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Human Beings' Values (1) The idea that human life is sacred and, therefore, is more valuable then the lives of animals, for example, became a moral dogma in Western society, thanks to the influence of Christianity. The origins of this religion lie in old Hebrew utilitarian tradition, which considers a human being as one big digestive organ. In Old Testament there are countless accounts of brutal animal sacrifices that were suppose to please God. It is the same tradition that imposed its sick morality on Western civilization. We need to understand that it is not the human strive to the greater ideals that Christianity considers as such that brings homo sapiens above other species, but its ability to praise God. It is the Judeo-Christianity that instilled the idea of environmental consumerism in the minds on healthy European pagans, who used to think of themselves as the part of nature, before the advent of good news.
Today, Christianity tries to disguise itself as truly humanistic religion, by organising numerous funds to help the needy children of Somalia, by spreading the message of peace - yet, its true colors remain the same from the time when the tribal god Jehovah told the Jews that they are the chosen people and that their lives worth more than the lives of others. Today's proponents of humanism have their spiritual roots in Christianity. They come up with claims like human life is the biggest treasure of all, without bothering to provide a proof. Children in schools are encouraged to celebrate the diversity, even though this directly leads to the lowering of their intellectual level. Cows and chicken are being killed at the conveyor killing floors in most gruesome manner, without raising concern of those who never get tired of whining about cruelty of Nazi concentration camps.
An enormous amounts of harmful chemicals are being thrown into the air everyday, so that people can enjoy some additional domestic comfort, by being able to use materials made out of plastic. This is done at the expense of destroying our forests and polluting our rivers. Still, the moral justification of this is based on the assumption that man is a king of nature. Let us prove the conceptual falseness of such claim. (2) In order for us to asses the value of anything, we need to have a system of coordinates, which make such evaluation possible, because it can only be accomplished by the method of analytical comparison.
Only after we have analysed all aspects of a thesis, can we say that our opinion on the matter has a validity. The statement that human life has a universal value, is nothing but a good example of fallacy of assumption, which is intolerable in the field of philosophy. Basically, people assume that their lives have more meaning than anything else because it sounds pleasing to their ears. The whole religions, social and political concepts are based on this presumption. We are being taught the human life is sacred, even when we talk of retarded people, whose existence is burden to themselves and to the society. Besides from the fact that humanism lacks a logic, it is also methodologically wrong.
If we assume that it is an intellect that allowed homo sapiens to become a dominant specie, than we have to agree that it is one's intellect only that should be used as universal category, while assessing the value of individual's life. But can we really compare the intellect of a savage from Africa, whose vocabulary consists of 100 words with an intellect of average European, who is able to operate with an abstract philosophical categories? Can we really say that the life of Mozart, for example, has the same value as the life of one of those many unknown individuals, who are born and die in obscurity? To any person who hasn't completely lost its ability to think logically, as the result of living in politically-correct realm, the answer is going to be negative. In order for us to realize the real value of one's life, we would have to think of such individual from the historic prospective.
We would have to consider one's hereditary, as a factor that is alone responsible for person's intelligence, health and beauty. Therefore, the value of human life is a relative category. In order to have some value assigned to his or her life, an individual must have a social significance. Otherwise, we can think of such life as we think of any other form of organic life a set of bodily functions, maintained by the instinct.
In this respect, the life of a turtle will appear as much more valuable than the life of mediocre individual, because turtles live up to 300 years. It is only individual' intelligence that allows him to slightly raise above other manifestations of organic life, but even in this case, such life cannot be thought of as sacred. (3) The most harmful aspect of public morality that uses Christianity as its spiritual foundation, is that emphasises on equality, above the quality. But as George Orwell once said: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than other. It is a fact that the lives of 90 % of people on this Earth are driven by the anomalistic instincts of hunger and procreation alone. The spiritual hold of the Christianity over great many people that Jesus officially refer to as herd, points out to the fact that they are really a herd.
They can be rounded up and voluntarily led to slaughter, they can be instigated to become violent, they even can be convinced that not paying taxes is morally wrong. Their fear of death is exploited by the priests, who convince them that if they donate enough money to the Church, they " ll continue their worthless existence in the afterlife, even though that there is no afterlife, apart from the process of physical decomposition. To conclude this we need to say the following: 1) there is no reason to think of human life in different terms than we think of any other form of organic existence, 2) all socio-political doctrines that are based on the assumption of human life's sacredness, are conceptually wrong and therefore, cannot be considered seriously, 3) the value of human life is a relative category. Bibliography: Human Life Is Sacred. (Apr. 20, 2005). Crisis Pregnancy Center of Southwest Mississippi. Dec. 10, 2005.
web Phone, Frank Why is Life Sacred? . 2005. Priests for Life. Dec. 10, 2005. web
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Research essay sample on Value Of Human Life Homo Sapiens
