mikey mikey wrote:
dogsmilk wrote:
But unless you're religious in which case God may have elevated man above other life forms,
Why would such an opinion require religion?
Some religions venerate other life forms.
Animals have always been regarded in Buddhist thought as sentient beings, different in their intellectual ability than humans but no less capable of feeling suffering. Furthermore, animals possess Buddha nature (according to the Mahāyāna school) and therefore an equal potential to become enlightened. Moreover, the doctrine of rebirth held that any human could be reborn as an animal, and any animal could be reborn as a human. An animal might be a reborn dead relative, and anybody who looked far enough back through his or her infinite series of lives would eventually perceive every animal to be a distant relative. The Buddha expounded that sentient beings currently living in the animal realm have been our mothers, brothers, sisters, fathers, children, friends in past rebirths. One could not, therefore, make a hard distinction between moral rules applicable to animals and those applicable to humans; ultimately humans and animals were part of a single family. They are all interconnected
.
And I could easily provide further examples.
Secular people may be just as likely elevating humans by considering humaniy to be the highest form of evolution and animals as lower forms on the evolutionary ladder.
Not necessarily of course.
I wouldn't want to make the same mistake you have.
I meant in the sense that God provides objectivity - He is the ultimate arbiter of morality.
By 'elevate' I didn't mean that believing in God gives permission to abuse animals - some religious people might interpret 'dominion over the earth' in this way, others do not - of course there is wide variety in spiritual attitudes to man's place on earth. I also agree with Dubmeup that secular people can have attitudes of superiority.
I'm not saying
religious people are like this, secular people are like that, I'm simply saying that without God it's very difficult to see an objective basis. Beyond the perfectly natural bias we have for our own species, it's difficult to see how we are
objectively more important than a cockroach and how
objectively a human life is more important than the life of a cockroach - the universe doesn't care either way, the universe doesn't care at all - though we will of course ascribe greater importance to a human than a cockroach.
But if you believe in God, then He as the creator, will be forming some kind of judgement as to how we should act and His status as a creator of all things whose being transcends anything we can fathom presents the ultimate arbiter of moral judgement - basically he provides objectivity by His nature. as God.
What that framework is exactly is, of course, open to interpretation. God may allow objectivity, but then you get into the terrain of people claiming they know exactly what God is thinking and how you can work out exactly what He wants. Which then leads into theological debate.
But anyway, it's just the point that God gives you an objective framework for stuff that is otherwise is very important but ultimately a human construct - like we all agree murder is wrong, but if one guy stabs another, you can't observe wrongness particles or measure the wrongness on a wrongometer that measures wrongons. God promises an answer - even if that answer might seem elusive to mere mortals. Secular thinking leads to nothing ultimately having any meaning, though having meaning is nevertheless very important and has to be constructed without a divine arbiter.
