God Given Rights

Which it has, of course.

No it wouldn't, obviously.

 

Are they? Really? Is capital punishment not murder? Is collective bargaining and taxation not theft? Is polygamy not adultery? Is divorce not? Are not some laws better than others? If it is "intrinsic" then why is it so fundamentally different?

 

So which is it? Why do you think it's mutually exclusive and that no other animal expresses a moral compass other than man...when clearly they do?

 

Because that's the truth...

...and that's a lie. You're welcome.

 

Let me just give you some information and I'll just leave it at that.

 

RESPONSE: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." (an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence)

Covered many times in the course of this thread, the only thing I can do is refer you to the many sources that dispense with that erroneous statement you made. That would only be repeating what was established many posts back.

 

And you've proven nothing. For that is not 'God given rights'.
Those rights are endowed be a 'their' Creator. That could be a rock for some people.
And they still need to be granted and protected by the gov't.

 

There is no such thing as god given rights, for a start one must understand the essence of rights. Rights are founded on ethical value judgements, which may be empirical or rational. A right is that which confers legitimacy upon an action or a belief. For example, if one has a right to free speech, the act of speaking freely is given legitimacy. This legitimacy derives from whichever authority conferred the right in question.

one can derive three main principles that govern a system of rights. Firstly, a later right cannot contradict an earlier one (assuming both are granted by the same authority) unless that earlier right has been explicitly repudiated. For example, if a state confers upon its citizens a right to freedom from torture, then it cannot confer a right to torture upon its Secret Service – the earlier right stops the later one having legitimacy.

Secondly, a right can only be conferred on a body by another body of greater authority or by that body itself. For example, a Supreme Being can confer rights on mankind but mankind can also confer rights upon itself. A lower authority cannot confer a right which contradicts a right conferred by a higher authority. For example, a trade union cannot confer a right to strike on its members if the government has conferred a right to freedom from strikes on its citizens. Whilst, as mentioned earlier, rights can be conferred by a body on itself, they cannot be conferred by one body on another of equal authority. For example, Malaysia can confer a right to life on its own citizens but it cannot confer one on those of Myanmar since both Malaysia and Myanmar are nation-states and hence equal in authority. Furthermore, Malaysia and the Philippines cannot together confer rights on Myanmar because, although one group contains two nation-states and the other only one, nevertheless both groups remain equal in authority – having no more or less authority than that possessed by nation-states. A collection of hundreds of bodies can be overruled by one body with greater authority. For example, a Supreme Being could overrule the whole human population, even though He is one and they are billions.

Thirdly, authority can be ceded. For example, the governments of all members of the European Union have ceded their ultimate authority over all social legislation that affects their citizens. Hence, through the Social Chapter, rights may now be legitimately conferred on their citizens by the European Union since, in the area of social legislation, it is now a higher authority than the national governments.

As you OP deals with second of the three principles that govern a system of rights then that is what I shall concentrate on.

Jefferson mentions one possible group of Natural Rights when he says that men “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights”. As mentioned earlier, rights can be conferred by a higher authority on a lower one and so it follows that a Supreme Being may confer rights on humanity or indeed the world and these will be Natural Rights.

Consequently, one must attempt to prove the existence of a Supreme Being because unless He exists or at least has existed, then there is not the slightest possibility of His conferring rights. In the history of philosophy, there have been numerous attempts to prove His existence, usually based on one of three arguments. The first is the argument from design which was stated, and then comprehensively rebutted by Hume in his Dialogues on Natural Religion. The second is the cosmological or causal argument propounded by Aristotle, Maimonides, and Aquinas in Summa Theologica, which asserts the idea of God as the First Cause. Strong criticisms of this argument were levelled by Hume in the Dialogues on Natural Religion and Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason. The third famous argument was the ontological argument offered by Anselm, by Spinoza in Ethics, and by Descartes in Meditations with refutation coming from Gaunilo, Kant, and, ironically, Aquinas. To examine the individual merits of these arguments is beyond the scope of this response. However, the fact remains that very strong, and many would say conclusive, rebuttals have been made of these arguments. Perhaps this is because a Supreme Being does not exist or perhaps it is because comprehension of His nature is beyond the capabilities of human minds. Either way, it seems likely that one cannot prove the existence of a Supreme Being and hence one cannot prove the foundation of divinely ordained Natural Rights.

There are further objections why one cannot accept that Natural Rights have been conferred by a Supreme Being. The most important is the fact that, even supposing one can know for certain of the existence of a Supreme Being, that does not imply that He will have instituted a system of rights. It is the Judaeo-Christian tradition that asserts that God has set down irrefutable commandments and conferred irrefutable rights. The essence, however, of Judaism and Christianity is that one is given free will so that one can choose to obey or disobey God’s laws, based on the strength of one’s faith. If God conclusively revealed his existence, then everyone would obey His laws because they knew God existed rather than believed He did. Hence, it is likely that if a Supreme Being exists approximating to the Judaeo-Christian model, then he will have ensured that His existence cannot be proven by rational arguments so as to preserve the necessity of people making leaps of faith. Therefore, one reaches the conclusion that the Supreme Being conventionally associated with conferring Natural Rights – that is, the Judaeo-Christian ‘God’ – is, if He exists, likely to have arranged it so that one can never be sure He, his authority, or His Natural Rights actually exist.

None of this categorically disproves the existence of a Supreme Being but it makes it unlikely that one can prove the existence of Natural Rights from a theological perspective. It remains very difficult to prove a Supreme Being exists and it remains even more difficult to prove He endowed the universe with Natural Rights.

I think Jeremy Bentham says it best, "Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptable rights, rhetorical nonsense – nonsense upon stilts." and "Right… is the child of law: from real laws come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from laws of nature, fancied and invented by poets, rhetoricians, and dealers in moral and intellectual poisons, come imaginary rights, a bastard brood of monsters."

 

Nature gives no rights to anyone, nature does not consider you any more valuable than the ant beneath your feet .. ALL rights come from man.

 

Strange though how the so called unalienable right to life is regularly violated.

The definition of unalienable is "not subject to being taken away from or given away by the possessor", therefore if the right to life is unalienable it is "not subject to being taken away from" the possessor, and yet it is obvious that this is not the case.

Courts regularly take away the unalienable right to life when ever they issue a death sentence.
Governments take away the unalienable right to life each time they go to war
When a person uses deadly force in self defence they take away the unalienable right of the other person.

So in reality there is no unalienable right to life, it is just a legal right.

According to your post there is no court, no war or no reason at all to take away unalienable rights, and yet it happens everyday.

 

There is no such thing as natural law. firstly you have to understand the nature of rights, rights are ethical and/or moral based judgements, nature, which is where the term natural comes from, has no ethical or moral basis. Nature does not consider it ethically or morally wrong to kill you or any other species on this planet. A right to life does not mean that one will live, it means that one’s life is protected, and that protection comes only from the rights decided by man.

 

You are born with the right to defend your life. Most of what government does is take away your rights in exchange for protections. An example of natural law would be the male child of a woman is her son. No law can change that or need be written. They may be able to take away the childs custody but not the biological fact that it is her son.


Besides were speaking mostly about human nature. Logic.

 

Not always true, now we have artificial insemination etc a woman can carry a fetus to birth and have no biological connection to that child, the DNA of that child can be from two totally different people from the female that carries it, you also have cases of women who have given birth to a child that does not contain her DNA at all even though it was from a "natural" conception, look up chimera twins, and you will find cases such as the woman who required a kidney transplant, naturally they tested her immediate family only to discover that she had no DNA link to her son at all, on further investigation it was discovered that the ova that was fertilized came from her chimera twin .. the ovary the ova came from was from that twin, and before you say this is an isolated case scientists estimate that up to 20% of the worlds population are chimera twins ie they carry and organ etc that genetically is not theirs.

 

and as usual when you are cornered you ask people to prove a negative .. a fallacy.

 

None of the things you have listed are natural rights, they are rights determined by man, in order for them to be natural rights one would have to show that nature has the capability of making ethical and/or moral decisions, can you do that?

 

That is not natural

 

Granted the first example is not, the second however is.

 

We've been playing this game since the first page of this thread. So, here we go again.

The only legitimate reason a court can take away your unalienable Rights is if you jeopardize the unalienable Rights of another. If I have an unalienable Right to Life, but you decide to take it then a problem exists for all of society.

The Declaration of Independence states this:

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

While you have unalienable Rights as envisioned by our forefathers, we have mortal men at the helm, making sure that government helps secure those Rights. When civic rulers are not mindful of the Rights bestowed upon us by a Creator, we expect the same response the founding fathers gave in the Declaration of Independence:

"A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."

A Creator gave each and every one of us unalienable Rights. That is a foundational principle upon which this nation is built. Still, other men can take your Rights. Abel had a Right to Life, but Cain illegally took it and he was punished. Still, Abel had that Right to Life. A Right is not an absolute guarantee. That is why we institute government to secure the Rights.

However, by establishing a government, we do not and cannot forfeit an unalienable Right.

 

All of the above does not answer the question, that if as you claim we all have unalienable right to life, remembering that unalienable means "not subject to being taken away from or given away by the possessor" then no government can take away that right regardless of the circumstances - two wrongs do not equal a right - an unalienable right is an absolutely guaranteed right, that is what unalienable means ie not subject to being taken away from or given away, if you are saying that the state under some circumstances can remove that right then by definition it is not an unalienable right.

Furthermore just because the USA is alleged to have been founded on the principle of unalienable rights, does not change the challenge to the root ideology of those rights whether they were dreamt up a thousand years before or on the day, they are still based ultimately on the assumption of a higher power, be it the Jeudo-Christian God, or any other form of 'Creator', therefore in order to prove the validity of those principles one needs to provide, at the very least, evidence of that higher power regardless of how far down the line we have come. If the philosophers during the Age of Enlightenment based their conclusions of unalienable rights on their assumption of a higher power then the onus lies with them to provide evidence as to the existence of that higher power, failing that it reverts to those who assert what the OP is asserting to provide the evidence, to simply say that it is true because the philosophers during the Age of Enlightenment say it is true is committing various fallacies, including appeals to tradition, appeals to authority and circular reasoning.

 

I've heard your arguments sir and they don't hold water. You don't get to be the ultimate judge. Neither does a majority of people.

Again, America was founded upon Christian principles. It is not an issue of what the Christian can prove; it is what the Christian believes. Some cultures do not believe that killing is wrong (you've probably heard of cannibalism.) America, due to its Christian heritage has a high regard for life. Can either side prove they are right?

The most influential voice for developing our founding culture was John Locke:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/

http://www.americassurvivalguide.com/john-locke.php

You and I can argue what is provable or not, but your objections have been dealt with throughout the course of this thread AND with the aforementioned links. It is what it is. For Christians, they must accept the promises of God:

Proverbs 3 : 1 "My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments:

2 For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee.

3 Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart:

4 So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man.

5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths."

Throughout the Bible man is promised peace, prosperity, and abundance if he will obey God's laws. Our system of jurisprudence was / is based upon God's laws and the Bible. We have been blessed in proportion to the obedience and loyalty that we've demonstrated in that regard. America became the greatest nation in the annals of history while observing the principles extrapolated from the Bible and included in our lives as a nation.

As we divorce ourselves from our Christian heritage, we find ourselves to be a debtor nation ruled by the heathen and occupied by the lowest class of human beings we've ever endured on American soil. No amount of political and philosophical jockeying can change that.

 

Evidence by the fact that I have provided the definition of unalienable they certainly do hold a whole lot of water, and if you conceive that asking questions and making observations is being the "ultimate judge" then you should really look into the mirror first.

That is not the issue being questioned, what is being questioned is the basis of those principles, if those principles are based on nothing more than the assumptions of a higher power existing then they are based on pretty flimsy ground, and history proves your assertion of America having a high regard for life as incorrect (and not just America)

Again this is not the issue, I have no idea why you are trying to evade.

Plainly they have not, or did I miss the comment where the proof of this higher power exists?

I have no interest in a book that's sole purpose is to control others.

Great, now all you have to do is show that what the bible promises is actually there .. please do so.

I have no interest in your rant, it is irrelevant to the topic.

 

Pride is a deadly sin, which made the fall of satan. Exceptionalism is pride, God didn't teach us that.

 

God bless America is because of 7 million Jewish people here. According to your logic, the chosen people Jewish shoud be more entitled to exceptionalism. The Zionists look down on the rest of us, does it justify it just because they are chosen people?

 

Okay then, you prove God exists.

 

There is no 'Creator'. Some people need to get a grip on reality instead of leaning on the crutch of superstition!