The most inconvenient thing about being an Atheist/Agnostic/Pastafarian is that there's no easy way to tell right from wrong. If you insist of having a sense of morality, you've got to invent one from scratch and then come up with a convincing-sounding justification for it later. Me, I'm partial to the whole 'inalienable rights' thing. Of course, it's all pretty arbitrary when you think about it. Who decides which rights are inalienable? Why do these rights apply to humans, but not to dolphins or sandwiches?
Silly little Nath, I hear you say. Everyone knows that human rights only apply to humans. And, presumably, to other sentient beings we might make contact with some day. So what makes a being sentient? Is it empathy? Evidently not. Curiosity? No. Reason? Creativity? None of the above, I'd say. There are humans that have none of these, and non-humans that have plenty.
When I started writing this, I was hoping to bring these nihilistic ramblings to some neat conclusion supporting the claim that it somehow makes sense for human beings, and only human beings, to have rights. Unfortunately, I cannot logically come to that conclusion – Athe knows I've tried. Young children, people in permanent vegetative states, people with severe mental retardation, and people with sociopathic tendencies may fail one or more of the criteria usually considered prerequisites for sentience. Yet they have inalienable rights, while more intelligent and/or compassionate creatures are slaughtered (cover your eyes) and eaten. Now, I'm no environmentalist, but this sort of thing gets hard to justify objectively.
The bottom line is that humans have rights while jam sandwiches do not simply because humans have more power over their environment. If a race of intelligent alien jam sandwiches were to descend from the skies tomorrow with advanced technology and a craving for toddler meat, our cries for justice and mercy would be no more valid than the squeals of the dolphins in that video.
That is all. I'm no closer to justifying my ideas of morality than I was when I started writing this, and now I feel like a sandwich.
Silly little Nath, I hear you say. Everyone knows that human rights only apply to humans. And, presumably, to other sentient beings we might make contact with some day. So what makes a being sentient? Is it empathy? Evidently not. Curiosity? No. Reason? Creativity? None of the above, I'd say. There are humans that have none of these, and non-humans that have plenty.
When I started writing this, I was hoping to bring these nihilistic ramblings to some neat conclusion supporting the claim that it somehow makes sense for human beings, and only human beings, to have rights. Unfortunately, I cannot logically come to that conclusion – Athe knows I've tried. Young children, people in permanent vegetative states, people with severe mental retardation, and people with sociopathic tendencies may fail one or more of the criteria usually considered prerequisites for sentience. Yet they have inalienable rights, while more intelligent and/or compassionate creatures are slaughtered (cover your eyes) and eaten. Now, I'm no environmentalist, but this sort of thing gets hard to justify objectively.
The bottom line is that humans have rights while jam sandwiches do not simply because humans have more power over their environment. If a race of intelligent alien jam sandwiches were to descend from the skies tomorrow with advanced technology and a craving for toddler meat, our cries for justice and mercy would be no more valid than the squeals of the dolphins in that video.
That is all. I'm no closer to justifying my ideas of morality than I was when I started writing this, and now I feel like a sandwich.
