Rights - god given? inalienable? self-evident? natural? WRONG

It's annoying that every time someone tries to argue government should or should not do A, B & C, many (mostly conservatives) veer the discussion to a debate about RIGHTS. Once this path is taken, the debate becomes muddled in nonsense. The reality is that there is no consensus on what is truly a right, this is nothing more than a belief system.

the below article does a bang up job at dispelling the myth that rights are either god-given, natural, self-evident or inalienable.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-rights.htm

it's a short and very good read for those who want to stimulate their thinking, call it a critical thinking exercise.

In summary, article supports that:

To add to the above, what do god-given rights mean to an atheist? and it's human nature to kill, why isn't this a natural right?

As the article states, rights are nothing more than 'social constructs', determined by us and subject to change/improvement.

As it relates to the declaration of independence and the famous words 'life, liberty and pursuit of happiness', the article correctly points out -

As far as the beliefs that rights are god given, bound by natural law, self-evident or inalienable:

and this:

boy, haven't i run into this in this forum...
now:

this is absolutely true...

Reality is that the idea of what constitutes a right is nothing more than a figment of our imagination, not self-evident, not bound by natural law, not God-given and not inalienable. We, humans, determine what is a right based on what makes the most sense to ensure survival and well-being of society. If one day we determine healthcare is a right, then it is, period.

 

Bears and sharks have the inalienable right to eat people. Other than that, it's a crap shoot.

 

God given rights are all defended by the 2nd amendment...


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what are god given rights to someone that doesn't believe in GOD?

"God-given rights also fail the test of the real world. Unfortunately, rights are not only highly contradictory among the world's religions, but within the same religions over time. This makes it impossible to use religion as a source of rights. In Judeo-Christian cultures, for example, our modern, post-Enlightenment concept of rights is seldom found in the Bible. The story of Abraham leading Israel out of slavery from Egypt has long been celebrated as a triumph of the right to freedom. But the Israelites did not celebrate their freedom by creating a Jeffersonian constitutional republic based on individual rights. Instead, they first created a theocracy, then a monarchy, both of which are dictatorships. And these dictatorships enacted laws that many would decry today as human rights abuses. For example, the Torah permitted parents to kill their children if they disrespected them. Slavery was allowed, if regulated to prevent the more egregious abuses. Even so, it was legal for a master to beat slaves so severely that they could not get up for two days. Male prisoners of war and non-virgin females were often killed, and virgin females taken into sexual slavery. The New Testament offered no improved philosophy of individual rights; indeed, the apostle Paul commanded, "Slaves, obey your masters." The changing nature of religious-based rights precludes them from being used as a guide for rights today."

 

God doesn't give or take or there would be no child molestation in the church

if ones God doesn't protect the little children in his own place of worship..... who would he protect?

 

Someone who doesn't believe in God hasn't thought about it very much.

 

No-one can prove god exists. If you believe in GOD, it doesn't make you smarter than an atheist. There are many things we cannot explain because in a universe that has been in existence billions of years, we have existed for a tiny faction of time. Just because there are many things we don't understand, doesn't mean we can just deduce that there is GOD. We simply do not know and this is a FACT. No-one knows.

 

Rights are derived from morality, so of course they are not objective reality, which the author of that flimsy piece of fluff is attempting to conflate.

i.e. If you have the right to life, then how come you can be killed? Is the right to life an inalienable right? Yeah, well my electric chair says otherwise!

The problem with people who argue along those lines is that by refusing to accept certain rights as "ought", then they themselves give up those rights. It's either you accept these rights as things we can agree to, or we are at war.

Those are natural rights which you give up. You don't have the right to life, the right to personal property, or the right to free speech. You gave up on those by refusing to agree to allow me those same rights. So you can complain when you lose your property, but you're just being hypocritical. Once you refuse to abide by the right to personal property, then you can't go back and claim you made a mistake. That would be like saying I don't have ownership of my car, so you take my car. Then you turn around and say "okay, let's agree to the idea of personal property" after you've stolen my car.

Nope. You gave up on that right for the rest of your life. The right to life? Same thing. Can't kill somebody either by your own hand, or the hand of the state, and then claim a right to life. You gave up on that forever.

For those of you who believe in things like taxation and the power of the state, remember, you gave up on those rights which have been violated, and they are lost to you forever. You refused to abide by common moral values, so you have voluntarily turned your backs forever on living in a civil society.

 

What he alludes to is a very common issue, how many times do we hear conservatives say 'god given' or 'natural right' ? but there truly aren't any god given or natural rights.

there is no god given or natural right to life as much as there is the right to kill. Killing is part of human nature, eliminate the competition. Why don't we have right to kill if it's natural? because we, society, deemed that taking another person's life is not ideal for the well being of society. There really is no natural, god-given, inalienable, self-evident right to life.

It's what the consensus accepts. If the consensus is that access to food, water, procreation and yes, affordable healthcare are rights, then they are rights.

there are no natural rights unless you consider what is human nature and only pick the ones you consider to be moral, omit the rest. This becomes subjective at this point.

what's your point exactly? you are not making any argument here that explains what a right ought to be other than just claiming that when you take a right from someone, you forego that very same right. The key debate is what ought to be a right..

Society has agreed that for the well-being of society, you don't have the 'right' to keep every penny that you make from your labor or from what you produce. The founding fathers and the states that ratified the constitution agreed that a government was needed, a government with checks and balances. We collectively agreed to forgo the right to keep all of the fruits of our labor in order to fund government.

 

You are focusing too much on "God given" as meaning from God.

Think of it as meaning not "given" instead.

 

1: There is no evidence that rights like this even exist.
2: There is no real biblical support that these rights come from God, in fact the God of the old testament formed a genocidal totalitarian theocracy.

 

You first need to prove a god exists, then prove it gave us rights, before you can make this claim.

 

Proof comes with wisdom, I can't grant you wisdom..


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Any Atheist who sounds off that the United States isn't founded on a Christian foundation should read your post. Because you have made the point, that our country was founded on Christian principals.....and it seems it really irritates you. Free-will is a God-Given right---meaning free speech, freedom in choosing and adhering to one's religious beliefs without persecution from government is a Christian principal.

 

That was pretty much the mindset behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And it was almost a consensual position until the right started doing the math, and figured out that the survival and well-being of society wasn't that profitable.

 

Ah yes, the uneducated view of the philosophical understanding of rights. It still amazes me that men, over 200 years ago, were smarter than the new age liberals. If you think enslaving labor to your ideology is progressive then you are no better than any dictator.

 

well put

 

the smartest minds in history haven't been able to agree on a universal list of rights, it has been debated by philosophers for hundreds of years. You are the one that needs to educate yourself.

 

The declaration of human rights ignores natural rights and imposes limits on freedom based on the ideology that natural rights can be oppressed for ideological reasons. No different than any authoritarian regime.

 

The smartest minds in history have already agreed on what natural rights are. The authoritarian minds want to redefine it.

 

Then alrighty then. If that's how you want it, then that's how you will get it.

Fair enough. Do you know why cows don't have any rights? Because they are not consensually agreed to. If they could, they'd kill us just as quickly as we kill them. There is no morality to a cow. It's just beef on the hoof.

Exactamundo! Consensus comes from the word "consensual", which means it is voluntarily agreed to by all parties. Just like if one party agrees to sex but the other party doesn't, then it's not consensual sex, but rather rape.

You're not really good at this, I see. We do pick and choose the ones we want. It has to be consensual, as we have both agreed is the case. Not everything is consensual. It's, as you point out "subjective" rather than intrasubjective.

What "ought" to be a right is what we both agree should be a right.

Now you're getting confused. First you correctly use the word "consensus" and now you're talking about founding fathers and the constitution, which most of us were not, or did not consensually agree to. And what's with this "collective"? I get the feeling you're trying to conflate consensual with collectively.

hint: with rights, you are talking ethics, and that demands linguistic precision.

 

wrong, what a natural right has been hotly debated for hundreds of years. A natural night is a subjective unprovable idea. Natural laws cannot be broken and can be proven, no such is the case with a natural right.

 

God given rights to an atheist are expendable because they are only given by the governing body. The government may try to usurp rights given to man by God, but Godly men and women will overthrow that contingent. It is their duty. Live Free or Die-General John Stark my ancestor.

 

You know what they are in the deepest recesses of your soul. You just insist on denying them.

 

Government can only get in the way and deny our natural rights, so it needs to be limited in scope by a constitution, bill of rights, etc.