Humans, what's our value?

Posted by Suhail on 12-20-2007 in Are humans the most valuable organisms on the planet?

For many of us, we feel as though all humans are created equally but often at times people, in my opinion, have a double standard for the philosophy that it does not apply to anything outside the human race. I take a much broader stance on the philosophy, that humans are not necessarily anything more divine or valuable than any other organism.

I came across this argument while debating with a pro-life advocate, just for the sake of doing so, and my question was, if you're pro-life, why do you feel it's okay to kill animals? And the response was that humans are regarded differently, they are inherently more valuable. This isn't an argument on pro-life, so lets not make it one. Back to the point...

What's your position? What makes humans more valuable just because we have thumbs and better critical thinking skills? Humans are capable of showing the same and sometimes even more emotion for a pet that has passed away. So at least we can't say that we have a striking affinity for our own race more than any other species, that's simply not true. So without the emotional tid bit out of the way, what's so compelling about us that makes us "valuable." We eat, excrete, breathe, have a way of communicating like any other organism. You could argue we're at the top of the food chain and that alone makes us valuable, well I'll tell you what, the dinosaurs were at the top too and they mysteriously fell off the chain, where was natural selection to recognize their value or superiority?