Is there a difference? Really?

Question

We are told by the enlightened ones who have cast off the bonds of religion, that man is just a step on the ladder of evolution. Man is here simply due to random chance events; no divine intervention took place. All agreed? Therefore, man is on the exact same level as all life on planet earth. Evolved man has no more “rights” to anything including life than say a whale or Ape, dolphin, or any other evolved creature. All agreed? Now we must assume that morals, laws, guiding principles and all such nonsense are nothing more than the ideologies of priest, shamans, and busybodies attempting to force their views upon the rest of mankind. All agreed? So would it not follow suite to accept that there is no true difference in the actions of one who slaughters countless chickens or cows in a meat processing plant than there is in one who causes the slaughter of 7,000,000 people for no other reason than they don’t like them? IS this not true? If not please explain why

Answer 1

How you are deceived!
There is indeed a God, and savior Jesus Christ. Who loves you and wants to save you from your sins.
And there really is a devil that would love all to believe that God doesn't exist. For if we don't believe in God, then we can't be saved and have eternal life.
For there are no atheist in hell...only FORMER atheists.

Answer 2

I stopped agreeing after your first statement or perhaps the second.

Saying that man is on the same level as other creatures is a meaningless statement.

"Rights" are created by man, so true we have only the rights that we create and extend to others, on the other hand, most social species show similar rights i.e. the right to live and to reproduce and in fact are much better at it than humans are.

We "must" not assume anything especially that morals are the equivalent of laws or that principles, laws and morals are just an attempt to force views. Morals address how a human should act as a social creature, laws are created to ensure that a society and its members can survive. Even other species follow certain "morals". For example chimps will wage war on other chimp tribes and will cannibalize the defeated, they will never eat their own tribe members nor will they hunt other chimps for food.

This leads to your last statement that genocide is OK as it's no different than killing other animals. While to some extent this is true in that the only repercussion of this would be that the earth would slowly heal itself from the damage we have done and that there would be no more humans, but other than that everything else would continue. However all species are driven to survive first as individuals and second as a species.

To answer the question that you're really asking: Yes there can be morals and laws with out there being a god.

As an aside, we should not equate morals with laws while the two may intersect, they should be understood to be two separate and distinct things. Morals are what an individual uses to determine what is right and wrong, while laws are rules that allow a society to function. I.e. speeding is illegal but not immoral, breaking a law is illegal but also not immoral in of itself. Lying may be immoral but in many situations is not illegal.

Answer 3

The whole idea is based on the supposed writings of witnesses to an event that happened 2,000 years ago, while keeping in mind there have been human beings on this planet for up to 40,000 years.Religion is a way for people to enlist the idea that there is a greater meaning for all things, instead of understanding what is really happening.The thing about evolution is that it is random. We have evolved more than other species because we evolved the notion of roaming all over the planet and eating anything we could find whereas other species evolved in restricted fashion.

Answer 4

I would have many objections to this chain of arguments, and they are adressed properly by many other respondents here.

I'll simply adress the last point quoted below: living organisms come in all shapes and forms, but they all differ on an important point: their potential for self-realization are all different, and this is an important point in considering how much importance we should give to their own interest in living. Pigs, for example, have a much bigger interest in living than spermatozoids or cereal grains.

Now that our ethical and technological capacities have reached comprehensive levels, we are more and more allowed to enlarge our circle of compassion to the creatures susceptible to pain and suffering. We will eventually be able to sustain ourselves without the need to slaughter animals for our physiological sustenance, but we're not there yet. All we can do for the moment is minimize their pain and suffering in the process, and make dietary choices that minimize it.

> So would it not follow suite to accept that there is no true difference in the actions of one who slaughters countless chickens or cows in a meat processing plant than there is in one who causes the slaughter of 7,000,000 people for no other reason than they don’t like them? IS this not true? If not please explain why

Answer 5

Because we are sentient to the degree that we understand and contemplate our mortality and existence in ways that so far we don't see animals having the capacity to do. A chicken at the farm doesn't live everyday thinking about the fact they are on death row so to speak while a human inmate on death row does have the ability to understand and know. I do feel that we are highly evolved animals and that we should care enough since we do have the capacity to feel empathy and contemplate these issues we have also have the moral capability to want to minimize the suffering of other creatures who may be less sentient. I also think we are learning more about some higher evolved animals that is teaching us that we may underestimate their capacity for self consciousness. Perhaphs this would lead one based on empathy and understanding to consider giving more consideration to animals rather than less to humans?

Answer 6

Human beings are one step in the ladder of evolution. The top step. We have evolved into self awareness that few other creatures reach.

Yes, we should have consideration for other life.

No, morals are not just the work of busybodies. We have morals withouthaving them forced upon us.

No, killing chickens is not the same as genocide. This is troll question.

Answer 7

Man is a little farther up the ladder than a step. Man took the ladder up with most other species, then the ladder being so crowded with species stemed-out horizontally and then went vertically again. This has happened so much that the ladder resembles a busy tree, and man is at the top with chimps but they're over a few branches. These random events, like mass-extinction take out huge portions of the ladder-tree, species left on the tree either die off, or mutate to survive the new different environment. You must already be a flexible species to survive sudden change, but some change is slow , consider rot affecting some parts of the ladder-tree.Species now find themselves withering like the rotting ladders they're on. Rights are only given by mankind because they mutated(evolved) to invent the concept. The meaning of rights that only mankind could know, are then bestowed on, other species which include species like apes, whales, and dolphins. Funny you picked them, they all share a common ancester with us. They're all mammels like us, and apes took a simalur vertical climb as mankind. Whales and dolphins were on the same earlier vertical climb but instead of taking to the trees for survival, they hung by the shore and became successful swimmers, so successful that they now spend they're whole lives in the water, but share complex brains, lungs, warmblood, livebirth and nursing with apes and mankind. It's like the ladder-tree grew out of the ocean and onto land and flurished with ladder-branches everywhere. Then the ladder-tree became so large that some of the ladder-branches grew out over the water and dipped back into the water, making life on those ladder-branches, either wet or good swimmers. (agreed)(smiling) Yaa get your brain around that. Instinct already gives us some laws, like don't let your offspring mate with you, this is a unwritten law observed by many species. Caring for our young is another instincual law, but observed by less species. Empathy is observed by mankind, although a mother chimp will comfort her frightened offspring she is operating on instinct more than understanding. But mankind remembers when you were frightened and why. True with a large complex brain that does abstract thought, mankind has demonstrated the ability to commit mass murder. Many of these atrosities were and are done in THE NAME OF THE RELIGION. But all have their roots in greed, which is somewhat instinctual. Many speicies gather as much as they can and compete for survival, this helps them survive the next day or months. But mankind takes this to a whole new level years. Mankind is cunning we've created whole new concepts in killing off the competition. The U.S. has a monster war-machine, and we demonstrate our ability to stay fat and comfortable as we speak. Mankind is the top animals in the ladder-tree, and we have the ability to trim the tree any way we want. We also have the ability or ignorance to destroy the tree. Don't worry though with the right conditions life will always survive and grow a new tree. Now you sneak up on Duck Phup's answer and take a drink, not to much at first, its a-bit of an aquired taste. One good gulp can knock the holy spirit right out of you. And yes you are ill with it, and need to take the medecine offered here. Excuse my grammar, my spell check won't work.

Answer 8

Man has the knowledge of "good and evil" which sets him apart from the animals. Along with that comes the ability to operate from "intention".
A fox comes into my hen house and kills all my chickens. The fox is operating on instinct.
If my neighbor come into my hen house and kills all my chickens, he is operating under some kind of intention.

Jesus teaches that we should not judge the intentions of others. I don't know what the intention of my neighbor is. Is he trying to do me harm? Is he trying to feed his starving family?
But formal religion is not necessary for a man to understand "good and evil" even primitive tribes who have never heard of Jesus understand when they have done "good" and they experience satisfaction. When they do evil, they experience remorse and guilt.
It's just the way man has evolved. Ancient religious scholars spoke of this through creation myths to help people understand

Answer 9

As far as human civilized behavior goes it matters how many people you have to eliminate to attempt to get your ways here. You will eventually be killed or imprisoned for such behavior once the cries get loud enough! Mankind has learned how to fight back in numbers and will continue to do so until mankind finds a way to make their bodies invincible against destruction!

But as far as afterlife, you are absolutely correct. The reality of life is that we are here from a predestined source and we do what we do and return to that source and whether it be kill 7 million or heal 7 million, that was our Creator/Creation energy that we all participated in as being part of the whole of that source and so we are all doing our predestined best within the passion of the illusion of Free Choice every moment.

Maybe next life you will be the murderer, who knows? If we did know, what would be the fun of it?

Healing be unto you and yours and me and mine

Answer 10

What moves a person to step in front of a moving truck to save the life of someone else?
If man lived by the theory of survival of the fittest, nowhere would we find such acts.
This shows that God created man in His image or with His qualities, and the most dominant is love.

Answer 11

While I do not feel animls and the earth are the properties of man, I do feel that human life has more value to it than an animals life, or better to say in my eyes someone who killed many people like Hitler for example is far worse than the man who works at tyson.