Is an animals life as important as a human life?

Question

If your answer is yes, can you tell me necessarilly why that is the case?

If your answer is no, can you tell me necessarilly why that is not the case?

Answer 1

It depends on the circumstances. If it is a working animal and it gives up its live defending you so you can continue then yes it is important.

But also no because some animals i.e. cockroaches or bugs are killed without much thought from humans due to their further down the evelutionary scale in the eyes of humans.

Answer 2

All creatures in the eyes of God are precious and equally important. Without the other animals life would be very difficult and very unbalanced. At the end of the day humans are defind as an animal when put into category animal mineral or other. So I would say yes an animals life is as important as a humans

Answer 3

Yes! I believe all life is sacred (and incidentally, I don't believe that all animals don't have a soul) but if I had to choose between a 'good' animal and an 'evil' human I would take the animal any day. Isn't it a bit egocentric to believe we are more important simply because we are at the top of the food chain?

Answer 4

I'd say yes, though in a way it also depends on the animal, for instance if we're talking about insects I guess it's a bit far fetched.
However when we consider the greater species in life then though they have less self awareness and less of an idea of life, death and pain they still do have feelings, I guess here we could compare them to a new born baby - when we are born we have about the same instincts and emotions as an animal and if you ask someone to consider a new born baby when compared to an adult.... which life is more important???

Answer 5

No
Human life is of infinite value. No other created thing is capable of reason. We are the crowning glory of the earth.Think on the achievements of mankind (the good ones anyway) from domesticating animals to medical advancements to the beauty of art. What animal can do this?
Animals are ruled by instinct, humans are not.
We have free will.

It's a shame that some people put their value on the same level as their food.

Answer 6

No.

If you are an evolutionist, like I am, you accept that species predate and exploit others to survive, so ultimately, Human life is more important to our species than any other, That of course is a gross simplification, and there is the issue of sustainability and environmental responsibility. But we are the only species that we can say with certainty is self-aware and capable of abstract reasoning. So if a cow must die so that I can eat, so be it. If a primate dies so that a medication can be developed to prolong a human life, I have no problem with that. That is not to say that I think we should not behave ethically towards animals - but ethics is a human construct. Like Terry Pratchett's Patrician, I am strongly opposed to unnecessary cruelty, whilst being bang along with the idea of necessary cruelty!
And those of the religious persuasion can't say much different, because according to their bible we are god's special creation, given explicit dominion over all other creatures.

Answer 7

Humans tend to judge the value of human life by perceived intelligence and the social group one belongs to... In that sense there is a hierarchy of importance of life for everyone... for example for a European the hierarchy may be (from less important to more): plants, insects, wild animals, domestic animals, humans in unfortunate countries, humans in richer countries, people around the person...
I ignored the feeling factors like romantic love, dislike, hatered etc... i.e. the life of a dog for someone lonely is probably more important than many people in Bangladesh.

Answer 8

why must people always try to compare one thing against another.
i think most people would value a human above an animal.
however the extent to which we treat other species well, is the extent to which we can feel good about ourselves as a species.
if we treat animals badly, we have no right to see ourselves as "above" them.
because then we ourself can be said to be no better than beasts.
in fact less than "beasts" because beasts do not behave in evil ways towards each other as a conscious decision, only we [supposedly] superior human beings are capable of consciously chosen evil.

Answer 9

All life is important. We life in a chain of exist-ants. We only exist because we eat other animals. That is the way of it. Animals eat animals. So for practical reasons yes it is. If you mean is it more or less important to to have human than animal life then yes. However it should not allow people to kill animals for fun.

Answer 10

No, humans can recognize themselves in the mirror which suggests self awareness. Their sense of pain and the destruction of themselves is much more intense because they can actually analyze it. They have more emotional range and depth. They can love another enough to give up one's own life. Few other animals can do this. Dolphins get pretty darn close. They have oral sex with their blowholes....sorry off topic. I'm just saying humans derive more pain and pleasure from given experiences because they can add color to it with imagination and they attach meanings to it with logic/words. Humans are animals by the way.