I've often found that when I hear this phrase, I can't help but think that there are some negatives to this concept. On the one hand, it would mean that no government has the right to suppress it's people. That the people are protected by laws believed to be higher than the laws of man. Which one would at first see as a good thing. However, I have always had concerns regarding the possibility of the people's disagreement with such creators rights. To me, it appears that there is a major disadvantage to this belief. If the people disagree with a government, it has the possibility of being overthrown. An all powerful creator would be an impossible obstacle in the way of citizen's happiness. Just a thought. I look forward to your thoughts on this subject.
Too many assumptions in the concept. Firstly and obviously, is there a Creator? No-one knows but the lawmakers assumed there is and stated such so the premise is based on a supposition. Secondly the place to look is the concept of the social contract. Suppression of the people by a government would violate the social contract and there is no need to appeal to inalienable rights bestowed by a Creator.
Natural rights are things you can refuse if you want. People do that all the time. It's an individual decision to give everything you own to a stray cat, or give yourself to somebody as a slave. You can go skydiving without a parachute, or try surfing on a great white shark.
To the underlined: How so...you would have to define what makes a person happy...some find happiness in getting away with crime, some find happiness with law, some find happiness in lust, some find happiness in following a set of instructions, some find happiness in loneliness, peer groups, fight club, mayhem, chaos, order, food, drugs, legos, video games, work, suicide, oblivion, worship, etc, etc. And some just accept. Lets see... pros your happy, cons your unhappy. Free will is a motherf#$ker.
Firstly, the actual reference in a real world is NATURE, not the creator. Un-A-Lien-Able means they cannot be taken by law or with law. The concept is that without them, life cannot exist with continuity. That is unconstitutional. The constitution and all of he laws made under it literally exist to protect unalienable rights because they enable life with what it needs. This why the intent of the constitution is derived from the Declaration of Independence.
Yes. Under the assumption that something such as Christianity is true, free will truly is. Thank you for your response to the thread!
There are NO unalienable rights. Any rights we have...were secured by people who risked life and limb. They were not "given"...they were won. It is a terrific sounding phrase...but essentially it is a lie.
Take any religious text and try to find where the deity concerned grants any "individual rights" whatsoever. However what you will find in those texts is the denial of individual rights. For instance the bible opposes freedom of religion, freedom of speech, voting rights, freedom and privacy. Secondly there is no evidence of the existence of a "creator" or any other deity for that matter therefore something that doesn't exist cannot "bestow" anything at all. History tells us that when religions endorsed the "divine right of kings" and crowned monarchs they were depriving people of their rights and sometimes even their right to life by that action. Compare that to We the People requiring our leaders to swear an oath to uphold the Constitution that protects our individual rights. For the POTUS that oath of office is done before the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who represents the Law of the Land. The part about "so help me god" is optional and not actually part of the oath and no bible is required either. When anyone's individual rights are violated the remedy is not to go to a house of worship and pray for those rights to be restored. Instead those rights are restored via the Law of the Land using the courts and the system of justice. In summary We the People granted ourselves those individual rights and formed a government OF the People and FOR the People to uphold those rights. No deities were harmed by our actions and no deities reigned down plagues upon We the People for granting ourselves individual rights either.
Thank you Derideo_Te for your response. It is strange that, for example, those Americans who follow religions in an extremist manner (not all followers of religions are malicious) believe in the First Amendment so strongly, yet support deities that even go so far as to punish humans for "thought crimes". I admit to having far more authoritarian views than most, however I have always known that my ideals are merely my own opinions towards the world I find myself in. A world I have little to no control over. Absolute freedom may not be something I support, but I would not create intelligent beings with a will of their own, only for their refusal to follow my laws, based on the free will I gave them, to end in their infinite torture. For the majority who do support freedom, here is an interesting video. This video is about Christianity in particular, though the same thought can be applied to most religions:
