# If there is no God, where do our inalienable rights come from? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 28, 2010, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823 "2010-08-28T20:24:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![LilShieste](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9f8e36/32.png) [@LilShieste](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LilShieste)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/121 "2010-08-29T19:14:07Z")
> [@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”? ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/122 "2010-08-29T19:18:23Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/123 "2010-08-29T19:29:41Z")
> [@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. 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? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/124 "2010-08-29T19:34:21Z")
> [@LilShieste](#): > > > [@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. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/125 "2010-08-29T19:37:08Z")
> [@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. 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. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/126 "2010-08-29T19:38:36Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > People have been talking about natural law for 2400 years since Socrates and Plato. Is natural law a part of evolution? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/127 "2010-08-29T19:41:24Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > > [@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. > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/128 "2010-08-29T19:43:29Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > > [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/129 "2010-08-29T19:44:09Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > > [@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. [Natural law - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law) Evolution is a scientific theory, natural law is a legal theory. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/130 "2010-08-29T20:36:14Z")
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.” ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/131 "2010-08-29T20:37:46Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > > [@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. ---
**Author:** ![LilShieste](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9f8e36/32.png) [@LilShieste](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LilShieste)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/132 "2010-08-29T21:40:47Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > > [@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. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/133 "2010-08-29T22:07:08Z")
> [@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.” The Law of the Jungle ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/134 "2010-08-30T00:01:57Z")
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ivYN-j--ao](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ivYN-j--ao) From another thread the old philosopher george Carlin explains it. Of course bad language. ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/135 "2010-08-30T01:27:22Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/136 "2010-08-30T01:31:45Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![tonysidaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2acd7d/32.png) [@tonysidaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tonysidaway)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/137 "2010-08-30T05:51:15Z")
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. > **[Dominion theology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominionism)** > > Dominion theology, also known as dominionism, is a group of Christian political ideologies that seek to institute a nation that is governed by Christians and based on their understandings of biblical law. Extents of rule and ways of acquiring governing authority are varied. For example, dominion theology can include theonomy but does not necessarily involve advocacy of adherence to the Mosaic Law as the basis of government. The label is primarily applied to groups of Christians in the United Stat... ---
**Author:** ![tonysidaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2acd7d/32.png) [@tonysidaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tonysidaway)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/138 "2010-08-30T13:48:27Z")
Here you go. David Barton’s Wikipedia biography. > **[David Barton (author)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Barton_(author))** > > David Barton (born January 28, 1954) is an evangelical author and political activist for Christian nationalist causes. He is the founder of WallBuilders, LLC, a Texas-based organization that promotes pseudohistory about the religious basis of the United States. > Barton's work is devoted to advancing the discredited idea that the United States was founded as an explicitly Christian nation and rejecting the notion that the United States Constitution calls for separation of church and state. Schol... ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/139 "2010-08-30T13:51:45Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > > [@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? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823/140 "2010-08-30T15:00:09Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > 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 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-there-is-no-god-where-do-our-inalienable-rights-come-from/551823.md?page=8)