> To presume that one (or ones species) is the most important thing in the world (or universe) is basically the definition of narcissism

Humans are the most important things in the world. Why? Because I am a human. My family are humans. To me, and likely most people, humans are most important.

If I were an Otter and capable of self reflection I would likely think Otters were the most important things in the world.

Now this absolutely does not mean I don't value Otters. In fact I do. Otters are awesome! Just because I feel humans are the most important thing doesn't preclude me from having compassion to help other creatures. It's simply an order in which you find things important.

You've essentially manufactured a belief here (parent believes humans are most important therefore all others are in the way), projected it onto the parent and then became outraged by it.

> You've essentially manufactured a belief here (parent believes humans are most important therefore all others are in the way), projected it onto the parent and then became outraged by it.

This is the definition of a "straw man".

I said nothing about what the parent believes, i said that there are religious groups that have an ideology i find narcissistic at best.

besides that gp didnt say 'i prefer humans above other animals' dont change what they said to suit your needs; they said:

>the whole point of existence is human flourishing and happiness.

Thats a significantly stronger statement than you allude to

> I said nothing about what the parent believes, i said that there are religious groups that have an ideology i find narcissistic at best.

So you brought up a point that is unrelated to parent's about what people who belong to a religion believe in? I...should that even be in this thread? I don't get it unless you're actually replying to the parent above you.

> Thats a significantly stronger statement than you allude to

It's not though. They didn't say to bulldoze all the things. Why wouldn't humans flourishing and having happiness be a goal to hit? I can't think of a single thing that we do, when we interact with nature, that doesn't affect the environment in at least some fashion. It's all about balances. If you can add a dam, reducing carbon emissions from other power sources, but it displaces animals within X square miles that needs to be understood. It may be very worth it. It may not it.

What I got from your comment was that the parent poster was bad and that you think most people are bad because they find themselves most important.

Im not sure if english is your first language, but my response makes perfect sense to who i replied to, and we are discussing a comment by the grand parent.

> Why wouldn't humans flourishing and having happiness be a goal to hit?

you are /immediately/ softening the language - how do you not see yourself doing this?

now its gone from 'the whole point of existence' to 'should be a goal to hit' I'm not even going to read the rest, because youre flat out being dishonest here.

> Im not sure if english is your first language, but my response makes perfect sense to who i replied to, and we are discussing a comment by the grand parent.

I really don't enjoy the passive aggressive insults here. I provided criticism to your comment because, to me, it sounded wildly off base. If you want to ignore that then that's fine but don't say it makes "perfect sense" when obviously it didn't if we're not on the same page.

> now its gone from 'the whole point of existence' to 'should be a goal to hit' I'm not even going to read the rest, because youre flat out being dishonest here.

The initial language wasn't "hard" in the first place as I already explained. I told you it wasn't as huge as you made it out to be and your response is I'm making it soft...then I guess? In the context of your understanding of it I am but I still think you're making a giant crater out of a little ant hill here.

>The initial language wasn't "hard" in the first place

Right, literally claiming to know the meaning of existence - totally an interpretable statement.

My qualm was never that someone would put humans needs before animals, but that that should be the only consideration made is extreme - that its the very nature of existence to do so is beyond extreme.

Have a good one!

Your responses are all combative and (from my perspective) seemingly off base; meaning I have difficulty parsing your intended meaning from your statements.

He/she's trying to have a discussion and you're trying to win an argument.

>My qualm was never that someone would put humans needs before animals, but that that should be the only consideration made is extreme - that its the very nature of existence to do so is beyond extreme.

If your initial comment had been solely about 'that religion that thinks the world is solely for us and us alone', that would make some kind of sense, but given the following statement(from the same comment) I didn't interpret it that way.

>To presume that one (or ones species) is the most important thing in the world (or universe) is basically the definition of narcissism

^this is the sentence that people were responding to.^

On this point I also agree with other commenters; narcissism is excessive interest in oneself, not in one's species. I don't think it's narcissistic to say your species is more important than any other, especially given the dearth of evidence to back that assertion up(in this case).

I think it's definitely interesting that we as a species have been so successful that members of this species are quite literally advocating for it's demise.

We all have to build up our own framework of morality. If your framework says to save the animals at the expense of humanities advancement that's fine, but you won't have much company and from my perspective you're not a 'better person' for having done so. (I also don't think the people espousing this "humans are evil" narrative would _actually_ save more animals)

Replace "humans" with "white people" in your post, and you'll get a sense of how silly your beliefs seem to me. Not to say my beliefs are more right than yours -- to each his/her own.

Would you kill two black men to save a white man. I wouldn't.

Would you kill two otters to save a human? Yes. Absolutely.

Would you kill two bacteria to save a human? Yes. Absolutely. I would kill a million bacteria to save a human. In fact, we do it all the time.

It's about the lack of consciousness in bacteria, as I would never kill even one mentally deficient adult, even to save the life of a genius.

"Two otters" is a non-issue. What about "all otters" to save a single human being?

If we could do that without hurting a single other human?

Absolutely.

Actually, we did that a few years back with Smallpox.

True, there's a debate if viruses are alive, but I have no doubt we'd do the same if it was a bacteria (and possible to obliterate).

Wiping out a species to save a single life is monstrous and absurd. I hope you're not serious.

I'd personally agree with the view that small, simple life-forms which prey on humanity -- or on other large, complex organisms -- can be destroyed with impunity.

The Green Party's original manifesto rejected this view; their position has some logical consistency, but I don't think that the continued existence of smallpox and rinderpest, or Guinea worms, or mosquitoes (http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html), or Dutch elm disease (which doesn't really harm humans, but elm trees certainly suffer), is worth the suffering and premature death they cause.

So, I guess I could reduce my position to saying that if a species can only exist by causing harm or premature death to something more biologically complex than itself, it shouldn't exist. Do you think that this is reasonable?

I'd add two corollaries: that predation is natural enough that we shouldn't kill all predators; and that a species should only be wiped out if it has to cause this sort of harm in order to live -- if it's parasitic or infectious, or possibly (as with mosquitoes) if it's an extremely serious disease-carrier. And I'm not at all interested in driving mostly-harmless species to extinction for purely economic benefits...

Many would call my answer ("not sure") to the original question monstrous. It's all very subjective. That was my initial point. We all draw the line differently. And no one can claim to be right.

If there is no consequence for humans then I would find it perfectly normal. It isn't monstrous nor absurd.

The consequence is you've destroyed a species and set a precedent and for what? One life?

While human life should be preserved whenever possible, there are situations where you must realize that human life is, from the perspective of our role as planetary stewards, cheap and disposable.

Sacrificing some lab animals, even thousands, to cure some obscure but crippling disease that affects a handful of people could be justified.

Wiping out an entire species to save a single person is atrocious, and completely insane.

If you're prepared to wipe out, say, otters to save one person then what's next? Elephants for another? What if it takes two or three species to save someone else. At what point do you stop?

Like would it be acceptable to kill all non-human life to save a single life? There must be some kind of line.

The "no consequence to humans" part is hugely subjective, but a case could be made that we're worse off than our ancestors because of how many species we've obliterated.

It is highly subjective but of utmost importance. Let's say X species of hamster gives no benefit except diversity and there is plenty of hamster species. And let's say wiping it saves 1 person. You would need to consider if this species brings enough hapiness to human to warrant one death.

What I'm trying to say is (like the parents I believe) that the only thing affecting my judgement is humans qnd what the action does to them.

It's still not worth doing. That precedent of removing a species completely starts the ball rolling.

Shit happens, sometimes people die, and while it's unfortunate, it doesn't give us the license to turn one potential death into the extinction of an entire form of life.

Let's turn this around: What if some powerful alien life form had one of their citizens dying but they realized they could cure that individual by harvesting one planet worth of organisms. Given there's billions and billions of planets with life on them, what's the harm in killing Earth to save one of their own, right?

I dont believe we (or aliens) require license for anything that has a net benefit for us/them. It seems morally acceptable (it would, imo, be morally unacceptable to hold animal life higher than the human's, except if they actually provided more value).

"A single human" isn't a phrase meaning "literally one individual human".

If the OP answers it is anecdotal of course, but I'll point out that there's a whole field of bio-economics that tries to find survey/public answers to these questions for the purpose of making policies. And the result is laws such as the Endangered Species Act which dictates how far society thinks you should go in this direction.

Which moral worldview do you find superior? I presume you have one, because you're making a moral judgement.

All moral worldviews have defects. life isn't a ... geometry problem.

But if it were, the Rhombic Dodecahedron would be the best shape...

Or the sphere....

# theres also atheist folks who believe they answer to nobody and can do whatever feels good.

# I find it a rather disgustingly self centered ideology.

Sweeping generalizations can go both ways and are rarely helpful.

There aren't just two ways to go in this possibility space, I'm quite happy ruling out both of these ideologies.

Atheism is the lack of a religious ideology. It’s strange to assign an ideology to a group of people simply because they reject all religious ideologies.

It takes some doing to be comfortable with null things, whether it's pointers in 'C' or ideologies.

Consider: earth may well be the only habitable planet in our galaxy. In that case its nearer the truth to consider it a gift just for us.

Our brains seek patterns in coincidences. It's evolutionary! We can't stop seeking causal explanations in things that we experience. Nothing is a gift. Life is not fair. Universe doesn't care about us. :)

...but we can care about 'our' planet. That works.

I find the awareness that the Earth is the only place on which humans, let alone modern civilisation, is likely to be able to exist and thrive, to well within the likely timeframe in which we might well eliminate some or all of that capability (say, the next 10, 100, or 1,000 years) makes for far more nuanced consideration.

What humans do to this world in the immediate now will have profound implications to what humans will be able to do anywhere, in any possible future.

Earth being the only habitable planet is incredibly improbable.

We hardly have enough data to say that. In fact we've found nothing remotely similar to Earth in all the thousands of samples we've taken. So if there are any others at all, they number in the dozens?

Estimates say there are ~100 billion planets in the galaxy.

I'm also not sure that In fact we've found nothing remotely similar to Earth in all the thousands of samples we've taken. is reasonable.

Take Proxima b. It orbits the Sun's closest neighbor, is in the habitable zone (doesn't mean it is habitable, necessary but not sufficient) and is roughly earth sized. Sure, we don't know a whole lot more about it, so it is quite likely to not be a nice destination for humans, but it seems to be at least remotely Earth like.

So many, many things can be wrong and make a planet uninhabitable. Earth is probably unique in being - Earthlike. Such a delicate balance.

Okay, but now we've gone from habitable to sufficiently Earth-like to meet an unspoken definition of Earth-like.

No, he really didn't - he said specifically, "So many, many things can be wrong and make a planet uninhabitable".

What if Proxima B has chlorine in its atmosphere? Uninhabitable.

Proxima B is a tidal-locked eyeball planet - what if the equatorial stable zone still shifts enough to not provide a stable environment for life? Uninhabitable.

What if Proxima B encounters too much ionizing radiation? Uninhabitable.

Use your imagination.

You've managed to ignore the sentence in the post that I did reply to. You know, the other one.

You've also apparently not payed much attention to Sure, we don't know a whole lot more about it, so it is quite likely to not be a nice destination for humans, but it seems to be at least remotely Earth like. that I said above (surely my making that statement implies some use of my imagination prior to your suggesting it).

I think we're all on the same page here. Just because something is in a fortuitous orbit, there are still a thousand things that can make it miserable or uninhabitable. Even earth, aeons ago, we would have found uninhabitable. Its very likely we have evolved for exactly the earth we have. To find another anything like it is astronomically unlikely.

This whole thread is quite a bit tangential to the fact that Earth is the only habitat planet we can actually get to, and will remain so baring a significant change in technology. Rockets won't get us elsewhere.

So we might as well look after this planet.

A closer truth might be that life can only happen on a habitable planet so it's not really a coincidence or 'gift', just the way it must be if life is to exist.

Consider that the galaxy is 100,000 light years across so even if there are a couple of other habitable planets out there, we aren't likely to get there for millennia.

Without invoking abuses of either relativity or the rocket equation, current physical understanding more-or-less limits us to long-term 'generation ships'. There is some potential argument about cryogenic freezing/revival, but it may be more accurate to talk about human-descended life forms walking on exoplanets rather than homo sapiens sapiens per se.

Humans may not be the only beings on this planet with agency/ consciousness, whatever you want to call it.

How do you know the planet isnt a gift to them, instead of us?

This argument is flawed. If there's a gift, there must have been a giver, so why don't we ask the giver? Well the Christians already have, and they like the answer they got. Why don't you like it?

Well, im not the one who used the phrase gift, so this isnt the appropriate place to nitpick that.

Other than, 'some other group of humans told me this' what evidence do you have that the earth should be the birthright of humans more than that of any other thing on earth?

It's self-evident to me, but you might suspect I'm biased, being human and all. (Is this the right context in which to assume that everyone on the internet is a dog?) When the martians come to take the planet away from us, I'll volunteer for the Resistance.

A book I read earlier this year really bent my brain when it included characters working against humanity and for an invading alien intelligence. Seeing it in print was enough to convince me that it would totally happen, but I hadn't considered the possibility before.

Except humans are the most important thing in the world. It's not narcissism if it's true.

What's the point of even having a world if there are no humans in it? (Any conscious being, not just humans.)

Animals don't care if they exist, they just do what they were born to do, they don't ponder existence. Neither do plants or rocks.

Humans are the only ones (on this world at least) who actually care, and notice.

Humans being the most important thing in the world by virtue of simply being human strikes me as a tautology and logically problematic. It makes no sense.

I think "species-ism" is both honorable and necessary. I think the opposite is misanthropy and that it's hard to be moderately misanthropic, so one extreme or the other will win out.

In my life, I've fluctuated between moderately misanthropic and moderately speciesist. I don't see the evidence for your slippery slope argument.

"To presume that one (or ones species) is the most important thing in the world (or universe) is basically the definition of narcissism."

Not "one" nor the species, but exclusively for the "believers". Non-believers, heretics & infidels be damned.