Atheism and the Intrinsic Value of Human Beings

During a Twitter exchange yesterday I brought up the idea that atheists could account for the intrinsic value of human beings in order to counter the idea that only theism could account for our intrinsic value.

The atheist compatible basis for intrinsic human value is fairly simple: The capability to value anything at all is intrinsically valuable.

Since some human beings have the capability to value something, those that do are therefore inherently valuable.

This idea was challenged by an apologist and theologian I happen to respect and interact with fairly often Stephen J. Graham.


Stephen asks: "Why is the ability to value necessary for possessing intrinsic value?" (Emphasis his)

There is a response to this question, though at first I should make an important point.


The question is somewhat malformed, because like any question for the basis of value, or why something has value - you eventually come to a terminus of your explanation to which one can always ask "but why does that give something value?"


This is as true for theistic conceptions of value as it is for atheistic ones. After all, even if theists say that god simply is defined as being valuable, one could ask why we should consider a being like that to be valuable?


So at some point we reach an explanatory ultimate with regard to value.  The best we can do is evaluable whether or not we consider that explanatory ultimate to be sufficient.


My Answer

Convincing Theists to Abandon Theism?

This is intended as a conversation piece in response to a rather interesting blog post by philosophical theologian Stephen J. Graham.

Despite being quite very opposed to Stephens views, I really enjoy interacting with him on Twitter.  Most exchanges we have are very respectful and we seem agree on a variety of topics not related to theism.

His blog post really caught my eye since he tries to answer philosopher Anthony Flew's challenge of asking what it would take to abandon theism.

Stephen's answer is quite candid, pointing out he doesn't really know exactly what it is that grounds his theism but never the less he gives two things which could undermine his Christian beliefs:

1. Showing the concept of god is incoherent.
2. Conclusive historical evidence of Jesus not existing or the resurrection being a hoax.

Stephen also goes on to describe how a traumatic event in his life could make the problem of gratuitous evil more convincing to him personally, which would undermine his belief in god.  There isn't too much I would say in response to that point, so I'd like to focus on the first two.