This post of mine on LessWrong ought to do the trick. Let's see how it goes this time. I shared it below also. No one can ignore the truth here. I kept the horrifying truth simple, your squishy brains are too gentle to handle the deeper truth! Also I wrote it in the dark while thundering.
Life is only valuable if it fights back
Life is valuable. We are people. We are alive and love living life. There's many animals on Earth. We all deserve to have a life, and enjoy that life. Pain and death are a frowned upon event. Everything else, like iphones, tables, roads etc are not alive and can be recycled. There's no life in them.
Just today I was remembering back to a scientific test I did with my mother. I asked her to follow my finger. Her eyes did. I then asked her if she is doing this or if it is automatic. She replied "of course I am". I then told her the eyes track motion on their own, and you only feel like you are doing the tracking. She didn't believe it. My mom is a rather natural person, so she really believes what first comes to her mind. So, that makes the test rather a good fit. She said the truth. Even I admit I feel like I am doing the eye tracking if I purposely reflect on it in a different light. But I also see how I do it. It's automatic. It can be said however just to note "you do do the tracking" - because after all, you are a system, doing some tracking.
If no one on Earth fought for their lives, everyone could easily die. We as a species have evolved to fight death and pain. We take control of keeping ourselves safe. It is us, who protects our lives.
If you were to try to find a reason why a human is different from a kitchen table, I'm sure you'll come up with many reasons. Humans enjoy food. They hate pain. They want life. They hate death. I have 3 kids. I love sightseeing. I love video games. "Don't end my life", "use the table for your experiment instead". But scientifically, everything is atoms and particles. The real difference, between you and the table, is you fight me back when I approach you to recycle you. Humans fight for life. Tables don't. This is why all evolved species have 'life' in them.
This brings us back to the eye tracking test. Humans think they are in control. But we are automatic. And, you think you are special and deserve to not be recycled, but you are just a machine. - You fight for life, not because you are special, but because you do. It's evolutionary installed in you to fight for life.
In conclusion, we fight for life, and that is what gives value to life. Not because we are special, but because the body literally fights off others to stay alive. This effect, makes humans say "I must be special - I want to live I enjoy life!". An "empirical, unprovable reason". The human reasons that they want life, and so there MUST be a valid reason as to why they deserve to stay alive.
Seeing that, I still have a reason to live and enjoy life. The reason is to fight for it. I love life.