Rights Are God-Given

Let me start with the straw man that will inevitably come - people will argue against the proposition that God exists, trying to say the statement that "Rights are God-given" is factually untrue. My point here has zero relevance to whether or not God exists - if we all agree God isn't real, my point stands.

We should recognize rights as God-given. Forget whether or not God is real, think for a second about the consequences. Suppose a world where everyone believes in God and that your basic rights, like pursuit of happiness, are God-given. Now conversely suppose a world where everyone says God is not real, and rights are created by man.

In the second case, your rights are violable. They come from man - they can be taken by man. And no one thinks your rights are divinely given, so that barrier to the violation of your rights goes away. It becomes very easy for the majority to violate the rights of the minority, because their rights are not God-given - they are derived from the will of the majority.

Now think back on the first scenario. Everyone believes in God and that your basic rights are derived from God, not man. Are they going to be more or less willing to trample your God-given rights? Less willing.

Again, nothing to do with whether or not God exists - but having a society where basic rights are believed to be God- given means that your rights are "sacred", and less perceptible to being trampled. Someone wishing to object might say God isn't real - that's entirely beside the point, and focusing on that would just show that you have failed to understand the very simple point.

Someone wishing to object might also point to the trampling of rights in our history, like when Europeans came to the Americas. But that case actually just proves my point. Many Europeans believed the natives were not equals, not Possessing God-given rights. Those Europeans trampled the natural rights of natives. But many, especially religious leaders in the Catholic Church, insisted that the natives were people, and that they had God-given rights. Catholic leaders demanded that the natives not be abused, but aided and converted. This is why, except for early on with the well known abuses by Spanish and Portuguese Catholics, Catholics were better able to work with and integrate natives. See French Canada.

So that goes straight to my point - even as an Atheist, living in a world where my rights are believed to be God-given is preferable to where my rights are believed to simply by granted by the whims of the majority.

 

So you prefer self delusion over reality?

 

The idea of rights as granted by God can be side-stepped quite easily by calling them natural rights. Then anybody who disagrees with that is rejecting nature and find themselves in some solipsistic universe that doesn't exist outside of their own imagination.

From my experience, I have yet to even get a stateist to even discuss natural rights. They will absolutely refuse to accept the very concept of natural rights, so naturally this means they reject those rights. That's okay. People choose to give up rights all the time, and stateists have rejected their natural rights.

Just don't let them turn around and act like they do have things like the right to self defense or the right to free speech later on. Pounce on them mercilessly as soon as they even try. Sorry lads, but you gave up those rights.

 

Lol, already jumping to the strawman that I said from the get go would come. Niiiiice!

 

Rights are NOT God-given, because integrated into every religion is the concept of free will and the belief that our choices are not limited by God. Religion does, however, provide a moral compass by which society may make rules to defend rights.

A hermit living completely alone has infinite rights, but rights within society are those freedoms that are not infringements upon others.

Our founding fathers used the "God-given" concept to reinforce their beliefs.

 

The problem here is that if someone doesn't believe in god or your god specifically then those rights don't exist. That would set up a situation like the one you refer to regarding Europeans treatment of native American people.

I would much prefer that our rights are given by laws created by other people. It is good that laws can be changed to reflect societies beliefs. The advancements in human rights have often been fought against be religious people and groups who claim that their god determines law and that we can not change it. Everything from rights for women, prohibition, homosexuals, abortion, etc. have been opposed or, supported in the case of prohibition, by religious groups. Of course that doesn't mean that all religious groups and people were of the same opinion there obviously have been people on both sides using the bible as justification for their beliefs. It does mean that god and religion can be used to limit peoples rights and that doesn't seem any different from what could happen with laws crafted by people.

 

Yes, whether they are from God or considered "natural", the rights listed in our founding documents cannot be taken away by any government. Statism is unacceptable.

 

You are asking if it's better if people consider rights, god given, irregardless of an actual god existing. It's a nonsensical concept. So my question is valid.

 

Do you need a God to be good and virtuous? If so, then... you're not one for this conversation. If not, then your question is irrelevant.

 

The problem with that is that, as you've noticed, it's n

1. No, you clearly misunderstood the example. It was religious leaders that condemned the conquistador actions againdt the natives. I didn't think it had to be said, but the Conquistadors didn't say, "well these people aren't Christian, so we can do wtf we want." "They're not Christian so they have no rights" was never uttered by the Church nor Conquistadors.
2. It sounds like you have a partisan view of history. You'd rather a society of laws (as if that and the OP suggestion were ever in any way mutually exclusive) - you mean like the the laws that were passed in Germany? When you jump to such ridiculous extremes, you give license for the same.
3. It sounds like you're arguing against the proposition "we should be a theocracy run by religious extremists". Can you pinpoint anywhere in the op that suggested anything like that? What I suggested is nothing more extreme than the spirit of law in America's founding documents. You're acting like the Declaration of Independence is a theocratic license to abuse homosexuals etc.

 

Lol, I didn't even ask a question . I made a point. Periods and question marks dude.

And what I'm saying is not a nonsensical concept, it's pure consequentialism.

 

I do find it funny that so many posters recoil at the suggestion I made in the op as if I'm advocating a repressive theocracy. I'm advocating nothing more extreme than the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. In addition, I'm saying that it is better to view such rights as God-given than state-permitted, regardless of the existence of God, because if they are held as state-permitted then rights can just as easily be revoked as they were in the 1930s. And yet we somehow have liberals advocating for the latter...

 

Can a right be "god given," if another human can walk up to a person - shoot them dead, and take all the "god given" rights away in the blink of an eye? I can't think of any "right" that can't be taken away by another person.

 

I like the concept of natural rights, but as you've said, you've yet to meet a statist even discuss the concept of natural rights. I've seen plenty discuss and uphold the concept of God-given rights.

I thought it obvious, but my point here is merely consequential - and I think the concept of God-given rights has been far less susceptible to violations (at the very least, violations by the state) than the concept of natural rights.

 

You're confusing the violation of someone's rights with the abolition of someone's rights.

Example A: a group of people are stripped of their basic rights by the state, and no longer carry the protection of the state.

Example B: some ******* shoots another guy who has rights. ******* is put on trial, convicted, and sentenced to death.


These are not the exact same thing.

Though I can see how you might make that argument to say that rights are not, as a matter of fact, God-given. In which case you're making the exact straw man I predicted people would at the very start of the op.

 

Sure they can. Another government could defeat us and take everything away.

 

Unalienable rights are God-given. Surely the OP will not deny the existence of alienable rights which may be granted or denied, justly or not, by human agencies.

Perhaps you'd like to tell us what exactly Hitler or Stalin did that violated any rights conferred by this Godless "nature" in which you somehow find something beyond the right to eat or be eaten.

They do well not to discuss it with you, in any case, seeing you have no idea what you're talking about.

And just why do you suppose rights not conferred by the Creator may not be abrogated?

 

Violating someone's rights is refusing to extend those rights to them in the future. Terminating a person's rights completely and with finality (such as shooting someone dead) should only be possible to the god that gave those rights - if indeed they are god given.

 

Call them natural rights, or human rights, things intrinsically belonging to the discrete individual the if the idea of God makes you so uncomfortable.

 

I think that the issue of God is more of a Religion/Philosophy thing.

Western Philosophy tells us that a God must exist according to half a dozen classical "proofs". However this God is distant and uninvolved in our lives.

A dozen or more major world religions tell us exactly about God(s) which cannot be verified evidentially or scientifically.

Science is the trial and error process of gathering data and hypothesizing inductively about the data's relationship. It is independent of Philosophy and of Religion.

Ergo you cannot logically, scientifically, or philosophically start with a premise or grand assumption about God(s).

Doing so is a fallacy.

 

You're a statist, so it's useless talking about these things with you.

Sorry, but any idiot would know that these rights can be taken from people. You obviously labor under the delusion that they cannot.

 

Human rights:

1 - the right to die from severe injury, disease, deprivation (air, warmth, water, sleep, food, nutrition, exercise, etc.) or old age.

2 - the right to make the most of your situation whatever it is however good or bad.

3 - suicide.

Has nothing to do with God(s).

 

Pretty much all I'm seeing here are rights that philosophers over the ages have felt and written SHOULD be natural to all - and they are concepts we all have grown up with. But does that really make them god given? I don't think so.

 

You have raised the question of who has the right to kill.

The answer is that anyone who has the power to kill has the right also.

It is a Mother Nature given right.

Society has the right to do something about it after the fact or do nothing at all.

Mother Nature is a b!tch.

 

Might makes right, according to Aristotle.

He taught that to Alexander The Great.