Without God, Do Humans Have More Intrinsic Value Than Animals?

leavingwt

If there is no God (however defined), do humans have more intrinsic value than animals?

What do you think? Feel free to offer brief or complex responses.

hamsterbait

Humans have the intellectual capacity to decide their own fate and their own values of self and others.

So yes - we can see ourselves as being intrinsically of more value than animals. We also see ourselves as responsible for the life we see around us - that we have a duty to nurture it.

Why do we need a genocidal pychopath in the sky smiling down on us before we ccan have self esteem and value our own lives?

If a child is an orphan does that mean he has less value than a child whose parents show love and praise the good deeds whilst punishing the bad.

The Witchtower claims that without THEIR version of god, a mans life is of no more importance than a squirrel.

I counter: squirrels do not write music or poetry or actively protect other creatures. A squrrel has no concept of self-worth.

And finally - exactly which " god" are you talking about? Zeus? Thor? Wotan? or just yours?

Saying "God (however defined)" shows that the question is a human question. They define their own god, than say this is why they have value. Yet it is still not evident that this imagined invisible being exists, so again it is all down to humans.

Can we have value as individuals if we cannot imagine our sky daddy smiling on us?

HB

leavingwt

If there is no God (however defined), do humans have more intrinsic value than animals?

james_woods

Did you really need to ask this, LeavingWT?

NewChapter

I have a HUGE concern over the great apes in this area. Just how smart does an 'animal' have to be in order to be thought of as having more intrinsic value.

It is a fact that Chimps, gorillas and the like in zoos are on psychiatric meds. The confinement messes with their emotional health. There is also growing evidence that these species are capable of some symbolic thought----that kind of thought that leads humans to create religion, poetry etc.

And recently, there has been a study that shows the chimps may remember the dead. Remembering the dead introduces many uncomfortable questions---because if THEY value their lives enough to remember, then how should we value their lives?

Beyond that, with other animals, I don't have the same issues. We did evolve as omnivores--

But I get disturbed when we can look into an individual's eyes and see some understanding there and a close relationship, and we just disregard it.

I have a cousin that is a zoo keeper and another that is an anthroplogist. To hear them argue about whether apes should be contained is quite enlightening. The zoo keeping cousin---out of the presence of the anthropologist---told me it was indeed a real problem. That the apes had to be medicated. He is uncomfortable.

NC

leavingwt

Did you really need to ask this, LeavingWT?

Please elaborate. Is the answer to the question simple?

Suppose you hold the opinion that humans are of more value than animals. Then, explain your reasons. I'm interested in hearing what people have to say on the matter.

When I was a JW, I never had to ponder the question. There was a book that told me that I am superior to the animals.

SweetBabyCheezits

That's a great question, LWT, and recently brought up a dilemma that I never had when I was a Bible believer. I've been thinking about it for a while now since I started reading a book called The Emancipated Mind (full online version at link). There's a section that brought the idea to my attention - Species-centrism Is a Form of Sociocentrism.

I'm still debating it for myself and I don't want to give up meat but I know this: we tend to assign value to different species based our own personal feelings. For the sake of consistent judgment, I'm trying to figure out why we should value the life of a snake any less than the life of a dog or a horse or a chimp. And if we say that a snake's life deserves the same value as a dog's life, why not humans? If I wish to lead a moral and ethical life based on empathy, education, and consistent judgment, how can I justify where I currently draw my lines? (And trust me I'd love to find a way to justify eating a med-rare filet.)

Personally, I believe critical thinking should be applied, not just in matters of faith/belief, but in all areas of life. On the one hand, we're all animals. But we are more highly evolved in so many ways. We know it's wrong to kill each other. Why should it be okay to kill less-evolved species? I'm still debating that in my head. The idea of giving up meat isn't my favorite but, again, my goal is to suppress sociocentric bias and live by consistent standards.

SweetBabyCheezits

Okay, this is a long copy/paste - a whole chapter - but I think a new & different perspective is interesting, even if we don't agree, so I'm gonna plop it down here for any who are interested.

Species-centrism Is a Form of Sociocentrism

Sociocentrism is based on the notion that human groups intrinsically see themselves as privileged over other groups. Accordingly, humans naturally see their species (“their group”) as privileged over other species (“another group”). Species-centrism has been exemplified throughout human history and has caused an untold amount of unnecessary suffering to creatures outside the human “in-group.”

Consider, for instance, the use of primates in research. There is growing concern among reasonable people about whether, and to what extent, primate research is ethically justifiable, given the suffering that is almost always (if not always) connected with it. Primate research has historically been conducted for, and “justified by,” its potential human benefit. It is based on the (usually unstated) assumption that because human needs and desires take precedence over those of other species, humans are “entitled” to treat other species as they wish, with little or no regard for their thoughts or feelings. In his book, Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees, Roger Fouts (1997) argues, on ethical grounds, against the use of primates for any research purposes. He points out that the chimpanzee (our closest ancestor along with the bonobo) has for hundreds of years been viewed as a model research subject because, though virtually “human” genetically chimps are said to lack human emotions:

In 1699, England’s best-known anatomist, Edward Tyson, performed the first dissection of a chimpanzee and revealed an anatomy that resembled “Man in many of its Parts, more than any of the Ape-kind, or any other Animal in the World.” Tyson was especially troubled by the creature’s brain and laryngeal region. They looked almost human, indicating that this animal might be capable of thought and speech. But Tyson was a good Cartesian and he assumed that a thinking, talking animal was simply not possible. So he decided that though this ape-man had all the machinery for thought and speech, it did not have the God-given ability to use them. It was Tyson who invented the paradigm of the mindless ape: the chimpanzee with a human brain but no single thought in it, the chimpanzee with a nervous system but not the slightest emotion, the chimpanzee with the apparatus for language but not a thing to communicate. Tyson dreamed up the view of the chimpanzee that biomedical researchers still cling to today: a beast with the physiology of a human but the psychology of a lifeless machine—a hairy test tube created for the sake of human exploitation (p. 50).

But Fouts’ own research, along with that of many ethologists, has shown what is in fact obvious to any unbiased observer: that chimpanzees (and indeed all apes) experience feelings just as humans do.

Fouts (1997) documents a number of egregious acts perpetrated on chimpanzees for research purposes. For instance, he reveals how the Air Force “recruited” infant chimpanzees from Africa in the 1950s and 1960s for its space program:

The military procured the chimps from African hunters who stalked mother chimpanzees carrying a baby. Usually the mother was shot out of her hiding place high up in a tree. If she fell on her stomach, then her infant, clinging to her chest, would die along with her. But many mother chimpanzees shielded their infants by falling on their backs. The screaming infant would then be bound hand and foot to a carrying pole and transported to the coast, a harrowing journey usually lasting several days. If the infants survived this second ordeal, and many did not, then they were sold for four or five dollars to a European animal dealer who kept them in a small box for days until the American buyer arrived—in this case the Air Force. Those still alive when the buyer came were crated up and sent to the United States, a journey that mirrored the slave trade of earlier centuries. Very few babies emerged from the crates. It is estimated that ten chimpanzees died for every one that made it to this country (pp. 42–43).

A tremendous number of research studies conducted each year on innocent creatures center on topics of little practical use or which merely serve human greed and vanity. In his book Minding Animals, Marc Bekoff (2002) offers the following descriptions of two such research projects. The first focuses on learned helplessness, the other on the effects of radiation. Note the conclusions that researchers come to in each case:

When a normal, naïve dog receives escape/avoidance training in a shuttlebox, the following behavior typically occurs: At the onset of electric shock the dog runs frantically about, defecating, urinating, and howling until it scrambles over the barrier and so escapes from the shock. … However, in dramatic contrast … a dog who had received inescapable shock while strapped in a Pavlovian harness soon stops running and remains silent until shock terminates. … It seems to “give up” and passively “accept the shock.”

In one set of tests, [monkeys] had been subjected to lethal doses of radiation and then forced by electric shock to run on a treadmill until they collapsed. Before dying, the unanaesthetized monkeys suffered the predictable effects of excessive radiation, including vomiting and diarrhea. After acknowledging all this a DNA [Defense Nuclear Agency] spokesman commented: “To the best of our knowledge, the animals experience no pain” (p. 140).

Jane Goodall, famous for her research on chimpanzees in the wild and for her advocacy of animal rights, illuminates some of the many ways in which humans use animals in research, often causing suffering that, if it were done to humans, would be called torture. In her book Reason for Hope (2000), Goodall says:

In the name of science and with the various goals of improving human health, keeping dying people alive, ensuring human safety, testing researchers’ hypotheses, and teaching students, animals are subjected to countless invasive, frightening, and sometimes very painful procedures. To test product safety and efficacy, animals such as rats and mice, guinea pigs, cats, dogs, and monkeys are injected with or forced to swallow, or have dripped into their eyes, a whole variety of substances. Surgical techniques are practiced by medical students on animals, and new surgical procedures are tested on animals. To try out experimental techniques for treating burns, vast areas of animals’ bodies are subjected to first degree burns. To discover more about the effect of smoking, taking drugs, eating too much fat, and so forth on human animals, other kinds of animals are forced to inhale huge quantities of smoke, take drugs, and overeat. To learn about biological systems, scientists stick electrodes into animals’ brains, deafen, kill and dissect them. To learn about mental functions, researchers subject animals to a vast array of tests; mistakes are punished with electric shocks, food and water deprivation and other cruelties. In short, what is done to animals in the name of science is often, from the animals’ point of view, pure torture—and would be regarded as such if perpetrated by anyone who was not a scientist (pp. 218–219).

Bekoff focuses on a number of systematic ways in which humans violate the rights of animals.

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These violations are easily “justified” in the minds of human perpetrators when such perpetrators begin with the assumption that animals feel no pain. Bekoff details, for instance, the fact that wearing animals as clothing is still a common practice and that there are no laws in the United States that regulate fur farms or the ways in which trapped animals can or cannot be killed. He says:

Wild fur-bearing animals, over 40 million individuals per year, are cruelly captured, injured, and killed for profit. Many are trapped using contraptions that cause psychological and physical suffering. These devices include leg hold traps, wire snares that encircle an animal and pull tight as the animal struggles, and conibears that grip the entire body and break the neck or back. Beavers are often trapped in water and drown after struggling for some time. … Animals are also raised on farms only to be slaughtered for clothing. Recently dogs and cats (bred specifically for use as clothing, or strays) have been used to make fur products. These individuals typically are kept in deplorable conditions before being beaten, hanged, suffocated, or bled to death. … Animals such as mink are killed by neck-snapping. They show great distress when removed from their cages to be killed—screeching, urinating, defecating, fighting for their lives (p. 156).

In addition to the many mainstream beliefs that lead to animal suffering, there are many weird beliefs that also cause untold suffering for innocent creatures. In a National Geographic article (January 2010), Bryan Christy writes an exposé on the world’s most notorious wildlife dealer. In this article, he focuses on Asia’s wildlife trade and insatiable demand for traditional medicines, exotic pets and culinary delicacies. In cataloging these practices he says:

Tigers are all but extinct in the wild. … There’s a valuable black market for tigers. Tibetans wear tiger-skin robes; wealthy collectors display their heads; exotic restaurants sell their meat; their penis is said to be an aphrodisiac; and Chinese covet their bones for health cures, including tiger-bone wine, the “chicken soup” of Chinese medicine. … In some Asian countries, tourist attractions called tiger parks secretly operate as front operations for tiger farming—butchering captive tigers for their parts and offering a potential market for wild-tiger poachers too (p. 98).

The sad fact is that the exploitation of animals throughout human history has been well-documented—from the killing of whales for their blubber to the killing of elephants for their trunks, from the use of wild animals in circuses and animal “parks” to the breeding of animals for display in zoos, from bullfighting in Spain to wild animal “sporting” in all parts of the world, from mass-consumer farming to the use of animals in research. Virtually every animal that can be exploited for human use has been exploited for human use.

Peter Singer (2000), a preeminent philosopher who specializes in practical ethics, has had perhaps more influence than any other writer in advancing the rights of animals. In much of his work, he reveals the unnecessary suffering many animals face at the hands of humans. He says:

… [W]e have no right to discount the interests of nonhuman animals simply because, for example, we like the taste of their flesh. Modern industrialized agriculture treats animals as if they were things, putting them indoors and confining them whenever it turns out to be cheaper to do so, with no regard at all paid to their suffering or distress, as long as it does not mean that they cease to be productive. But we cannot ethically disregard the interests of other beings merely because they are not members of our species. Note that this argument says nothing at all about whether it is wrong to kill nonhuman animals for food. It is based entirely on the suffering that we inflict on farm animals when we raise them by the methods that are standard today (p. xvi).

Singer illuminates the powerful role that vested interest plays in people’s inability to empathize with animals. He says:

More significantly still for the prospects of the animal liberation movement is the fact that almost all of the oppressing group are directly involved in and see themselves benefitting from, the oppression. There are few humans indeed who can view the oppression of animals with the detachment possessed, say, by northern whites debating the institution of slavery in the southern states of the Union. People who eat pieces of slaughtered nonhumans every day find it hard to believe that they are doing wrong; and they also find it hard to imagine what else they could eat. On this issue, anyone who eats meat is an interested party. Meat eaters benefit—or at least they think they benefit—from the present disregard of the interests of nonhuman animals. This makes persuasion more difficult. How many southern slaveholders were persuaded by the arguments used by the northern abolitionists and accepted by nearly all of us today? Some, but not many (p. 25).

Add to the many egregious acts humans inflict upon animals the fact that the sheer number of humans (yes, the human population explosion) has caused increasing encroachments on the natural habitats of other animals, causing their numbers to dwindle, in many cases to the point of extinction. In fact, many scientists believe we are now living in what they term “the sixth great extinction,” and that this sad phenomenon is human caused.

As long as humans see themselves as superior to other species (as a natural part of our sociocentric nature), these problems will continue to plague the unfortunate creatures with whom we share the precious, but dwindling, resources on our planet.

tec

I don't see myself as superior to animals. (moral perspective) But we are superior in a 'might and intelligence' perspective. What we do with that superiority is a moral question though. Do we use it to supress and dominate... or do we use it as a responsibility to care for? I believe the latter to be true.

Animals as food, though... I'm grey on that area. Sort of the same as you, SBC.

Peace,

Tammy

james_woods

Please elaborate. Is the answer to the question simple?

Yes.

Without God, Do Humans Have More Intrinsic Value Than Animals?

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