Q&A: A Question About Human Value from an Atheistic Perspective
A Question About Human Value from an Atheistic Perspective
Question
Hello,
Religious philosophers often say that without a metaphysical entity to give value to human life, it would be worth no more than the lives of pigs, worms, and all sorts of other living creatures. This seems even more plausible in light of the theory of evolution, which shows that human beings evolved…
What about this atheistic proposal? The reason a human being has value, unlike worms, is that at present a human being has a more developed consciousness and experiences things in a much sharper way than other animals. The stronger a creature’s capacity for consciousness and perception, the more value it has, because now it will perceive more, suffer more, and so on…
Answer
This is much broader than the question of the value of life. Values have no meaning at all without God to validate them. See columns 456–7 on this.
Beyond that, the fact that a human being has consciousness does not in itself give his life value. It is only a quantitative difference. His molecules arranged themselves in a way that produces consciousness. So what?
The fact that a human being suffers more, even assuming that is true, also says nothing. Put him under anesthesia and then kill him. He will feel nothing and will not suffer.