Is one human life worth more than another?

[sean]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Right off I would immediately remark, "You despise what you've been told about it." The unchurched very often display a depth of ignorance about religion and its manifestations that would scare a bathyscaphe. Where do you find the slogan Ignorance Is Strength again -- and who benefits in strength from that ignorance? Are you sure you'd want them benefiting?

No, not told, churched. I have deep but informed arguments with religion. Of the Christian virtues --faith, hope and charity-- only charity comes anywhere near a virtue in my estimation. Faith and hope are insidious vices.

In their book Should the baby live?, Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer examine the question that frames this thread: "Is one human life worth more than another?". They show how an intuitive answer to this question begs an assertion of the 'sanctity' of life.

This ideologically inspired slight of hand hinges on two separate meanings of the term 'worth'; the first an objective accounting of the value of a life, the second a subjective reality; the quality of a life.

My position is that the quality of a life may sometimes be less than the quality of any life, and that the courage to act on this conclusion by ending a life is inspired by comprehension of (paradoxically) the 'worth' of that life in the first sense. That comprehension goes far beyond cant and dogma.

Sometimes letting a baby die is an act of love. It isn't an easy option, and the suggestion that it might be is a gross insult to those people who have faced such a choice.