Atheists: Give me 1 Objective Reason for the Preservation of life?

Question

Give me 1 objective reason for the preservation of life that isn't your OPINION?
- If you can't, then be Hitler was completely justified in killing Jews, and did nothing wrong because: A) He legally had them declared non-humans and B) Had the concensus of the German people that it was OK.

OBJECTIVE vs. SUBJECTIVE:
Objective judgements and claims are assumed to be free from personal considerations, emotional perspectives, etc. Subjective judgements and claims are assumed to be heavily (if not entirely) influenced by such personal considerations.

NOTE: U.S. law is based on inalienable rights embued by the creator, so you can't use LAW, as it is based on the idea that God gave everyone inalienable rights and it would be hypocritical to base your answer on something you don't believe in.

Answer 1

>Atheists: Give me 1 Objective Reason for the Preservation of life?

The life wants to be preserved.

Of course, things get a little more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea.

>Give me 1 objective reason for the preservation of life that isn't your OPINION?

Just because it's my opinion doesn't mean it's not also a fact. Opinions, by my definition, include both beliefs and preferences, and beliefs can of course be facts as well.

>Objective judgements and claims are assumed to be free from personal considerations, emotional perspectives, etc.

More accurately, they are supposed to be free from the personal considerations and emotional perspectives of the person making the judgement. That does not mean that the existence and nature of other people's personal considerations and emotional perspectives must not be taken into account (although by 'taken into account' I don't mean according to what they say, only according to what they are, if you understand my meaning).

>NOTE: U.S. law is based on inalienable rights embued by the creator

Wrong. There is no creator, and even if there were, United States law is not based on what it did (or even what it said, which is a different thing), but on the decisions of the legislative branches of government (i.e., the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Supreme Court, etc). The mere fact that laws are frequently changed in the United States without waiting for a divine message demonstrates that they are not necessarily based on the will of God.

>so you can't use LAW

You are right that I can't use law. One need only look at the countless evil purposes that legislation has been used for (and is still being used for) in history to see that it is not a good basis for morality.

Answer 2

Everything that has to do with "shoulds" and "oughts" is subjective. It's impossible to make an objective claim about such things, as they are within the realm of rhetoric, philosophy, and agreement. The fact that something is subjective doesn't make it wrong or not worthy of discussion.

We as a society--and now I'm talking about humans as a whole, not merely Americans or Germans--have decreed that human life is worth preserving, that killing others is wrong, that we should not allow others to do it. Therefore, Hitler was wrong.

Honestly, it merely takes a modicum of empathy--which is an emotion and therefore subjective, which is not at all a negative thing--to see that killing others is wrong.

Answer 3

The golden rule, already mentioned, is as objective as they come. It is based on logical reasoning: I strive to preserve life, I encourage others to do so, I demand it from society, in the expectation that this protection also will include myself, my children and beloved ones. Laws, and morals, are contracts between individuals or within a society. Negotiating such contracts, keeping them and defending them is a perfectly logical and reasonable behaviour.
Of course, nothing is perfectly objective. As a human being, I have a perspective of a human being, which is subjective in nature. But I am entitled to such a perspective.

Answer 4

I don't need, nor do I want, objective (universal) reasons for anything. I can CHOOSE how to value life (or anything else) and how to act without any objective standard. This is a reasonable and rational approach, and also coincides with profound understanding of atheism.

I don't need or want a holy book or any other alleged supernatural standard to measure or evaluate my thinking, my feelings, my behavior. Instead, I am responsible for developing my own moral compass. And even if you claim otherwise, if you look closely, the same applies to you! (After all, you probably don't support the sort of slavery that the verses in Leviticus supports! At least I hope you don't. So that means you also have a moral compass and are quite willing to make your own value judgements. Now just connect the dots, and you'll see it's possible to be responsible for ALL your actions.)

Answer 5

LOLz
I don't really care that your constitution says that "God gave everyone inalienable rights".
That's just another version of CircularLogic (CL).
You know CL don't you?
The Invisible Sky Critter (ISC) exists cos it says so in bible (Goat Herders' Guide to the Galaxy [GHGG] ) and everything in GHGG is true cos it says it's true in GHGG.

We (in Oz - I'm not too sure about you USians) live in a 'civilised' society which is built on the supposition that if you leave me and my stuff alone I won't touch you or your stuff AND a tribe united is stronger than individuals.

ULTIMATELY nothing matters in the scheme of things if you think of what anything could be like in ten thousand or ten million years.

"OBJECTIVE vs. SUBJECTIVE" is just MentalMasturbation just as the idea of any version of an ISC is.

ISCs were invented to control the peasants and make the scammers rich.
It still works well, doesn't it?
.

Answer 6

Human consciousness has enabled human beings to understand much more about their society than animals can. Yet even animals act in ways which preserve the life of their group. One can look at this in terms of evolution - the only species that will survive are those that make sure their whole group, on which they depend can survive. It is certainly true that the human infant is entirely dependent on its caregivers. We therefore have, hard-wired into us, the basic impetus to preserve the life of our children. Now anyone taking care of a child knows that even in modern society, we need support to achieve this well - there needs to be food, clothes and shelter, and in a 'primitive' culture, this means the whole group taking care of each other.

Humans have a developed consciousness in ways that animals don't. This means that not only do we have our instinctual, hard-wired, drive to protect life, but we can think about ourselves. The notion of treating others as we would like to be treated is very ancient, even if it's been got round in various cultures (include fascist Germany) by nasty little tricks. Almost any human being alive can recognise, from an objective viewpoint, that Hitler's attitude in declaring Jews non-people was sick - as was the attitude of white people in treating black people as sub-human.

The fact that not every human being at all times has had respect for life does not mean that there are not innate and/or objective reasons for preserving the life of others. Your phrasing in your question, addressing it to atheists, suggests that you feel that somehow atheists have to justify a non-religious respect for life, that they wouldn't 'naturally' respect life. I might turn this round and say that if your only reason for respecting life is because your God tells you to, you're a pretty sorry excuse for a human being.

Answer 7

Human society can't work unless humans are willing to protect one another. I can't live in a society and all enjoy all of the benefits of living in a society unless I agree to be part of the social contract that holds the society together.

For the record, Hitler was a Christian. So were the majority of Germans at the time. They used religious justifications for the Holocaust.

The purpose of US law is stated very succinctly in the Preamble to the Constitution. It has nothing to do with God.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Answer 8

It's a biological imperative. If you kill off your own species then you're a biological failure.

Hitler was christian and he thought he had a god-given right to kill people, as did most of the other mass-murderers.

Note. Law is certainly NOT based on inalienable rights imbued by gods. The Magna Carta was rammed into King John, who thought HE had the unalienable right to do as he wished.

You christians DO get these daft ideas.

Answer 9

If you don't preserve the life of your neighbor your other neighbors aren't going to preserve yours.
If Hitler had kept painting and clerking and nothing else he may have lived to a ripe old age with some grandchildren on his knees.

Answer 10

you're right, everyone should just go kill each other that doesn't believe in god. We are animals. We procreate. Instinct. By the way all laws are not formed due to your big sky daddy, there should be separation of church and state