[bishop]

Quote by: ish As humans become more plentiful, does the value of the individual diminish? When there were fewer of us, individual contributions to society were of greater significance and more noticeable. An individual could make a difference in their community, in the world.

if you went back even further, you'd find centuries of time rife with slavery and serfdom - where the individual's value was akin to livestock's value. when wars were fought, did anyone give a damn about all of the innocents who would be killed in the process? nope. i'd argue that the value of the individual has never been as highly valued as it is today.

Quote by: ish Can the increase in violent crimes be attributed to more people placing less value on human life? Is war becoming more acceptable because the value of the individual soldier has decreased?

violent crime has been a near constant imo... sure, the rates fluctuate, but there's always crime - attributable to all sorts of causes from poverty to poor family life. as for war.... the media censors it, removing most of the "dirtiness" of war. the way we fight war is like playing a video game (occupation and nation building are different from war imo). and, you have a society that is heavily motivated by fear-based emotion, and seemingly allergic to rational thinking before acting.

Quote by: ish Finally, does Christianity, along with similar religions, contribute to the devaluation of individuals by portraying humans as essentially evil?

i took a bunch of religious courses during my undergrad, and came to understand that islam has traditionally been able to give even the poorest of the poor a sense of dignity. (this came from evangelical, atheist and jewish/israeli professors in point of fact.) christianity's portrayal of human worth has certainly changed over time. i see a lot of similarities between today's fundies and the puritans - who seemed to think of humanity as a wretched and damnable race.

whether/not religion promotes humanity's worth seems to be dependent on whether/not you're religious... i doubt atheists see religion being of any benefit - and the true believers probably feel the opposite (i remember bush sr. saying that atheists shouldn't even be allowed to be u.s. citizens).