If there is no God, where do our inalienable rights come from?

[cosmosdan]

I started listening to Glenn Beck's speech today and noticed he was on Fox in a discussion group. A room full of college kids they are discussing our government with a lot about our founders. His guest David Barton of Wallbuilders (http://www.wallbuilders.com/ABTOverview.asp) makes this claim about the Declaration. He mentions 5 points two of which that
1 there is a creator and
2 that's the source of our inalienable rights.


the discussion they are having has a lot to do America returning to it's religious roots. They associate the Bill of Rights to the original Declaration that there is a creator that grants us these rights. They claim the New Testament is a big source for the concepts and there is no mention of Deism or The Enlightenment. Barton quotes something from Jefferson about the foundation holding up these rights and claims that's a reference to God.
Glenn looks into the camera and asks the question in the thread title. From reviews of Glenn's speech and this discussion I think what we'll see is him stressing religion, not just worship but organized religion and a return to church in order to return our country to it's foundational roots. So,

As we become more and more diverse , where do we find the foundation of our rights. In mankind's history and ongoing quest for human rights, or is there something else. I have no problem with people believing their personal is God but inferring that there is no foundation without god belief bothers me.
So, without God, where do our foundational beliefs, the inalienable rights mentioned in our Declaration , come from?

[Zsofia]

The social contract.

[Lobohan]

I started listening to Glenn Beck's speech today and noticed he was on Fox in a discussion group. A room full of college kids they are discussing our government with a lot about our founders. His guest David Barton of Wallbuilders (http://www.wallbuilders.com/ABTOverview.asp) makes this claim about the Declaration. He mentions 5 points two of which that
1 there is a creator and
2 that's the source of our inalienable rights.


the discussion they are having has a lot to do America returning to it's religious roots. They associate the Bill of Rights to the original Declaration that there is a creator that grants us these rights. They claim the New Testament is a big source for the concepts and there is no mention of Deism or The Enlightenment. Barton quotes something from Jefferson about the foundation holding up these rights and claims that's a reference to God.
Glenn looks into the camera and asks the question in the thread title. From reviews of Glenn's speech and this discussion I think what we'll see is him stressing religion, not just worship but organized religion and a return to church in order to return our country to it's foundational roots. So,

As we become more and more diverse , where do we find the foundation of our rights. In mankind's history and ongoing quest for human rights, or is there something else. I have no problem with people believing their personal is God but inferring that there is no foundation without god belief bothers me.
So, without God, where do our foundational beliefs, the inalienable rights mentioned in our Declaration , come from?Those rights seem plenty alienable to me. There are lots of places where people are denied them. Blacks were denied them here for over a century. Gays lack some rights now.

To the extent they exist, they come from an agreement we have to live according to them.

[TriPolar]

Ourselves

[Der Trihs]

The same place they do if there IS a God? Why would there being a god or gods make rights any more or less inalienable?

As for where they come from IMHO; the collective good and desires of humanity. Pretty much everyone wants free speech for themselves, after all. Just like older laws against things like theft and murder; no one wants to be robbed or murdered, so the obviously fair thing to do is outlaw such behavior for everyone.

[John Mace]

It's "unalienable", not "inalienable", if you're quoting the DoI.

There is no such thing as an "unalienable right". Every right we have was voted on in some way shape or form, or could be voted out of existence through the political process. We like to maintain the polite fiction that it isn't so, but it is.

[Der Trihs]

Those rights seem plenty alienable to me. There are lots of places where people are denied them.
If they can't be denied then they aren't rights in the first place but laws of physics.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

There is no nexus between the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. The DOI is legally irrelevant, so the question is meaningless. The Constitution doesn't say our rights come from a "Creator." It says they come from "we the people." Next question.

[GHO57]

The social contract.

/thread

Asked and answered.

[John Mace]

There is no nexus between the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.
No legal nexus.

The DOI is legally irrelevant, so the question is meaningless. The Constitution doesn't say our rights come from a "Creator." It says they come from "we the people." Next question.
Not really. The constitution comes from "we the people", but it's unclear where the writers think rights come from. Thomas Paine, who certainly had his share of influence on the writers, would absolutely disagree that rights are ultimately derived from the constitution itself.

[cosmosdan]

There is no nexus between the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. The DOI is legally irrelevant, so the question is meaningless. The Constitution doesn't say our rights come from a "Creator." It says they come from "we the people." Next question.

THAt's kinda what I was looking for. Why would you say historically there is no nexus between the DoI and the Constitution? Where are folks like BArton going wrong in insisting on some connection?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

There is no nexus between the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.
No legal nexus.
No other nexus either.
The DOI is legally irrelevant, so the question is meaningless. The Constitution doesn't say our rights come from a "Creator." It says they come from "we the people." Next question.
Not really. The constitution comes from "we the people", but it's unclear where the writers think rights come from. Thomas Paine, who certainly had his share of influence on the writers, would certainly disagree that rights are ultimately derived from the constitution itself.
Then Thomas Paine would be wrong. The Consitution makes it clear that only the people can decided what their rights are ging to be. The Consitution does not say that any right is "unaliable," and certainly does not say that they come from a sky fairy.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

There is no nexus between the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. The DOI is legally irrelevant, so the question is meaningless. The Constitution doesn't say our rights come from a "Creator." It says they come from "we the people." Next question.

THAt's kinda what I was looking for. Why would you say historically there is no nexus between the DoI and the Constitution?
Because the DOI established no law and no rights. It is of no legal significance. Where are folks like BArton going wrong in insisting on some connection?
They are wrong in presuming there is any connection whatsoever. There is none. They had completely different functions. The DOI was not intended to establish any official government positions on the law or the rights of the people. It was also not ratified or voted on by the people.

[cosmosdan]

There is no nexus between the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.
No legal nexus.

The DOI is legally irrelevant, so the question is meaningless. The Constitution doesn't say our rights come from a "Creator." It says they come from "we the people." Next question.
Not really. The constitution comes from "we the people", but it's unclear where the writers think rights come from. Thomas Paine, who certainly had his share of influence on the writers, would absolutely disagree that rights are ultimately derived from the constitution itself.

What did Paine think? Beck And Barton spoke of him as having a distaste for organized religion but still being a believer.

[John Mace]

No legal nexus.
No other nexus either.
Here we go again...

Nexus means "connection", as I'm sure you know. Since there are several common signers of both documents, there is a considerable connection.


Not really. The constitution comes from "we the people", but it's unclear where the writers think rights come from. Thomas Paine, who certainly had his share of influence on the writers, would certainly disagree that rights are ultimately derived from the constitution itself.
Then Thomas Paine would be wrong. The Consitution makes it clear that only the people can decided what their rights are ging to be. The Consitution does not say that any right is "unaliable," and certainly does not say that they come from a sky fairy.
Well, I agree with you, but I was talking about the Founders. Since you are quoting their words in support of your argument, it is of little matter what you or I think. But I'm open to changing your mind. Can you point to the part of the constitution where it says that only the people can decide what their rights are going to be?

ETA: I'll have to remember this the next time the SCOTUS finds a new right that we possess.

[John Mace]

[What did Paine think?

From Wikipedia:

Human rights originate in Nature, thus, rights cannot be granted via political charter, because that implies that rights are legally revocable, hence, would be privileges

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Can you point to the part of the constitution where it says that only the people can decide what their rights are going to be?
It says it in the parts where it enumerates how the Constitution can be amended. It does not say that any other entity has the power to alter rights but the people themselves. It also doesn't say that any right can't be changed by the people. We could repeal the entire Bill of Rights if we wanted to.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Thomas Paine's opinion is legally irrelevant, not to mention factually wrong, since the Constitution does give the people the power to revoke rights if enough of them want to do it.

[John Mace]

Can you point to the part of the constitution where it says that only the people can decide what their rights are going to be?
It says it in the parts where it enumerates how the Constitution can be amended. It does not say that any other entity how the power to ater rights but the people themselves. It also doesn't say that any right can't be changed by the people. We could repeal the entire Bill of Rights if we wanted to.

That's not the same thing. It also explicitly says that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." In that case, the people retain rights that are not listed in the constitution, no matter how many amendments are made. Where do these other rights come from, according to the constitution (not according to what you or I think)?

Please keep in mind that you and I are 100% in agreement on this issue. But that doesn't mean that either of us is in agreement with what the Founders thought when they wrote the constitution.

[John Mace]

Thomas Paine's opinion is legally irrelevant, not to mention factually wrong, since the Constitution does give the people the power to revoke rights if enough of them want to do it.

I only qoute Paine because he is known to have been influential on many of the Founders. I'm not talking about what is legally relevant, but what those Founders were thinking as they wrote the constitution.

Also, I believe the OP is asking a very general question, and that it is a much bigger question than what is or is not contained in the US Constitution.

[TriPolar]

That's not the same thing. It also explicitly says that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." In that case, the people retain rights that are not listed in the constitution, no matter how many amendments are made. Where do these other rights come from, according to the constitution (not according to what you or I think)?



You said it yourself, 'the people retain rights'. Where does it say those rights came from somewhere else?

[John Mace]

That's not the same thing. It also explicitly says that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." In that case, the people retain rights that are not listed in the constitution, no matter how many amendments are made. Where do these other rights come from, according to the constitution (not according to what you or I think)?



You said it yourself, 'the people retain rights'. Where does it say those rights came from somewhere else?

I make a distinction between what my beliefs are wrt "rights" and what the Founders beliefs were (and, by extension, what the constitution says).

Now, we might claim that the constitution is open to however we choose to interpret it, but I'm not making that claim. I'm just saying that the constitution does not say that the people are the sole source of determining rights. How could it, when it explicitly says that we retain rights that are not listed in the constitution?

[TriPolar]

I make a distinction between what my beliefs are wrt "rights" and what the Founders beliefs were (and, by extension, what the constitution says).

Now, we might claim that the constitution is open to however we choose to interpret it, but I'm not making that claim. I'm just saying that the constitution does not say that the people are the sole source of determining rights. How could it, when it explicitly says that we retain rights that are not listed in the constitution?

Leaving interpretation aside, you don't know what the Founder's beliefs were. You have some indications of what they were from their writings, but that doesn't matter either. What counts is what they wrote in the Consitution.

On the matter of the source of rights, the Constitution does say that people are the source of some rights, and it doesn't say that there is another source of any rights, or that there isn't. If you can prove the existence of such a source, that's just fine. But I've never seen evidence of our rights coming from anywhere but the people.

[LilShieste]

Why would God be a requirement for our inalienable rights? I guess I could understand if Moses brought a tablet of "rights" down from the mountain, but he didn't. I don't even think rights are mentioned anywhere in the Bible, for that matter. (Perhaps they're implied by the general "don't be a dick" rule, though.)

I agree with the other posters that have said society/social contract. Our rights are nothing more than boundaries that have been placed between people and other people (and government, etc.). Different societies are going to have different boundaries, and thus different rights.

I'm sure our society identifies certain rights that other societies think are completely ridiculous - and vice-versa. Since societies often can't agree on what even constitutes an individual right, the only thing that makes it inalienable is our own belief this it is inalienable.

[Ají de Gallina]

The social contract.

Doesn't this put Rights (capital R ones) in the say level a zoning laws and smoking bans?

Those rights seem plenty alienable to me. There are lots of places where people are denied them. Blacks were denied them here for over a century. Gays lack some rights now.

To the extent they exist, they come from an agreement we have to live according to them.

Rights are unalienable if they are to be something more that agreements. What other people do is deny you the right to excercise the rights.

The same place they do if there IS a God? Why would there being a god or gods make rights any more or less inalienable?

As for where they come from IMHO; the collective good and desires of humanity. Pretty much everyone wants free speech for themselves, after all. Just like older laws against things like theft and murder; no one wants to be robbed or murdered, so the obviously fair thing to do is outlaw such behavior for everyone.

Does it mean that Rights are no more special than getting a driver's license?


I make a distinction between what my beliefs are wrt "rights" and what the Founders beliefs were (and, by extension, what the constitution says).

Now, we might claim that the constitution is open to however we choose to interpret it, but I'm not making that claim. I'm just saying that the constitution does not say that the people are the sole source of determining rights. How could it, when it explicitly says that we retain rights that are not listed in the constitution?

It seems to me that Right can come from sources outside of human control if those not-in-the-constitution rights exist. Leaving aside the question of God's reality or even God's granting rights, saying that right come from social sources exclusively means that slaves factually did not have the same rights as free people and therefore theur condition wasn't an offense to humanity.

[Don123]

I started listening to Glenn Beck's speech today and noticed he was on Fox in a discussion group. A room full of college kids they are discussing our government with a lot about our founders. His guest David Barton of Wallbuilders (http://www.wallbuilders.com/ABTOverview.asp) makes this claim about the Declaration. He mentions 5 points two of which that
1 there is a creator and
2 that's the source of our inalienable rights.


the discussion they are having has a lot to do America returning to it's religious roots. They associate the Bill of Rights to the original Declaration that there is a creator that grants us these rights. They claim the New Testament is a big source for the concepts and there is no mention of Deism or The Enlightenment. Barton quotes something from Jefferson about the foundation holding up these rights and claims that's a reference to God.
Glenn looks into the camera and asks the question in the thread title. From reviews of Glenn's speech and this discussion I think what we'll see is him stressing religion, not just worship but organized religion and a return to church in order to return our country to it's foundational roots. So,

As we become more and more diverse , where do we find the foundation of our rights. In mankind's history and ongoing quest for human rights, or is there something else. I have no problem with people believing their personal is God but inferring that there is no foundation without god belief bothers me.
So, without God, where do our foundational beliefs, the inalienable rights mentioned in our Declaration , come from?Those rights seem plenty alienable to me. There are lots of places where people are denied them. Blacks were denied them here for over a century. Gays lack some rights now.

To the extent they exist, they come from an agreement we have to live according to them.



Gee golly whiz, you had to bring in the blacks. YOU do know it is racism to separate one race from the other by a descriptive title. YOU racist!

Ha ha, and you “all” blame me for being a racist? Ha ha ha ha; ALL you folks are so funny.


You can make me giggle for a half hour.


As to the point, if god does not exist where do our rights come from?—UUUDUAH--- let me think about it. I know, man created god so our rights come from man—that took all of 30 seconds to write, and prove--- as God only speaks and writes in Kilingon. HA



Don

[John Mace]

To understand the idea of Natural Rightrs, one need only look at the DoI. Philosophers like Locke and Paine believed that there were certain "unalienable rights" that derive from Nature and that legitimize the overthrowing of a government when they are violated. Hence, the DoI and the American Revolution.

So, we may try and put down on paper what we think our rights are, but if we (ie, the government) go too far and violate Natural Rights, then the people are justified in taking up armed resistance against the government. Locke thought these rights were Life, Liberty, and Property. These rights supersede the Social Contract.

Me, I don't buy the whole natural rights thingy, except in as much as we all have some idea in our head of what it would take to rise up against the government. But there is no objective way of determining what those rights are. You pretty much have to be religious to believe that there are some essential rights that exist outside our own ability to agree on what those rights are-- that is, our willingness to either vote on them or give that authority to someone else.

[Lobohan]

Those rights seem plenty alienable to me. There are lots of places where people are denied them. Blacks were denied them here for over a century. Gays lack some rights now.

To the extent they exist, they come from an agreement we have to live according to them.



Gee golly whiz, you had to bring in the blacks. YOU do know it is racism to separate one race from the other by a descriptive title. YOU racist!I don't think you have a strong understanding of what we're talking about. Why not read the thread again?

Ha ha, and you “all” blame me for being a racist? Ha ha ha ha; ALL you folks are so funny.I don't even know who you are. Are you the Austrian Economics fanboy?

You can make me giggle for a half hour.I'm charming and clever. I could have you laughing all day. :D

As to the point, if god does not exist where do our rights come from?—UUUDUAH--- let me think about it. I know, man created god so our rights come from man—that took all of 30 seconds to write, and prove--- as God only speaks and writes in Kilingon. HA
DonI think we agree. But you aren't communicating very well, so I'm not sure.

[John Mace]

Leaving interpretation aside, you don't know what the Founder's beliefs were. You have some indications of what they were from their writings, but that doesn't matter either. What counts is what they wrote in the Consitution.
True. But I contend that the constitution does not say where rights originate from, so we have to look outside that document to find what the Founders thought.

On the matter of the source of rights, the Constitution does say that people are the source of some rights...
No, it doesn't. It says that the people are the source of the Constitution. That's not the same thing.


...and it doesn't say that there is another source of any rights, or that there isn't. If you can prove the existence of such a source, that's just fine. But I've never seen evidence of our rights coming from anywhere but the people.
The constitution was meant to be a document that restricts what the government can do. It was not supposed to be a list of rights that we have, and it explicitly says that. The Founders were quite clear about that.

You have to get inside the mind of someone pre-Darwin. The Founders couldn't have conceived of us being just another species of mammal that evolved from other life forms, and that all of that went back to the Big Bang. And that everything we do is simply a social construct. They would have believed in some Prime Mover or some Natural Order of things-- some essential truth that existed apart from our own existence.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

It's irrelevant what the founders thought. It's only relevant what they wrote in the Constitution, and what they wrote in the Constitution was that rights reside entirely with the people. They can establish them, change them or repeal them as they see fit. "Rights" are, after all, only a legal construction and nothing else.

[DSeid]

Another angle at the premise of the op.

Rights, like God(s), are things that are accepted axiomatically. Or more to the point: they are the axioms, the postulates, that secular societies (and societies of diverse religious beliefs) are based on.

Questioning from whence they derive makes as much and as little sense as questioning who created God (or the gods). Assuming you believe they exist, they just are.

[Tamerlane]

Doesn't this put Rights (capital R ones) in the say level a zoning laws and smoking bans?


Does it mean that Rights are no more special than getting a driver's license?

In a very general sense, yes.

People want to believe in "capital R Rights", for much the same reason they want to believe in a deity. It brings a bit of philosophical comfort and design to human minds, that for whatever reason appear "designed" to seek out and create patterns and linkages in the world around us ( at trait that is no doubt highly adaptive from an evolutionary POV ).

But it is all smoke and mirrors. God/s do not exist and neither do unalieanable rights. IMHO :).

ETA: To be clear obviously a "right not to be murdered" is a vastly more powerful cultural icon than the "right to smoke in bars." But in the end the only difference is in degree, not kind.

[Susanann]

He mentions 5 points two of which that
1 there is a creator and
2 that's the source of our inalienable rights.

So, without God, where do our foundational beliefs, the inalienable rights mentioned in our Declaration , come from?


Unalienable rights are given to us by God the Creator.

Hypothetically speaking, if there were no God, then there would be no such thing as unalienable rights.

[Tamerlane]

Unalienable rights are given to us by God the Creator.

Hypothetically speaking, if there were no God, then there would be no such thing as unalienable rights.

Exactly :p!

[Bill Door]

Rights aren't something that are given or granted. If some entity can grant it, it's not a right, but a privilege. Rights are something that can't be taken away.

[Susanann]

We could repeal the entire Bill of Rights if we wanted to.

It would not change a thing.

Repealing the Bill of Rights will not make any difference, and will not take away unalienable rights.

Our unalienable rights endowed to us by our Creator, we would still have them whether you repealed a million laws or amended the Constitution every other day from now till the Second Coming.

The Bill of Rights does not "create" any unalienable rights, the Bill of Rights is supposed to "protect" our unalienable rights -which we already naturally had.

For example, the Second Amendment did not "give" Americans the right to keep and bear arms, and it did not give us Americans the right, and the means, of self-defense. Americans had the unalienable right to bear arms, and we had the unalienable right of self defense long before the Second Amendment was invented.

[Der Trihs]

He mentions 5 points two of which that
1 there is a creator and
2 that's the source of our inalienable rights.

So, without God, where do our foundational beliefs, the inalienable rights mentioned in our Declaration , come from?Unalienable rights are given to us by God the Creator.

Hypothetically speaking, if there were no God, then there would be no such thing as unalienable rights.
If there WAS a god or gods, they'd be no more "unalienable" due to being decreed by one. On the contrary; if anything having them handed down by a god or anyone else with no justification makes them more arbitrary and baseless, not less. God's existence is simply irrelevant to the question of rights.

[LilShieste]

Unalienable rights are given to us by God the Creator.
According to who?

It all comes back to people.

[Der Trihs]

Unalienable rights are given to us by God the Creator.
According to who?
And why should we care? "God said so" isn't a good enough reason to hold a position on anything, including rights. Even if he was real.

[Don123]

Look here your Darwin worshipers.

Human rights came with the evolution of man for about a million plus years. Human Rights are not the problem, nor there definition if you more than a cranberry brain, but humans that suppress rights to one another is a great problem; it all depends on how you want to draw your lines...

You have the right to piss? Oh WELL, not if you are a black or a Muslim. You cannot piss anywhere, so you have to hold it unto your death. Ha ha ha.

If you are white in civilized society you can only piss in designated holes. See what I mean? Rights are not a problem but the suppression of rights is.

OK let’s hang on to this thought and talk about USA land use laws—does a squeal go by human made land use laws? NO, but they are animals, and have rights so they can piss on your food---or YOU eat the squeal for dinner, Unless another human suppresses your rights.

Mohammad (630 AD) had the right to rape Aisha at age nine, as NO one was strong enough to protest, nor to stop it, not even Aisha. NOW USA tort law, USA common law, Western criminal law—(Christian laws from old times and the fathers desire before that), YOU rape a child your life will be trashed if not taken.

You can clearly see rights “are not a problem” but the suppression of rights are.

So how do you draw your lines where one right is suppressed and another is granted---in the Human world?

You cannot determine this until you have an objective in mind on how you want human society to be.


YES--- YOU KNOW YES is right. So YOU being a human what are your objectives? Go for it and spell it out as you do not know what your rights are until you have an objective—and if you are a good writer, with good examples the management on this board will do all it can to suppress your rights to talk—ha ha ha.


Don

[Susanann]

Rights aren't something that are given or granted. If some entity can grant it, it's not a right, but a privilege. Rights are something that can't be taken away.

Correct.

Unalienable rights endowed by the Creator/God are as simple as 1, 2, 3.

For example:
1. A free American has a right to his own life. That right to life is given to each American by God.

2. Since an American has a right to his own life, it then logically follows that he must also have the inherent right to protect his own life - i.e., the right of self-defense.

3. The Founding Fathers could clearly see that if citizens had the rights to their own individual lives, and if citizens must also be free to protect themselves, then naturally it necessitates that individual citizens MUST have the means to protect themselves - ergo: citizens MUST have the Right to Bear Arms.
================================================================================

(If the individual means of self defense(guns) could be denied by some other foreign government, then it would mean that the government could prevent those people from defending themselves and it would then mean that those people were not free and did not have a right to their own lives. It is typical among other countries that slaves and other peoples with less or with little freedom are prohibited from owning guns by their governments since un-free peoples are subject to the goverment )

[John Mace]

It's irrelevant what the founders thought. It's only relevant what they wrote in the Constitution, and what they wrote in the Constitution was that rights reside entirely with the people. They can establish them, change them or repeal them as they see fit. "Rights" are, after all, only a legal construction and nothing else.
Let's get back to the original point of disagreement-- your statement that:

The Constitution doesn't say our rights come from a "Creator." It says they come from "we the people."
That is simply not correct. The constitution is silent on the source of our rights.

"We the people" created the constitution, and the constitution is meant to secure rights from encroachment by the government, but those rights existed, in the abstract, before the constitution existed. That is how that document is constructed.

The Founders didn't sit around and say: OK, let's make a list of all the rights we have. They assumed that we retained all rights, unless we decided to give up some of those rights to the government. The BoR is explicitly a partial list of our rights. It doesn't create rights. It recognizes that those rights already exist.

Again, that's not my own philosophy. I'm just not willing to project that philosophy onto a document that was not written with that philosophy in mind.

So, unless you can point me to the part of the constitution that says the people are the source of rights, it's simply incorrect to claim that it does.

[Guinastasia]

What the hell was that?


ETA: I mean Don123's uh, "post".

[John Mace]

Rights aren't something that are given or granted. If some entity can grant it, it's not a right, but a privilege. Rights are something that can't be taken away.

Yes and no. It depends on whether you accept the concept of Legal Rights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rights) vs Natural rights.

Many philosophers and political scientists make a distinction between natural rights and legal rights.

Legal rights (sometimes also called civil rights or statutory rights) are rights that are conveyed by a particular polity, codified into legal statutes by some form of legislature (or unenumerated but implied from enumerated rights). That is, legal rights are those rights which exist under the rules of some particular legal system.

I'm on the side that says there are only Legal Rights. I don't believe in things "in the abstract".

[John Mace]

What the hell was that?


ETA: I mean Don123's uh, "post".

Well, he has the "right" to post nonsense, no? :)

[Lobohan]

Rights aren't something that are given or granted. If some entity can grant it, it's not a right, but a privilege. Rights are something that can't be taken away.

Correct.

For example: A free American has a right to his own life. That right to life is given to each American by God. Since an American has a right to his own life, it then logically follows that he must also have the inherent right to protect his own life - i.e., the right of self-defense.

The Founding Fathers could clearly see that if citizens had the rights to their own individual lives, and if citizens must also be free to protect themselves, then naturally it necessitates that individual citizens MUST have the means to protect themselves - ergo: citizens MUST have the Right to Bear Arms.

(If the individual means of self defense(guns) could be denied by a government, then it would mean that the government could prevent people from defending themselves and it would then mean that those people were not free and did not have a right to their own lives. It is typical among other countries that slaves and other peoples with less or with little freedom are prohibited from owning guns by their governments since un-free peoples are subject to the goverment )Just because you say something doesn't make it so. God no more grants American rights than he grants winning lottery numbers.

The very idea is illogical, why doesn't God grant American rights to people in the Middle East? Are we his chosen people? Silly, as I say and it doesn't stand up to a second of actual reasoned thinking.

If society says you have the right to defend yourself you do. If we lived in some sort of pacifist commune where there was no right to self-defense, you wouldn't have one. You could complain about how we should (in Pacifist-Topia) have the right to self-defense, but that doesn't mean it's inherent. It means that society says it's not.

Any jerk with a two by four can remove your "right" to life. It's only kept in place because society conditions people to respect them and punishes, to the best of its ability, transgressors.

[DSeid]

Rights aren't something that are given or granted. If some entity can grant it, it's not a right, but a privilege. Rights are something that can't be taken away.At least unalienable rights anyway. That's what the phrase means.

"A straight line segment can be drawn joining any two points."

You can't prove it. You don't need to evoke God to justify its existence. It is just accepted as true.

Take Euclid's postulates and a whole belief system follows. Take the human rights that we accept axiomatically and a different sort of belief system, and with it a certain sort of society, follows.

[Susanann]

Unalienable rights are given to us by God the Creator.
According to who?



According to America.

It is a truism.

It is self-evident.

"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."

[Der Trihs]

Rights aren't something that are given or granted. If some entity can grant it, it's not a right, but a privilege. Rights are something that can't be taken away.

Correct.

Unalienable rights endowed by the Creator/God are as simple as 1, 2, 3.

For example:
1. A free American has a right to his own life. That right to life is given to each American by God.

2. Since an American has a right to his own life, it then logically follows that he must also have the inherent right to protect his own life - i.e., the right of self-defense.

3. The Founding Fathers could clearly see that if citizens had the rights to their own individual lives, and if citizens must also be free to protect themselves, then naturally it necessitates that individual citizens MUST have the means to protect themselves - ergo: citizens MUST have the Right to Bear Arms.
================================================================================

(If the individual means of self defense(guns) could be denied by some other foreign government, then it would mean that the government could prevent those people from defending themselves and it would then mean that those people were not free and did not have a right to their own lives. It is typical among other countries that slaves and other peoples with less or with little freedom are prohibited from owning guns by their governments since un-free peoples are subject to the goverment )
Nonsense. First, there is no God; and even if there was he's dead silent. He isn't in a position to give anyone anything. And second, having a god (and which god?) hand down rights does not make them unalienable, since he could just decree them invalid the next day or declare an entirely different set of "rights". And third, gun ownership doesn't make people safer, nor does it prevent tyranny. Gun ownership was legal and common under Saddam Hussein or in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Your claim is wrong on all levels.

[John Mace]

That's not the same thing. It also explicitly says that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." In that case, the people retain rights that are not listed in the constitution, no matter how many amendments are made. Where do these other rights come from, according to the constitution (not according to what you or I think)?



You said it yourself, 'the people retain rights'.
Just because you retain something doesn't mean you are the source of that thing.

Where does it say those rights came from somewhere else?
It doesn't say where they come from. It doesn't say they come from "the people" or from "their Creator", or from Santa Claus.

[Chronos]

There is no such thing as an "unalienable right". Every right we have was voted on in some way shape or form, or could be voted out of existence through the political process. We like to maintain the polite fiction that it isn't so, but it is. There's a difference between preventing someone from exercising a right, and eliminating that right. A slave in the antebellum South, for instance, had a right to freedom. He was not able to exercise that right, but he still had the right. If it were not so, then we would have no basis for saying that slavery in the antebellum South was unjust (it was certainly legal).

[Susanann]

Correct.

For example: A free American has a right to his own life. That right to life is given to each American by God. Since an American has a right to his own life, it then logically follows that he must also have the inherent right to protect his own life - i.e., the right of self-defense.

The Founding Fathers could clearly see that if citizens had the rights to their own individual lives, and if citizens must also be free to protect themselves, then naturally it necessitates that individual citizens MUST have the means to protect themselves - ergo: citizens MUST have the Right to Bear Arms.

Just because you say something doesn't make it so. God no more grants American rights than he grants winning lottery numbers.

The very idea is illogical,

But it IS! logical!

1. A free person has a right to his own life.

2. If a person does not have the right to defend himself, then he doesnt have a right to his life. Therefore, a free person has a right to defend himself.

3. In order to defend oneself, one MUST have the means to defend oneself. For a government to deny a person the means to defend himself would mean that the person does not have right to his own life.


The Founding Fathers clearly saw that it was self-evident that pure logic dictates that if a free person has a right to his own life, then he has a right to defend himself, and of course he has a right to the means of self-defense.

Hypothetically you could get a bunch of lawyers and politicians to make a million different laws or amend the Constition a hundred times but it still wont change God's unalienable right to life (and the means of self-defense) that all Americans have.

[Der Trihs]

Just because you say something doesn't make it so. God no more grants American rights than he grants winning lottery numbers.

The very idea is illogical,

But it IS! logical!

1. A free person has a right to his own life.

2. If a person does not have the right to defend himself, then he doesnt have a right to his life. Therefore, a free person has a right to defend himself.

3. In order to defend oneself, one MUST have the means to defend oneself. For a government to deny a person the means to defend himself would mean that the person does not have right to his own life.


The Founding Fathers saw that it was self-evident that pure logic dictates that if a free person has a right to his own life, then he has a right to defend himself, and of course he has a right to the means of self-defense.

Hypothetically you could get a bunch of lawyers and politicians to make a million different laws or amend the Constition a hundred times but it still wont change God's unalienable right to life (and the means of self-defense) that all Americans have.Again, that's nonsense. You've just declared freedom to be impossible, because no one has the ability to defend themselves, gun or not. Individuals are weak and easily killed; owning a gun makes them no more durable. That's what armies and police are for.

And again, the opinion of your nonexistent god is irrelevant.

[Susanann]

There is no such thing as an "unalienable right". Every right we have was voted on in some way shape or form, or could be voted out of existence through the political process. We like to maintain the polite fiction that it isn't so, but it is. There's a difference between preventing someone from exercising a right, and eliminating that right. A slave in the antebellum South, for instance, had a right to freedom. He was not able to exercise that right, but he still had the right. If it were not so, then we would have no basis for saying that slavery in the antebellum South was unjust (it was certainly legal).

Exactly.

The color of ones skin does not negate the unalienable rights endowed to us by our Creator. It was wrong to deny any American his unalienable rights.

No matter how many stupid laws you pass, a black American still has just as much unalienable rights to self defense, free speech, etc as an American white man.

[John Mace]

There is no such thing as an "unalienable right". Every right we have was voted on in some way shape or form, or could be voted out of existence through the political process. We like to maintain the polite fiction that it isn't so, but it is. There's a difference between preventing someone from exercising a right, and eliminating that right. A slave in the antebellum South, for instance, had a right to freedom. He was not able to exercise that right, but he still had the right. If it were not so, then we would have no basis for saying that slavery in the antebellum South was unjust (it was certainly legal).

By what process did you arrive at the conclusion that the slave has a right to freedom? What if you and I disagree about that?

What if I think I have a right to half your income, and you don't?

What if I think I have a right to physically assault someone who yells insults at me, and you don't?

[gonzomax]

The basis is philosophical not religious. Plenty of atheists see people as born with rights that we have to respect. Plenty of religious people think they are special and other religions are lesser religions and their religious rules are not valid. Ask a few catholics about muslims today and see how it comes out.

[Susanann]

And again, the opinion of your nonexistent god is irrelevant.

I dont know why you are commenting on my posts, my posts are not for you.

If there is no God in YOUR!!! world, then, I agree with you, YOU!!! have no unalienable rights.

You are going to have to find some other person who is Godless in order to debate with.

[John Mace]

And again, the opinion of your nonexistent god is irrelevant.

I dont know why you are commenting on my posts, my posts are not for you.

If there is no God in YOUR!!! world, then, I agree with you, YOU!!! have no unalienable rights.

You are going to have to find some other person who is Godless in order to debate with.

How do you determine which rights God gave us?

[Der Trihs]

By what process did you arrive at the conclusion that the slave has a right to freedom? What if you and I disagree about that?Do you feel it would be right for someone to enslave you? No? Then if you don't agree that the slave has the same right to freedom you do, you are being hypocritical. That's what rights are largely about; forbidding things that no one wants to happen to them. And to the extent they have an objective basis, our shared human nature that causes us to all have certain needs and desires in common is that basis.

[Der Trihs]

And again, the opinion of your nonexistent god is irrelevant.

I dont know why you are commenting on my posts, my posts are not for you.

If there is no God in YOUR!!! world, then, I agree with you, YOU!!! have no unalienable rights.

You are going to have to find some other person who is Godless in order to debate with.There's no more gods in your world than there are in mine, since they are the same one. And again; it doesn't matter. If a god shows up and declares something to be a right, that doesn't make it one.

[John Mace]

By what process did you arrive at the conclusion that the slave has a right to freedom? What if you and I disagree about that?Do you feel it would be right for someone to enslave you? No? Then if you don't agree that the slave has the same right to freedom you do, you are being hypocritical. That's what rights are largely about; forbidding things that no one wants to happen to them. And to the extent they have an objective basis, our shared human nature that causes us to all have certain needs and desires in common is that basis.
What if I believe I have the right to be hypocritical? Most people actually are hypocritical about lots of things, so that must be part of human nature.

Your golden rule analogy is good place to start, but it doesn't get you much past a typical Libertarian Philosophy. Somehow, I don't think that's what you have in mind. :)

[Susanann]

I dont know why you are commenting on my posts, my posts are not for you.

If there is no God in YOUR!!! world, then, I agree with you, YOU!!! have no unalienable rights.

You are going to have to find some other person who is Godless in order to debate with.

How do you determine which rights God gave us?

The same way the Founding Fathers did it!

If it was a good enough methodology for George, Tom Jeff, and John and Sam Addams, et al, then I will stick by it too.

[DSeid]

How do you determine which rights God gave us?

The same way the Founding Fathers did it!

If it was a good enough methodology for George, Tom Jeff, and John and Sam Addams, et al, then I will stick by it too.

Then you'll stick with allowing slavery to be determined according to the states and Blacks to be counted as 3/5ths of a person? That's what their methodology came up with.

[John Mace]

How do you determine which rights God gave us?

The same way the Founding Fathers did it!

If it was a good enough methodology for George, Tom Jeff, and John and Sam Addams, et al, then I will stick by it too.

But here's the thing: The Founders were a pretty homogeneous bunch. Throw in a bunch of Mormons, Fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Rastas, etc. and you're not going to get much that can be agreed on.

Then what do we do?

[cosmosdan]

To understand the idea of Natural Rightrs, one need only look at the DoI. Philosophers like Locke and Paine believed that there were certain "unalienable rights" that derive from Nature and that legitimize the overthrowing of a government when they are violated. Hence, the DoI and the American Revolution.

So, we may try and put down on paper what we think our rights are, but if we (ie, the government) go too far and violate Natural Rights, then the people are justified in taking up armed resistance against the government. Locke thought these rights were Life, Liberty, and Property. These rights supersede the Social Contract.

Me, I don't buy the whole natural rights thingy, except in as much as we all have some idea in our head of what it would take to rise up against the government. But there is no objective way of determining what those rights are. You pretty much have to be religious to believe that there are some essential rights that exist outside our own ability to agree on what those rights are-- that is, our willingness to either vote on them or give that authority to someone else.

Thanks for this post. Can't we in a real way follow the question of human rights down through the centuries , various civilizations and significant documents?

[Der Trihs]

What if I believe I have the right to be hypocritical?Then we aren't talking about rights anymore. The whole point of a right is its universality. That's one of the things that makes it different from just any random law.

Most people actually are hypocritical about lots of things, so that must be part of human nature. So is greed and murder, but they don't like other people practicing any of those on them. Which, again is what a right is in my view; what things are there that none of us want done to ourselves?

Your golden rule analogy is good place to start, but it doesn't get you much past a typical Libertarian Philosophy. Somehow, I don't think that's what you have in mind. :)
That's not at all a libertarian view of rights. "I have my rights and my money, screw everyone else" is libertarian. There's no contradiction between being a libertarian and, say, owning slaves since the only "rights" a libertarian cares about are his own.

[cosmosdan]

It's irrelevant what the founders thought. It's only relevant what they wrote in the Constitution, and what they wrote in the Constitution was that rights reside entirely with the people. They can establish them, change them or repeal them as they see fit. "Rights" are, after all, only a legal construction and nothing else.

I don't know if I'd say irrelevant but it does seem that the Constitution was written with change in mind. I think they realized it needed to be open for future generations to work with. All the folks who quote the founders as if if that's what we're supposed to use as a measure are missing that point.

[Musicat]

Let's reverse the question, and say that all rights do come from God. Now we need to find out what God wants those rights to be. How do we do that? From ancient writings and unknown sources? Strong evidence points to man's handiwork in those, not a god's. And which ancient writings are God's, which are bogus?

Anyone who claims that God put his desires in one particular book must explain why all the other religious texts are wrong and do not represent God's wishes.

Anyone who believes that any god provided mankind with an incontrovertible list of rights is living in a fantasy world.

[John Mace]

Thanks for this post. Can't we in a real way follow the question of human rights down through the centuries , various civilizations and significant documents?

I'm not sure what you mean. It sounds like you think there is some logical progression taking us to a better and more universal sense of which rights are universal. But I think that only looks like that in retrospect if you already have some idea of where you want to end up.

Many people will say we've gone too far. Recognized too many rights. Many people will say we have a long way to go.

I suppose you could look at something like Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights) But that still doesn't say where these rights come from, and it's very easy to get people to agree to a document like this that has no legal status.

[cosmosdan]

Unalienable rights are given to us by God the Creator.

Hypothetically speaking, if there were no God, then there would be no such thing as unalienable rights.

How do we know whose interpretation of God hands out those rights? Which human being tells us what rights God wants us to have? Are we missing any?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

He mentions 5 points two of which that
1 there is a creator and
2 that's the source of our inalienable rights.

So, without God, where do our foundational beliefs, the inalienable rights mentioned in our Declaration , come from?


Unalienable rights are given to us by God the Creator.

Hypothetically speaking, if there were no God, then there would be no such thing as unalienable rights.
Even if there is a God, he has never told us what these unaliable rights are, so they're still just whatever we say they are.

[gonzomax]

Cicero said"We are all born for justice ,that right is not based upon opinion but upon nature."

[Diogenes the Cynic]

It's irrelevant what the founders thought. It's only relevant what they wrote in the Constitution, and what they wrote in the Constitution was that rights reside entirely with the people. They can establish them, change them or repeal them as they see fit. "Rights" are, after all, only a legal construction and nothing else.
Let's get back to the original point of disagreement-- your statement that:

The Constitution doesn't say our rights come from a "Creator." It says they come from "we the people."
That is simply not correct. The constitution is silent on the source of our rights.
Not true. The power to establish, change and eliminate rights is explicitly vested with the people. The Constitution does not establish any unaliable rights, and as a matter of practical fact, there is no such thing.

[kanicbird]

I believe that (and can provide scriptural support - Gal 3:19,20) that any right we have as a human is from God's Love for us and His ability and authority to mediate between us the 'ruling powers'. We basically accept unjust and illegitimate authority, such as the US Government, and we even pledge allegiance to it, but God by far limits their power, praise be to God. Without God there would be no freedom at all, no mercy, and no love.

With God comes the ability to chose one's path and to seek Him.

it's not that there is no foundation but we would never discover that foundation without Him.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

According to who?



According to America.

It is a truism.

It is self-evident.

"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."


It's not self-evident at all. Jefferson was completely full of shit on this one.

[Don123]

Hey, I have no problem going back to the animal kingdom where Darwin says we came from.

It is always easer to destroy something than to build it, and in the end whites can build better. Do not get mad at me this is a statement of historical fact. I suppose the management on this board will ban me now because I say a fact.

Look YOU Guys, Women, transvestites and other troglodytes--- there is not a god that gives a shit from black Shin-0-la and a sea monkey.

Many of US whites, not all, have our human rights by force of arms, the US courts, USA police powers, state laws, and in so doing coercion, scheming, intimidation, and even wars and violence when needed are our tools for social justice as WE see it in accordance with our civil and criminal laws that are plainly written---SEE ORS 2009, chapters 164 and 163 as a very good start.

Do, I, a white, blond, blue eyed, want child rapist roaming the land like Mohammad (630AD)? HELL NO. ANY touch my girls but in public kindness I will cut the offenders guts out, eat them, and fry the offenders heart on wood grill, and never think twice about it; but I am restrained by USA state and USA federal laws. I cannot take the law into my own hands; though I’m willing, ready, and able to do so.

Where are MY rights to get to the root of the problem of human abominations, torts, and totally destroy the problems? They are in USA laws that I’m bound (chained) to.


Yeah, let us talk about human rights and restraints to those rights. Perhaps another thread should be opened and leave your brain dead god out of the conversation.


Don

[John Mace]

What if I believe I have the right to be hypocritical?Then we aren't talking about rights anymore. The whole point of a right is its universality. That's one of the things that makes it different from just any random law.
What if I believe that everyone has the right to be hypocritical?

And the idea that rights are universal is about as reality based as the concept of unalienable rights. People in Saudi Arabia don't have the right to practice whatever religion they want.

So is greed and murder, but they don't like other people practicing any of those on them. Which, again is what a right is in my view; what things are there that none of us want done to ourselves?
None of us? I don't want anyone to tax me. So, I guess you don't have the right to tax me.


That's not at all a libertarian view of rights. "I have my rights and my money, screw everyone else" is libertarian. There's no contradiction between being a libertarian and, say, owning slaves since the only "rights" a libertarian cares about are his own.
Well, I'm just going to say that is factually incorrect and leave it at that. I'm not going to get into a debate on Libertarian Philosophy with you.

[Der Trihs]

Let's reverse the question, and say that all rights do come from God. Now we need to find out what God wants those rights to be. How do we do that? From ancient writings and unknown sources? Strong evidence points to man's handiwork in those, not a god's. And which ancient writings are God's, which are bogus?

Anyone who claims that God put his desires in one particular book must explain why all the other religious texts are wrong and do not represent God's wishes.

Anyone who believes that any god provided mankind with an incontrovertible list of rights is living in a fantasy world.
And again, why should we care? If we somehow proved that the racist Christians who claimed that God divinely ordained the enslavement of back people were right about what God wanted, should we then go ahead and re-enslave the blacks just because God wants it? Of course not.

[Susanann]

Unalienable rights are given to us by God the Creator.
Hypothetically speaking, if there were no God, then there would be no such thing as unalienable rights.

How do we know whose interpretation of God hands out those rights? Which human being tells us what rights God wants us to have? Are we missing any?

This was all agreed on and resolved back in 1791.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

There is no such thing as an "unalienable right". Every right we have was voted on in some way shape or form, or could be voted out of existence through the political process. We like to maintain the polite fiction that it isn't so, but it is. There's a difference between preventing someone from exercising a right, and eliminating that right. A slave in the antebellum South, for instance, had a right to freedom. He was not able to exercise that right, but he still had the right. If it were not so, then we would have no basis for saying that slavery in the antebellum South was unjust (it was certainly legal).
This is not true. A "right" is nothing but a legal construction. The word has no meaning outside of the legal. We can have opinions on what rights people should be allowed to have, but they aren't rights until the government says so. The idea that people have some kind of abstract, philosophucal "rights" which can be hindered by the law sounds nonsensical to me. The word, by definition, describes only what you are allowed to do in practice, not what you think you should be able to do.

I mean, who decides what a "right" is if we are permitted to say it's whatever we think it should be in the abstract. If I say that God has given me the right to smoke pot while I'm driving, have I established that such a right actually exists? If a right does not exist in practice, then what IS it?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

How do we know whose interpretation of God hands out those rights? Which human being tells us what rights God wants us to have? Are we missing any?

This was all agreed on and resolved back in 1791.
Cite?

[Susanann]

The same way the Founding Fathers did it!
If it was a good enough methodology for George, Tom Jeff, and John and Sam Addams, et al, then I will stick by it too.

But here's the thing: The Founders were a pretty homogeneous bunch. Throw in a bunch of Mormons, Fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Rastas, etc. and you're not going to get much that can be agreed on.
Then what do we do?

We dont need to do anything.

We have had our government since 1791. Unalienable rights have been a resolved issue for over 200 years. I am an American! My mindset is exactly the same as all of the founding fathers. I have no conflicts, and no unanswered questions. They left a ton of letters, documents, writings, and papers for all to see and for all to understand. There are no inconsistencies.

If those other people you mention want to come here and if they want to become citizens of our country and if they agree to and pledge to follow our form of government, then there isnt any problem, nor any conflicts.

[cosmosdan]

I'm not sure what you mean. It sounds like you think there is some logical progression taking us to a better and more universal sense of which rights are universal. But I think that only looks like that in retrospect if you already have some idea of where you want to end up.

Many people will say we've gone too far. Recognized too many rights. Many people will say we have a long way to go.

I suppose you could look at something like Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights) But that still doesn't say where these rights come from, and it's very easy to get people to agree to a document like this that has no legal status.
I'd have to do the research but I vaguely remember reading an article about societies struggle for an understanding of human rights and how different documents appeared at certain points in history that probably influenced the understanding of the societies and documents that followed

[Der Trihs]

What if I believe that everyone has the right to be hypocritical?Then, again, you aren't talking about rights anymore.

And the idea that rights are universal is about as reality based as the concept of unalienable rights. People in Saudi Arabia don't have the right to practice whatever religion they want.And, again, the fact that rights are violated somewhere doesn't make them any less rights. If they can't be violated then they aren't rights in the first place and no one would bother writing them into the law any more than they do the conservation of energy.

None of us? I don't want anyone to tax me. So, I guess you don't have the right to tax me.But you want and have benefited from government services that need to be paid for, and everyone wants other people to pay what they owe. The people who deny that they need to pay taxes are thieves and hypocrites.

[John Mace]

Not true. The power to establish, change and eliminate rights is explicitly vested with the people.
Once again, can you quote the section that "explicitly" says that?

The Constitution does not establish any unaliable rights, and as a matter of practical fact, there is no such thing.
I never said it does and don't think there is. The Founders did not put anything in the constitution about what they thought was the the source of rights.

[TriPolar]

The constitution was meant to be a document that restricts what the government can do. It was not supposed to be a list of rights that we have, and it explicitly says that. The Founders were quite clear about that.


Remember that Bill of Rights thingy? That's what was needed for the states to ratify the Constitution. That's what counts. Not what you think the founders thought.


You have to get inside the mind of someone pre-Darwin. The Founders couldn't have conceived of us being just another species of mammal that evolved from other life forms, and that all of that went back to the Big Bang. And that everything we do is simply a social construct. They would have believed in some Prime Mover or some Natural Order of things-- some essential truth that existed apart from our own existence.

Again, what you think. Not what the Constitution says. Please give me an example where someones rights were provided or removed by anything but the people.

[John Mace]

But here's the thing: The Founders were a pretty homogeneous bunch. Throw in a bunch of Mormons, Fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Rastas, etc. and you're not going to get much that can be agreed on.
Then what do we do?

We dont need to do anything.

We have had our government since 1791. Unalienable rights have been a resolved issue for over 200 years. I am an American! My mindset is exactly the same as all of the founding fathers. I have no conflicts, and no unanswered questions. They left a ton of letters, documents, writings, and papers for all to see and for all to understand. There are no inconsistencies.
So, you're OK with slavery. I assume you're a woman, so I guess you're also OK with women not having the right to vote.

If those other people you mention want to come here and if they want to become citizens of our country and if they agree to and pledge to follow our form of government, then there isnt any problem, nor any conflicts.

Well, what if they don't "come here", but are from here, like most of the Mormons? But you're missing the point. You claim that it's self-evident what the unalienable rights are. If so, it should be self-evident to everyone. But it clearly isn't.

[The Second Stone]

So what Glenn Beck is saying is that he does not believe that we have any rights since rights are God given and Glenn Beck is pretty clearly lying when he claims to believe in God, because no one who believed in God would be a malicious propagandist for evil for a living. In short, this is more of Glenn Beck blabbing authoritative about the fictions he makes up on the spot and contradicts minutes or days later. Beck is willfully ignorant and appealing to the willfully ignorant. And he is blathering about God to cover up the lifetime of scholarship that he can't be bothered to learn and make his audience feel good about also never having bothered to learn it and despise the people that have.

Nuff said about that.

Where do our rights come from?

Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Paine, the Magna Carta, common law, experience and history were the sources that the men at the constitutional convention looked to when they were sent to Philadelphia to fix the failed Articles of Confederation. They looked at the workings of churches, Indian tribes, monarchies and republics throughout history back to ancient Athens, etc. There were compacts and charters of the colonies.

From history they looked at what problems they were trying to fix and avoid. Yes, the had the Dec of Indp and it was important to them. But remember that it was also a document that was plagiarized from history and political philosophy.

Read the Federalist Papers and the various collections of Anti-Federalist papers which were written at the time of the ratification debate and you will see a lot of what their concerns were. Madison originally strongly believed that no bill of rights was needed and proposed at the constitutional convention a template that did not include a written bill of rights. That template was modified, but by the end of the convention the changes were mostly about the power of the Senate and the counting of slaves for electoral college purposes as 3/5ths of a person. In short, Madison wrote the draft of what became the constitution. That does not make him God. By the time the Constitution was finally ratified, the one thing Madison was convinced he had done wrong was not to include a bill of rights, and he set about drafting a proposed bill of rights. With minor changes, it was adopted.

Why these particular rights were chosen and then statements added that all rights not specifically mentioned were reserved by the people means that these rights come from the people, not God. The people specifically stated they were doing that when they enacted the constitution and when their legislatures approved the amendments. Sure, God was working through the people and James Madison and history, but don't be ignorant and substitute an understanding of Western civilization with religious conviction.

[DSeid]

We may or may not assume that rights are universal and as unchangable as the law of gravity, but we still left with our sometimes varying understanding what they actually are, and agreeing to some common enough understanding when each of us may come from different religious belief systems, or none at all.

The problem with using religions and "God" as the source of the postulates, as the basis for the unalienable rights, is that different religions have had, and continue to have different revealed truths about rights, along with a wide variety of other things. Those who believed that human sacrifice was demanded by God or gods were just as sure of that as some here are of what they claim God says are human rights.

The key is to make belief in any particular version of God or in God or gods at all irrelevant to the issue: the rights just are. If you want to be part of this society you accept them with no further justification needed than that - they are. The UN document is an attempt to define a broad basis for the global community so that we can all function together. It may have no teeth, but it defines what we have mutually agreed is self-evident, and that is a major start.

[The Second Stone]

It's "unalienable", not "inalienable", if you're quoting the DoI.

There is no such thing as an "unalienable right". Every right we have was voted on in some way shape or form, or could be voted out of existence through the political process. We like to maintain the polite fiction that it isn't so, but it is.

No. Inalienable rights are by definition rights that cannot rightfully be taken away, even by a majority vote. They are a concept of what it means to be human. That concept cannot be destroyed by vote or tyranny in the same way that outlawing the use, teaching and existence of calculus cannot strike that discipline from having existed. Inalienable rights are an idea. Good luck on snuffing an idea out. It can always be reinvented even if you manage to succeed for a time.

There is no nexus between the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.
No legal nexus.

The DOI is legally irrelevant, so the question is meaningless. The Constitution doesn't say our rights come from a "Creator." It says they come from "we the people." Next question.
Not really. The constitution comes from "we the people", but it's unclear where the writers think rights come from. Thomas Paine, who certainly had his share of influence on the writers, would absolutely disagree that rights are ultimately derived from the constitution itself.

When you say that there is no legal nexus between the Dec of Indp and the Cons, you are espousing the legal doctrine of the strict constructionist school of jurisprudence. There are other philosophies of jurisprudence in this country that do look to the Dec of Indp.

As for the Dec of Indp, it pretty strongly supports a natural rights interpretation as God's regime:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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. That to secure these rights...

The constitution at no point in it refers to God or a creator in any way.

[Susanann]

We dont need to do anything.

We have had our government since 1791. Unalienable rights have been a resolved issue for over 200 years. I am an American! My mindset is exactly the same as all of the founding fathers. I have no conflicts, and no unanswered questions. They left a ton of letters, documents, writings, and papers for all to see and for all to understand. There are no inconsistencies.
So, you're OK with slavery. I assume you're a woman, so I guess you're also OK with women not having the right to vote.

If those other people you mention want to come here and if they want to become citizens of our country and if they agree to and pledge to follow our form of government, then there isnt any problem, nor any conflicts.

Well, what if they don't "come here", but are from here, like most of the Mormons? But you're missing the point. You claim that it's self-evident what the unalienable rights are. If so, it should be self-evident to everyone. But it clearly isn't.


But it WAS! self evident to the Founding Fathers...............to everyone at the time, and to everyone else who bothers to take the time to learn. The Founding Fathers just zipped right thru that since everyone pretty much agreed right away was unalienable rights were, and nobody argued against or questioned unalienable rights. If you dont believe it, or if youdont understand it, then go to a government depository library which has all of the papers, letters, notes, and debates of all the Founding Fathers - there are hundreds of thousands of pages that make it very clear.

What took some time, and some debates, were HOW to ensure those rights, how to set up the government, and how to deal with, and phase out, and set procedures, and try to get agreements of how to deal with the already existing hot potato problem of slavery that we inherited from the British.

The Founding Fathers did not create what America looked like in 1775, we inherited it from how the British made it. The Founding Fathers did not create/invent slavery, nor did they create/invent Connestoga wagons, spinning wheels, or candle wax.

However, "Unalienable rights" of a free people were not something that we "struggled with", it was self evident to everyone and pretty darn clear to everyone what they were.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were meant to create a self government to takeover the country from British rule, and to PROTECT the rights of our people. The Bill of Rights did not "give" any unalienable rights to anybody.

[Der Trihs]

You claim that it's self-evident what the unalienable rights are. If so, it should be self-evident to everyone. But it clearly isn't.Actually, I think that many of them pretty much are self evident; as said, no one wants to have their free speech or freedom of religion taken away. What doesn't appear to be self evident is that those rights should be universal, that they should be written into law and enforced as rights; instead for most of history people tried operating on a model that can be simply be described as "I have rights and you don't" which fails due to in large part its internal contradictions. If I try to oppress you and you try to oppress me and the guy over there is trying to oppress both of us, the odds are that all of us will end up oppressed. But everyone thinks that they will be the guy who gets to do the oppressing and not the one being oppressed.

Again, it really is a lot like laws against murder. Nobody wants to be murdered, so we outlaw it for everyone; even though that means you can't just kill that annoying neighbor of yours, it's worth it because it also means he can't kill you. It just took a lot longer for people to realize the same principle applied to concepts like speech as well as ones like theft and murder.

[John Mace]

The constitution was meant to be a document that restricts what the government can do. It was not supposed to be a list of rights that we have, and it explicitly says that. The Founders were quite clear about that.


Remember that Bill of Rights thingy? That's what was needed for the states to ratify the Constitution. That's what counts. Not what you think the founders thought.
I wasn't talking about what the Founders thought in those sentences. I was talking about what they explicitly wrote in the 9th amendment. The people retain all rights, even those not listed in the BoR.


Again, what you think. Not what the Constitution says.
Fine. But the constitution still doesn't say what the the source of rights is.

Please give me an example where someones rights were provided or removed by anything but the people.
Well, the SCOTUS provides and removes rights all the time. Often contrary to the will of "the people".

[Guinastasia]

Susanann -- why do you assume the word "creator" refers to a god?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Not true. The power to establish, change and eliminate rights is explicitly vested with the people.
Once again, can you quote the section that "explicitly" says that?
The entire document.
The Constitution does not establish any unaliable rights, and as a matter of practical fact, there is no such thing.
I never said it does and don't think there is. The Founders did not put anything in the constitution about what they thought was the the source of rights.
The Constitution says it's the people.

[John Mace]

[But it WAS! self evident to the Founding Fathers...............to everyone at the time, and to everyone else who bothers to take the time to learn. The Founding Fathers just zipped right thru that since everyone pretty much agreed right away was unalienable rights were, and nobody argued against or questioned unalienable rights. If you dont believe it, or if youdont understand it, then go to a government depository library which has all of the papers, letters, notes, and debates of all the Founding Fathers - there are hundreds of thousands of pages that make it very clear.

No, I'm not going to go to a "government depository library". Why don't you just end this debate by giving us a cite that "everyone at the time" agreed on what the unalienable rights were.

And don't pretend that they all wanted to free the slaves, but just couldn't because of what they inherited from the British. There were plenty who had absolutely no desire to free any slaves. Those who fiercely defended the institution of slavery.

So, to the extent that it was self evident that at least "freedom" was unalienable, their concept of freedom was something that would make us in the 21st century shudder. Except for you. You think just like the Founders, so you're perfectly OK with slavery.

[John Mace]

Once again, can you quote the section that "explicitly" says that?
The entire document.
IOW, you can't.


Constitution says it's the people.
Then simply quote the part that says that.

[Susanann]

Susanann -- why do you assume the word "creator" refers to a god?

1. I don't "assume" anything. I know. I also read thru, and understood, most of the detailed exact sources of papers, letters, notes, debates, etc. of many of the Founding Fathers. Try it sometime.

2. It is Creator..........not creator. Creator is capitalized by the Founding Fathers since the statement refers to God.


"We hold these truths to be self-evident...all men are...
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men."

http://www.nccs.net/articles/ril16.html

[gonzomax]

The Hammurabi Code held a basis for a legal system 4000 years ago, protecting against arbitrary persecution and punishment.
The Ancient Greeks agreed and codified them as "rights that spring from nature".

[Susanann]

[But it WAS! self evident to the Founding Fathers...............to everyone at the time, and to everyone else who bothers to take the time to learn. The Founding Fathers just zipped right thru that since everyone pretty much agreed right away was unalienable rights were, and nobody argued against or questioned unalienable rights. If you dont believe it, or if youdont understand it, then go to a government depository library which has all of the papers, letters, notes, and debates of all the Founding Fathers - there are hundreds of thousands of pages that make it very clear.

1. No, I'm not going to go to a "government depository library". Why don't you just end this debate by giving us a cite that "everyone at the time" agreed on what the unalienable rights were.

2. And don't pretend that they all wanted to free the slaves, but just couldn't because of what they inherited from the British. There were plenty who had absolutely no desire to free any slaves. Those who fiercely defended the institution of slavery.So, to the extent that it was self evident that at least "freedom" was unalienable, their concept of freedom was something that would make us in the 21st century shudder. Except for you. You think just like the Founders, so you're perfectly OK with slavery.


1. If you refuse to learn and refuse to find out, then I am not going to do your homework for you. The compete documents of so many of the Founding Fathers are Massive!!! ........that is what makes it so clear, so comprehensive, so all encompasing, and so self-evident. YOu are not going to get an understanding of what the Founding Fathers did, said, and thought from an internet cite. Go do the real thing, go find out the truth, or just forget it.

2. I never said that! Also, I ain't pretending nothing! Why are you trying to change my words, or make up stuff that I never said, and give false implications? Since you refuse to learn about the founding and creating of our government, you also will never have any understanding as to what our Founding Fathers had to deal with in trying to set up a brand new government our of the mess that the British left us with. You gotta do 1. before you do 2. , and since you wont do 1. then you aint never going to understand this topic.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

What part of "The Declaration of Independence is irrelevant" do you not understand?

[Voyager]

Susanann -- why do you assume the word "creator" refers to a god?

1. I don't "assume" anything. I know. I also read thru, and understood, most of the detailed exact sources of papers, letters, notes, debates, etc. of many of the Founding Fathers. Try it sometime.

2. It is Creator..........not creator. Creator is capitalized by the Founding Fathers since the statement refers to God.


"We hold these truths to be self-evident...all men are...
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men."

http://www.nccs.net/articles/ril16.html

But Jefferson did not believe in an interventionist god, so his god would not have directly given us rights. Rights would ensue from being created as human beings. If Jefferson lived today, I am sure that he would extend this to say that the rights we have are a result of the intelligence and self-awareness we evolved. If we can understand the lack of rights, then we have the basic rights.

[John Mace]

1. If you refuse to learn and refuse to find out, then I am not going to do your homework for you. The compete documents of so many of the Founding Fathers are Massive!!! ........that is what makes it so clear, so comprehensive, so all encompasing, and so self-evident. YOu are not going to get an understanding of what the Founding Fathers did, said, and thought from an internet cite. Go do the real thing, go find out the truth, or just forget it.
Sorry, that ain't the way it works around here. You make a claim, you back it up. That's not doing "homework" for someone, that's debating.

If you can't or won't do that, then.... Buh-bye!

[TriPolar]

Well, the SCOTUS provides and removes rights all the time. Often contrary to the will of "the people".

The SCOTUS is a group of people, appointed by people who were elected by people, with the advice and consent of some other people elected by people, according to the constitution and other laws written and ratified by people. Where does something else besides people come in? I'm not talking about the possibility that non-people show up some day and give us some rights, or take some away. I don't see any evidence that anything but people have provided or removed rights since this nation was formed. So I don't have any reason to wonder where the rights came from. They came from the people. And they don't have to come from anywhere else.

[John Mace]

Well, the SCOTUS provides and removes rights all the time. Often contrary to the will of "the people".

The SCOTUS is a group of people, appointed by people who were elected by people, with the advice and consent of some other people elected by people, according to the constitution and other laws written and ratified by people. Where does something else besides people come in? I'm not talking about the possibility that non-people show up some day and give us some rights, or take some away. I don't see any evidence that anything but people have provided or removed rights since this nation was formed. So I don't have any reason to wonder where the rights came from. They came from the people. And they don't have to come from anywhere else.
You said "anything but the people". The SCOTUS isn't "the people".

And there is a reason I didn't write "the legislature". I think it would be fair to call the legislature "the people", since they are our direct representatives. We vote them in, and we can vote them out.

But not the SCOTUS. Not a group that is appointed for life.

[TriPolar]

The SCOTUS is a group of people, appointed by people who were elected by people, with the advice and consent of some other people elected by people, according to the constitution and other laws written and ratified by people. Where does something else besides people come in? I'm not talking about the possibility that non-people show up some day and give us some rights, or take some away. I don't see any evidence that anything but people have provided or removed rights since this nation was formed. So I don't have any reason to wonder where the rights came from. They came from the people. And they don't have to come from anywhere else.
You said "anything but the people". The SCOTUS isn't "the people".

And there is a reason I didn't write "the legislature". I think it would be fair to call the legislature "the people", since they are our direct representatives. We vote them in, and we can vote them out.

But not the SCOTUS. Not a group that is appointed for life.

OK, I'll amend my contention to state that nothing but SCOTUS' and people provide and remove rights. I don't see your distinction though, because the SCOTUS is people who were appointed by people who were elected by people who could change how people become the SCOTUS. But there have been no other sources of rights since this nation was founded. No gods, no oracles, no aliens, no aeronautic pasta collosi. And there doesn't have to be any other source.

[Peremensoe]

"Rights" are, after all, only a legal construction and nothing else.

If I believed that, why should I care about your rights? Or those of anyone I don't know?

And the idea that rights are universal is about as reality based as the concept of unalienable rights. People in Saudi Arabia don't have the right to practice whatever religion they want.

Or, that right is unrecognized and persistently trampled upon.

You think just like the Founders, so you're perfectly OK with slavery.

That's really unfair. It's true that some Founders defended the institution of slavery; others condemned it. The Constitution initially permitted the institution to continue, yes--but so what? The Constitution as initially written (nor at any time since) was not a perfect document, and the Founders knew it. They knew that it was only a legal construction, a product of committee and compromise and the human limitations of its writers. No doubt they felt they had done a pretty good job, all things considered--but a process was built in for the revisions to come.

[cosmosdan]

No. Inalienable rights are by definition rights that cannot rightfully be taken away, even by a majority vote. They are a concept of what it means to be human. That concept cannot be destroyed by vote or tyranny in the same way that outlawing the use, teaching and existence of calculus cannot strike that discipline from having existed. Inalienable rights are an idea. Good luck on snuffing an idea out. It can always be reinvented even if you manage to succeed for a time. I think if you look at the history of this country you'll see that for much of our history certain people did not have unalienable rights, no equal rights. That is still true today. So, while those rights may exist out there some where on some esoteric level we haven't made them a reality.
The good news IMO is that we are still working on it. In better words then I could mange, it's here (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-th_n_92077.html)




"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.


The work of perfecting that union goes on. But it is we the people who have to claim and defend those rights, not only for ourselves, but for those who still do not enjoy equal rights.

[cosmosdan]

How do we know whose interpretation of God hands out those rights? Which human being tells us what rights God wants us to have? Are we missing any?

This was all agreed on and resolved back in 1791.

Could you be more specific please? Do you mean the founders interpretation? Do you mean the founders are the human beings that tell us what rights we should have? So, we're not missing any?

Do you think what was agreed on then needs to flexible in a changing world?

[Little Nemo]

If God gives us our rights, then why does He hand them out so randomly? Why did God decide that American have a right to bear arms but Canadians do not? Why didn't God give American women the right to vote until 1920? Why did God decide to give British women some limited voting rights in 1918 and then drop property and age restrictions in 1928? Did God decide to lower the voting age to 18 in 1971? Did God give us the right to religious freedom, including the right to not believe in him?

[The Second Stone]

No. Inalienable rights are by definition rights that cannot rightfully be taken away, even by a majority vote. They are a concept of what it means to be human. That concept cannot be destroyed by vote or tyranny in the same way that outlawing the use, teaching and existence of calculus cannot strike that discipline from having existed. Inalienable rights are an idea. Good luck on snuffing an idea out. It can always be reinvented even if you manage to succeed for a time. I think if you look at the history of this country you'll see that for much of our history certain people did not have unalienable rights, no equal rights. That is still true today. So, while those rights may exist out there some where on some esoteric level we haven't made them a reality.
The good news IMO is that we are still working on it. In better words then I could mange, it's here (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-th_n_92077.html)




"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.


The work of perfecting that union goes on. But it is we the people who have to claim and defend those rights, not only for ourselves, but for those who still do not enjoy equal rights.


It depends on your theory. Under a natural law theory the inalienable rights that people have they have always had, whether or not they are recognized under law. It only became self evident that all white men with property had them during the Enlightenment, and as time has gone by it expanded to pretty much everybody. Even now we are seeing that more and more people are accepting that there is no logical reason why gay people cannot marry.

[LilShieste]

According to who?



According to America.

It is a truism.

It is self-evident.

"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."

But that's my point - those rights come from us, not God.

[LilShieste]

How do we know whose interpretation of God hands out those rights? Which human being tells us what rights God wants us to have? Are we missing any?

This was all agreed on and resolved back in 1791.
There were white women and black slaves in 1791 that would disagree with this.

The fact that we've made several (major) adjustments since then is evidence that it hadn't been resolved.

[LilShieste]

"Rights" are, after all, only a legal construction and nothing else.

If I believed that, why should I care about your rights? Or those of anyone I don't know?

Well, if they're a legal construction, there's a built in disincentive for you to not care about them. ;)

If God gives us our rights, then why does He hand them out so randomly? Why did God decide that American have a right to bear arms but Canadians do not? Why didn't God give American women the right to vote until 1920? Why did God decide to give British women some limited voting rights in 1918 and then drop property and age restrictions in 1928? Did God decide to lower the voting age to 18 in 1971? Did God give us the right to religious freedom, including the right to not believe in him?
This.

If God had made some statements (e.g., in the Bible) that explicitly pointed out that people have certain rights, then there might be something to debate. Instead, what we have is people pointing out certain rights, and attributing them to God.

[Little Nemo]

It depends on your theory. Under a natural law theory the inalienable rights that people have they have always had, whether or not they are recognized under law. It only became self evident that all white men with property had them during the Enlightenment, and as time has gone by it expanded to pretty much everybody. Even now we are seeing that more and more people are accepting that there is no logical reason why gay people cannot marry.I have a hard time accepting that argument. To me an unknown right is a nonexistent right. So is a theoretical right.

Were slaves actually free but just trapped in a situation where nobody recognized their freedom? How is that any different from saying they were actually slaves?

If I confiscate people's firearms can I still claim that they have a right to own them? If I cancel elections can I claim that people still have a right to vote? That these rights still exist even if I'm preventing people from exercising them?

To me a right only exists if it has some functional reality. A right has to have an effect on the way people live. Otherwise it's not a right, it's just a hypothetical opinion.

[cosmosdan]

It depends on your theory. Under a natural law theory the inalienable rights that people have they have always had, whether or not they are recognized under law. It only became self evident that all white men with property had them during the Enlightenment, and as time has gone by it expanded to pretty much everybody. Even now we are seeing that more and more people are accepting that there is no logical reason why gay people cannot marry.

I've long felt we are all connected in some way, like cells in the same human body. We function better when we realize that and stop fighting. That led me through Christianity to a more general spirituality, so I have to aversion to belief. I don't like the dogmatic versions. Still, lets try this as a concept.
Evolution moved us to survive and through a tribal period. As the centuries passed a new seed began to grow in our evolutionary pattern. The awareness that we are all one tribe and there's no logical reason to constantly separate ourselves by race and religion for the purpose of conquest for available resources. This part of our evolved selves tells us that we need to work toward is spreading the one tribe concept in order to prosper and live in peace and safety as a race of beings.
So, I guess I'm suggesting that these unalienable rights we are talking about are really an evolutionary pull towards reason and survival through removing violence and conquest as a part of our makeup.
Of course this often conflicts with our lingering tribal selves and the natural instinct for survival when we are attacked.

[cosmosdan]

The Hammurabi Code held a basis for a legal system 4000 years ago, protecting against arbitrary persecution and punishment.
The Ancient Greeks agreed and codified them as "rights that spring from nature".

That's one of the historic documents I meant. Couldn't remember their names or dates.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

"Rights" are, after all, only a legal construction and nothing else.

If I believed that, why should I care about your rights? Or those of anyone I don't know?
You are under no obligation to care about them, but you may find yourself facing legal consequences if you violate someone's rights. How you feel about them is of no consequence, though.

[cosmosdan]

We dont need to do anything.

We have had our government since 1791. Unalienable rights have been a resolved issue for over 200 years. I am an American! My mindset is exactly the same as all of the founding fathers. I have no conflicts, and no unanswered questions. They left a ton of letters, documents, writings, and papers for all to see and for all to understand. There are no inconsistencies.

If those other people you mention want to come here and if they want to become citizens of our country and if they agree to and pledge to follow our form of government, then there isnt any problem, nor any conflicts.

The inconsistencies are in our human behavior as we find reasons to not extend the spirit of those founding principles to everyone equally.

You should be aware that people here aren't going to read thousands of pages to check your conclusions. A couple of things trouble me,

from the web site you linked to;
What are those unalienable rights with which we are endowed? They may be described in many ways, but English jurist Sir William Blackstone wrote in 1766, ".these may be reduced to three principal articles:

the right of personal security (life);
the right of personal liberty; and,
the right of private property.."
America's written Constitution was to protect and secure God-given individual rights to life, liberty, and property. If we ever allow this foundation to be eroded and lose faith that these rights are a gift directly from God to each individual, then we lose the basis of the greatness of the miracle of America.

1766? that's about 30 years before the date you gave,and doesn't seem to involve our founding fathers. . The statement that if we lose faith that our rights come from God we lose the basis of our greatness is troublesome. We have a very diverse society with many religions and a lot of people who do not believe in any god. We can make our judgement based on certain principles laid out in the Bill of Rights but belief on them coming from God is not required is it?
The founders couldn't even conceive of the world we live in today. We can value the principles set forth , and work to live up to them , but science and a changing society presents new challenges in interpreting how those rights are applied in day to day life. It's the principles themselves which we hold as valuable not necessarily what they thought about them Their society was much different and we owe them no particular allegiance.

[The Second Stone]

It depends on your theory. Under a natural law theory the inalienable rights that people have they have always had, whether or not they are recognized under law. It only became self evident that all white men with property had them during the Enlightenment, and as time has gone by it expanded to pretty much everybody. Even now we are seeing that more and more people are accepting that there is no logical reason why gay people cannot marry.I have a hard time accepting that argument. To me an unknown right is a nonexistent right. So is a theoretical right.

Were slaves actually free but just trapped in a situation where nobody recognized their freedom? How is that any different from saying they were actually slaves?

If I confiscate people's firearms can I still claim that they have a right to own them? If I cancel elections can I claim that people still have a right to vote? That these rights still exist even if I'm preventing people from exercising them?

To me a right only exists if it has some functional reality. A right has to have an effect on the way people live. Otherwise it's not a right, it's just a hypothetical opinion.

It's fine that such is your belief. That's not the theory of natural law however. In the instance of slavery, people have the right to be free, regardless of whether that right has been discovered or is honored or dishonored. They were just doing it wrong and violating natural law. The Dec of Indp is pretty clear that they were referring to concepts of natural law.

[LilShieste]

It's fine that such is your belief. That's not the theory of natural law however. In the instance of slavery, people have the right to be free, regardless of whether that right has been discovered or is honored or dishonored. They were just doing it wrong and violating natural law. The Dec of Indp is pretty clear that they were referring to concepts of natural law.
Who determines the rights that are granted by "natural law", though? Why is "the right to be free" a natural law, and not "the right to own slaves"?

Or a different example:

Person A claims that people have a right to shoot whomever they please.
Person B claims that people have a right to not be shot.

Which of these rights is bestowed by "natural law"?

[tim314]

Who says rights have to come from anywhere?

Well, obviously plenty of people say it, but it doesn't mean it's necessarily true.

I don't see anything logically inconsistent with believing that, say, freedom of speech is a basic human right while nevertheless not believing in a higher power.

[John Mace]

Who says rights have to come from anywhere?

Well, obviously plenty of people say it, but it doesn't mean it's necessarily true.

I don't see anything logically inconsistent with believing that, say, freedom of speech is a basic human right while nevertheless not believing in a higher power.

As I said on the first page, we maintain this polite fiction that there are unalienable rights that come from "somewhere", whether it be a deity, or from our humanity. We don't like to think that we can votes rights away, even though we can.

And I see this not only from the Religious righties, but often from the secular lefties. How often do we hear that certain rights are not subject to a vote, or should not be subject to a vote. How we decide what those rights are without voting remains a mystery.

Still, you have to admit then that someone else might believe that freedom of speech is not a basic human right.s Or that what they consider "speech" is different from you consider it to be. And who is to say who is right?

[The Second Stone]

It's fine that such is your belief. That's not the theory of natural law however. In the instance of slavery, people have the right to be free, regardless of whether that right has been discovered or is honored or dishonored. They were just doing it wrong and violating natural law. The Dec of Indp is pretty clear that they were referring to concepts of natural law.
Who determines the rights that are granted by "natural law", though? Why is "the right to be free" a natural law, and not "the right to own slaves"?

Or a different example:

Person A claims that people have a right to shoot whomever they please.
Person B claims that people have a right to not be shot.

Which of these rights is bestowed by "natural law"?

Whichever are most persuasively argued for under a system of logic. People have been talking about natural law for 2400 years since Socrates and Plato.

[cosmosdan]

Who says rights have to come from anywhere?

Well, obviously plenty of people say it, but it doesn't mean it's necessarily true.

I don't see anything logically inconsistent with believing that, say, freedom of speech is a basic human right while nevertheless not believing in a higher power.

Sure, As humans we can agree on certain basic human rights and embrace them as correct.

I even suggested earlier that evolution might be pushing us toward these concepts as part of survival of the species.

[cosmosdan]

People have been talking about natural law for 2400 years since Socrates and Plato.

Is natural law a part of evolution?

[The Second Stone]

Who says rights have to come from anywhere?

Well, obviously plenty of people say it, but it doesn't mean it's necessarily true.

I don't see anything logically inconsistent with believing that, say, freedom of speech is a basic human right while nevertheless not believing in a higher power.

As I said on the first page, we maintain this polite fiction that there are unalienable rights that come from "somewhere", whether it be a deity, or from our humanity. We don't like to think that we can votes rights away, even though we can.

And I see this not only from the Religious righties, but often from the secular lefties. How often do we hear that certain rights are not subject to a vote, or should not be subject to a vote. How we decide what those rights are without voting remains a mystery.

Still, you have to admit then that someone else might believe that freedom of speech is not a basic human right.s Or that what they consider "speech" is different from you consider it to be. And who is to say who is right?

Yes, Dionisio, you keep saying this and keep ignoring the concept of natural law, which does not depend on a vote or the existence of one or possibly more deities. We get that you are saying that inalienable rights and natural law do not exist. We just disagree with you that they do exist as concepts and have been very influential as concepts, having provided, among other things, the intellectual foundation for the formation of the United States.

[John Mace]

People have been talking about natural law for 2400 years since Socrates and Plato.

Is natural law a part of evolution?

Evolutionary psychology, perhaps. There is a school of thought that our morality is in our genes. And from that morality springs our sense of justice. But that has some disturbing implications as well, since many of our shared natural impulses are not what we like to think makes a good society.

[The Second Stone]

People have been talking about natural law for 2400 years since Socrates and Plato.

Is natural law a part of evolution?

Good question. I think not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law

Evolution is a scientific theory, natural law is a legal theory.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

It's not a legal theory, it's a religious belief and a complete wank-off as far as any practicality, since nobody can positively identify a single "natural law."

[cosmosdan]

Is natural law a part of evolution?

Evolutionary psychology, perhaps. There is a school of thought that our morality is in our genes. And from that morality springs our sense of justice. But that has some disturbing implications as well, since many of our shared natural impulses are not what we like to think makes a good society.

I can even see those conflicts , or impulses being a part of working it out.

There's the impulse to survive as an individual , but also the drive to procreate. We eventually figured out that forming a family unit to protect was a decent idea. Then a tribal unit. and eventually the nagging evolutionary leading to all of us as one tribe, sharing resources, and forming a harmonious society. we run into conflicts because our individual needs and desires , which are also pretty normal, come against our societal needs and we have to choose. It's a complicated Sophie's choice.

[LilShieste]

Who determines the rights that are granted by "natural law", though? Why is "the right to be free" a natural law, and not "the right to own slaves"?

Or a different example:

Person A claims that people have a right to shoot whomever they please.
Person B claims that people have a right to not be shot.

Which of these rights is bestowed by "natural law"?

Whichever are most persuasively argued for under a system of logic. People have been talking about natural law for 2400 years since Socrates and Plato.

That's the problem - people talk about these basic rights as though they're some set of rights that is simply immutable. However, that goes at odds with what you mentioned in your last paragraph. This set is mutable; its elements determined at any given time by what we think they should be.

[TriPolar]

It's not a legal theory, it's a religious belief and a complete wank-off as far as any practicality, since nobody can positively identify a single "natural law."

The Law of the Jungle

[gonzomax]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ivYN-j--ao From another thread the old philosopher george Carlin explains it. Of course bad language.

[tim314]

How often do we hear that certain rights are not subject to a vote, or should not be subject to a vote. How we decide what those rights are without voting remains a mystery.
If the whole world voted that it was OK to stone people to death (for example), then the whole world would be wrong. Obviously, that's my opinion, and I can't prove it, but the fact that I can't prove it doesn't mean that I'm wrong. I see no reason why in principle something cannot be both true and unprovable.

Now because I can't prove my opinions on morality and neither can anyone else it may be necessary to settle these questions by a vote, but that doesn't mean that the majority opinion is necessarily the right opinion, or that there's no such thing as a right opinion.

I personally believe in absolute morality. It doesn't need to be handed down by God or anything like that, but it can still be the case that the world contains moral facts as well as empirical facts. For instance I think that it's a fact that you shouldn't go around killing people for no reason. It's not an observable fact, but I still believe it's true.

I also can't prove I'm not a brain in a vat or that inductive reasoning is valid, but I still believe those things.

[tim314]

I even suggested earlier that evolution might be pushing us toward these concepts as part of survival of the species.
I think that's quite possible. I think there's a lot of things we may have evolved to believe because it would have been disruptive to our survival not to believe them. Like my aforementioned example of inductive reasoning. I can't prove mathematically that if the first 4 saber toothed tigers tried to eat me then there's a good chance the 5th will do the same. But I believe it is likely to be the case, probably because the people who didn't believe that ended up as tiger food.

[tonysidaway]

Glenn Beck is an escaped Sinclair Lewis character. I fully expect that one day he'll disappear, only to show up in the desert a few days later claiming he was kidnapped.

Meanwhile, this article may clue you in as to what he's up to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominionism

[tonysidaway]

Here you go. David Barton's Wikipedia biography.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Barton_(author)

[John Mace]

Evolutionary psychology, perhaps. There is a school of thought that our morality is in our genes. And from that morality springs our sense of justice. But that has some disturbing implications as well, since many of our shared natural impulses are not what we like to think makes a good society.

I can even see those conflicts , or impulses being a part of working it out.

There's the impulse to survive as an individual , but also the drive to procreate. We eventually figured out that forming a family unit to protect was a decent idea. Then a tribal unit. and eventually the nagging evolutionary leading to all of us as one tribe, sharing resources, and forming a harmonious society. we run into conflicts because our individual needs and desires , which are also pretty normal, come against our societal needs and we have to choose. It's a complicated Sophie's choice.
And our sense of what is just evolved while we lived in groups of maybe 25 - 100 individuals. When we knew all the people we dealt with quite well.

tonysidaway: Are you posting in the right thread?

[Shodan]

This is not true. A "right" is nothing but a legal construction. The word has no meaning outside of the legal. We can have opinions on what rights people should be allowed to have, but they aren't rights until the government says so. The Ninth Amendment was put in specifically to make clear that the above statement is false.

Regards,
Shodan

[Lobohan]

This is not true. A "right" is nothing but a legal construction. The word has no meaning outside of the legal. We can have opinions on what rights people should be allowed to have, but they aren't rights until the government says so. The Ninth Amendment was put in specifically to make clear that the above statement is false.

Regards,
ShodanThe ninth amendment is a rule for the government. As such, any rights it bestows, are granted by the government.

Your rights aren't natural, they're given by the society you live in. You can't get married to multiple women, other men in different cultures can. Each of those rights is created by common consensus.

If you were a cave-person living with an extended family group they would decide what rights you enjoy, and they would enact the punishments backing those limitations up.

[Lemur866]

Look, if our rights come from God, how do we discover what rights God intended us to have?

If our rights come from nature, how do we discover what rights nature intended us to have?

Even if you don't believe the social theory of rights--that rights are just those things that we all agree to because that's the kind of society we prefer to live in--it amounts to the same thing in the end. Because in order to get us to agree to your set of God-given rights, or natural rights, you have to convince your fellow monkeys that they'd be better off agreeing to your list.

God hasn't spoke to me, and given me a personal revelation about human rights. Maybe he has to you, but he certainly hasn't done the same for me. And those people who claim that God told them such-and-such don't all agree. Now, some of those people may be getting messages directly from God, but how do we tell the difference between messages from God, and messages that aren't from God?

Likewise, if rights come from nature, why did it take until the 18th Century before philosophers were able to decipher our natural rights? If our rights were self-evident, why weren't they self-evident back in ancient Rome, or Egypt, or Sumeria?

It seems to me that our rights aren't really self-evident. It's more a question of looking around at the various systems of social organization that have been established around the world over the thousands of years of recorded history, and asking how those systems worked out. If one form of social organization leads to misery and horror, well, it doesn't matter if that form of social organization is dictated by God or Nature, I don't want to live that way. If another form leads to a tolerable life, well, it doesn't matter if it's against God's law or Nature's law, I know I'd rather live that way.

And this method can be refined, so that we can look at tolerable systems of social organization, and see if there can be any improvement. And it turns out, there are, and if we implement various rules that have been shown to improve life in other places and times, people often see an improvement in their own circumstances.

But of course, these improvements aren't guaranteed, and we often have no idea how things will actually work out until we try them. We have to work empirically, because there's no other way. And we've seen whole countries charge over the cliff and cause immense suffering, despite the examples of history that should have been a warning.

Human beings do not have an innate sense of justice. Or rather, we do have such an innate sense (given to us, in my opinion, by evolution), but that innate sense of justice doesn't resemble the Constitution of the United States very closely. We know we don't want to be killed, we don't want to suffer, we want our children to survive, we want to keep our property safe, we don't want to be disrespected, we want to belong to a family. But these innate desires don't lead to modern liberal democracy, they lead rather to the typical lot in life of the typical person throughout history, which is living as an agricultural serf in some shithole village.

If we want to live our lives as other than serfs, we can't just go by our natural instincts, we have to live by artificial rules that we assent to only because we see that for some reason, they work. And this is the source of our "rights", which are just things that we all are compelled to agree to, because if we don't, then the result is misery. And even if these rights preexist our faltering acceptance of them, if we discover these rights rather than invent them, it doesn't make any difference, because the process whereby we adopt them as social rules is identical. We are convinced to adopt them because we think we'll have better lives if we do.

[Jas09]

2. It is Creator..........not creator. Creator is capitalized by the Founding Fathers since the statement refers to God.This is interesting. Other non-sentence-starting words that are capitalized in the DOI include: Nature, People, Government, Rights, Despotism, Representation, Legislature, Annihilation, Offices, Military, and Judges. Do all of these words have implied godliness because they are capitalized? Or just creator? Is it all possible that capitalization was used for emphasis?

One plausible, universal, and I think agreeable answer to the OP is that natural rights derive from nature. That is, as independent sentient human beings we have certain freedoms that should not be limited by the yoke of authority. The founders of America felt (and I strongly agree) that the best way to protect those natural rights was through a social contract guaranteeing certain legal rights. By vesting power in the people themselves we could better perfect this contract over time.

None of this requires a deity in any way.

In fact it is somewhat contradictory to claim that some of these rights came from the Christian God, since he rather explicitly forbids large swaths of freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression.

[Shodan]

The Ninth Amendment was put in specifically to make clear that the above statement is false.

Regards,
ShodanThe ninth amendment is a rule for the government. As such, any rights it bestows, are granted by the government.Non sequitur, obviously. The Ninth Amendment says exactly the opposite (http://civilliberty.about.com/od/equalrights/p/9th_amendment.htm).

Regards,
Shodan

[Lobohan]

The ninth amendment is a rule for the government. As such, any rights it bestows, are granted by the government.Non sequitur, obviously. The Ninth Amendment says exactly the opposite (http://civilliberty.about.com/od/equalrights/p/9th_amendment.htm).

Regards,
ShodanAnd since the Ninth Amendment says it, we are following it. If the Ninth Amendment said the opposite, we would be doing the opposite.

The fact that you're pointing to a document to prove what you're saying, disproves what you're saying. :D

Man makes rights and enforces them. Remember, you're an advanced monkey. In nature you would eat, shit and breed. But the real world is full of tigers and other things with the strength to remove those abilities from you. Now we have societies, whose function (among others) is to generate rights to make our lives better. The reason America is a great country is that the rights we get from it are pretty good.

Without society you would be at the mercy of anyone or anything stronger than you.

[FREQ_FORCE]

I love how this premise assumes that in the perceived absence of a natural explanation for simple social constructs, "a magic man makes it so" is a viable explanation of anything.

Invoking gods simply turns questions of social morality into "mite makes right."

[Mozam]

I think many folks above are right that if there is no God, or some other transcendent source for inalienable rights, then they don't exist. What we call inalienable rights are just preferences we have for a particular social contract that's a by-product of sociobiological evolution. In that case, these rights would not be inalienable or objective, but malleable and subjective.

But I think this view butts up against some problems in our moral experience. It certainly seems that slavery is objectively wrong. It was wrong even when most people in times past believed and agreed that it was right and the social contract of the day permitted it. But if there are no inalienable rights, this would not be the case. Slavery wouldn't be wrong. Likewise most (all?) moral pronouncements would lose their meaning. Rape, murder, intolerance, etc. wouldn't really be wrong either. We just prefer different values. If an individual or group had a different preference, we wouldn't really have a basis to disagree with them.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

We still don't. Morality does not, and never has had any empirical reality. It derives from biologically evolved emotional responses. Humans are social animals. they are hardwired to survive in communities, not as individuals. Our emotional and empathic responses revolve around a sense of "us" and our shared biological responses (along with variable environmental circumstances) lead to consensuses about what is "right or wrong."

These emotional responses can change according to who we perceive as our in-group -- as "us." If another ethnic group is seen as "other," we don't feel the same protective emotional instincts about them. The more we get to know them, the less "other" and the more "us" they become, the more our emotional responses (and, accordingly, our social consensus as to our moral codes) change to reflect it.

It's all biology.

[DSeid]

We still don't. Morality does not, and never has had any empirical reality.
... if there is no God, or some other transcendent source for inalienable rights, then they don't exist. What we call inalienable rights are just preferences we have for a particular social contract

While my personal God-belief (a pantheistic God-who-couldn't-give-a-shit) does emerge from the belief that there are things that are Right and Wrong (rather than just right and wrong); that Hitler was objectively doing evil things, even if all who were left alive agreed with him, I do not believe that such a belief mandates a God-concept, and certainly not the God-concept that most of the religious in America espouse.

Yes it's biology, but that does not mean it is all biology.

[Ají de Gallina]

If rights come/came only from society, then nobody has the right to something they don't already have the right to.
For instance (accepting the rights-come-from-society idea), same-sex couples do not have the right to get married in Texas and no right is being taken from them or being trampled on. They have the aspiration to a right. If this is/were true, then SSM is more like zoning laws than a moral imperative.

[Der Trihs]

If rights come/came only from society, then nobody has the right to something they don't already have the right to.
For instance (accepting the rights-come-from-society idea), same-sex couples do not have the right to get married in Texas and no right is being taken from them or being trampled on.
That assumes that homosexuals aren't part of society. And it ignores the fact that marriage is treated as a right except when it comes to homosexuals.

[Ají de Gallina]

That assumes that homosexuals aren't part of society. And it ignores the fact that marriage is treated as a right except when it comes to homosexuals.

No it doesn't in the same way that non-natural-born US citizens cannot be presidents. If rights are glorified zoning laws then there is no objective reason (aside from societal mores) that says rights should be the same for all. It's simply a right for man-woman couples and it is codified as such. Even if you went out of your way to specifically say such a right doesn't include a group of people, then the right is that, it is not violating a right (analogous to nulla poena sine lege).
Either rights are "bigger" than people/societies or they aren't.

[Der Trihs]

That assumes that homosexuals aren't part of society. And it ignores the fact that marriage is treated as a right except when it comes to homosexuals.

No it doesn't in the same way that non-natural-born US citizens cannot be presidents. If rights are glorified zoning laws then there is no objective reason (aside from societal mores) that says rights should be the same for all. Yes there is; if they aren't the same for all, then they aren't rights. That's rather the point.

[Bearflag70]

If rights come/came only from society, then nobody has the right to something they don't already have the right to.
For instance (accepting the rights-come-from-society idea), same-sex couples do not have the right to get married in Texas and no right is being taken from them or being trampled on. They have the aspiration to a right. If this is/were true, then SSM is more like zoning laws than a moral imperative.

Except that our society acknowledges other rights, such as due process and equal protection, as supreme.

[Mozam]

If inalienable rights don't exist, then homosexuals may still have a right to marry, but no one is doing anything objectively wrong by denying homosexuals that right. People who wish to deny homosexuals the right to marry may be logically inconsistent, but there's nothing wrong with their being so. They simply prefer a different social contract.

[Little Nemo]

If rights come/came only from society, then nobody has the right to something they don't already have the right to.
For instance (accepting the rights-come-from-society idea), same-sex couples do not have the right to get married in Texas and no right is being taken from them or being trampled on.
That assumes that homosexuals aren't part of society. And it ignores the fact that marriage is treated as a right except when it comes to homosexuals.I think the point that Aju is making is that if rights originate from society, you can't appeal to some higher power in support of a right you seek. You can't claim something should be a right even if the majority of people disagree.

[Jas09]

I think the point that Aju is making is that if rights originate from society, you can't appeal to some higher power in support of a right you seek. You can't claim something should be a right even if the majority of people disagree.But one can still make two types of arguments:

1) That society would be improved by granting these legal rights.

2) That universal human rights (life, liberty, etc...) demand certain legal rights.

The recognition of universal human rights does not require a supernatural source of these rights - secular ethics is sufficient. And a society can grant legal rights that have no root in universal human rights, simply because it benefits society.

ETA: adding a distinction of legal rights to argument one

[Lemur866]

I think many folks above are right that if there is no God, or some other transcendent source for inalienable rights, then they don't exist. What we call inalienable rights are just preferences we have for a particular social contract that's a by-product of sociobiological evolution. In that case, these rights would not be inalienable or objective, but malleable and subjective.


Our moral sense IS malleable and subjective. As proof, I hand you the entire sweep of recorded human history. How many ancient Sumerians believed in freedom of speech, or freedom of religion, or freedom of assembly?

But that doesn't mean our moral sense is infinitely malleable, since we are human beings, not computer programs that can be reprogrammed at will. We have a particular human nature that is our biological inheritance, and we are compelled to live our lives as human beings. And that means we have to live together, we have certain physical and social needs that have to be satisfied or the result is disaster.

If we have a particular set of moral judgments, and some other group has another set, we can certainly disagree with them, on the simple grounds that we prefer to live otherwise, and we can point to the results of our moral system and invite people in the other group to agree with us. If they don't agree, well, the result is conflict.

But suppose we imagine that moral systems are handed down by God. We obey the moral laws we claim are handed down by God, and that other group over there doesn't. Now what? We tell them and tell them that they must obey God's laws, but they don't agree. As a matter of fact, they are so immoral as to claim that we are incorrect about what God wants, and they have a whole other set of moral laws that were handed down by God, and their set doesn't match our set.

Now what? How do we resolve this difference? God, the source of moral law, has seemingly handed down contradictory laws, and both cannot be correct. So how do we determine which are the laws of God, and which are false? Is there some objective method of determining objective morality? If God or Nature has created these eternal moral principles, he hasn't done a very good job of making sure that all humans understand them, has he?

The obvious complaint is if slavery is always objectively wrong, why didn't God bother to tell the ancient Israelites it was wrong? Why didn't God give them a document along the lines of the US constitution, or the Swiss constitution? Why didn't he tell them to construct a modern liberal democracy? Or, if rights are self-evident from nature, why didn't the ancient Israelites discover them?

If rights are given by God or Nature, how do we discover what God intended for us? Is there some objective process whereby this can be accomplished? If so, I'd like to hear it. Note that if your process includes something like, "Read the Bible", you've just pushed the process back one iteration without actually explaining the process.

[marshmallow]

If inalienable rights don't exist, then homosexuals may still have a right to marry, but no one is doing anything objectively wrong by denying homosexuals that right.

Correct. There is also nothing objectively wrong with wearing socks with sandals, spreading gossip, identity theft, cheating on your spouse, molesting children, or shooting up your workplace. An example of something that is objectively wrong is the statement, "Mars is larger than Earth."

Individual subjective opinion regarding homosexual rights will differ from locale to locale, era to era. A lot of people arguing for inalienable rights are confusing the collective subjective with the objective. To me, the concept of inalienable or natural rights as a property of the universe is on a similar plane of believability as the six day creation. At least one can imagine the kind of evidence one could marshal for the existence of god. What exactly would an atheist point to for evidence of natural rights?

[Jas09]

What exactly would an atheist point to for evidence of natural rights?There is plenty of research in fields of secular human morality and the way the human mind is hard-wired for certain moral "instincts", for lack of a better term. This is why human societies scattered across the globe, worshiping various gods, almost universally have moral imperatives against murder.

So one form of evidence of natural rights absent a supernatural power would be common systems of morality in societies with dissimilar religious traditions. Another could be research into the behavior and beliefs of young children with respect to fairness and morality. Yet another area could be brain-mapping and other neurological research into the source of "moral emotion", so to speak.

In general, non-theistic natural rights would be those rights that humans are hard-wired to both grant to other and expect to be extended to themselves. Those which when violated provoke an innate negative emotional response in the vast majority of humans regardless of their religious inclinations.

This quickly devolves into the question of "can there be morality without a god" - an area ripe with discussion which has spanned centuries. If the answer is yes, then I believe clearly there can also be natural rights without a god. Natural rights would be those that our secular ethics demands be granted to all people.

[Lemur866]

If all you mean by "natural rights" is, "if your system of social organization doesn't respect these rights, you're guaranteed to find yourself living in a shithole", then I agree with the concept of natural rights.

But discovery of these natural rights is still an empirical process, and the only way we have for deciding whether something is a natural right or not is whether we like or don't like the consequences of recognizing or not recognizing the right.

If there is some natural right that humans ought to enjoy, yet all of us agree that we wouldn't like the consequences of recognizing that right, then what? What happens is that we all disagree that the disfavored "right" is really a natural right. Well, if everyone disagrees that the supposed right is actually a natural right, even though it really is, then what happens next? The putative natural right is tossed on the scrapheap of history. And the only way future wise men can get the rest of us to recognize this natural right is for them to convince us that the consequences of recognizing this right aren't so bad. And so in actual practice we're back to the social theory of rights.

I will agree that our instinctive natural notions of morality and rights must inform our actually existing social organizations. But only in the sense that they must, because otherwise we'll cause immense human suffering. It turns out that many people don't seem to care about causing immense human suffering, and this is why not every country in the world is a modern liberal democracy.

[Ají de Gallina]

Yes there is; if they aren't the same for all, then they aren't rights. That's rather the point.

I don't want to be ass (at least in this post), but your point begs the questions of where rights come from. We don't have equal rights for everything.


Except that our society acknowledges other rights, such as due process and equal protection, as supreme.

Sure, but even the concept of due process and equal protection can be argued as to whether they apllie(d) in this situation.

If inalienable rights don't exist, then homosexuals may still have a right to marry, but no one is doing anything objectively wrong by denying homosexuals that right. People who wish to deny homosexuals the right to marry may be logically inconsistent, but there's nothing wrong with their being so. They simply prefer a different social contract.

Pretty much, yes.

I think the point that Aju is making is that if rights originate from society, you can't appeal to some higher power in support of a right you seek. You can't claim something should be a right even if the majority of people disagree.

Agreed. "Should be a right" is an opinion not an objective reality.

But one can still make two types of arguments:

1) That society would be improved by granting these legal rights.

2) That universal human rights (life, liberty, etc...) demand certain legal rights.

The recognition of universal human rights does not require a supernatural source of these rights - secular ethics is sufficient. And a society can grant legal rights that have no root in universal human rights, simply because it benefits society.

ETA: adding a distinction of legal rights to argument one

It may not require a deity, but secular ethics means "what we like".


Our moral sense IS malleable and subjective. As proof, I hand you the entire sweep of recorded human history. How many ancient Sumerians believed in freedom of speech, or freedom of religion, or freedom of assembly?

But that doesn't mean our moral sense is infinitely malleable, since we are human beings, not computer programs that can be reprogrammed at will. We have a particular human nature that is our biological inheritance, and we are compelled to live our lives as human beings. And that means we have to live together, we have certain physical and social needs that have to be satisfied or the result is disaster.

If we have a particular set of moral judgments, and some other group has another set, we can certainly disagree with them, on the simple grounds that we prefer to live otherwise, and we can point to the results of our moral system and invite people in the other group to agree with us. If they don't agree, well, the result is conflict.

But suppose we imagine that moral systems are handed down by God. We obey the moral laws we claim are handed down by God, and that other group over there doesn't. Now what? We tell them and tell them that they must obey God's laws, but they don't agree. As a matter of fact, they are so immoral as to claim that we are incorrect about what God wants, and they have a whole other set of moral laws that were handed down by God, and their set doesn't match our set.

Now what? How do we resolve this difference? God, the source of moral law, has seemingly handed down contradictory laws, and both cannot be correct. So how do we determine which are the laws of God, and which are false? Is there some objective method of determining objective morality? If God or Nature has created these eternal moral principles, he hasn't done a very good job of making sure that all humans understand them, has he?

The obvious complaint is if slavery is always objectively wrong, why didn't God bother to tell the ancient Israelites it was wrong? Why didn't God give them a document along the lines of the US constitution, or the Swiss constitution? Why didn't he tell them to construct a modern liberal democracy? Or, if rights are self-evident from nature, why didn't the ancient Israelites discover them?

If rights are given by God or Nature, how do we discover what God intended for us? Is there some objective process whereby this can be accomplished? If so, I'd like to hear it. Note that if your process includes something like, "Read the Bible", you've just pushed the process back one iteration without actually explaining the process.

There is a process in which, as societies progess, they discover things (e.g. glass-making or quantum theory) they didn't know existed. Ignorance of something does not mean they don't exist.

[The Second Stone]

If rights come/came only from society, then nobody has the right to something they don't already have the right to.
For instance (accepting the rights-come-from-society idea), same-sex couples do not have the right to get married in Texas and no right is being taken from them or being trampled on.
That assumes that homosexuals aren't part of society. And it ignores the fact that marriage is treated as a right except when it comes to homosexuals.

That's not exactly right. Two straight males or females cannot marry each other either. In this country it is not legal to marry more than one person at a time. In many cultures throughout history polygamy was legal. You can't marry a non-human or a close relative, or a dead person, or an inanimate object. Marriage is about extending legal and financial and property benefits to another person. There is no logical reason not to allow that other person to be of the same sex.

[shy guy]

If rights come/came only from society, then nobody has the right to something they don't already have the right to.
For instance (accepting the rights-come-from-society idea), same-sex couples do not have the right to get married in Texas and no right is being taken from them or being trampled on. They have the aspiration to a right. If this is/were true, then SSM is more like zoning laws than a moral imperative.
Actually, it's more like existing marriage laws. An argument for same-sex marriage absent some objective moral authority is not as difficult to make as you seem to think.

For example, the response to "same-sex couples do not have the right to get married in Texas and no right is being taken from them or being trampled on," is simply that, yes, the right of marriage is being denied them. Sides can then argue whether "same-sex marriage" is a separate right from "marriage," but an argument for the former isn't a lost cause just because it doesn't already exist. Rights originating from the will of the people doesn't limit us to pure majority rule. The argument for pretty much any right is "It would be better if we had this."

[marshmallow]

In general, non-theistic natural rights would be those rights that humans are hard-wired to both grant to other and expect to be extended to themselves. Those which when violated provoke an innate negative emotional response in the vast majority of humans regardless of their religious inclinations.

This idea, along with animal studies, is my defense against religious people who claim no god means no morality. But IME this isn't what most people, even atheists or humanists, think about when they mean natural rights. Natural rights are something that stands outside of current opinion or cultural mores as some sort of universal morality.

Also, that definition of natural rights is very limited. It doesn't really speak to most modern day issues. And it may not be very applicable in instances where people want or do not want something for themselves or their family but do not care when applied to others.

So right now, most people on the planet don't think homosexuals should be married. If anything, the very thought of homosexuality itself gives them negative emotions. So we're not violating homosexual rights then? I think we are, and other countries are even worse, but I'm not going to flatter myself by saying people are violating some timeless Platonic universal principles. Like the Dude says, that's just like, your opinion, man.

IOW, natural rights sounds a whole lot like some religious voodoo. I'm not saying it's not good propaganda on a variety of issues and it can be very useful. If I was trying to convince some tribal leader to ban female circumcision I'd use it. I'm just saying it's daffy as in the duck.

[gurujulp]

What the hell was that?


ETA: I mean Don123's uh, "post".

Well, he has the "right" to post nonsense, no? :)

What's a squeal? I wanna eat one before it pisses on my food...

[Ají de Gallina]

Actually, it's more like existing marriage laws. An argument for same-sex marriage absent some objective moral authority is not as difficult to make as you seem to think.

For example, the response to "same-sex couples do not have the right to get married in Texas and no right is being taken from them or being trampled on," is simply that, yes, the right of marriage is being denied them. Sides can then argue whether "same-sex marriage" is a separate right from "marriage," but an argument for the former isn't a lost cause just because it doesn't already exist. Rights originating from the will of the people doesn't limit us to pure majority rule. The argument for pretty much any right is "It would be better if we had this."

Of course you're right that, if rights come from the will of the people and are not pre-existing, SSM can be argued for even if not a right today even if it is/were a separate right.

[psikeyhackr]

US!

WE give them to ourselves.

Who is there to take the rights away after all?

It is just a matter of what social philosophy we choose to operate under. If some people want to rationalize it with God that is their business.

psik