Why is human life more important than animal life?
Either my 22 years of experience on the internet plus 20 years as a professional programmer and a 130+ iq does not qualify me to be on this site, or this site is run and managed by idiots. Most of the time this site works poorly, if at all
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You can fool people, but nature can not be fooled
The ideas discussed here are good, but the site itself sucks, and works very poorly.
That said. This question goes away if one thinks in terms of e-prime. E-prime is english without the use of any form of the verb "to be". I like a modified form that allows the verb if it applies to things that can be measured. As in "mary is 5' 7" tall" or "The shirt is red". If you dump e-prime, then the question goes away. In fact, the word "important looses most of its meaning". What you get instead is "Why do most people like or value human lives more than animal lives." The my answer to that would be that in terms of evolution, humans who put the lives of animals above their own did not tend to pass that trait onto their non existent descendants. Think if a similar question like which is better chocolate or vinilla. We can easily see that we can ask that question in a more meaningful way (note the lack of the use of the verb to be) by saying which flavor do you prefer. Of course preferring chocolate to vanilla has less dire consequences than preferring animals to humans.
This has nothing to do with logic, but with likes and dislikes. And it kinda cuts the arrogant legs out from under the person who posted that liking dogs more than ants is not logical so we aspies are "better" than NT's. Extend that logic and you end up with computers are better than humans cause computers have no emotion and are totally logical.
Aspies will probably like e-prime. Do a search on the terms english and e-prime and try and avoid the programming language e-prime.
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You can fool people, but nature can not be fooled
Ants are different to dogs.
I know that's an obvious point.
Dogs have much greater awareness and cognition and ability to suffer. They're capable of expressing affection and anger.
Life isn't valuable in itself. You kill living things all the time. Every time you swallow, you dump thousands of bacteria in acid, not to mention countless skin cells from your cheeks.
The thing that makes some life valuable is sentience. Having an awareness of your continuing self and being able to truly experience things means that you have the right to have your continuing self respected. The huge majority of humans meet this requirement - the only ones who don't are those clinging onto life after serious accidents but lacking all consciousness. So do many animals, and presumably many alien life forms. These life forms should be granted many of the same rights as humans, as their specific needs demand.
They won't be, because there is little political will for it, but I think it is morally correct.
Ants are different to dogs.
I know that's an obvious point
Dogs have much greater awareness and cognition
.
And like the sun going around the earth being "obvious" it is wrong. The largest single living entity spanning much of California is an ant colony. Ants are to ant colonies what single cells are to dogs. So the ant colony may, in fact, be more aware than dogs
and ability to suffer. They're capable of expressing affection and anger.
Life isn't valuable in itself. You kill living things all the time. Every time you swallow, you dump thousands of bacteria in acid, not to mention countless skin cells from your cheeks.
The thing that makes some life valuable is sentience. .
Having an awareness of your continuing self and being able to truly experience things means that you have the right to have your continuing self respected. The huge majority of humans meet this requirement .
And the evidence that an ant colony does not meet this criteria is what exactly? From where, exactly, do these rights come? You? God. As I said above, if you use e-prime, almost of this discussion evaporates. It is all just a matter of what people prefer. .
- the only ones who don't are those clinging onto life after serious accidents but lacking all consciousness. So do many animals, and presumably many alien life forms. These life forms should be granted many of the same rights as humans, as their specific needs demand.
They won't be, because there is little political will for it, but I think it is morally correct.
It is morally correct, differes from the statement "It is what I like", how exactly? Could you take some examples from the moral practices of much of the world in which fundamentalist believers of all forms live --- like as it relates to killing homosexuals for examples.
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You can fool people, but nature can not be fooled
Because humans declared themselves more important.
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Cinnamon and sugary
Softly Spoken lies
You never know just how you look
Through other people's eyes
Autism FAQs http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt186115.html
I don't think it is, but it is important to ask the question, let's say you have a domestic house cat. Now assume this cat is not a house cat but a lion. Would it kill you in an instant if it got angry at you? Probably.
I have a problem with little spiders and ants. I don't like them so I kill them. I know I shouldn't but I do anyway because they make my life uncomfortable The reason I kill them is because I am selfish.
When it comes to cats, dogs, rabbits, etc, I would never think of killing one. Because I like them. Well, I guess humans are selfish.
The age old question beckons;
"What does the universe favour more in the web? The spider or the fly?"
To put this in context, putting fellow members of our own species before that of others, is nothing more than survival instinct.
In a direct conflict of interest between a human & another species, I will always put that of the human first. Irrespective of it's causality.
It may be arrogance, or pride. But we as humans can & will always rise above a co-dependency of the biosphere of earth.
Nope, it's completely logical.
Dogs are the oldest domesticated animal, and have practically evolved alongside humans. Ants are insects with a few connected neurons serving as a brain.
It's the same vein of logic that makes people value their family members over complete strangers.
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"If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced."
-XFG (no longer a moderator)
I can try and tackle this issue very succinctly. *ahem*
Humans write that laws. Animals don't.
It's basically that simple. It's like the saying "life is sacred". OF COURSE IT IS! Because people who are living want to keep doing that, and anyone who disagreed died and couldn't talk about it anymore. And apparently, people don't like being murdered. Like....a shocking amount.
My mum used to say my autism is the reason I felt this way.
The answer to your question is the simple fact that humans, like all sentient organisms, are selfish and self-interested and so they put their own kind before other species. It's really how people are wired.
As for Christianity, it is an anthropomorphic religion that projects human qualities onto things that are clearly non-human. Like the Universe for example. At teh same time, anthropomorphic projection is a Western religious tradition that predates Christianity and is actually very infantile.
It's JUST as you say:
"The answer to your question is the simple fact that humans, like all sentient organisms, are selfish and self-interested and so they put their own kind before other species. It's really how people [b](and all other animals)are wired."[/b]
The key words I read are: "like all sentient organisms" I believe this also applies to organisms which are not sentient as well. The idea is survival of YOUR species, the rest are food.
It's called "Survival of the fittest" or "law of the jungle" or some such. Going backward hundreds of thousand of years, when things were more even, each animal was looking toward eating the animal lower than them in the evolutionary scale. As humans progressed they began eating more frequently and created civilization. The rest of the animals on the scale of life continued eating (and killing) as much as they could.
Are we now tasked with preserving all animals lives??? Why? To confine them? To alter their life style? To give them intelligence? If it were possible should we resurrect all of the extinct species and build them their own habitat? Should we only let lower animals (all animals) breed when it's convenient for us? Or do we consider other (non-intelligent) animals as merely part of the evolutionary scale that supports us and feast away? What is more "natural"?
Frankly I feel all (or almost all) of the monies spent on other animals should be spent on the enriching and survival of OUR species. The compassion I feel for other human beings dwarfs any feeling I may have for lower animals.
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