What is your opinion between outside interference vs. local votes?

Not the rights themselves. Our concepts regarding them or, as I said in another comment, their definitions, perhaps. The rights themselves exist independent of how we describe them.

Not Platonist. I’m not reifying the concept, that’s something I can’t stand. (In quantum physics, physicists constantly act like the description, i.e. the math – is what’s actually real. Some believe it literally. It’s holding back the field.) The concept is an abstraction, therefore it only exists in the mind. It merely represents the actions necessary for successful survival and the fact that interfering with them impairs life. Any action that impedes those actions impairs life and is therefore evil.

The objective, non-theistic basis for rights is human life. Life is the most fundamental right, all others are derived from it.

(Paraphrasing Ayn Rand) Life is the process of self-generating and self-sustaining action. It’s also the only thing in the universe known to be able to go out of existence. When an organism dies, its life no longer exists – that process no longer goes on. The matter that makes up its body changes forms but cannot cease to exist.

(Back to me) The good is defined as that which benefits an organism’s life, the evil as that which impairs it.

Human beings are unique among living organisms in that, thanks to cognitive abilities that other organisms don’t possess, they are able to understand all that. They are also able to understand that, for the purpose of living a flourishing life, other humans are an inestimable value to them. The human mind is our fundamental means of survival. We don’t have sharp teeth or claws, we have the ability to reason. Therefore, our reason must be free to operate if we are to live to the best of our ability. Rights only apply to beings capable of understanding and exercising them and, at least as far as we know to date, only humans are able to do those things.

Since we must use our reason to survive, since we are so valuable to each other, and since our reason must be free to operate in order to live successfully, it follows that we have the right to act on our own judgment. All of us have that right and refraining from violating each others’ rights is the only way we can succeed at living together. We must cooperate and to do that we must respect each other’s rights.

Notice that this leaves no room for false rights like the “right” to health care. The only way such a “right” can be implemented is by violating the rights of, say, doctors by forcing them to provide their labor to those who have that “right.” And of they do have such a right, they need not pay for that labor – when you have a right to something, it’s yours regardless of all else. Doctors cannot refuse to do what they do, paid or not, because that would violate the “right” that others have to their services.

So,

• Life is the non-theistic, objective basis for rights. You are alive,thus you have the right to remain so I’d you want. (If you don’t, there’s only one acceptable choice left to you.)
• Unlike other organisms, as human beings our minds are our means of survival. Only humans can conceive of and exercise rights.
• To survive successfully, we must be free to use our minds as we choose, so we have the right to do that.
• Since all humans must do the same, all humans have the same rights, so we must respect each others’ rights. Not to do that means you agree to have your own rights violated by others because you are a human being like the rest of us; if you expect us to respect your rights, you must respect ours.
• Rights do not entitle anyone to anyone else’s labor or property because that violates the right to live our lives according to our own choices.

Finally, note that it doesn’t matter how you came to be alive, whether by action of a god or by simple natural processes. Once you’re alive, you have rights, whether you, anyone else, or that god say different. As long as you’re alive, rights cannot be taken away, only respected or violated, because your life is the fundamental right and the basis and justification for all the others.

Absolutely. No doubt we’ll both learn something. The thing about a civil discussion of ideas is that one side will win and one will lose (usually, barring agree to disagree situations) but both will profit (no matter the outcome).

Things like this are never too long for me. 🙂 And there wasn’t anything I couldn’t understand. (I hope. I can always be mistaken).

I appreciate you stating your understanding of my positions. Very few people do that in a discussion and it leads to talking past one another. It even has a name: steelmanning, the opposite of strawmanning, in which someone has an incorrect interpretation of another’s position and argues against that. I didn’t steelman your side in this comment and I hope I haven’t misinterpreted your positions, it’s just that this comment is already so long .

First, notes on your description of my position.

– Rights only apply to people who are capable of understanding and exercising them.

Rights only apply to living things capable of understanding and exercising them, not just people. It’s just that humans are the only living things we currently know to be capable of that. Also, I should have clarified that this is based on the abilities of a normal, healthy, fully developed human – rights are not lost due to loss of or never having had the ability to understand or exercise them. For example, those with down syndrome or in a coma have rights, as do unborn children.

– If someone does not value his own live he does not have the right for live anymore.

No, he retains the right to life – he might change his mind. He has no right to impose his belief on anyone else, though. To attempt to do so is a choice to exercise his right to life in order to attempt the imposition. The only valid actions he retains once he has decided that he doesn’t want to live are to change his mind or to kill himself. (There’s a way this point is even more subtle but it’s outside the scope of this discussion.)

– If someone does not care the live of others then he infringes on other peoples live and he should be stopped.

More precisely, if he doesn’t respect the rights of others by not violating them, he should be stopped by those who do. It doesn’t matter whether or not he thinks others’ rights are valid.

Continuing…

1) When someone does not value live, does he get stripped away of every right? Let’s take a nihilist for example. He does not value his own live. Could he be enslaved and harmed, just becasue he does not think human life is valuable?

No. He doesn’t lose his rights if he doesn’t value life. As I said above, he might change his mind. Christianity maintains that even the worst sinner can be redeemed by accepting God at any time. Similar concept. Also, if the rest of us do value life and so recognize the rights of others, including our nihilist, enslaving or harming him would be a violation of morality and a crime.

And what about people who logically think live is meaningless, but emotionally think some humans are valuable? I personally would count them as nihilists, but they do value human live though.

Thinking life is meaningless isn’t the same as choosing not to live. No thoughts of any kind are breaches of morality, nor are they crimes, because we cannot always control our thoughts. All that matters are actions. As long as this person never violates anyone’s rights, he can do as he pleases.

2) 
If we created an artificial Intelligence which is capable of understanding the right to life and it can only die by us turning off the power. Are we forced to never turn off that PC?

That’s an exceedingly complex question and it’s hotly debated by everyone, including others who share my ideas. Is such a machine alive? Does it die when it’s shut down? What about the fact that it can be restarted, with or without it’s previous knowledge? Is it even capable of “knowing?” If it were to be physically destroyed beyond repair, does it die? The questions go on and on.

My thoughts on this are incomplete. Unless it has developed the capacity to somehow provide it’s own power, perhaps by building power plants on its own, it’s completely dependent on us for “survival” – does that matter? Children, in particular babies, are similarly dependent. Do they not have rights? I admit I haven’t investigated this topic at all thoroughly, so I can’t justify offering an opinion.

While we’re at that question. Are we just not allowed to kill someone (because it infringes on someones rights), but we could deliberately let someone to die because we do not have the right for recieving help (this enslaves the helper).

That’s also complex. As with self-defense (and the vast majority of other matters) context is king. Let’s say I just shot someone. Did I commit murder? That depends on the context surrounding the shooting. While it’s difficult to imagine someone deliberately allowing someone to die, there might exist circumstances where it’s justified.

As for receiving help, no, the dying person has no right to assistance. Again, it’s extremely difficult to imagine anyone not helping but no one is ever entitled to such help – entitlement means, if necessary, forcing someone to provide whatever someone is entitled to. (If force is not necessary, the entitlement makes no difference in that situation.) Context again determines. Refusing to help or get help might be wrong, depending on the exact circumstances.

Now, there are those who have committed to helping by, in effect, entering into a contractual agreement to take on that responsibility. (Doctors, police, EMTs, etc have all made that commitment.) That’s a different matter. Since such agreements are voluntary by definition, no one is being forced. Not helping would be at the very least some sort of moral violation, and almost certainly a legal one.

3) 
What is with people who’s brain isn’t their fundamental means of survival? Do they not have the right to live tho the best of their abilities?

The fact that our minds are our fundamental means if survival isn’t a statement about occupations. It’s as true for a fruit picker as it is for the most erudite scholar. When you compare humans to other creatures, we don’t have claws or sharp teeth, we can’t fly or sufficiently swim. Everything we do comes from thinking first, from our use of reason. Keeping our physiology but replacing the mind with one that cannot learn or reason would cause us to go extinct pretty quickly.

4)
Since you said that only organisms capable of understanding the human value have the rights then I will set up a few groups of people who do not appear to have that understanding…

See my remarks above where I said I should have clarified that one point. We all have the same rights simply because we exist as human beings. What we should do about them is the same as we do for everyone else, respect their actual rights.

Now, it is possible for someone to forfeit the exercise of their rights, as evidenced by legal punishment for crimes. By committing a robbery, a person forfeits his right to liberty for the period of time (in prison) required to account for that crime. (I personally think that criminals should also be forced to make full restitution for their crimes, for example, by returning stolen goods to their victims or paying them the monetary equivalent, but not everyone agrees with that.) But they possess their rights at all times.

5) I heard several times that animals like Elefants and hippos and others mourn over their dead family members. I personally do think that is an indication that they do value the live of at least some other organisms besides their own life. 
So I could set up the argumentation that:
– Animals live and die. 
– Animals at least appear to have a will for survival
– Some animals care for thier tribesmen
– We neither know nor don’t know if animals think about the right to live, but we do know they emotionally act as if they understand it. (if the emotional understanding of the rights isn’t enough then most people don’t live upt to the standards as well, especially young children)
– Therefor we aren’t allowed to make any animal suffer and we are also not allowed to infringe on any of their other rights.

Animals “appear to have a will for survival.” True. “[T]hey emotionally act as if they understand.” No, they appear to have emotions. It’s not possible to prove that animals have will or emotions. We know that humans do because we are humans and experience those things ourselves; it therefore must be true that all humans do, as well. Animals are very likely merely “running programs” that are unalterably wired into their brains, i.e. acting on instinct that they have no control over. Their ability to reason is severely limited and incapable of increasing, whereas ours is effectively infinite and capable of growth. That elephant that “mourns” the death of an elephant “friend” in its own way will also turn and charge you down for no reason other than that’s what elephants do. It’s not capable of respecting your rights, and must not be able to understand them because that comes before respecting them. That’s why animals don’t have rights.

Our revulsion with animal cruelty isn’t fundamentally about the suffering of the animals, though that feeling of sympathy is certainly real and can be quite intense. At root, it’s a judgment of the people who commit the cruelty. Since animals don’t have rights, those nonexistent rights cannot be violated. Cruelty is a violation of an animal’s owner’s rights, specifically the right to property and, as I said, it’s a stark indicator of the bad character of the one committing the cruelty.

6) What is your opinion of animal cruelty? Should we reduce pain or is it irrelevant, because they can’t understand the condcept of the right to life?

See above. Also, animals experience pain just as we do. It’s a sign of good character to alleviate that pain when we can. I was deeply saddened the time I found a baby rabbit that some other animal had sliced open at the belly. It died in my hands. I wanted to help it but there was nothing I could do.

We have no moral obligation to alleviate animals’ suffering but what good human would stand idly by when faced with it?

7)You paraphrased Ayn Rand in saying that life is the process of self-generating and self-sustaining action. It’s also the only thing in the universe known to be able to go out of existence. 
I don’t really agree with that opinion. Or let’s rather say I can think of things which don’t align with that statement. 
For example what is the difference between a star and life in that specific aspect? Stars are self-generating and self-sustaining and they can die off. The only difference I can think of it the composition and that life appears to have a mind. But both have chemical processes and both can “die”.
Also if Christianity is true, then there is a soul which does live on after death. Then the material body dies and the immaterial soul lives on. Does that argument still work in that way?

Not all physical, chemical, or subatomic processes produce life. A star isn’t alive. Physically, it goes through the same sort of process that a living thing does when it ceases to be a star – its physical components change form but no life ends. Like nearly everything in our minds’ store of knowledge, life is an abstract concept we invented to describe a specific thing we observe in nature. Stars have no teleology, they don’t act toward an end; like all non-living entities, they have no self-purpose. It is self-generating because it is an ongoing, uncontrolled nuclear reactor but it is not self-sustaining in that it cannot do anything to alter the fact that it will supernova or collapse into a red dwarf, or even collide with another star. It has no control over that or anything else. All living things act toward the end of remaining alive. They do have varying degrees of control over their own circumstances. We call the actions they take to exert that control, that self-generated and self-sustaining process, life.

As for the soul, there is no evidence that it exists. I’m talking about real evidence, not claims in a book or someone’s feelings. There just isn’t any.

8) In case god exists and he set up a system by which humans die, did he therefor create an evil system by the fact that humans die?

Death isn’t evil, it’s merely a fact. It’s amoral, has no moral import at all. It doesn’t matter whether it was designed by a god or if it’s a result merely of the way nature works if no gods exist.

9) If people are not aware of someones existance, then that person has no value besides the value he ascribes to himselve.

Yes. And that’s true even if others are aware of his existence.

The concept of “value” is dependent on the answer to a question: Of value to whom and for what? There’s no value absent a valuer, and no one values anything for no reason. There might be planets out there made of solid diamond (some real hypotheses conclude that there actually are, and at least one may have already been discovered) but without us to have curious interest in them or to desire the wealth they may bring, they have no value at all. There’s no such thing as inherent value (i.e. value existing only because of the nature of a thing and the mere fact that it exists). We have people right now working on mining asteroids because of the possibility of trillions of dollars (or more) worth of various materials some of them contain. Without anyone placing value on those asteroids, they do not have any value.

Water, soil and sunlight have value for trees. Trees have value for birds. Birds have value for humans, and more than one. Teleology, the having of an end and working toward it, is not limited to humans. But for value to exist there must be some living thing that has a reason to value something.

Regarding human value, others might value you or they might not. You might appreciate it if they do but it doesn’t truly matter except to them, they are the valuer of you (to whom?) and they have reasons for it (for what?). The primary value you ought to have is you.No matter what you do or want to do (for what?), you (to whom?) must be your first concern in order to get it done. After all, if you are unable to do the thing, the thing you want to do can’t be done by you. Want to build a tower, have a baby, help others, save the life of the person next to you who’s choking on a dollop of caviar? You have to take sufficient care of yourself first or you won’t be able to. (That is not to say that you should be your only concern to the exclusion of all else but that’s a topic for another discussion).

Unless you find meaning in your own life, independent of whether others value you, your life will not be a happy one.

As far as I know, strawmanning is taking a weak or wrong position of the opposite side and steelmanning is taking the strongest position of the opposite side. But I get what you want to say.

The strawman logical fallacy is defined as having (or deliberately creating, for the dishonest) an incorrect interpretation of someone’s argument then claiming that it’s the correct interpretation and arguing against that.

Steelmanning is demonstrating that you have the correct interpretation of someone’s argument before proceeding to the discussion, so that you are sure you’re not accidentally strawmanning.

And I tend to make comments which are too long. Long comments are more difficult to respond to because they do touch more points, which could lead to information dump. Information dump is basically bringing up so many arguments that people can’t look at them individually and therefor it is not really a useful argument anymore. It is rhetorically useful, but not if you try to make a good argument.

You do a good job of keeping different topics separate from each other. There’s no confusion about what you write.

And now to your comment. Thank you for your effort and time. I also appreciate that you state where you have an clear opinion, where you don’t have an answer and where there is a debate on that topic. It cleared things up quite a bit. I won’t go into every topic. I will only mention topics where I have further questions.

Thanks for replying in depth and with understanding and intelligence. It’s quite rare.

Since we don’t know of any animal which is capable of understanding and exercising rights, we just act as if no animal is capable. I do think this line argumentation might have the danger of regretting the previous behavior once we find an animal capable of doing so. During the last 500 years there were a few people who thought black people are almost like apes. And they didn’t know if the black people are capable of understanding and exercising rights. It was also a taboo subject to look into it because of economic reasons. The same thing could happen with animals.

We don’t, in science anyway, act as if a hypothesis* must be true. That leads to mistakes like you describe. What I’m saying is that we have no evidence that any animal is capable of understanding as complex a concept as rights. As always, if we find evidence to the contrary, the hypothesis, as it stands, is refuted and either modified to fit the new evidence or abandoned. So far, in the few hundred years we’ve been using the scientific method, we haven’t found such evidence and it’s very unlikely that we will.

Regarding such blatantly erroneous beliefs as that some people aren’t really people, there are many reasons for that, most of which come down to lack of knowledge or the understanding of it, or the characteristic of humans as old as we are: preferring our group or tribe to others and considering those others to be a threat. That was once a successful survival behavior but as civilization emerged and grew more sophisticated over time, and as our factual knowledge grew hand-in-hand with it, the physical need for that behavior grew less and less but, as in many things, our beliefs changed much more slowly. We know better now but racism, for example, still exists. That’s true for many things.

*I say “hypothesis” and not “theory” because of the common misconception that a theory is “just a theory,” as if it’s some kind of guess. In science, “theory” means an idea for which there is enough evidence that it can be considered proven; the odds of finding contrary evidence is effectively zero. (It’s equivalent to a mathematical “theorem,” which is a mathematical statement that has been proved to certainty via logic. Theories can never reach certainty but they can reach odds of being false so close to zero that they might as well be zero.) A “hypothesis” is sort of a guess, but it’s a guess derived from the available evidence. It could be disproven by a counterexample at much greater odds than a theory because our knowledge of the matter is pertains to is incomplete. I use these terms in the scientific way.

(With that I don’t want to say that my worldview and my reasoning for it is completely solid and therefor superior. I just try to learn what you are thinking here. Because I love to learn how different people think about stuff.)

I understand. I have a whole set of philosophical ideas about certainty. What I’ll say here is that I am certain of my ideas given what I know (which in most cases is quite extensive) — contextual certainty. There is always the possibility that I’ll learn something new that will require that I change my mind to better fit reality. Contextual certainty lies somewhere between theory and hypothesis.

People by the fact that they are humans get the treatment, even if they don’t reach the level. What about close (but extinct) relatives like Neanderthals? Where is the line to who gets those rights and who doesn’t? And let’s assume we find a tribe somewhere who is biologically human, but all the people there are mentally on an animal level? Does it apply to them as well?

No human alive today knows whether or not Neanderthals were able to understand rights, and no homo sapiens who ever existed left evidence either way. It appears to me, based on my limited knowledge of the science, that Neanderthals probably were capable of understanding rights and exercising them.

Regarding your tribe, if they have human DNA then they’re human and have rights. Their understanding of them may be at the level of infants or might not exist at all, but since the capacity for understanding rights (as well as nearly every other sufficiently complex concept) is measured in terms of a normal, healthy, fully functioning adult human, they are not only human because of their DNA but because they are human they have rights even though they haven’t learned or figured out on their own anything about them.

The line is what makes humans, humans – our DNA. Living things withut human DNA aren’t human. (That might be different for Neanderthals or aliens we one day encounter, should we find that they are capable of understanding rights the way we are. Then the criteria for what kind of beings have rights would have to change to better match reality.)

I can think of several animals which use their brain as their fundamental means of survival. Octopus, parrots, dolphins, racoons, apes… You could say that they also have other bodily features, but I do think that they set themselves apart from the other animals by their intelligence. And just taking the example of dolphins, they don’t really have a thing which is their claw or sharp tooth. But they do have school depended hunting strategies and things like that. Because of that I do think their major strength isn’t the teethes but their brain.

Dolphins can swim like nothing we can possibly do. And many animals have coordinated hunting strategies. Some animals can even reason to a limited extent. For example, ravens can figure out how to get to food not immediately accessible by using what can be nothing other than problem-solving skills. But in all cases, the extent of their intelligence and their capacity to reason is fixed. They can do what they do and nothing else – they cannot expand them to capabilities they don’t already have. Humans do that as a matter of course. It’s not merely a difference in extent, either. It’s a difference in kind. That we can increase our knowledge and use & improve our reasoning abilities the way we can shows that we have a different kind of mind than animals.

And when I look at the sloth, I’m not too sure if we would go extinct pretty quickly if we were less smart. Especially since we do have another skill besides our brain. We have the highest endurance of any land animal besides the sledge dog. When it comes to long distance we can outran horses and we can run the gazelle to death (which some hunters and gatherer tribes do). But that is a pretty hypothetical scenario where we can just speculate.

I don’t know much about sloths but I do know they have claws that could do a lot of damage and they live in trees in a way that might be the primary reason for their survival. And no human would ever have trained himself to out-endure a gazelle unless somebody first figured out that we could do it and that it would work. It’s not something we have an instinct for.

And when it comes to animals I have seen humans teach them a simple language in three cases:

– A dog could learn a few hundred words and assign them to objects.
– A gorilla could speak simple sentences in sign language
– A dolphin could learn the name of a new object (in dolphin noises) within a few minutes.

I personally also think that animals and humans are not on the same level. But the more I learn about animals, the less do I think they are merely “running programs”. I haven’t formulated a concise opinion on that topic, but I’m pretty certain that animal do have more behind their brains than just instinct.

Some do but as I described above they’re nowhere near capable of what we are. We have a different kind of mental capabilities than animals do.

And if we go with your version that we are conscious beings and animals are just running on a programming script, then when and how did it change? I assume that you hold to the secular opinion that the earth was populated according to the theory of evolution.

…

It’s not a “secular opinion,” it’s a scientific theory. (See above.)

…

What makes the difference? The amount of neurons? And how do we find out if other species are capable of the same as us? Ask them? Did it change from one moment to the next or was there a period of change?

There’s not enough room here to go into the whole evolutionary process of the development of the human mind. To answer your specific questions:

1. It’s not the number of neurons because there are animals who have more.
2. We would find out if other species have the same abilities we do by studying them scientifically to see if there is evidence that says so, or not.
3. Evolution occurs at varying speeds depending on the given species and its environment. For example, there are many species of bacteria that have evolved to resist antibiotics since antibiotics were discovered some 70 – 80 years ago. In evolutionary terms, that’s a split second. On the other hand, crocodiles have effectively not changed at all for millions of years. However, evolution never occurs instantaneously.

And what do you mean by the statement that “Their ability to reason is severely limited and incapable of increasing, […]” Is it just their capability to learn? If that were the case then even sparrows can learn new songs (there are regional differences and sparrows can learn new things when they are adults). But I don’t assume that this is your answer. It is too obvious after all.

Ability to reason is different than, but necessary for, learning (in humans). Some facts can be learned by simple rote. (I learned my multiplication tables up to 12 x 12 by singing along with songs in grade school. I don’t remember the songs but I still have instant recall of the tables.) Other facts take years of study and research to learn.

Sparrows can learn new songs because their brains are wired for it. They have to learn their first songs from their parents, so they have that capacity.

You mention that humans don’t have a soul. Wouldn’t that mean that humans are just running on a program, although a slightly more complex one than the other animals?

That’s an interesting and controversial topic, debated on all sides. If we are just running a program, it’s a program that can modify itself. That might be the case. Some physicists hypothesize that random quantum fluctuations in the particles that comprise the brain give us our free will. The scientist and philosopher Stephen Wolfram proposes that our brains are “running a program” (actually a chaotic state machine) but it’s sufficiently complex that it’s impossible to tell the difference between it and a fully free mind. That’s currently the answer I think best. But it might change as I learn more.

In any case, at this time there’s no definitive answer to that question.

As a last statement of animals in this comment I also want to mention that city people tend to have a poorer understanding of animals in general. And people who live with animals on a daily basis seem to value their capabilities way more. Each animal has its own character and behavior and learning speed. Some are dumb, some are curious, some like to play and so on. The same thing can be observed with wild animals as well. For a city person it is easier to say that they are just scripts than for a countryside person. Since you mentioned that bunny story I assume that you live on the countryside though.

I grew up in a mostly undeveloped suburb. (It’s no longer mostly undeveloped but nearly all the development came after I no longer lived there.)

Of course all animals are different – they’re not all the same animal, or even the same kind of animal. Even someone who has never lived around animals should be able to see that that’s true. That doesn’t mean that each of them isn’t running on its particular species’s normal instincts. Instincts enable a wide range of behaviors, the breadth being different from species to species.

When it comes to not letting someone die I want to add a bit of my opinion to the topic. I would say people are not entitled to help, but since people normally are charitable, they will help on their own, if circumstances allow it of course. But big cities, corrupt societies and too many suffering people sadly dull down our natural instinct of helping people. I have the same opinion here as I have with charity. People are not entitled to receiving help but people do help on their own if they get the chance to do so. At least it is that way in countries which have a Christian history. I have never lived in a country with a non-Christian history and this view could be only bias and not general human behavior.

I guess I didn’t state outright that people will choose to help each other. Our natural tendency, except in abnormal cases such as psychopaths, is toward benevolence. And you’re right about what causes that tendency to erode. But there’s a deeper cause – altruism.

Altruism and benevolence aren’t the same thing, although the former has come to mean the latter for most people. Altruism is a term created by August Comte in the 19th century. Its original meaning was action that benefits someone and does not benefit you. Some then turned that into a moral imperative, that we must always put others before ourselves, even to the point that we die as a result. And by “others,” they meant anyone, anywhere, at any time, as long as it’s not you. In other words, you are to hold yourself to be entirely unimportant no matter what, a zero effectively enslaved to everyone else in existence. Benevolence, on the other hand, is benefiting others without harming yourself. The distinction is crucial. People are naturally benevolent, not altruistic.

Socialism and communism are the political embodiment of altruism. Environmentalism extends the command beyond people, to animals, plants, rivers, and even rocks.

Under such a system, everyone is a slave to everyone else but no one is allowed to benefit from anything. It fails by its very nature. No such society has ever succeeded. None can.

This command to always put oneself last puts a strain on people, because they’re never permitted to have, and usually are condemned for having, concern of any kind for themselves. Eventually they resent other people for it, more quickly where people live closer together. This resentment underlies the problems you mention, and societies eventually break down because of it.

This doesn’t mean that you should put yourself first no matter what. You should hold yourself and all others equal in terms of morality and rights. That’s how we can live peacefully with each other and benefit each others’ lives.

Just wanted to mention that I like your distinction between live and non-live. It’s kind of obvious. I just didn’t think of it at the moment.

Thanks. 🙂

Basically the primary value of a human comes from himself. And the secondary value comes from fellow humans and a possible third value of humans comes from animals and plants. If the human is dead then the primary value disappears. And if his fellow humans die the secondary value is gone. And by then most likely the third value of that person is also already gone. This leads to a very fleeting version of value. Just an observation, not a judgement.

More precisely, the most important value for any human is his own life. Without it, nothing is possible to him. All other values derive from this because all proper values serve to sustain and improve his life. They do, however vary in importance. Food is a more important value than a new iPhone. Your children, I hope, are more important values to you than a beer. (That’s “you” in a general sense, not you, Philipp, specifically.) Some things that are valuable to one may be of no value to another. (LeBron James values his ability to dunk a basketball – it’s a value to him. My ability to dunk (correctly, lack of ability, lol) doesn’t impact my life – it’s not a value to me. Everyone has a sort of tree-like hierarchy of values with each of our lives being the root. (If you wanted to, you could take all the things that you value and list them all according to importance to you and relation to each other. Doing so would produce such a tree, literally drawn on paper. I’ve done it.)

Not all values for humans are lives, whether their own or others’. Food, air, water, knowledge, pie & ice cream for some and cake & milk for others, independence, honesty – values run the gamut. Some people continue to be a value to others even after the valued person’s death. (The dead person has no more values – remember, values are only possible to the living.)

Values are only fleeting to the extent that life is fleeting. You have values from the moment you exist to the moment you die. But all living things have values so, in that sense, there will be values as long as there are living things.

I respect your skills in answering every necessary point without making the reply notably longer. I never noticed anyone doing it so skillfully.
I guess I asked everything to get a decent understanding on your view on the rights every human has.

Thank you. I do my best.

I only have one last question and then I will give my conclusion on what I think of your view.

Let’s assume we find one octopus who is capable of reasoning. And we can say with certainty that he is capable of reasoning. But we can also say with certainty that all the other octopie are not capable of reasoning. Will we treat every octopusses with the same DAN as if they were capable of reasoning? And what happens if he dies?

The basis I use is the nature of a healthy, fully developed human being. (We reach this state at approximately age 26, when brain development is complete.) I then use that as the “model,” if you will, of what the full nature of humans is and derive morality and rights from that. Of course, no specific human being is exactly like the model, but the model allows the understanding of what is fully possible to human beings in general. Using less than an ideal model would miss many important derivations.

In the case of our octopus, we have discovered something about the species that we didn’t know before: proof that it is possible for at least one octopus to reason. In order to be fair to octopi in general, we have to add intelligent reasoning ability to our model of the ideal octopus. Then, using our revised model, we decide that all octopi, because we now are certain the species has the capacity to produce such individuals and there might be more of them (it’s a mistake to assume another will never be born even if we know for certain that ours is at this time the only one), all octopi have rights, because our one must have them since it is known to be able to understand them.

Substitute “alien” for “octopus” and I think this becomes clearer.

My final thoughts:
1)
A very simplified version of your argument looks like this:
– most humans have rational capabilities.

It’s that the human species has the capacity for reason. All humans have the capacity to reason, it’s just that some have developed a better ability to use it than others (and some might have lost it to injury or disease – but they don’t lose their rights because whether or not they have them is based in the ideal, not the individual).

– no animals are known to have rational capabilities.

Not the kind or extent we have.

– even if there is a human with the same or lower rational capability as an animal, he gets the same rights as every other human.

As explained above, yes.

I personally don’t like such an argumentation, but I can accept you doing so. I personally would say that if we use the capability of rational thought, then it doesn’t matter what kind of DNA this creature has, as long as it is high enough it passes the bar.

As I said above, yes. But no species has the same exact DNA as any other. If they did, they wouldn’t be a separate species. Our intelligent octopus remains an octopus, just with rights.

And if it is lower, it doesn’t.

If the species, idealized in a model, is incapable of producing individuals that meet the criteria, yes.

That’s why I don’t use it.I use the Bible which says that god made human according to his image. And he didn’t say the same thing to any other animal. Since we are according to gods image and animals are not, we have to treat every human like gods image deserves. Some might find it simplistic and it only works with a Jewish and Christian background. But it fits best with my worldview. Also my rational side of the brain likes it best.

I don’t hold that view because there’s no evidence that God exists, the Bible is a book with no scientific basis written by ancient tribesmen who had none of the knowledge we’ve gained since their time, and using it for these purposes is to make claims based on nothing but their say-so even though arguments from authority like that are invalid. Such arguments are by definition irrational, however well-intentioned.

2) We do have a different view on animals and programming scripts. I assume my position can be easily deducted by the questions I asked. I’m pretty sure you have thought more about those kinds of topics. On your profile picture you look older than I am (I’m 26), which gives you more time to think and find people to discuss those things. The way you reply to my comments seem to indicate that you are used to having such conversations. Sadly in my environment I haven’t yet found someone who really wants to go deep with the questioning. And I work better in a conflict of two different ideas than if I have to do it on my own. That’s why a lot of my ideas are not as refined as I’d like them to be.

You’re clearly quite intelligent. Don’t worry about a relative lack of experience and time spent learning. And, as I tell everyone, if you have chosen your principles, never compromise on ylthem. Continue to learn and gain experience, and never stop examining your principles to make sure they comport with reality as it is, not as anyone (including you) wishes it to be. That way, if you ever find that your principles are not in accord with reality, you can change them so they are.

Also, if you want a fuller understanding of your own ideas, teach them to others. It works wonderfully.

3) From my theistic point of view, your argumentation looks a bit like the argumentation for relative morals. The stupid version goes as follows: “Our group decides on one specific aspect of live and build our entire moral structure on it. And everyone who disagrees has to be stopped.” This method is plenty good to build a stable society, but it looks a bit shallow when I personally fixate my moral structure on a moral law giver. I’m aware that this moral law giver actually has to exist. And if he doesn’t exist my structure is just as good as any other relative moral law with the one difference that it isn’t based on a real fact. (I don’t think I have to mention that I don’t talk about the outcome of the moral structure but the way it is logically argued for.) I’m aware that in the end I also just build my moral system on some random basis which a specific group decided to do. But if god actually exists then it is reasonable to do so and every other method falls short of my method.
Also I don’t think relative morals help much emotionally, when you encounter evil which is not brought to justice.

My view is as firmly fixed on life as it’s source as yours is on God. The only acceptable way to derive morality is to make certain it is in full accord with reality as it really is. So there’s nothing relative about it. It might seem that way upon superficial examination but life exists and is exactly and only what it is and that doesn’t change any more than your God does. My morality is fixed as strongly as yours. (Note also that it happens to match up extremely well with Christian morality. Not in every detail, but very, very closely. But if it didn’t, I would stick with reality and differ from Christianity justly as strongly as I differ from, say, Jainism.)

(I’d like to point out that, if God doesn’t exist, my morality has a much firmer foundation. It’s been derived using hard facts and strict logic.)

I mentioned context earlier – someone might interpret my use of context as making for relative morality. It most certainly doesn’t. Anyone with that interpretation, to be consistent, would have to believe that a non-relative morality must say that killing someone in self-defense is the same as murder (or, conversely, that all killing of anyone is self-defense), i.e. they would have to ignore all context, always. No reasonable and/or sane person would do that. Once the context of an action has been fully determined, my morality makes a very clear, objective judgment that doesn’t change unless verifiable new information is found that requires it to better match reality. Things and actions are what they are and nothing else. We must acknowledge that fact and always think and act accordingly.

Side note: I’ve always found it interesting that my morality can be applied whether or not God exists. Once a human first ” comes into being,” we can again start from life as the foundation and derive my position just the same, ignoring whether or not there is a God. Other than Christianity generally allowing for essentially random interventions that are instant, temporary breaking of the “laws” of reality we experience, e.g. miracles and occasional commands directly from God (and some other, relatively minor differences), the two moralities are strikingly similar. I’m inclined to think that, just as gods were made up by man in an attempt to explain things that were not understood (e.g. rainbows), they came up with a morality that is nearly in full accord with reality because it guided them to a more successful way of living. Think of the Jewish prohibition of pork. I think that ancient people saw deadly results from eating what they didn’t know was undercooked meat from pigs. Since they didn’t know what was really happening, they simply banned all pork. Boom, life was better (except no bacon 😕). They assigned this morality to God because, like with pork, they didn’t understand what they had, how it came to be, or why it worked.

But I digress. Thank you for this thread. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a deep, intelligent discussion like this. It’s something that I love to do and I rarely get the chance. I’ll gladly answer anything you want to ask, any time.

If you think that the bible is written by tribesmen who had no knowledge then you should probably look at it more closely.

I didn’t say they had no knowledge, I said they had none of the knowledge we’ve gained since their time. Science as we know It today didn’t exist back then and in all the time between we’ve learned a lot that they didn’t know. I’m sure one day we’ll have the same relative relationship in knowledge to those alive 2000 years from now. But given that we have discovered the scientific method and know how to use it to achieve as much certainty as is possible, our knowledge will still be valid then, if outdated (Einstein is a refinement of Newton, not a replacement), but knowledge in general will be much greater in both quantity and quality.

There were indeed tribesmen among them. But people like Paul can’t be called uneducated by a longshot. He had the best education a Jew could get in both the school of Jews and the school of the Romans. Whenever he traveled around he was first trying to get the intellectual battels.

He was certainly well educated. For his time.

But in the end the most important feature of the Christian belief is the crucifixion. I could give you a short overview of the topic but I guess looking into it yourself is better to make a fuller picture. If you like books I can recommend “Crucifixion by Martin Hengel” or “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach by Mike Licona”. And if you like the short version you could look up the minimal fact approach for the crucifixion by basically anyone. This works even if all the people involved were stupid barbarians with no education.

Again, I never said they were uneducated. I also never said they were stupid. They merely had nowhere near the amount of knowledge that we do now.

At this point, I have to ask you to look more carefully at my words so you can give an accurate account of them.

Regarding the crucifixion or, more accurately, the resurrection (without that, Jesus would have merely been one of many thousands throughout history who were killed on a cross and Christianity wouldn’t exist), the same critique applies as to the existence of the soul: there’s no valid evidence for it. On top of that, we know that beyond a certain point, when resuscitation becomes impossible, dead things can’t come back to life. Certainly not after three days.

And inerrancy of the Bible is not a necessary doctrine for a Christian to hold. The Christian who do believe in the inerrancy of the Bible do so either on the basis of their tradition or because they think Jesus is god and Jesus acts as if the scripture is inspired. At least that is the case for the Christians I know of.

I also never brought up inerrancy. It makes no difference whether people believe that or not, the facts remain what they are.

And when it comes to responses to Christian arguments, I recommend not looking too deeply into the “new atheist” side.

I don’t even know what that is. My conclusions are my own. I know enough about Christianity and other religions, after years of research and experience coupled with everything else I’ve learned, to have decided for myself. I don’t follow other atheists. In fact, I don’t even call myself an atheist because that implies that atheism is the root of what I believe, that I first decided that God doesn’t exist and went from there. I’m my case, it arose as a quite natural conclusion of learning all I could about how reality works and what’s actually real. The realization that there can’t be any such thing as a god or the supernatural in general came after.

I might call myself a rationalist because of reason’s fundamental role in human survival, but that term is already used for a specific school of philosophical thought. I don’t fit completely into any school of thought that I’ve ever found.

According to my judgement they are skilled in rhetoric but lack intellectual depth. Not all of them but sadly the majority. But the other atheists are good. And you could also add the general Muslim as well to the group that lacks depth when it comes to countering Christian claims.

That’s probably true. The atheists I have encountered certainly almost all lack intellectual depth. And Islam has proven itself over and over to be, frankly, evil and ridiculous.

Over the years, I have found all religions to be silly at best and evil at worst.

I can’t say that what I wish to be true doesn’t influence my reasoning.

Of course it does, that’s true of everyone. It’s only when you think your wishes are reality or can be made real simply because you wish them that you’ve crossed the line into purely irrational thought.

But I can say that I can’t stop examining my believes.

Excellent.

I was the oddball since very young. I looked at things differently even if there should have been a peer pressure. I still react to peer pressure, but less than the average person.

The same for me, ever since I can remember, except that now I barely react to peer pressure at all. And I was hated or despised for it, even by my own parents. My father once told me, “When you were a kid, you were so smart that we were afraid of you.”

Atheists often like to explain away why Christians think the way they think. Let me do the same here. I do think your reasoning lines up that nicely with Christian values because you grew up in a Christian environment.

I was raised Roman Catholic but religion for my family never went beyond church on Sundays and holidays and Sunday school until I was 12. I thought it all was just plain ridiculous from the moment I could think about things like that.

People often don’t reach their conclusion based on reasoning alone.

That’s definitely true.

They often have a general direction they want to go to and reason their way into that direction.

That’s rationalization, which is misapplied reason. I work hard not to do that.

If you were to live in a Buddhist country, your reasoning would slightly differ in a way that it would match up extremely well with Buddhist morality.

I doubt it, unless I had a very different mind that I have. But then it wouldn’t be me. I have always sought facts and truth from the moment I could think. I don’t remember ever not being that way.

I’m aware that this is a pretty bold statement which I just made. I just wanted to have a little revenge to all those atheist who explain away how Christianity evolved from the evolutionary perspective. Don’t mind my little tease.

It’s nearly impossible to offend me. lol

The reason I called your system relative isn’t because of the reasoning after you have chosen the fundament but because of the fundament itself. A Buddhist would probably not base his morality on the aspect live but on the balance of the universe. Both are aspects within the creation and not of the creator himself. If the creator doesn’t exist I’m just as much part of the relative moral systems (because it goes back to some elaborate idea a few humans had), but if he does exist then mine goes further back than any of the ones which use facts of reality within creation. That is why I call mine objective and yours relative.

Nothing can be objective if it’s based in any sort of belief in the supernatural, because no such thing exists. We’re just going to disagree about that. No big deal – as long as you don’t try to force anything on me, we’ll get along fine. 🙂

I’m glad that I could stimulate your brain cells. I rarely have those kinds of conversations as well. And one thing that is even rarer is that I feel completely stupid (which didn’t happen here). Often I feel like I have a lot to learn. But I normally can follow many educated professionals in their field. If you have a podcast or something else where you think I’m completely out of my league please forward the link to me. I love the feeling of looking amazed at people who seem to have a blast in discussing stuff I don’t get. By the way the last time I felt that was in the YouTube video with the title: “From Necessary Being to God? | Dr. Graham Oppy & Dr. Rob Koons”. It almost made me feel like a kid again. Like the time where everything was new and I didn’t understand what the smart people were talking about.

I know that feeling very well. I keep looking for it now that I’m older (I turn 60 tomorrow) and it doesn’t really happen any more. I haven’t had more than ephemeral whiffs of it for a long time. I’m sure you know the amazing feeling that occurs at the moment understanding of something new clicks into place. I live for that.

I don’t have any videos or podcasts to recommend because I always end up disappointed with them at some point. They inevitably fall short of what I want, which is an intellectual equal. That sounds like boasting, I know, but it’s true. The vast majority of people just aren’t of high enough intellectual caliber or aren’t interested in the same things I am. Nothing wrong with that at all and I don’t look down on anyone, I just wish there were more people I could have these kinds of discussions with.

Thanks again for talking with me. I truly enjoyed it.

Yeah, we’ll just keep going back and forth about that. The summation of my position is that all of it is no different than other myths – made up. Perhaps with good intentions or as a result of a “whisper down the lane” effect over time, but untrue.