I feel the continual need to defend the value of human life simply and merely because it is human. Why? Among other reasons, human exceptionalism is the necessary predicate to universal human rights and equality. If we don’t have objective value, then who matters and who doesn’t depends on who gets to decide which subjective criteria provide which people (or animals) with the highest value.

Too many defenders, in my view, resort to religious assertions in the cause of human worth. That is fine — for co-believers.

But what about others? From my article “More than ‘In God’s Image’,” published today at First Things:

We live in an increasingly secular society. One consequence (among many) of this cultural shift has been an increasing rejection of the once uncontroversial belief that humans reside uniquely at the pinnacle of moral worth.

Activist academics, purveyors of popular culture, and issue ideologues across a wide swath of movements — from bioethics, to animal rights, to environmentalism — seek to knock us off the pedestal.

This attack has already had deadly consequences to the most vulnerable humans, with more in store. One remedy is a defense of the objective value of human life from a non-theistic angle:

A belief in human exceptionalism, on the other hand, does not depend on religious faith. Whether we were created by God, came into being through blind evolution, or were intelligently designed, the importance of human existence can and should be supported by the rational examination of the differences between us and all other known life forms.

After all, what other species in known history has had the wondrous capacities of human beings? What other species has been able to (at least partially) control nature instead of being controlled by it? What other species builds civilizations, records history, creates art, makes music, thinks abstractly, communicates in language, envisions and fabricates machinery, improves life through science and engineering, or explores the deeper truths found in philosophy and religion? What other species has true freedom? Not one.

But it goes beyond that:

Perhaps the most important distinction between the fauna and us is our moral agency. The sow that permits the runt of her litter to starve is not a negligent parent, but a human mother doing the same would be branded a monster. The feline that plays with a fallen baby bird before consuming it is not being sadistic; she is acting like a cat! But any human who tortures an animal is rightly seen as pathological.

The distinction that elevates us beyond all other known life forms is moral in nature. Indeed human exceptionalism is the backbone of Western civilization, an essential to our liberty, prosperity, and rights.

I conclude:

I believe that our morality in the twenty-first century will depend on how we respond to this question: Does every human life have equal and incalculable moral value simply and merely because it is human?

Answer yes, and we have a chance of achieving a truly humane, free, and prosperous society. Answer no, and we are just another animal in the forest. If that is how we define ourselves, it is precisely how we will act.

Or to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: We must all as humans hang together, or we will surely hang separately.

Image credit: Barelyhere (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.