Anthropocentrism ought to be valued above biocentrism

I'm pretty sure neither myself nor the commenters/judges of this debate really need a recap of your initial argument. For sake of clarity I'll place your arguments into quotes and answer each one individually. "Starting off with the first statement u mentioned about that we dictate the human systems and such. Yes i agree entirely thats exactly why our opinions are the only ones that matter and why animals opinions dont. Which is why they are not equivalent to us." Equivalency is irrelevant given that we are only capable of surviving due to them. Cows are made of beef, pigs are made of pork, we eat both these animals, but these animals also naturally create fertiliser with their faeces, it could therefore be argued that without cows or pigs, we would have no agriculture. That means vastly reduced quantities of fruits and vegetables, and if pigs and cows didn't exist, that also means no beef, no pork, no bacon, no leather for clothing, no truffles if you happen to be into that kind of thing, and no milk. Stating that our opinions matter more because we're the only ones that have them is like saying that a man with four fingers is less important than a man with five. "Next we will never destroy nature." Who said anything about destruction? I'm referring to us reaching the point when we can no longer exploit nature for our own ends. "We would be negating Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs which is impossible" Um, ol' Mazzie's system focuses explicitly on human motivation without taking into account the effects of that motivation on the natural world. I fail to see how it's relevant to the so-called destruction of nature. Hell, it's been compared to Zen Buddhism which, if memory serves, teaches that all sentient beings are born with Buddha's virtue, and virtue, according to Wikipedia, is a sense of moral excellence. The peak of morality is to place others before the self. Therefore, I would argue that Mazzie's hippy happy hierarchy is directly contradictory to Anthropocentrism. Assuming you can't negate that hierarchy, as you yourself stated, that means that Anthropocentrism is an impossibility. "We need nature to survive. In doing so we value it without even knowing." The value of something is not dictated by an arbitrary value decided by mankind. Something's value in relevance to human opinion is pretty much arbitrary. The value of something when looking at it from the perspective of everything that isn't human, that is when we see it's true value in reference to this argument. The basis for this entire argument is the contest between perspectives, if you're only going to acknowledge one then your argument is doomed from the start, but I digress. Getting back on point, what value do you suppose gold has to, say, a lemur? How about penicillin or a pilum? None. A Lemur could walk past these things and not realise their significance to us. That lemur could then come across whatever it is lemurs eat and consider it more valuable than the other three combined. A poor person (or any person, really) will see the financial value to gold, a person with an infection will see medical value in penicillin, and a historian will see the historical value of an intact pilum. That does not make these things important to the natural world. It makes them important to humans. What is important is not dictated by how we can use them, what is important is dictated by how we might benefit from them. The current ultimate benefit at the moment would be a renewable series of resources from which we can keep our current standards of living without serious financial loss. "Biocentrism is stating that all forms of life have intrinsic value But we still need to value humans more than anything else" Not to the extent that you're implying. "We have an obligation to ourselves first so crossapply my contention 1 tagline. And the example of the trees. We cut trees for paper. We still need trees though but their are other organisms that give us oxygen. Are u saying there arent? " Don't put words in my mouth. I said our oxygen supply would be vastly diminished. Not gone. "We will never destroy nature to the point where we cannot use it." Once again with the destruction I never spoke about in the first place "Thirdly, yes i do argue that we value humans more than anything else. And animals value themselves more than anything else as well." I take it you've never seen a lioness defend her cubs, then? Gruesome but enlightening. I'll be blunt with this, we are only alive today because of nature. We exist because of it. We can exploit it only so much before that exploitation begins to hurt us. Anthropocentrism will hurt us and hurt us badly in the long run. Biocentrism, by comparison, will at least ensure that we have the resources and the natural aid we need to produce drugs, food and materials. Tell me this, if an elderly relative gave you fifty dollars, would you then demand fifty more? That's us. Nature has given us those fifty dollars, you are saying we should demand fifty more. We don't need it, we're not going to do anything with it, but you want it so you think you should have it. Please don't act as if we're the only ones that matter. And for the love of God almighty, make use of the spellchecker. I've been copy/pasting your spelling of Anthrop Centrism up until now, apparantely both that and Bio Centrism are two words, and that's ignoring all your other little mistakes. They make your arguments look bad and they make you look bad and it takes like five minutes. Seriously. Sources: Maslow's Hierarchy: http://en.wikipedia.org... Buddhism: http://en.wikipedia.org... Virtue: http://en.wikipedia.org...