What makes a human life more important than a plant or an animal life?

I guess being at the top of the food chain has its advantages :S

We are not at the top of he food chain. i could name a dozen animals that would eat you with gusto. But we don't have any natural predators anymore, due to scientific breakthroughs along history.

I don't think a human life is "more important" than the life of every other living thing. At least if i try to be objective.

The "worth" of things is something we humans made up. It's in fact immessurable. Why most of the people think animals are worth less than humans, is simply because of their individual feelings towards one or the other. I have a cat, who is 16 years old, and has been with me all my life. I hold it very dearly, and her worth to me is probably much higher than that of people i don't know / i don't know anything about.
It's all just a matter of the point of view.

We've invented pizza.

I'd say that it's our ability for abstract and rational thought that does it, in combination with the thumb. We're definitely at the top of the food-chain. But "more important"? See, that's a good question. On the small scale we're so because those other things have not reached the same level of consciousness evolution that we have, therefor I would always choose to save a humans life over a that of a deer or a tree. However on the grander scale we exist on a rather precarious knife-edge in regards to the Eco-balence of the entire planet. If we don't take into account the fact that we rely utterly upon the balance of the natural world around us, we will doom ourselves to eventual self-destruction.

So we are and we aren't. We're the most evolved piece of the jigsaw puzzle, but without the rest of the pieces we'd just look silly.

Nature

When my conscience tells me that eating animals is wrong, I remind myself that we are designed and intended to do so.

This is just my opinion, and isn't any type of official reason.

I think that this is the case because human beings have developed language and empathy, which have allowed human societies to become more powerful than any animal group could become. More specifically, we have developed language, which can prevent individual/small violence, and we've developed empathy, which is both a helpful and noble asset to the human race. While animals have shown signs of empathy, my understanding is that they have shown it inconsistently and usually only for primitive reasons, such as the continuing of their species. (As opposed to human beings who display empathy for more transcended reasons.) And of course, animals have never developed real language - beyond a few primitive dances and calls.

With superior development and skills, it's no wonder human culture has developed in a way where humans view themselves as more important than plants and animals.



Also, you only get to talk with human beings about this issue (I assume) so you're not going to hear someone advocating for plant or animal dominance, since what would be the use for subordinating your own human race to another, indifferent species?

Just as "America thinks they are the best country in the world" because they have convinced themselves to be such, regardless of if some of them have even been outside the country or not, humans tend to feel convinced that they are the most important species on earth, regardless of if they've never lived the life of any other creature on the planet.

One word: Interdependence.

Interdependence is right

We eat plants and animals, they eat other animals or fertilizer(plants) the fertilizer is made by animals and bugs eat remains...it's all a big interdependent circle.... when we die bugs and worms will eat what's left...then "poop" out fertilizer...plants will "eat" the fertilizer, us and animals will eat the plants and poop out the remains creating more fertilizer....now how many of you are thinking about becoming poop? :woohoo:

I don't think we are more important.

But we definitely are at the top of the food chain. We control the food chain. In fact, if we didn't regulate ourselves, I'm pretty sure the food chain would be human farming and nothing else because everything else would be long dead...

One is only able to apply importance to an object by comparing it to another. In the grand scheme of Things, no one thing is more important to another thing.

The idea of importance is a human concept, ergo, Ego.

RyuJin wrote: Interdependence is right

We eat plants and animals, they eat other animals or fertilizer(plants) the fertilizer is made by animals and bugs eat remains...it's all a big interdependent circle.... when we die bugs and worms will eat what's left...then "poop" out fertilizer...plants will "eat" the fertilizer, us and animals will eat the plants and poop out the remains creating more fertilizer....now how many of you are thinking about becoming poop? :woohoo:

thx for that thorough explanation, was about to go and eat, think ill delay that for a bit :blink: