farm animals then the matter of "top of the food chain" is coherent, but if we should not surrender then the argument is incoherent, as top or bottom would not actually matter for the behavior of the human race.

Carnivorous and omnivorous animals consume animals lower on the food chain in order to survive. Are you suggesting that they are immoral for following their survival instincts? Humans are omnivorous animals whether you like it or not. Consuming meat is beneficial for our growth and development.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4282257.stm

The aliens, after evolving so long on another planet wouldn't need to consume us in order to survive. In fact, we wouldn't be a part of their diet and they may not be able to digest us in the first place. If this far fetched scenario actually does occur, we should strike back by any means necessary. We have the weapons and cognition we need in order to put up a fight.

Last edited by timeisdead on 30 Dec 2008, 5:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If consuming animals is natural and you conclude thus that it is a moral action, then you are using a classic fallacy, Appeal to Nature.

I am not saying it's right simply because it occurs in nature but because it's needed for many species to survive. If there were no predators, many herbivores would die of starvation anyways due to overpopulation causing a lack of resources. Do you really want to force lions to become herbivores and thus cause their extinction? Face it, we need death in order to preserve life.

Just because something is necessary does not automatically make it right. If I were a vampire who needed to suck dry the veins of the living (non consensually) in order to survive, is my behavior automatically moral? If that isn't gruesome enough for you, I'm sure you can substitute any number of absolutely dreadful things which aren't polite to mention on a public forum.

So if you had your way and forced the carnivorous animals to consume plants (unlikely and almost impossible but bear with me) and thus caused them to go extinct, that would be a better example morality? If you outlawed the consumption of meat and caused impaired physical and mental development in children, wouldn't that too be immoral? Necessity is justification for many actions in the world. If someone is trying to brutally murder you, would you rather him or you be the one who survives?

Last edited by timeisdead on 30 Dec 2008, 5:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Killing for food= Good. Yes, even the vampires you speak of. Are they to starve because other people die? Survival of the fittest.

But, humans kill for the unnatural abomination of clothing, among other things. Not just food.

Anyway, this has gone offtopic-- The question is/was, why do people consider humans above other animals. This has been answered a few times, but I've not found them satisfying.

This is a total non sequitur. If it would be wrong for me to make lions eat salad, that wouldn't make it right by default for lions to eat antelope.

Not necessarily. Again, I have not presumed that people obtain the right to do something simply because it is necessary. If children have no right to eat my dog, for example, than preventing them from eating my dog isn't me harming children, it's me protecting my dog. I am preserving the rights of my dog against an unjustified infringement by another party.

But this is a totally different case, because we might argue that someone trying to actively murder me has therefore forfeited his right to not be killed; his initial action creates an injustice which earns him a good whoop ass.

But then we're back to the question of what "survival of the fittest" could possibly mean in an ethical context.