*quality stuff from Carlin as usual

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by ghark.

*nsfw

This video has been flagged as being Not Suitable For Work - declared nsfw by brycewi19.

This reminds me a lot of a term paper I wrote in college about "the fallacy of the 'value of human life'"...I got an A and we spent two days in class discussing it.

What a sad and cynical outlook on life. If life is not sacred, why is so much fuss made about the taking of it?

Actually, the people who really feel that life is not sacred is the left...they love their abortions! Another thought...the only life that is sacred for the left is the life of those on death row...can't take their life!

I would bet that George would be the first to scream for the sacredness of life if someone held a gun to his head and told him he was about to lose his.

I'll take that bet. How much are we talking?

I always thought of Carlin as a philosopher trapped in a comedians body.

I think he's great; I agree with most of what he says, but I just don't think he's that funny. Witty, intelligent, insightful? Hell yeah. But never tears rolling down my face funny.

Also, my back hurts just looking at his posture

You're conflating sanctity with value in general.

I assume that a sanctified thing would have value, but there are plenty of things people consider to have value that they do not consider holy in any way.

I agree with your point, however I believe he is making the point that life has no value, so we can kill a cow to eat it, or kill a bug because it bugs us.

It's all entertaining comedy but I don't take my philosophies from comedians.

If it's just entertaining comedy, why are you taking such a strong position on it? Unless your own comments are entertaining comedy, for which I would be willing to take your case.

Nah, he's making the point that people are hypocrites. They claim that life is sanctified but they only apply that to a subset of life, and only when it's convenient to them.

Yes, he's making that point. But he also clearly makes the point that there is no such thing as the sanctity of life, that there is no God, etc.

He is not. He is making the point that we made it up. There is a difference. There is no god, we made all that up. Sorry. There is no "sanctity of life" either, its an incoherent phrase that doesnt pass even a shallow honest analysis (as shown in this video)

BUT, and there is a big but, Life is a continuos process, full of degrees and nuances (which, by the way, Carlin makes a point of in the continuation of this clip), and the value of say, a human life, is something that we should estimate on the grounds that we have brains, feelings, relatives, friends and so on.

Saying shit like "Life is Sacred" is both simplistic, hypocritical and complete bullshit. In fact, it is ultimately disrespectful to living creatures whose life should be respected, a point which the ramblings of the anti-abortion team never ceases to illustrate perfectly

Some people believe that life is sacred. Some people will pull their hair out trying to disabuse them of that opinion.

The sacredness of life is subjective, which makes it a useless measure.

A Palestinian mother thinks her son's life is priceless, an Israeli mortar team don't even consider it. An American husband thinks his wife's life is sacred, the terrorist that blows up the plane she is on does not.

Think about the dispassionate way we regard yearly statistics on road fatalities or death due to chronic disease. Do we weep our hearts out for every one of those deaths? Of course not, those lives have no worth to us beyond the abstract "fellow human being". They don't really bother us emotionally because we have almost no care for them.

If life is only subjectively sacred, then it's not really sacred at all...

The people that picket abortion clinics are the same ones that vote down social support mechanisms to promote and enhance people's lives. Life is so sacred that they oppose things that would make the live far more worthwhile living...

I'd say "ironic" but it's not surprising in the least.