THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE
The life of a person is more important than the kind of life they have for it
makes no sense to say that it is a good quality of life that is, for that does
not tell us why a person should have it. If the good life is important it is
because the person comes first and is more valuable.
A life should only be ended when it is the only way to avoid more people dying.
I should kill the person who attacks me to kill me if it is not my doing that I
am being attacked and if there is no other way to survive.
War is only acceptable when it is undoubtedly the only way to stop an unjust
aggressor and when without it there would be a greater loss of life. Really just
wars happen a lot less than you would be led to believe.
Capital punishment is wrong. Belief in God implies that the person is not very
valuable for God has made death and you are forbidden to judge God and are
expected to encourage him to kill if he wants to so God is a belief fit only for
villains for you are more sure that death is real than that he is.
We should be health-conscious. It is obviously better to prolong life than to
indulge in needless pleasure that will shorten it. There are other pleasures.
Abortion is not always wrong. Humanism agrees with abortion on demand in the
early stages for there is no reason to think that the baby is a human person
then. Even if it has a brain it would be too primitive to make it conscious to
any important degree. Without meaning to make an insulting comparison, we don't
think that animals are as personal as ourselves and many of them are more
developed than embryos so opposition to abortion often has more to do with
religious obstinacy than real concern for babies. A baby should be aborted when
it would be destined for a life of agony. It is wisest in this case to terminate
the pregnancy in case it is not a person. Abortion at the later stage is never
right unless it is the only way to save the mother's life. If the baby is
certainly dying and if the pregnancy is not terminated as soon as possible the
mother will be gravely ill, it is right to abort the baby.
Euthanasia, helping an incurably ill person who is dying in great agony on their
way to spare them suffering, is wrong but it is not very wrong so it should be
tolerated. It is advised, "You never know what kind of new discovery is round
the corner. It is better to let them live just in case as unlikely as it will
seem." If euthanasia is wrong so is giving a dying patient painkillers that will
hasten the onset of death and even more so if we should wait for a possible but
nevertheless unlikely cure. Christians say they give the painkillers to stop
pain and not to kill so it is not euthanasia. But if life comes first as they
say then they have a choice and should let the patient suffer. They practice
euthanasia after all. Euthanasia is certainly wrong but should be made a
tolerable evil. It is not seriously evil under the right circumstances and if
the patient consents. We can't legally forbid everything.
We must help the starving for we are murderers if we do not. Religion collects
vast sums of money and won't give away all it can spare for them. It says that
saving souls is more important and that is its excuse. But if it really believes
in an all-powerful God who never lets his people down it would give all away and
trust in his providence. It is different for Humanists to decline to give all
away for we need our property and money to spread the word that will reverse the
conditioning that leads people to disregard the tables of the starving.
Sacrificing all wouldn't help in the long-term. The Humanist who does not help
to topple religion is a murderer. Even if there could be a supernatural being
who will help the poor we have to help them ourselves in case there isn't.
Believing in God makes it less evil to neglect them because he loves them and he
will intervene eventually.
