One can always claim human value to be objective and self-evident; however, this is an assumption. "We hold these truths to be self-evident" implies others may not. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, "all men are created equal" is an arbitrary statement with little or no grounding in reality.
Without this assumption, you cannot say Hitler or Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot were wrong. That is a strange position to put yourself in, isn't it? In fact, you cannot then say there is any difference between torturing a baby and feeding the poor! If man has no objective value, then mankind has no dignity and is a big fat zero as I have pointed out. This conclusion is undeniable and inescapable.
Folks prior to 1776 certainly didn't hold this view (the "divine right of kings," et al) and many still do not, so to them it is not self-evident.
Yes, and thank goodness Christians were around! Why is it do you think other places had no rights, and why people were slaughtered, and why there was no respect for human life! That is the consequence of your humanist valueless thinking! Compare the French Revolution with the American one - The French one (no Christian worldview of objective human worth and dignity) was extremely bloody and brutal and ended in dictatorship. Then there's Mao, Stalin, slavery and on and on. The American system works because it is based on the TRUTH of human worth.
I see you had no response to any of my comments about the consequences of your thinking.
As a First Principle, the above statements leaves much to be desired. What I'm driving at, in a round-about way, is that your claim that human beings have an objective value is not supportable by the evidence.
I know this is what you think, but your thinking makes man a big zero. Your thinking means that the love you have for your family is just a chemical process in your brain. Your thinking means that your loved ones are, in the words of your evo hero JW Gould, no more significant than "dried twigs". Your thinking reduces humans to twigs, because if there is no objective worth that is the only inescapable conclusion. You can protest all you want that your SUBJECTIVE love for them has meaning, but it can't. Meaning is meaningless unless it is intrinsic and objective. "Subjective meaning" is just a euphemism for a chemical process in your brain. In your world, love, grief, tenderness, gentleness, goodness, kindness, compassion - these are all material processes and are qualitatively no different than meanness, cruelty, malice, rage, and evil. In your world, cruelty and non-cruelty are equal as you have no basis at all for saying otherwise. Marquis de Sade thought exactly like you do!
You may believe it to be and you may gear your moral actions around this belief, but you're basically starting from an arbitrary First Principle. The rest of the universe does not put much value on human life.
Yes, in the big scheme of things in this cosmos, you are no more signicant than a quark or a dried twig. How sad for you. Whose system is more desirable? Whose system - mine or yours - better fulfills the needs and yearnings of people; which one is more conducive to harmony and peace? Surely not yours!
Acts of God claim hundreds of thousands of lives per year, so He obviously does not hold us in as high regard as you believe. Other organisms regularly kill human beings, so they obviously don't value human life. Human beings regularly slaughter each other over trivial matters, so they don't place a high value on people.
Non sequitir. Mixing of categories. Other organisms do not have self awareness, cannot be spiritual, and cannot think abstractly about their existence, don't have any moral inclinations or values. It is no surprise that you compare humans with bacteria. You are really scaring me.
You value human life highly. I value human life highly.
No you don't. You have absolutely no basis to say that Jeffrey Dahmer was wrong, or that Stalin was wrong, or anyone else. You have no basis for any morality outside of yourself.
Neither of us likes to see people hurt or killed -- it strikes at the very core of our upbringing.
It's only a personal preference - it would make no difference if you did like to see people hurt or killed as in your world there is no qualitative difference between the two. I like chocolate and cuddling babies - you like vanilla and torturing babies - no diff. in your world.
However, as humans go we are the exception rather than the norm. Moslems shoot their women for showing a little ankle; Chinese soldiers threw themselves suicidally at their enemies; Russians regularly resorted to decimation to keep the peasants in line. There is no evidence for an objective value for human life.
Yes, from your perspective, cruelty and non-cruelty are EQUAL. ALL OF YOU EVOS - TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT WHERE YOUR FOOLISH THINKING HAS LED YOU! DO YOU LIKE WHAT YOU HAVE BECOME??
You can claim an objective value for people, but you cannot prove it; the available evidence does not fit your theory.
The very mannishness of man proves my theory. Men live AS IF love and grief and people had real meaning. You have to deny it to take your position. You have to deny thousands of years of human experience and desire. YOu must deny the mannishness of man.
Once again, I think we are mixing apples and oranges. The phrase "all men are created equal" is a reference to value and worth -- what we have been discussing. Torturing babies is a reference to right and wrong, which we have specifically not addressed. And, even if value and worth are arbitrary and dependent upon the observer, there is no reason worth would be zero, as you imply, as that would mean value and worth were absolute and objective. Each observer assigns a value to each person he meets, knows, has sex with, and while this is a arbitrary value it does not mean that value automatically equals zilch. Of course, it does mean that there are people (Moslems, ChiComs, whatnot) that place the value of your existence fairly close to zero, but this is offset by folks like your parents, spouse, kids, significant other, friends, etc., who place a high value on your life.
Only for some homosexuals.