3) Everything is Meaningless...?

          Suppose the cynic rebuts by saying that he believes that the value of human life is universal simply by coincidence, and not because there is any real value to human life in any way that refutes his own position.  If asked why this value is universal, the cynic would likely point to the herd instinct.  Thus would he argue that his and others’ value of human life arose out of the fact that man is, by instinct, a social creature, and not because humans are objectively meaningful in any way that refutes his view that everything is meaningless.
          This seems a very poor rebuttal, for any historian will tell you that this sense of value we have in the West for each individual human life is due to the influence of Judeo-Christian values, not the herd instinct.  Yet that is a worldview which boldly asserts that the world is, in fact, profoundly meaningful (unless, of course, God is divorced from it, a fact quite poignantly stated in Ecclesiastes).  Before the rise of Christianity, you’d be hard-pressed to find a culture that really valued human life.  As a for-instance, before Christians condemned it, the Romans (among other things, mind you) practiced pederasty; a practice in which an older Roman man would take a young man under his wing and show him “the ways of the world”.  Sure, he was the boy's teacher.  But he would also sexually abuse him.  The more one studies history, the more one realizes that the herd instinct is quite inadequate when it comes to inspiring men to really value other men.
          Furthermore, what does the herd instinct have to do with innocent men, women and children who were brutally murdered nearly a century ago at the hands of men like Hitler and Stalin?  When last I checked, the herd instinct is nothing more than a way to describe man’s natural inclination to belong to and/or identify with a group.  How could this native drive, of its own accord, synthesize hatred for murderous men that we’ve never even met?  In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the herd instinct cannot, of its own accord, cause sadness at the death even of a very close friend or relative.  For in its most basic form, the herd instinct tells us what we will do.  It forecasts the future.  How, then, can it cause us to mourn the past?
          As a matter of fact, mourning over the past not-so-infrequently results in the herd instinct being inhibited.  We all know of those who became shut-ins after the loss of a loved one.  It would be patently absurd to say that the herd instinct, acting alone, can cause its own inhibition.  Thus the herd instinct cannot adequately explain our sense of sadness at the loss of human life, or, by extension, our sense of value for human life.  The cynic has yet to supply an adequate reason as to why he values human life without conceding that there really is meaning in the world.