Placing Value on Human Life

Obviously, it is human nature to celebrate the arrival of a new life, and to mourn the loss of life. It is interesting that people get emotional over the passing of a celebrity that they never met. People wonder what makes human life have value at all, whether close to us or someone we admire from a distance.

Materialists necessarily believe that there is nothing beyond molecules and atoms, but their evolutionary worldview is very self-refuting. They cannot account for logic, thought, love, or any of the preconditions of intelligibility.

Standing near Giants Causeway, Unsplash / Steven Roussel

It is consistent with his worldview for an atheist to value human life by how much someone contributes to society — using an inconsistent arbitrary standard. Obviously, Christians have a far different worldview and is not utilitarian. Life comes from God the Creator. That alone gives it value. More than that, however, is that God made us in his image; we are not the product of evolution. The ending of a life by abortion should be appalling to everyone — most times, that is done for convenience or preference.

From the time a woman finds out she is expecting to when family gathers around a beloved elder’s deathbed, almost everyone acts like there is something special about human life. A new life is something to be celebrated, and the end of a life is a matter for mourning, especially if that life is prematurely cut short by accident, illness, or murder. But even the peaceful death of someone who has lived out an unusually long life is mourned as if it is not natural for people to die.

Secularists insist that human beings are only one node on the vast tree of life, related by a common ancestor to orchids, katydids, and crocodiles. The first living thing, they assert, arose from nonliving matter by incomprehensible chance. In the best-case scenario of a secular worldview, humans are no more valuable than other living things. In fact, some secular ethicists such as Peter Singer claim that some intelligent animals, like pigs and crows, may have more value than disabled humans!

To read the rest, see "Is Human Life Valuable?"