Ted Bundy and Atheism

I just couldn’t resist this quote of serial killer, Ted Bundy, who had confessed to over 30 gruesome murders:

• “Then I learned that all moral judgments are ‘value judgments,’ that all value judgments are subjective [it just depends on how you think about them], and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’…I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable “value judgment that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others?’ Other human beings with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me – after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self.” (Christian Research Journal, Vol 33, No 2, 2010, 32)

Reasonable? It should be to an atheist! Many argue that it’s just our arrogance that makes us think that we’re more important than a pig. Of course, many atheists don’t argue this way. However, they lack an adequate rationale to explain why we are more important than pigs.

Important to whom? As Bundy suggests, to the pig, his own life is more important than ours.
Then to whom are we more important? Well, to us, of course! But why is our judgment any more significant than the pigs’? Some atheists argue that it’s our intelligence that gives us the edge. What arrogance! If I score higher on an IQ test, does that make me more important than you? Of course, not? Well then, how can the atheist answer Bundy’s challenge?