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1. What is a human being? There are a couple obvious answers, I think, as a Christian.
First, I involve a body. Whatever else I am, I have a material component. Some of course would say that a body is all we are.
We are, at the very least, highly complex animals. I hear that my DNA is about 98% the same as the DNA of a chimpanzee (yours too -- it's not just me). It's alarmingly 60% the same as a chicken's -- again, not just me. Yours too.
The behaviorist B. F. Skinner (1904-1990) famously pointed out that humans can be manipulated using the same techniques as you can use to train a dog. [1] "Chocolate?" Sheldon asks Penny on Big Bang Theory as he "conditions" her not to talk when he gives her sweets.
Nevertheless, Skinner assumed that we were only animals. I don't think a Christian should have a problem with a sense that we are animals. [2] It seems undeniable from any objective point of view. The question is whether that is only what we are.
Are we just roadkill waiting to happen? Christianity says a resounding "NO!"
2. There is a second answer that Christians give to this question, and it is more important, I think. Maybe it is more important because it has deep implications for how we treat other people. It is a distinguishing belief -- or at least should be.
That is the belief that humans are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27). I have found that it is very easy to say this. It is much harder to parse its implications. I don't think it should be hard. It just is because a large number of people -- including people who call themselves Christians -- don't want to follow its implications out in society and the world.
There is an "egalitarianism" of sorts that follows from this belief because there are no gradations in the image of God. Egalitarianism in this context means that you and I are equally valuable qua human beings. [3] You are not "more" of the image of God than I am, and I am not "more" of the image of God than you are. It is a statement of "ontology" or "being." That is, it is a statement of who we are.
The Declaration of Indepedence put it in a secular way: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [and women] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." We'll talk about rights (vs. graces or privileges) at another time. The point is that, no matter what an individual human being's instrumental value might be -- our usefulness. All human beings as human beings have intrinsic value.
3. It's worth expanding a little on this point. If you have to choose between saving my life and saving the life of a president, you should save the president. He or she plays an immensely important role in the world. Me? I'm a blogger. The instrumental or useful value of a president is immensely greater than my instrumental value.
When we say that a human being is intrinsically valuable, we are saying that human beings have worth whether they do anything or not. We will get into the details of when human existence begins in a person life and when if ever it ends. But assuming a body is a human being -- a "person," as it were -- that individual has intrinsic value and worth.
This was the great offense to humanity that was Joseph Mengele, who experimented on those who were in the concentration camps of the Nazi regime. He did not consider Jews to be human beings. For that reason, he did not consider it immoral to cause them great pain by experimenting on them. Ironically, his experiments intrinsically assumed that they were of the same species as he was -- he was experimenting on them to learn about the human body, I presume.
4. When we get to the fifth section of this journey, we will pick up this train of thought as we launch a discussion of ethics. Although ethics is bigger than human to human interaction, it is understable that we focus mostly on how we should treat other human beings when we think of ethics.
From a biblical and Christian standpoint, we have a responsibility to give all human beings a certain dignity as bearers of the image of God. The image of God is not conditional. It is a fundamental aspect of human identity. This is why, from a Christian perspective, even a serial killer should be treated with some fundamental dignity -- indeed, the nature of their crime is that they did not treat their victims in that way. To treat them as they treated others is to come down to their level. [4]
We should emphasize again that, as a fundamental value, human dignity is not dependent on what a person does. In the current debates over immigration, human dignity is not dependent on whether a person is "legal" or "illegal." This is true even from a secular, Constitutional perspective -- the Constitution ascribes certain core rights to people regardless of what they have done. And it is even moreso the case from a Christian perspective.
Disregard for the "rights" (or privileges, if you would prefer) of a human being is thus anti-Christian and anti-American.
5. Human value is thus part of our "ontology" -- it is part of who every human being. Even the dead should be treated with respect.
I suppose that there is a sense in which human value is derivative. To speak of the "image" of God suggests that we mirror God. We reflect God. If God did not exist, our value would cease to exist.
However, God's not going anywhere. In fact, God is a necessary Being. All existence is contingent on God's existence. In that sense, the value of all creation is derivative from God.
For this reason, while our value (and existence) is derivative from God, it is "inalienable." We can go ahead and say that it is intrinsic to our ontology. It is part of who we are and cannot be removed or detatched from us.
6. Throughout the centuries, there have been varied perspectives on what the image of God might be. I find almost all the suggestions to capture a truth about who we are as humans.
In Genesis, it is a political image. God rules over the creation; humanity "rules" over the creation. The image of God in Genesis has to do thus with our position or status in relation to the world.
However, theologians have also spoken of the "natural" and "moral" image of God. [5] To use these terms in my own way, we can reason at least analogously to God reasoning. And we can make moral decisions analogously to God making moral judgments.
There is some level of reasoning in a chicken or chimpanzee, but it does not come close to the capacity of an average human being. So Christians believe that God is supreme intelligence. Our ability to think comes nowhere close to God's, but there is a meaningful resemblance all the same.
I would suggest that humans are the only species that makes moral judgments. Perhaps I would almost make this claim by definition, although I hope there is an empirical basis for the claim as well.
To put it another way, killer whales and vicious dogs don't sin even though they can seem quite "mean" from an anthropomorphic perspective. But we are simply ascribing human characteristics to them. [6]
That is to say, we might suggest that humans have a moral image of God that an orangutan does not.
7. I suppose from a non-theist perspective, some of these latter claims might seem disputable. Is human rationality and moral thinking simply a more developed version of the capacities of less complex animals? Perhaps such debates are not outside the bounds of Christian debate as well.
The core point is what seems essential, namely, that all human beings should be given a fundamental dignity and value qua human beings. From a secular standpoint, such value can be seen as part of a social contract -- I agree to assign value to other human beings under the agreement that they will assign such value to me.
Hopefully, we will be able to convince AGI to respect us under some similar agreement. But that's a topic for another time.
[1] B. F. Skinner, The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis (Cambridge, 1938).
[2] Although I seem to remember my mother resisting this idea in some random conversation we had.
[3] I thought I'd work in the Latin qua for fun here. It means "as." We are equally valuable as human beings. What's philosophy without a little Latin here and there?
[4] Many in the modern world -- Christians and non-Christians alike -- take this principle to imply that the death penalty should not be a punishment. The question becomes whether it can be administered humanely, in my opinion, and under what circumstances.
[5] John Wesley's classic treatment of the image of God can be found in his sermon on "The New Birth." Of course, Wesley was largely premodern and didn't interpret biblical texts in context. That doesn't mean, however, that his theology was necessarily wrong at those points. The truth of an inference is not dependent on the strength of one's exegesis (a.k.a. the genetic fallacy).
[6] We have brainstormed the thought experiment in a Science and Scripture class I have taught whether it would make sense to hypothesize that homo sapiens before Adam and Eve did not sin because they were not yet fully "human" in a moral sense. What do you think?
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1.1 What is philosophy?1.2 Is philosophy Christian?
1.3 Unexamined assumptions
1.4 Socrates and the Unexamined Life
2.1 The Structure of Thinking?
2.2 Three Tests for Truth 2.3 Plato and Aristotle
3.1 Faith and Reason
3.2 Arguments for God's Existence
3.3 Suffering and Evil
3.4 Augustine and Aquinas
4.2 Beginnings and Endings
4.3 Free or Fated?
4.4 The Soul
4.5 Existentialism
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