a question about the value of human life

EDIT
Khaos your post wasnt there when i started this
i am watching the harris video
ill get back to you

---

i dont like the quoting and picking apart every detail thing that people usually do so im just going to respond, sort of freestyle to everyone as best as i am able
if i miss anything that anyone feels is important then please direct me to it again

first, if the topic is more accessible by re-framing it then by all means do so

i felt that putting it in the scenario format made it a little more immediate - which imo is appropriate

rather than a completely abstract "does science offer a sense of morality?"
which sort of keeps us all out of it, to an extent

it could be "hey for those who promote science as the foundation of all truth, what reason does science offer to NOT kill (virtually) everybody?"

but like i said, i dont care that much how the question is considered - im really just interested in the feedback and the discussion

as for "is it sciences FAULT? or do i BLAME science?"

no

i think science is awesome - these are two of my favorites in the hope that someone finds one of these interesting

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/cosmology-and-astronomy


https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology


i guess i should have put this in philosophy - my apologies
if a mod wants to move it i am ok with that

im not new to the essential question presented here but i AM new to the experience of taking it seriously as a question

when confronted with the idea that people need religion to be decent to each other i have thought "thats stupid"

but now im asking WHY; why is that stupid? where else does the idea come from? that life has value? that it is RIGHT to be good to each other in a way that is bigger than just personal feelings or the avoidance of negative consequences?

is it not possible that the very reason we assume that treating people decent is self evident is because we have some religious conditioning which tells us it is so?

if it doesnt come from religion then where?

in a relatively equal society, where everyone is basically dependent on everyone else or at least someone else, then yes, cooperation and general respect are in order and are justified by logic and reason

but

in a technological society where innovation has produced the ability to change the social structure virtually over night (consider the intentional release of a biological agent, for example) and where one person or group may see the legitimate opportunity to re-write the existing social structure and place themselves tyrannically above it (nazi germany or stalin or any other terrible regimes or dictatorships you might name) - the need for respect of life drops exponentially in relative proportion to the total numbers of the individuals and logistics involved - i.e. "we only need X number of you - as slaves - and the rest can die".

also, what about personal responsibility insofar as that the ideas which we promote as individuals will inevitably influence our societies?

especially now in the internet era, one single idea can make more of a difference in the intellectual development of mass peoples than ever before in known human history

which brings me to Consequentialism

i dont know where the limits of the consequentialist philosophy are drawn;

if a parent teaches the child that nothing matters and its ok to do whatever they want to anyone as long as they can get away with doing it to, and the child grows to be a monster, is the parent responsible for the consequences of their teaching?

if mom says "go steal me some beer" is she responsible for the child doing it?

if she simply says "theres nothing wrong with stealing in and of itself, because theres no such thing as right or wrong anyway" and the kid goes and steals, is she responsible?

if so, then are we, as individuals not also responsible for what we teach each other?

does the question not become "is it responsible to promote ideas which inherently deny essential value to human life?"

if i teach that life has no value and existence has no meaning, and the charisma of my presentation inspires someone in such a way that their personality develops with faith in the ideas that i presented to them, do i not share in the responsibility when they act on those ideas?

and is it not inevitable that they eventually will?

i understand that there is no guarantee that a "religious" or "god worshiping" society wont produce such a thing as well

religious people have certainly proven that they are capable of mass murder

but does the argument "its not the science that is to blame for the murder, it is the people" not equally hold true for religion?

certainly in the case of christianity and most definitely in the case of buddhism (and buddhists have been known to fight over religion) the doctrine itself advocates love and respect and tolerance and justifies it with the assertion that life is or can be a holy experience

and that there is a cosmic order of which we are a part and that this order is inherently valuable

and religion at least, allows for conversion

do we not have on the one hand "there is no meaning to existence and no inherent value to life"
vs
"we are a part of something inherently meaningful and holy and must treat each other and the world accordingly"

it seems logical to me
(and to others, who i have been impressed with and by whom i am inspired to have this discussion with the group)
that one of those world views virtually guarantees genocidal outcomes and the other at least has within it a mechanism which limits or reduces the likelihood, as well as encourages its resistance

and if not religion, then, again, in the face of the awesome power of science, WHAT?

i am reminded of the fight club quote about the panda that wouldnt screw to save its own species

I DONT WANT TO BE THAT PANDA :deadpanda

on the issue of the word "genocide"
i dont know the context or history of that discussion
my thought is that the debate over a word is fair and good here on an internet forum where the entire experience is centered around words - but that in the face of actual genocide, in the face of the EVENT, the personality who would quibble over the DEFINITION would be part of the problem

it seems to me the shorthand definition most of the world will acknowledge would be something like "mass murder of a predetermined group of people"
you could add "regardless of their level of hostility" and i think that would seal the deal about the word and its definition
some people have mental associations to religious implication, or geographical or cultural, but i think its a safe bet that most of the world would look at any event which met that criteria/definition and say "genocide"

the only positive thing i can come away with is the idea that not really having a good word for the event seems hopeful in its own right

i am reminded of the fight club quote about the panda that wouldnt screw to save its species and i wonder if belife in the value of life is not something we ought to teach on faith

i think the world needs more than science alone to move us forward, if for no other reason than that science does not provide any real reason TO move forward

one of those degrassi tyson talks he mentions that chimps and humans have only about 2% difference in genetic make up and that this two percent is the difference between say vivaldi and koko the gorilla

he suggests that "aliens" if they were ahead of us by the same two percent margin might wheel a stephen hawking or isaac newton out on a chair and say "look this one is a little bit smarter than the others - it can do math, sort of"

and in the context of this discussion - if koko the gorilla told me there was no meaning to the universe and no value to life because her culture couldnt find any evidence of it being otherwise, if i wouldnt then laugh at the clever little monkey and its clever little science (sorry ms goodall, i know shes not actually monkey)

what im saying is, since we are not by any means guaranteed to be the measure of intelligence (in the "grand cosmic sense")
even though our science is doing a great job in a lot of things in its own right, who are we to say that it is the be all and end all of what is true in the universe?
isnt it still premature to accept this?

it cant even prove that we should continue to live
isnt this the most basic thing?

is it rather like crawling around in a dark room and only being certain that anything exists at all if we can fit it into our hand and smell it and set it back on the floor and crawl our way back to it and find that its still there?

compared to someone who knows how to flip the switch (that theoretical alien with a 2 percent difference to us) arent we imbeciles?

isnt this enough to confirm that we shouldnt put ALL our faith in the results of science to provide the answers - at least in this one instance?

Lol, I think you need to try to shorten your posts. Seriously, they run on for so long and I get lost into what it is your trying to say.

but does the argument "its not the science that is to blame for the murder, it is the people" not equally hold true for religion?

In that context, replace the blame for murder, for the blame for doing good. Hence religion holds no real corner in the market in regards to morality, any more than science anyway.

So ultimately, who is to blame? The individual, or group, who if they are going to do bad or good, probably do not need science, or religion, as you have reduced them to tools, blameless tools, and so, the rest of the argument is moot in my opinion.

You don need science, or religion to do bad, or good things, or to look to to justify your acts of atrocity, or benevolence.

Perhaps people put to much time into looking for those answers outside to begin with.

You will not get rid of bad people, or god people, and there excuses are largely irrelevant, and the means with which they carry it out, the tools as it were? Well, you cant blame them right?

Those that will do good will, and though they have excuses, would not need them. The same for those that would do bad.

You cant look to the tools for answers.

Do you ask your ethical and moral questions to a hammer?

So why ask it of science, if it is just a tool?

Lol, and if religion is also a tool, it has just as much of an answer, or lack of one.

isnt this enough to confirm that we shouldnt put ALL our faith in the results of science to provide the answers - at least in this one instance?

Heres the thing....Science has in no way said it could asnwer the questions you are asking of it.

So the instance, this one instance, to say it doesnt have the answer to a question it doesnt ask...

What are you trying to prove exactly?

Science doesnt ask for, or require faith anyway.

For those paths, or avenues, or what have you, that do say they have the answers...None of them have an overwhelming corner in the market on morals and ethics, but all have been vehicles for various levels of atrocity.

Science holds no morals as science is not an ideology because science is a tool. Everything that science does it dependent on the one who uses it.
You can use science to create or to destroy. Which you choose depends on who you are as a person. Will you use the hammer to smash the vase or build a shelf for it?

Does human life only hold value in a religious sense? No, absolutely not. The value of life is inherit to all of us if we care to listen to our natural instincts because without other people we won't survive and the instinct to keep our species alive is just as strong in humans as in other animals and organisms. Many ideas, though, has given us an ethnocentric view of the world that sets us apart from the natural world and has taught us to ignore natural instincts.

In the end I can't answer your question because I believe you're holding two things up against eachother which aren't comparable. In a sense it's like asking if you prefer icecream or jazz.

A heads up to the newer members and guests here, most of us are geeks, and we love science. Consider yourselves warned when posting theoretical questions...

the sam harris video was cool

the only thing i see that needs to be addressed in response to his talk is what i already mentioned about the situation where a person or small group sees a legitimate chance to overthrow the existing structure and kill off most of the competitors (i.e. the rest of the human race)

the conclusions of science dont require faith insofar as they are able to be reproduced deliberately and reliably

what i meant when i said something about "faith in science" is that i see people putting forward the idea that religion is bad and science is good and therefore we should do away with religion and count on science to provide all the answers

i see that religion is pretty much a bad word among people who pride themselves on being intellectual and the more i think of it, the more i come to believe thats a terrible way to see things

i guess thats my point

Zenchi wrote: A heads up to the newer members and guests here

Consider yourselves warned when posting theoretical questions...

the taliban say stuff like this

OB1Shinobi wrote: the sam harris video was cool

the only thing i see that needs to be addressed in response to his talk is what i already mentioned about the situation where a person or small group sees a legitimate chance to overthrow the existing structure and kill off most of the competitors (i.e. the rest of the human race)

the conclusions of science dont require faith insofar as they are able to be reproduced deliberately and reliably

what i meant when i said something about "faith in science" is that i see people putting forward the idea that religion is bad and science is good and therefore we should do away with religion and count on science to provide all the answers

i see that religion is pretty much a bad word among people who pride themselves on being intellectual and the more i think of it, the more i come to believe thats a terrible way to see things

i guess thats my point

But that would be the intentions of that small group of people, not the intention of science as science has no intentions in itself. Math enables you to calculate how many bombs it would take to destroy a certain amount of buildings but it also enables you to calculate how many throws of a dice it would take to spell out "Macbeth" in Morse code. Math doesn't care. Chemistry doesn't care or judge the right or wrong in making Agent Orange more than it does when I make soap at home. Chemistry just do what it does.
I see no conflict between religion and science as they deal with two different things. The spiritual and the earthly. Coming from Druidism do I see a problem with science explaining how photosynthesis works considering I attribute Life to the Force? No, it just makes it all so much more wonderful and beautiful to me. It doesn't change the fact that I believe there's an all-pervasive Force running through the entire universe, it simply shows me another aspect of it.

i agree

i love learning about a wide variety of subjects- i myself am not a scientist, strictly speaking, but i do promote science and i am fascinated with scientific discovery

the feeling that inspired this thread was a response to the idea that religion is a blight on humanity and in its place we should accept science

in the place of religion

i grew up seeing religious people act like asses and for a time i had a sense that religion was more trouble than its worth

every now and again a religious person would say "without god people would have no morals" and i thought "thats absolutely stupid"

but i realize that its not stupid at all

its not precise that we need "god" but it seems to me that it IS religion that insists life is valuable and so i was interested in exploring that basic topic

i bet science would care if you could make a soap that would wash away the agent orange

and i feel the same way with a lot of astronomy and physics

the universe is amazing and every time i hear or read scientists talking about how atoms and molecules behave and space time and the multiverse i always think "science is proving the ancients were right about a lot of stuff"

Okay, my apologies for taking advantage of you in the following way, but this comes up a lot. While you are welcome to see the following as a response to you specifically, be aware that I am using you to address the points so broadly that I may venture outside of your particular words.

OB1Shinobi wrote: every now and again a religious person would say "without god people would have no morals" and i thought "thats absolutely stupid"

but i realize that its not stupid at all

But it is. Whether or not there is a god out there (and whatever "to be" would even mean in that context), we live in a world that increasingly seems to be not controlled by anything smart or at all interested in our welfare. I am willing to entertain a deist conception of a first cause with no further interference. While there is nothing to indicate that, it does not seem to be strictly in conflict with what we learned about the universe until now. What "truth" means in this context is also yet to be defined, but for the sake of the discussion I am tentatively willing to entertain that this could be true in a colloquial sense of "could" and "true", respectively.
In any case, since this god (or universal force or pantheon of gods, if that is more to your liking) doesn't seem to be giving much of a damn about us, we are effectively operating in what I am comfortable saying is a world without gods. In this world people have morals. Some are decent from our point of view, others are barbaric, and all but a few insist that their morality is that of a god, revealing the inherent arrogance and vanity of that position (which is not universal, but very present and outspoken). I don't know what a world with a god would look like or, if ours is one, what one without a god would look like. For as long as no difference can be identified, we - sort of by definition - couldn't tell. The idea therefore, that in a world without god people would have no morals is either the declaration of a definition of a godless world, in which case it is begging the question and pretty much defining god into this world, or it is an empty statement asserted without any justification and thus not worth our consideration until such time when a valid or sound argument is presented in its favour.

its not precise that we need "god" but it seems to me that it IS religion that insists life is valuable and so i was interested in exploring that basic topic

But it isn't. Not in general anyway. Some religions do insist on a value of life, others don't. Those that do have one or all of the following problems: First, most are willing to abandon their oh-so-sacred principles whenever it suits their interests if it is the leaders or the believers or whenever it suits their narrative when it is their holy myths. Second, all of them, with not one exception, lack any and all justification for their assertions of the value of life. The best they can offer is an appeal to consequence in which case no sacredness is attached or an appeal to dictate from up above (be it their gods or the universe or holy creeds or whatever), which in essence is no more than themselves claiming the heart and mind of God as their own, yet again revealing an astounding arrogance and vanity so many religions tend to shun. And as if that wasn't quite enough, many will talk about how the human condition is a bad or wicked one and instill shame and guilt over being what we were born to be, essentially wrecking our sense of self-worth to the point where they can rebuild it for us, thus capturing us forever in their service.

the universe is amazing and every time i hear or read scientists talking about how atoms and molecules behave and space time and the multiverse i always think "science is proving the ancients were right about a lot of stuff"

Except of course it isn't. Science isn't in the business of proving anything, but I shan't make this about semantics again. In the struggle for the authoritative position on what is true, religion at this point has pretty much lost, not least thanks to their constant conflicts among the globe and, perhaps more importantly, epistemic vapidity in just about every claim they ever made. Seeing as science is gaining the upper hand through curiosity and honesty in their pursuit of knowledge, the religions now desperately try to have a part in it. This is why they claim that science keeps confirming what they had been saying all along. Back when religion was strong, back when it had god on its side, it would confidently contradict science and declare capital-T Truth in any way it pleases and by force. Now that it can't get away with that anymore it is humbling and sleazily trying to hijack the good name of science. This is particularly apparent in the entire creationism debate where they literally try to say that what is science really isn't science but what they do is, because that is how good the name of science has indeed become. The Great Christopher Hitchens pointed this out numerous times, here is one.
As for the new-agers and their quantum nonsense... Well, they have been doing it to electricity, too, back when nobody learned any of that in school. There is no ancient wisdom confirmed by it and in my humble opinion what ever asserts itself as true and waits for millennia to be confirmed by honest inquiry, meanwhile insisting on its own correctness for no reason and with dissenters' blood, does not qualify as wisdom.

FYI, in the 60's comics and for as long as until the 90's cartoons, Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider to become the Amazing Spider-Man. However, in the 2012 blockbuster, Peter was bitten by a genetically altered spider. Could it be that both are just rephrasings of "magic" in a popular current scientific frontier sort of way? Science woo in a nutshell.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HooeZrC76s0


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ytaf30wuLbQ


http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2005/11/01/the-perimeter-of-ignorance

if a man has the power to kill off 99% of the human population and place himself as supreme emperor of the remaining - and devote the majority of the remaining workforce to ensuring the colonization of space

and the majority of the rest of his personal time to having as many children as posibble

why shouldnt he do it?

all of the individual points made about god not being smart/good and/or not caring are highly interpretive

if we acknowledge the possibility of "god"

religion places man in the position of being held accountable to a reality inherently superior to his potential

if religion is not the ultimate source of ethics, what is?

is there any reason to respect the social structure or the value of life if one has the power to reign supreme over it?

religion does offer justification Gisteron, and the various expressions of it can be summed up with this; because it is gods will - gods plan and gods work (or THE Gods, or The Spirit, or The Spirits, or the Grand Cosmic Poobah, or the Force) that something essentially RIGHT is behind it all and there is a limit to how much of that we have a right to mess up simply because we are playing with something beyond our ability to fathom or to judge

and we are meaningful because we are a part of it, but we are only one piece in a puzzle and we do not have the right to break the whole durn thing just because we can and we want to

---

EDIT

im not talking about any particular religion

i am talking about religion as a psychological force - meta religion, as it were

even the potential of the next era of religious thought, which is in our hands as free thinkers and conscientious participants in the global society

OB1Shinobi wrote: if a man has the power to kill off 99% of the human population and place himself as supreme emperor of the remaining - and devote the majority of the remaining workforce to ensuring the colonization of space

and the majority of the rest of his personal time to having as many children as posibble

why shouldnt he do it?

Because he hasn't the right to do so.

OB1Shinobi, do you see morals as objective or subjective. Are they seen by you as derived from an external whatever there is or through an internal reasoning?

Calem wrote:

OB1Shinobi wrote: if a man has the power to kill off 99% of the human population and place himself as supreme emperor of the remaining - and devote the majority of the remaining workforce to ensuring the colonization of space

and the majority of the rest of his personal time to having as many children as posibble

why shouldnt he do it?

Because he hasn't the right to do so.

i agree that he hasnt the right

now i ask you (us) to justify this assertion

OB1Shinobi wrote:

Calem wrote:

OB1Shinobi wrote: if a man has the power to kill off 99% of the human population and place himself as supreme emperor of the remaining - and devote the majority of the remaining workforce to ensuring the colonization of space

and the majority of the rest of his personal time to having as many children as posibble

why shouldnt he do it?

Because he hasn't the right to do so.

i agree that he hasnt the right

now i ask you (us) to justify this assertion

No one has given him the right thus he cannot have it.

OB1Shinobi wrote: if a man has the power to kill off 99% of the human population and place himself as supreme emperor of the remaining - and devote the majority of the remaining workforce to ensuring the colonization of space

and the majority of the rest of his personal time to having as many children as posibble

why shouldnt he do it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm94Lb2mz4s
The fact that nothing else offers a good answer does not mean that the billion things that pretend they figured it all out are any closer to the truth than an honest innocent shrug. Besides, the default position is inaction. The question shouldn't be why should he not do it, but rather, with all things considered, why should he?

all of the individual points made about god not being smart/good and/or not caring are highly interpretive

No, they aren't. This world operates in precisely the way we would expect one without god to work and nothing like what we would expect assuming the claims of the preachers were true to any extent. Again, not saying that they're wrong, just that we would expect different if they're right.

religion places man in the position of being held accountable to a reality inherently superior to his potential

No, it doesn't. Not in general anyway. Again, some might, others might not and the more sophisticated ones end up contradicting themselves all the time on this point. And even if we accepted that we are accountable (because or in spite of religious claims in regards to that), there is nothing forcing us to care either way. We care on our own for - you guessed it - no reason. At least not any ultimate reason which seems to be what you are asking for as if that made any difference.

if religion is not the ultimate source of ethics, what is?

It isn't. We are. Ultimate in the sense that ultimately it is us making the moral judgements and engaging in action. We do that with and without religion just as we do it with and without politics. Other animals do it, too. All it takes is a collective of social animals. If you need anything more ultimate than that, at least in this lifetime, well, then that's too bad; better luck next time.

is there any reason to respect the social structure or the value of life if one has the power to reign supreme over it?

No, there isn't. There are people who have no capacity to value either their own or anyone else's life and no amount of reasoning can bring them about, and that's not for a lack of logic skills on their part but for a lack of good reasons on ours.

religion does offer justification Gisteron, and the various expressions of it can be summed up with this; because it is gods will - gods plan and gods work (or THE Gods, or The Spirit, or The Spirits, or the Grand Cosmic Poobah, or the Force) that something essentially RIGHT is behind it all and there is a limit to how much of that we have a right to mess up simply because we are playing with something beyond our ability to fathom or to judge

Yes, and they said that the subordination of black people was part of that plan and back in that day you would have had no argument to refute them.
I'm sorry, but a dictate from up above is not its own justification. I could bring up the Euthyphro-Dilemma and have another chuckle watching people trying to get around this pretty much unsolvable problem, though I don't even need to, because you are already arguing in a circle here. Even if we grant that all this is a divine plan, that doesn't make it "essentially RIGHT", it just makes it a god's plan. That doesn't give it the right to command us and does not obligate us to follow it. Nothing does and nothing can, and even if it could, that wouldn't make it right, it would just make it obligatory. But we don't live in a world that seems to be governed by gods and we don't have divine commands. All we have is our own texts and our own morals and we must make our own decisions in this world and until such time that we can identify consequences outside of our world, consequences like that must not and cannot come into consideration - and again, wouldn't oblige us to anything, if they could.

and we are meaningful because we are a part of it, but we are only one piece in a puzzle and we do not have the right to break the whole durn thing just because we can and we want to

So what sort of meaning is it exactly? Let's say we were specially created by a god. That tells us nothing about our purpose. Let's say we know the purpose. That doesn't tell us about why the god did it. Let's say we knew why the god did it. How could we possibly know there is a meaning to any of this? Let's say we know there is a meaning. How do we know what it is? You see, even to get to the questions countless assumptions must be made and you are saying there is something that is answering those questions as we speak?
Oh, and even if we could answer all of them: How do you infer that we wouldn't have the right to break the entire thing and do our own instead? No moral obligation follows from that knowledge, even if the god gave us laws to live by. They would be just that: Divine laws. Why we should care in the slightest would still be a matter of our individual own.

LuCrae Jiddu wrote: OB1Shinobi, do you see morals as objective or subjective. Are they seen by you as derived from an external whatever there is or through an internal reasoning?

i dont know

how much of who we are internally is shaped by our environment and our conditioning is something still up for some debate

that a developed personality has a moral inclinationnwhich is not a result of some level of conditioning seems to me very unlikely and impossible to prove anyway since we wouldnt survive infancy without some external care and that experience itself is the begining of or moral conditioning, for better or worse

i think there is such a thing as a "meta-view" of the world and existence and that we all develop one as an automatic psychological process

i think that the nature of this view is then used either as a model for ideal behavior or as a justification for desired behavior and that it has a huge influence over the types of behavior which result

this "meta-view" is basically what i mean when i say "religion"

which is why imo the most functional defition for the word religion is "what a person believes to be true aboutife, existence, and their place with it"