So basically you're saying humans are more important because we're more important to ourselves? Seems like a circular argument.

Life is meaningless anyways. So, pretty much claiming any species to be the most "important" is redundant.

EDIT: I do agree with Jaszoon about how idiotic it is to find humanity to be more important and "superior" than other species. That kind of arrogance gets old after a while.

I don't even think he's saying that humans are most important, just slightly more value is placed on humans over animals is all if given a choice to help an injured dog or an injured male. he would help the male and so would I

I am saying I value humans more than animals because we are capable of comprehension and understanding on a level that animals are not. We are more complex intellectually than they are.

I have no guilt that a cow was killed so I could eat a steak. Animals can only do so much to help humans, and most of it comes in the form of their sacrifice. And like i said, human betterment is what I am most concerned with.

Unless some animals are making insights we don't understand...

The key thing here is that slightly more value is placed on humans by humans. It's not surprising that we'd be more concerned with ourselves, I'm just saying in the grand scheme of things there's nothing that makes humans somehow inherently superior to any other species.

A bit off topic, but... I just noticed how strange the thread's tags are.

Not as bad as the sex and drugs threads

I think it's pre programmed in us to protect our own species perhaps if given the choice, a dog might choose to help it's own kin...

Maybe. Maybe not. We don't really have enough data to say that for sure.

It does raise a question though: If aliens came to earth who were demonstrably more intellectually complex than humans, would you value them more than humans? Given the choice between killing an alien or killing a human, would you kill the human? It seems that you'd have to based on the argument that you're making here.