You hear it all the time. People saying things like "life is sacred" or talking about "the sanctity of life." Nowadays, this phrase is most closely associated with the heated debate surrounding abortion. I was, until recently, still trying to figure out where exactly I stood on that debate. When discussing it on social media (you know, the best place to hold a nuanced conversation), I was told, or more screamed at, that I cannot reconcile abortion with the sanctity of life. This angry person did have a point - if life is sacred, and that fetus is possibly alive, then it could be construed as murder. So I did what this man asked, but he probably wouldn't be happy with the outcome.
Turns out it's very easy to reconcile abortion and the sanctity of life when you realize that the sanctity of life does not exist. I mean, it does exist, but only as a concept. For life to be inherently sacred, to be imbued with some sort of something in that way implies the existence of a God, and as long as I don't believe in God, I can't believe that life is inherently sacred.
Additionally, if human life is sacred, why not all of the other types of life on Earth? We kill cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, goats, mosquitos, ants, cockroaches, many different types of plants, and billions of bacteria every day, and I have yet to hear anyone argue that these beings are also sacred. People like to think that humans are above other creatures on this planet, but humans, as remarkable as we are, are still just as animal as any other. So, if life is actually sacred, it only applies to a certain amount of creatures, including humans and any pets that we decide for whatever reason that we don't want to slaughter and eat.
This begs the question: where did the concept of 'sanctity of life' come from? The answer, as far as I can tell, is that we made it up. Human life doesn't actually have any intrinsic value, but there is a legitimate reason for making people believe that it does. I'm no biologist, but I think it is apparent to everyone that any creature, humans included, has a vested interest in staying alive for as long as it can.
If you tell everyone that human life is sacred, and then people live by this concept, the probability of you being killed goes down drastically. It was a useful concept at one point, but society has evolved to a point, with our laws and taboos against killing, that the concept has outlived its usefulness. It's much like religion in this way; without it, civilization would be almost impossible, but now that we have civilization and it has reached a point of law and order, it can fly away like at the end of Mary Poppins. Besides, just because life isn't sacred doesn't mean you're going to go out and kill people. The concept of 'treat others how you want to be treated' still exists, and murdering takes a lot of work regardless.
In the end, humans are no different than any other species that has ever lived. There's no divine spark inside of us. We're just a bunch of highly-evolved apes who got so evolved that we put ourselves on a pedestal above the rest of nature, when in reality, we are no more sacred than that steak you ate for dinner last night.
