How does an atheist value human life? This is a question that has perplexed me, both as a believer and, long ago, as an atheist. I am here defining human life to be the life that inhabits our mortal bodies, our "biological life."

It seems to me that an atheist manages to both diminsh the objective value of life and to exaggerate its comparative value. What I mean to say is that an atheist becomes more obsessed with the benefits of biological life (ie, physical pleasures, money, etc.) while diminishing the very value of that life.

A metaphor might better illustrate this point:

Imagine a small village, half of this village works as farmers and the other half works collecting water. The group of farmers then decides that they no longer "believe" in water and declare the only things worth producing are their crops. They have assigned all of their value to those crops, which now encompass their entire world. But without water for irrigation, those crops will wither and never grow to their full potential. They have made their crops their world, but have denied those crops the water needed to grow and be fruitful.

I think that the atheist is much like this. The deny the spiritual aspect of humanity and make the biological the total sum. Believers, however, think that humanity is composed of two parts: the spiritual and the biological. They believe that the combined value of those two parts is far greater than simply the biological. In fact, it is the spiritual that elevates the biological.

Our Earthly existence and bodies are all the more important and valuable because they are also temples for a drop of the divine. That tiny drop of divinity, of spiritual essence, is what allows us to rise above simple animals to become something altogether different and amazing. However, since we accept the existence of something beyond our mortal bodies, we know that our biological life is not the total sum. Though we know that our biological being is so much more than simply a sack of electric connectors and chemical receivers, we also know that it is but an atom within a drop of the sea that is God.

This is why religious people, despite believing that there is life after death and that biological life is just a grain of sand in our existence, are so passionately pro-life and why atheists are so easily pro-choice. We value that life so much higher, since we know it is touched by the divine, while an atheist would believe that they are simply ending a series of chemical reactions.