Is the right to LIFE an inherent right?

God doesn't think so. He takes everybody's life by the time they are 75 or 80 years old, no matter how people complain about their rights being stepped on.

 

If I separate YOU from your life, YOU will cease to exist.

How does that not support the claim that your life is an inherent quality and attribute of YOU?

Is there some other explanation you can offer?

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What about the other Poll question, Bump?

Do you have an inherent right to defend yourself?

 

I can claim that everything is subjective and that nothing exists in the absolute sense.

In fact I just did.

Wow, that sure took a lot of pressure off.

Ignorance may be blissful after all.

 

Astute

Well, I agree that my life is an inherent attribute of my life. But the issue if whether there is an inherent right to life, not whether it is an inherent attribute of life.

Explanation of what? I've already explained how it cannot possibly be you have an "inherent" right to life. Because you simply don't. You will die, one way or another.

 

No wonder you want to dismiss the semantics, Irie.

It is the fact that your life is an inherent "quality and attribute" of your being... that makes it YOURS.

OMG.

Let me ask this....

Do you have ANY "inherent qualities or attributes" at all?

Does anything have any inherent qualities or attributes - in your opinion?

Or is it your claim - that there is no such thing as an "inherent" quality or attribute?

 

Semantics, but so what?

OMG. Can you just address how we can have possibly be you have an "inherent" right -- "a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute" -- to life, when there is nothing permanent or inseparable about your life?

Of course not. An inherent quality of a hydrogen atom is that it has a single proton and single electron.

 

I'm not much of a believer in "rights", inherent or not. I don't even believe in the right to self-defense. Even if you had not been formally granted that right, you'd defend yourself anyway, correct?

 

Semantics, but so what?

OMG. This thread is not about inherent qualities or attributes. Quit trying to change the subject. It is about whether there is an inherent right to life. Can you just address how we can have possibly be you have an "inherent" right -- "a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute" -- to life, when there is nothing permanent or inseparable about your life?

If you want to concede the obvious point that there is no such "inherent" right we can move on to inherent qualities if you want.

Of course not. An inherent quality of a hydrogen atom is that it has a single proton and single electron.

 

We aren´t talking about the question, if life is inherent, but if the right of life is. I probably agree with the conclusion, that you can´t say, life doesn´t exist in a person as "a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute". (Even this is questionable, because a person exists only as long as it lives, so you have a circular argument right there.)

But theoretically, the right of life can definitely be "a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute" of a person, because the term "person" just covers the timespan between the birth and death of someone. So only because of the fact, that everyone has to die, you can´t conclude, that the right of life is not inherent in the sense of the above-named definition.

Yes, I haven´t answered yet, but will do so now. To make a long story short: In my opinion, the right to self defense isn´t inherent as well, because of the idea, that rights as a manmade construct can only be given by human beings and don´t appear out of nowhere. As far as you wonder where it then comes from: It differs from country to country. In Continental states, the right to self defense comes from written codes of law, in common law countries like the US it probably comes from judicial precedents. But always, a certain act by humans of attributing is the basis for the right to emerge.

 

There we go.

 

Yeah, but that atom can be fused to the point that it is no longer a hydrogen atom, correct?

 

Since a person can die at any time, then you've defined away a "inherent right to life" as being meaningless by saying it only applies while they are alive.

I have an inherent right to life. Until I'm dead by whatever cause.

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Then it is no longer a hydrogen atom. I never said a hydrogen atom had an inherent right to be a hydrogen atom. ; )

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Glad we got that straightened out!

 

Okay... let's take it slow

So, - at least semantically speaking - you have an inherent right to your life.

True?

Or do you claim to not even "own" your own life in a semantic sense?

 

Absolutely false. I have no "permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute" right to life. Someone could shoot me tomorrow.

 

Do you have an inherent right to anything, Irie?

Speech?

Religion?

Freedom?

Property?

Anything at all?

 

I found this quote and I would like to get everyone who voted "no" - in this poll - to comment on it.

"life is an inherent capacity that an organism posses to maintain and reproduce itself. most of the ideas on the origin of life fall in to either of the following four theories...:" ~ Gaddget's Science

 

That is precisely the context in which I would argue we have an 'inherent right to our lives.'

I can't imagine how you can hold that view and draw any other conclusion.

 

I dont think inherent right to life means people have to be immortal, lol, that is an absurd interpretation that ignores what is usualy meant by the phrase "inherent right". Regardless if it exists or not.

 

This is certainly an eye opener, some people actually believe that because there is such a thing as death, that means there's no inherent right to live. Death is not the outright nullification or cancellation of life, though. As there must be life first before there can be death, otherwise would be the nothing of nothingness. Virtually everything in civilization follows the experience of life, the great circle is the primordial example. Hell, even the astrophysics like to think in terms of the life cycle of stars and galaxies in the cosmos, their theories of nebulae of interstellar nurseries where stars are born, and they grow, into red giants, then what? Do we rely on their expertise knowing they've absolutely no experience being a star, merely projecting the human experience upon the points of light in the sky in some fanciful scientific poetry? Who wants to go tell the Sun it has no inherent right to life since it will eventually go super-nova in a billion years anyways? I'd like to see somebody try.

 

No.

The Mayor is explaining what the term "right to life" really means. It means murder is not allowed.

 

YES...

A "murder is not allowed" is based upon WHAT conclusion - if it is not that the person who doesn't want to be murdered - has a RIGHT to their life?

 

Is a chair a man? See what happens when you play semantics?

I guess chairs have rights.

 

How is this an argument for objective morality?

 

Your problem is that you insist on using the misleading language of "rights". Rights have no more existence than ideas.

Start by throwing out the concept of "rights", take the following axiom instead:

People are not property, however, each person owns his own body.

Hence, they cannot be owned by others.

People lacking owernship of property cannot damage that property. Hence one cannot damage the body of another without permission.

Thus one cannot commit murder.

 

There are no rights.

Morality is an absolute. Violence is moral only in self-defense, for example, or in the defense of the weak from agression, for example, people attempting to stop the slaughter of babies by killing abortionists are answering a higher moral absolute that the incubator seeking to relieve her body of an unborn baby by murdering it.