Four attributes of God,: Love,Wisdom,Justice and Power. God said,'come let us make man in our image and in our likeness'. I am an animal lover,but animals have pre-programed knowledge or instinct. Humans can Adapt to their environment. Animals go extinct if their environment becomes difficult. What makes us higher on the food chain is our 3 pound brain.Our brain pound for pound uses 7 times more glucose than the next smartest animal. Now why don't we live forever? This is a very complex dynamic, the short answer is because;"A circle has no ends". Organisms like cancer cells and certain bacteria are immortal because their DNA strands are circular and like an old 8 track tape cartridge never run out and continue to play on.Their circle has no Ends. Our DNA strands are Linear and every time they replicate the very ends of the DNA strands get 'snipped off'. Current theory suggest that the DNA can replicate about 50 x's and then they become too short to continue on. How long a lifespan is 50 cellular divisions ? It is about 120 years Sooo,it is impossible to extend beyond the 50 divisions.We cannot exceed 120 years.What we can do is SLOW DOWN THE SPEED RATE OF THE REPLICATIONS. Some snapping turtles live 300 years! Life extension and regenerative medicine i'll save that for another thread.
question: why are humans worth more than animals?
by Realist 58 Replies latest jw friends
-
-
AlanF
For Realist:
: also of course you have a special relation to your offspring...this has little to do with an objective "validation".
For most people this sort of relation -- one human to another -- goes far beyond genetic kinship. Instead of a mother and child, think of yourself and some random person from Timbuctoo. What's worth more to you -- his life, or that of a thousand cats? Take the illustration as far as you like -- where would you draw the line?
Also, I think that trying to frame discussions such as this in terms of "objective" and "subjective" is futile. What exactly do you mean by "objective"? What's the standard of objectivity in a general sense? Can human morality be called objective in any sense? Most religions attempt to answer these questions to some extent, but I think that neither you nor I accept religiously based morality.
: so the true question is...can we justify our laws towards animals if we cannot state objectively that we are worth more than them?
Define objectivity and let's take another stab at it.
AlanF
-
Realist
TD,
yes i meant justify to us.
as i see it, one could try to come up with a consistent measurement of how much a lifeform is "worth". e.g. intelligence, number of individuals, complexity of the individual or the society formed by the species etc.
one could for instance objectively say that a stone is less complex than an insect and an insect less complex than a human.
this does not mean this is a reasonable choice of measurement though...but i would like to hear something that sounds somewhat convincing.
alan,
For most people this sort of relation -- one human to another -- goes far beyond genetic kinship. Instead of a mother and child, think of yourself and some random person from Timbuctoo. What's worth more to you -- his life, or that of a thousand cats? Take the illustration as far as you like -- where would you draw the line?
absolutely correct...but can we say this is a logical necessary choice? is there a "natural law" so to speak that would justify this choice?
also not all humans see it this way...if i am not mistaken animals are worth a lot in several cultures. woman would be sold in exchange to camels or whatever.
-
blacksheep
It all comes down to the food chain. If I can figure out how to eat you, I'm worth more than you.
That said, last night I heard my husband let out an "Oh my God." I asked what happed. A bird had flown directly into our kitchen window. My husband peered out into the yard; I couldn't bear it. He put rubber gloves on and went out into the back yard. I never asked what he did--I was very, very sad.
-
frankiespeakin
All this talk about food chains is making me hungry,,, I think I go munch on some innocent beans and rice that so easily gave up their life for me. And maybe a hot dog or polish sausage,,, or chicken,,, I figure we should eat bigger animals that way more lives can be saved,, I mean how many people can be feed on a full grown cow,,, as apposed to frogs legs. .
-
AlanF
For Realist:
: absolutely correct...but can we say this is a logical necessary choice? is there a "natural law" so to speak that would justify this choice?
I'm certainly not aware of one. But then, you've pushed the question back to the murky problem of what comprises "natural law". Really there is no such thing. What we usually think of as a "natural law" is just a generalization that describes how we observe things to behave. Bertrand Russell had an interesting and humorous comment about that, which I'll post if you like.
: also not all humans see it this way...if i am not mistaken animals are worth a lot in several cultures. woman would be sold in exchange to camels or whatever.
Yeah, but in a very subjective way, I'll make an exception and say that any man who thinks of women in that way isn't even worth one cat.
AlanF
-
Realist
alan,
i guess the term natural law was not very helpful in this case. natural law to me is the way matter respectively energy behaves (whether our descriptions of the behavior are accurate or not). for instance put too much heavy elements together und you will get a gravitational collaps and a black hole. or gas will fill out two connected cylinders virtually equally. or pinch an insect and its sensory neurons will send signals to the primitive brain making the animal move in a specific way.
i have to admit that i have not red a lot about russell ...so if he defers from my point of view i would very much like to read it.
so i guess in this context what i would want to find is more like a consistant logical reasoning that puts all human life over animal life based on some measurement. if we could say for instance that we suffer more than animals than this would make it reasonable to conclude that tortuing animals is less problematic than torturing humans. if there is no measure that distinguishes all humans from animals than wouldn'T we have to apply the same laws for treating animals and humans?
PS: by the way...what do you think of "free will"? do you think such a thing exists? i came to the conclusion that we have no free will but everything is predetermined (with the possible exception of the heisenberg uncertainty principle). would like to hear your opinion on that one!
-
AlanF
Realist said:
: i guess the term natural law was not very helpful in this case. natural law to me is the way matter respectively energy behaves (whether our descriptions of the behavior are accurate or not). for instance put too much heavy elements together und you will get a gravitational collaps and a black hole. or gas will fill out two connected cylinders virtually equally. or pinch an insect and its sensory neurons will send signals to the primitive brain making the animal move in a specific way.
I think you have the right idea about what constitutes what we call "natural law".
: i have to admit that i have not red a lot about russell ...so if he defers from my point of view i would very much like to read it.
Ok, this is from Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (pp. 7-8, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1957):
. . . there is a very common argument from natural law. That was a favorite argument all through the eighteenth century, especially under the influence of Sir Isaac Newton and his cosmogony. People observed the planets going around the sun according to the law of gravitation, and they thought that God had given a behest to these planets to move in that particular fashion, and that was why they did so. That was, of course, a convenient and simple explanation that saved them the trouble of looking any further for explanations of the law of gravitation. Nowadays we explain the law of gravitation in a somewhat complicated fashion that Einstein has introduced. I do not propose to give you a lecture on the law of gravitation, as interpreted by Einstein, because that again would take some time; at any rate, you no longer have the sort of natural law that you had in the Newtonian system, where, for some reason that nobody could understand, nature behaved in a uniform fashion. We now find that a great many things we thought were natural laws are really human conventions. You know that even in the remotest depths of stellar space there are still three feet to a yard. That is, no doubt, a very remarkable fact, but you would hardly call it a law of nature. And a great many things that have been regarded as laws of nature are of that kind. On the other hand, where you can get down to any knowledge of what atoms actually do, you will find they are much less subject to law than people thought, and that the laws at which you arrive are statistical averages of just the sort that would emerge from chance. There is, as we all know, a law that if you throw dice you will get double sixes only about once in thirty-six times, and we do not regard that as evidence that the fall of the dice is regulated by design; on the contrary, if the double sixes came every time we should think that there was design. The laws of nature are of that sort as regards a great many of them. They are statistical averages such as would emerge from the laws of chance; and that makes this whole business of natural law much less impressive than it formerly was. Quite apart from that, which represents the momentary state of science that may change tomorrow, the whole idea that natural laws imply a lawgiver is due to a confusion between natural and human laws. Human laws are behests commanding you to behave a certain way, in which way you may choose to behave, or you may choose not to behave; but natural laws are a description of how things do in fact behave, and being a mere description of how things do in fact behave, and being a mere description of what they in fact do, you cannot argue that there must be somebody who told them to do that. . .
: so i guess in this context what i would want to find is more like a consistant logical reasoning that puts all human life over animal life based on some measurement.
I suggest that this measurement can be made in a statistical way, in line with Bertrand Russell's above comments. In other words, we observe statistically how humans and animals actually behave with regards to how they appear to view the worth of their ownkind and the worth of other creatures, then we make statistical analyses and make conclusions about how much humans view the worth of other humans compared to the worth of animals, and how various animals view the worth of humans and other animals. I think that the results would be a foregone conclusion.
: if we could say for instance that we suffer more than animals than this would make it reasonable to conclude that tortuing animals is less problematic than torturing humans.
One possible measure is how much humans complain about suffering as opposed to how much animals complain about it. Or how much humans agonize over past sufferings of themselves or other humans, compared with how much animals do the same. Personally, I 've never heard animals complain too much about their suffering, so I think the results would be obvious.
: if there is no measure that distinguishes all humans from animals than wouldn'T we have to apply the same laws for treating animals and humans?
Not necessarily. Remember what Russell observed about natural versus human laws.
: PS: by the way...what do you think of "free will"? do you think such a thing exists? i came to the conclusion that we have no free will but everything is predetermined (with the possible exception of the heisenberg uncertainty principle). would like to hear your opinion on that one!
Oh boy. I've gotten into this question with Calvinists and the result wasn't pretty.
Sure, I think that free will exists. In a subjective way, I know that on occasion I make completely random choices.
If everything were predetermined, then from the instant of creation (whatever that is) everything that ever happens would have been predetermined. All scientific information I'm aware of, as well as my own subjective experience, goes against that. Quantum mechanics indicates that uncertainty is not simply the uncertainty of measurement, but is built into the very fabric of the universe. In other words, even someone with 100% knowledge of the state of the universe (say, God) cannot make more than statistical predictions. Some scientists used to think that the universe was indeed predetermined in this sense, i.e., it was sort of like a bunch of billiard balls in motion and if you could perfectly measure the characteristics of every one, you could calculate where they'd be forever after. Heisenberg divested us of that notion.
AlanF
-
Realist
hello Alan,
i agree with russell...only that he probability distributions are remarkable by themself. for instance that so many phenomena follow a normal distribution is quite neat imo.
by the way...have you studied science at a university or you are simply very interested in the subject?
If everything were predetermined, then from the instant of creation (whatever that is) everything that ever happens would have been predetermined.
yes exactly.
the uncertainty principle is indeed not just a consequence of measure but seems inherent in matter respectively energy. how else would we get hawking radiation?!
BUT who says there is not an underlying scheme to what appears random to us? perhaps there is a law that guides when a energy quant splits into particle and anti particle?!
in any case i firmly believe that our brain does not produce an force that is able to direct the movement of particles in our brain. however without such a force all movement of all particles in all our neurons is guided merely by the laws of known physics. the bumping of neurotransmitters into the corresponding receptors, the release of ions into the cells or the intra cellular space etc.
thus it follows that all our "thoughts" and actions are determined merely by physics. we are in this sense nothing but highly complex biorobots. too complex to predict the outcome of our decisions but nevertheless just robots guided by the physical laws.
-
AlanF
Hi Realist,
: i agree with russell...only that he probability distributions are remarkable by themself. for instance that so many phenomena follow a normal distribution is quite neat imo.
It is. But this, too, is a result of relatively simple statistics. If you know anything about the "Law of Large Numbers" and the "Central Limit Theorem" of statistical analysis, you'll know what I mean. The Central Limit Theorem simply states that all statistically describable phenomena tend to look gaussian when you throw a lot of different types of phenomena together. When you work with stuff like this every day, like I do when looking at the measured performance parameters of integrated circuit chips, it becomes mundane.
A neat graphical demo of the Central Limit Theorem can be found here: http://www.rand.org/methodology/stat/applets/clt.html
: by the way...have you studied science at a university or you are simply very interested in the subject?
Both, actually. I have a Masters degree in electrical engineering but have read widely on subjects in physics, geology, paleontology and so forth.
: the uncertainty principle is indeed not just a consequence of measure but seems inherent in matter respectively energy. how else would we get hawking radiation?!
Precisely!
: BUT who says there is not an underlying scheme to what appears random to us? perhaps there is a law that guides when a energy quant splits into particle and anti particle?!
Actually I agree with that idea, in the sense that, even though most physicists subscribe to the notion of "no internal machinery" in quantum particles, I don't believe it. But whatever the machinery is, I suspect that it's fundamentally a crapshoot. Whether the crapshoot is simply a product of "nature" or that of a Supreme Creator (if you subscribe to religious ideas), it's still a crapshoot. I guess my suspicions are much like Einstein's, who didn't believe in a God, but said with regard to quantum mechanics, "God doesn't play dice."
: in any case i firmly believe that our brain does not produce an force that is able to direct the movement of particles in our brain. however without such a force all movement of all particles in all our neurons is guided merely by the laws of known physics. the bumping of neurotransmitters into the corresponding receptors, the release of ions into the cells or the intra cellular space etc.
I firmly believe that that's the case.
: thus it follows that all our "thoughts" and actions are determined merely by physics. we are in this sense nothing but highly complex biorobots. too complex to predict the outcome of our decisions but nevertheless just robots guided by the physical laws.
You and I are on the same page here!
AlanF