What Makes Human Life Intrinsically Valuable?

Human life is a special phenomenon in the universe. All the experiences of love, truth, joy, victory, glory, and reality in general have been experienced to its extreme depth by humanity and the human experience is all we know.

There are a lot of things that make human life valuable, and many ways to measure that value. There are different opinions and different perspectives on the issues, and I debate with some of my friends as to whether intrinsic worth is legitimate. 

From my perspective, what gives a person intrinsic worth comes from their individuality and the unique identity of each person, but it goes deeper than that. It's not just individuality and uniqueness that makes people priceless and infinitely valuable. My main foundation of why I think human life is sacred comes from our sentience and our awareness. 

The philosophy I am about to explain is complex, but if understood it gives a different clarity to anyone reading this why it is so egregious and atrocious to harm or kill someone. As sentient, aware beings, our minds are like a platform for reality. Our awareness bears hosts to our worlds and pretty much the whole universe. Each individual person, regardless of their intelligence level, skillset, or any physical or mental trait is a host mind for all of existence. 

Some people may know more than others, but it still remains true that every single one of us is a host or platform for reality and our particular vantage point of the universe. Another term is "we are worlds within the world." 

To terminate a human life is essentially wiping out an entire universe, because you are wiping out someone's awareness of it. This makes harming or killing people extremely terrible. An unnacceptable and unthinkable atrocity. 

Who has the right to wipe out a universe?

This truth in particular gives human life intrinsic, infinite worth. That's how I see it anyway. As a result, it also makes slavery and oppression impossible, unjustifiable things, let alone genocide and murder.

There is a verse repeated in both the Quran and the Talmud that reinforces this line of thinking. The Talmudic version is "Why was man created alone? Is it not true that the creator could have created the whole of humanity? But man was created alone to teach you that whoever kills one life kills the world entire, and whoever saves one life saves the world entire."

While the Quran version states something similar: 

"That is why We ordained for the Children of Israel that whoever takes a life—unless as a punishment for murder or mischief in the land—it will be as if they killed all of humanity; and whoever saves a life, it will be as if they saved all of humanity." Quran 5:32

These verses show that this line of thinking I'm doing in this post is thousands of years old, but quite profound nonetheless. The depth and meaning of this concept they present has profound social and ethical utility and applications if a person just takes the time to think about it.

Such an outlook, for me, makes me see harming a person as if I were to harm the whole universe, because each person is pretty much their own universe, and if the universe is infinite, then to harm a person is to harm something infinite.

Another favorite quote of mine touches on the hot to the touch topic of suicide, but it also helps illustrate this point. G. K. Chesterton wrote a quote saying "The man who kills a man kills a man.The man who kills himself kills all men.As far as he is concerned, he wipes out the world."

He makes a good point that follows in the same spirit of the Talmud and Quran quote, but if you do "kill just a man" you are still wiping out an entire world.

This, for me, forms the core of my view as to why human life is intrinsically, infinitely valuable. Priceless.