How precious is life?

Answer 1

: Based on immediacyStop breathing as much as you can. You will realize.

: A simple answer

Life is as precious as you make it.

The value depends on what value, you give it.

: Value based on the merits of progress

Life is invaluable.

Consider intelligent life and the meaning, purpose, and value we place on existence. Collectively, humankind comprises the most valuable part of life. In harmony, all plant and animal life support the cycles of living, providing fruit, clean air, and clean waters for us to use. If one wants to surmise that life is insignificant in the vast world or universe, then they can embrace a life defined without value; it's their choice, but it doesn't change the great wealth of knowledge and wisdom we have come to grasp. Within the confines of our intelligence, our understanding, and our observation of all that is or will be -- life presents itself as the most valuable asset in the chaotic universe.

: Value based on intelligence

A question well worth considering, Humans say human life is precious because we are sentient and intelligent and we understand ourselves. However we don't see the life of animals having a great deal of importance because they don't have the same ability to organize as we humans. So the preciousness of life to the majority today depend on your intelligence. Meaning that smart people are more precious then people who are not smart. with a scale moving down to what we humans perceive as the least intelligent or the least precious. I think the preciousness of life depends very much on what you think life is. beauty is to be found every where no mater how lowly it may seem.

: A Christian perspective

An objects value is measured by its uniqueness or rareness and by the skill of its creator e.g. a painting by Rembrandt, or a violin by Stradivarius. Although those items are very valuable because they where made by a master and there are only a few of them available (very rare), yet there are more than one of those items in the world. By that definition each of us are the most valuable objects in the universe because we were created by the most skilled artisan in the universe and because each of us are unique and rare. Each of us has been given a unique set of gifts and abilities, a unique personality, a unique physical appearance, unique fingerprints, DNA, retina pattern, etc. And we are made so wonderfully complex that each one of the trillion cells in our human body has more complexity than the space shuttle. Just one strand of your DNA, if it was stretched out, would be 2 meters long and contain more information than man is able to store on a single computer hard drive.

That is why David writes in Psalms 139:14-16: ""14 I will give thanks to you, For I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. My soul knows that very well. 15 My frame wasn't hidden from you, When I was made in secret, Woven together in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my body. In your book they were all written, The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there were none of them." (Ps 139:14-16 WEB)

Another definition of value is what someone is willing to pay for something. By that definition we are just as valuable because we have not been bought by silver or gold, but by something infinitely more valuable, and that is the precious blood of the very Son of God Jesus. He paid the full price to free us from our destructive natures, to pay the full penalty for our sin, and buy us back or redeem us from satan's grip. Like the Scripture says in 1Corinthians 6:19b-20 "You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." (1Co 6:19-20 WEB) and John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life."

: A second Christian perspective

Life is precious because God created it and people are made in God's image and so have the ability to relate to Him, unlike the animals. The animals life is of course precious as well since they, along with the rest of creation, in all its amazing complexity and diversity give glory to its maker. Only man with his precious life which contains in it free-will chooses to treat His life as if it is not made by God and is not precious and so destroys himself and others.

Ultimately of course, man's life is demonstrated to be so precious that Jesus Christ, God's only Son, went through an agonizing death for each human on this earth, even those who reject Him and hate Him, as well as those who society rejects because they are not rich or clever or have some mental or physical 'defect' which gives the so-called healthy ones an excuse to write them off. To God however every life is precious and special and purposeful.

: Immediacy revisited

You will know how precious life is when you are experiencing near death, you will remember what are the things you did and didn't do. That's the time when you will know how your life is important. We have only one soul and we will grow old as time flies we will not be able to change our age. We can't do things we did when we're old.

When we want to say I love you in that person but its too late that's when will know how we should not waste our life. And take the day for granted.

The preciousness of life can only be judged from an inward point of view. How precious is the life of the son just about to commit suicide to a loving mother and how precious is that same life to him self? How Precious is the life of a fly that you are about to swat how precious is that same life to the fly as it attempts to get out of your way?

: The Buddhist Perspective:

The preciousness of life is based on one's perception. Your perception is your reality. Your consciousness dictates your perception, therefore the mind is our everything in determining and guiding our path through this blissful journey of life.

: Based on pedestrian observations

God seems to love some of us more then others. meaning that some life is more precious then others. That's why there is Heaven and Hell. Animals are life also, the loyalty and sacrifice they put out for men doesn't even rate a mention.

Life is as precious as a child to a mother.

Life is a passing fad you are born you age and you become mulch. the value of life usually relates to your level of comfort consider the lives lost just because you have a taste for steak. or fuel in your car rather then pay more for fuel most of us are quite happy to keep wars constantly raging in the mid east. So life looking at the status quo life is pretty cheap and easily replaced.

: Observations of a naturalist

"Precious" is a term to denote value, hence preciousness is determined not only by the object, but by those that would value it. That said:

To the universe or to God, life is merely a quasistable event, albeit a rare and sophisticated one. Our universe is inconceivably big. According to Michio Kaku "By comparison, if the entire visible universe were as small as a subatomic particle, then the actual universe would be much larger than the visible universe we see around us." And though life is infrequent according to the Drake equations, there are so many viable worlds that the universe should be teeming with it. Hence, even if our universe (rather, one of an eleven-dimensional multiverse by contemporary quantum theory) is of divine origin, we are so small in it, and our footprint so insignificant, that we are vastly more likely to be incidental to a grand purpose, rather than central to it. It is rather anthropocentric of humankind to think otherwise.

We also witness the insignificance of life in our local ecology, in which disease, war and famine destroy individuals and societies, beasts and entire species continuously. Humankind is one of the rare species that gets to enjoy old age with some frequency. Most other creatures perish from predation, if none of the above calamities.

And yet, we are as significant to ourselves as we are insignificant to creation. The survival instinct drives us to continue to exist in all but the rarest of condition, usually when pain or anguish is compellingly insurmountable. Even when we value another's life over our own, it is at a point prior to our cognizance of the imminence of our demise.

Kenneth Feinberg struggled with legal value when having to compensate families of the 9/11 victims. As he put it "The law required that I give more money to the stockbroker, the bond trader and the banker than to the waiter, the policeman, the fireman and the soldier at the Pentagon." And yet he was challenged on this determination by the wife of of one of the heroes, "Mr. Feinberg, my husband was a fireman and died a hero at the World Trade Center. Why are you giving me less money than the banker who represented Enron? Why are you demeaning the memory of my husband?" Feinberg would later be driven by conscience to compensate victims of the Virginia Tech shootings evenly to professor and student, alike.

Foreign relations tends to tell a contradictory story. The Geneva Convention holds nations (and therefore us as individuals) to a grand humanist ideal, in which every soul is valued as equal, and a thing deserving of life, comfort, respect, and opportunity to thrive - And yet in practice, our baser nature gets the better of us; it doesn't matter if we examine third-world nations like Darfur, and the ethnic cleansing that really seems to be about the lack of resources, First world nations like the United States, whose interests in Iraq are, as shown by casualty counts, driven solely by business interests of the elite, or the United Nations, whose representatives have been so easily corrupted by a lack of accountability. Opponents of honoring human rights, be they against consideration of illegal immigrants into the US, or against the preservation of habeas corpus rights of the Guantánamo detainees, invariably fail to hold these groups as equally human as themselves.

: Legal value of casualties

Ask a war casualty's widow or parents what they are paid when a military member is killed. Any insurance agent worth his salt can tell you what the no-fault payout for killing someone in a car accident is. Any industrial risk manager can tell you the cost of loss of life at a construction project. All intangibles aside, this is how valuable a human life is. Society says it isn't much.

The value of a life ranges from a few thousand dollars, or less, for a civilian killed by soldiers in Iraq to a few million dollars for an "important" person killed by misadventure as an insurance claim. Some parts of the world can see a contract put out on someone's life for a few hundred dollars or as part of an evenings entertainment. Society says it depends on who you are and where you are.

: From materialism

Life is worthless. Happiness, sadness and supposed satisfaction with one's life is merely chemicals acting upon ones brain. Dying means nothing. Nothing we do in our lives affects anything. God does not exist. Religion is pointless.

: Introspective

Life is precious as long as you make something of it, whatever that may be. The preservation of life is thus means to an end. To love, to hate, to touch, to rate against others in a grand rat race. For better or worse. Even just to find a goal in life makes a life, although the lack of fulfillment tends to lead to depression.

: The quantity of time

Life is made up of an infinite number of moments [or, approximately 2.5 billion seconds].

Quote: "Whether it be a grain of sand or a rock, in water they sink the same."

Every little thing is important, including the Universe!

: Christianity revisited again

God created life... Therefore life is very precious. Would you spend time making a universe, fish, plants, birds, even the Sun, and people, and everything else in the world, and make it all so that it would work just so forever and ever?! God loves people, and according to him, Life is more precious than a jewel. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God, but we CAN try to spread the word of God and it's wonder. Everyone KNOWS that the world is going down hill... it's just that most people are having fun having sex with a different person every day of the week, or getting drunk every time something doesn't go there way, or doing drugs because it's "Cool". The world is getting worse and worse, there's not much one person can do about it, but if that one person told... lets say 20 people about God and brought them to Christ in their life-time, then those 20 would each bring 20 more to Christ and get them to change their ways... Now would you rather be drunk, sleeping with some one you're not married to, or hi when God comes back to the earth to take back all that are truly Christians? Honestly I'd rather be found reading The Bible, in Church singing praise, or Telling the last person I could about God when he comes. The Bible Psalm 52:2-3 says 'God looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. Everyone has turned away, they have together become corrupt, there is no one who does good. Not even one' So right there is proof that people are sinful, but we can ask forgiveness and become people of God that do good.

Answer 2

Life is precious because none of us can create/ generate life ... only God. Can you create a butterfly, for example?