Respect for Life

I will be starting my argument with several points to directly contend against what I assume to be PRO's premise: All life should be respected. My opponent presents a compelling case against the notion of both apathy (giving no concern to the destruction of non-human life forms) and human superiority. It is comprised mainly from the following bases: 1. The man-made environment under which man lives is 'fake' and therefore inferior to that developed by other life forms. I will quote my opponent : -We might have progressed scientifically or in making our life superficially more comfortable, bringing more conveniences to us, but we have only bound ourselves in the artificial world we created for ourselves, whether in small settlements, or big cities. Far from nature, from the true beauty of life -My opponent says that the 'artificial world' we've created is both far from nature, and that nature is true beauty. The basic assumption : everything manmade is inferior to everything not manmade (the true beauty of nature). I find this very unfair. What makes man inferior to non-man? Unless my opponent can prove that man is inferior (meaning not better nor equal to), I cannot see a reason why the creation of man is not as natural or as beautiful (maybe even more so) as the creation of, for example, bees. Bees create their own living environments, the beehive, and they are automatically considered natural (and therefore beautiful). When man makes something, it is automatically marked as 'artificial' or 'superficial' (and therefore not beautiful). Is this fair? NO! I argue: Is man not a part of nature? Despite my opponent's closing statement: - each life form is as good as any other -I cannot help but feel that a more adequate summary of my opponent's philosophy is : "Each life form is as good as any other except for the human one. " 2. If all other life forms were to be removed, humanity would not be able to survive. - if the variety of life-forms we ignore were to go, our basic survival will be doubtful -What my opponent indicates here is true. Our survival would be less than doubtful. It'd be impossible. Everything we consume are products of other living organisms (Our food and our Oxygen is largely generated by living photosynthetic units : plants). If these living organisms were to disappear forever, man (and all other plant-consuming life-form) would not survive. This is however, beside the point. The logic runs thus:2a. survival is important2b. the existence of other life forms sustain our survivaltherefore2c. it is imperative that we conserve and respect the existence of other life forms. This logic however, fails on its first point. The significance of survival is completely subjective. My philosophy runs thus : nothing is important. Any significance assigned to any object or objective only holds value to the assigner. Let me explain it this way. If all life were to die, what objective loss to the universe would we be able to observe? The fact is, there are none. Any argumentative support for life can only be subjective because life is not necessary. Even if we were to run this logic assuming 2a is correct, we would find that the respect endorsed in 2c plays no part. Conservation? Yes. Respect? Doesn't really matter as long as conservation is implicated. Since the topic of this debate is based on respect, my opponent's argument, although it complements nicely a plea for conservation, does not really call for respect. For the PRO side to secure victory, it must establish the following:1. conservation and respect are objectively relevant 2. life is necessary3. nature is true beauty, and that man is indeed not a part of nature (recall my beehive analogy) Without further ado, I pass the argument over to PRO.