I think if an alien came from space and could pick on lifeform to take away with them, they are more likely to pick a human than any other type of animal. Human’s are unique in their ability to think and reason and I think this is an objective measure of human value.
On a more practical level, humans are more valuable because we kick ass and evolution demands that we value humans over gophers.
Evolution doesn’t “demand” anything. If you really want to talk about kicking evoluationary ass, do we value sharks because they have been around for 450 million years (predating the dinosaurs), in their modern forms for about 100 million years, can live to be 100 years old, and unquestionably are at the apex of their food chain? Evolution should DEMAND that we do, if we’re anthropomorphizing here, on the basis of their time-tested success as a species, far eclipsing anything humans can boast of. But we clearly don’t, so I think we can discount this idea entirely if that’s OK.
food chain. HAH.
Try telling that to a shark…
How is this objective? You’re coming from a human viewpoint, and all your metrics are based on the values that are important to humans. What if aliens saw human activity and said, “these guys are fucking dumb. They are poisoning the same water that they need to live!” From that standpoint, humans don’t seem so intelligent, and seem incapable of the kind of simple reasoning needed to sustain themselves. Sure, they make nice buildings and send satellites into space, but they can’t be bothered to preserve the basic things they need to live. That doesn’t seem so smart.
Yeah we can make sharks extinct in a decade if we wanted to. Every species values itself over others.
Yeah but we’re smarter than anything else on the planet. That and we have souls.
I assume you’re agreeing with my point here, which is that evolution doesn’t demand anything, because humans cannot compare their success as a species on the planet to that of the sharks for sheer longevity, yet they could be gone and the planet would roll on. The same goes for humans. Intelligence is not a measure of evolutionary success. Only the ability to reproduce successfully over a long period of time is, and humans haven’t been around long enough to prove any such thing. Sharks have. The fact that we could wipe them out in a decade does not erase their hundreds of millions of years of proven success, or make us more successful. It just proves that we are more destructive. There are bacteria that could mutate and wipe humans out in a decade too-- are they superior to us as a result?
Also, not everyone believes in souls, so that argument isn’t going to hold water at all in a debate of facts.