It appears I won’t be getting a direct response on this one. But the issue is being discussed so I’ll join in.
I do not find the idea that rights are endowed by a Creator to be either plausible or meaningful. The Creator has shown no sign of handing out rights or protecting them.
Let’s say the Creator endowed us with a right to have cable TV (and conveyed it to us through his chosen prophet Mahoney). But the Creator did nothing to give people cable TV. He just said we should have it.
Is this really a right? It sounds more like the Creator was just expressing the opinion that people should have cable TV.
Now suppose the town council of my hometown decided that the people in my hometown have a right to cable TV. And to affect this, they set up a fund that people can apply to that will pay for the monthly cable bill if they can’t afford it. This program would actually result in people getting cable TV.
So we’re left with the situation where a right endowed by the Creator has less meaning than a right endowed by a town council. Does this mean a town council has more power than the Creator?
While this example points out the absurdity of thinking a Creator gives us our rights, it also points us in the direction of the real answer. Jefferson came close when he said governments are instituted by men to secure our rights. The truth is governments are instituted by men to create and secure our rights.
Our rights are created by society. We collectively create our own rights.
Some people will be horrified by this idea. They want to believe that individuals create rights (while not wanting to believe that other individuals can create rights they don’t agree with). Or they want to invoke some third party like a Creator or natural law, which doesn’t actually make these pronouncements, but upon whose behalf they are volunteering to act as spokesman.
Acknowledging rights are collectively created by society puts people into the uncomfortable position where the rights they feel they should personally have might not be endowed upon them by other people. And those other people, unlike a silent Creator, might not remain conveniently silent on the subject.
Even more direct. My door is closed. I have my laptop, my TV, my couch, my cup of coffee, my lamp. That’s mine and not yours. You have much of the same. We all respect that. How much of a leap is it to say that we agree that we have an innate right to our stuff?
And again, we think that, not because you read your state code this morning. Not because you read the English common law. That is built into us by God, the universe or whatever.
The Creator is not enacting social welfare programs. These are freedoms from tyranny not entitlements to the collective teat.
The idea is not that controversial as everyone agrees with the idea. We are entitled to live, be free, and pursue our goals which makes us happy. Government is there to ensure that. A government which doesn’t do that is a shitty one, not really a government at all, and should be replaced.
You don’t need a law degree or a history PhD to figure this very simple thing out.
We definitely do not have an innate right to our stuff. For centuries, the king or lord or whatever had the right to your stuff, and even now, the IRS, your kids, your ex-wife, etc., have a right to your stuff.
Again, this is not borne out by history. Most of human experience involves servitude, bondage, prison, death sentences. Even today, North Koreans certainly don’t have those entitlements, neither do much of the population of China, especially the minority populations. Homosexuals almost never had those rights, until very recently. Blacks and whites in the US couldn’t marry who they chose in Virginia until I was born (I’m not saying I had anything to do with it, just that I was born in 1967).
If you’re saying that Americans or Westerners are entitled to be free, etc., then sure, for some of the population at least – but the last century or so is an aberration from what came before.
Why did you pick this part out of a statement that my ideas of what is “right and wrong” stem from “a combination of my upbringing, my genetics, and my own philosophical musings”? Do you agree with the other parts?
But the Creator did give me life. The town council did not. The government cannot give anyone life—it cannot grant that right, though it can do things to protect it.
(And don’t reject this position just because you reject the existence of God. Here “the Creator” just means whoever or whatever created us—whatever we owe our existence to. In that sense, the creator exists by definition.)
So maybe cable TV isn’t actually a right. Or maybe it’s a different kind of right than the right to life.
My “Creator” is nature, and nature hasn’t granted me anything resembling a right to life, just a right to participate in nature as best I can. I chose to participate in and promote and improve collective human activities that reduce the lethal competition that nature favors in general to a minimum, but recognize that is is very difficult to reduce it to zero due to the lack of universality in humanity as a whole of a respect for the lives of others.
Those collective human activities have improved significantly in the last couple of hundred years, but still face challenges in the form of competition between subgroupings and individuals that frequently turn deadly, and in the form of those who would like to reduce any influence from society on them as individuals to the point where the only restriction on them is “no active attempts at killing specific individuals”.
Only a few hundred years ago my ancestors relied to a much higher extent on a tighter bond with close relatives and neighbors to stay competitive, and a looser connection to “nation” as society as a whole was a lot less complicated and lacked the kind of enforcement of laws we see today. They would not have understood a “right to life”, except perhaps within their group, as it would restrict the actions they could take, while those not recognizing it were free to take advantage.
No, it doesn’t come from any “idea” at all. It comes from your innate instincts, which are as old as social mammals themselves. If your distant ancestors lacked those social instincts, they would have been outcompeted by groups that didn’t lack them, and you’d never have evolved in the first place.
I guess you mean your parents? If not that, do you mean the laws of physics? Those laws didn’t give you any right to life – nearly all of the universe has no life at all.
How do you know that the Creator gave you life so that you could enjoy your rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, rather than as food for the lion (which this Creator also created) that’s crouching in the tall grass behind you? Maybe your life’s purpose isn’t to find happiness - it’s to deliver calories?
Or maybe your Creator is just a big fan of your king, so he made you for the purpose of dying at the end of a spear for king and country?
So you’re saying I have the same right to life as an ant or an aemoba? So this right is a lot like saying that you have a right to a million dollars just go out and earn it and keep anything from taking it.
Of course not. There are billions of microbes living in your gut. I think it’s clear the Creator gave THEM a right to life, while YOU are just the comfortable environment they live in.
I took a stab at it in post #88 but didn’t get any responses - I would be interested to hear if other people could poke holes in it. Note that these are what I feel are necessary for something to be considered a “free and fair” society, but that there can still be “good” societies that might not be “free” ones.
Just so we’re clear, are you expressing your own opinion here? Or are you announcing your new position as the Creator’s official spokesman?
If the latter, you might want to check with the Boss on your statement that God wants you to have a laptop, a TV, a couch, a cup of coffee, and a lamp. You might want to check his memo to Matthew, dated 19:21.
What exactly does this entail? All living things die. Assuming life comes from the Creator, then life is just something the Creator gives you at one point and then takes back at another point, with you having no say in the matter. That’s not a right.
For example, would the right to bear arms be a right if it was something that you only had when some higher authority chose to give it to you? Or that could be arbitrarily taken away at any point by that same authority?
It comes down to how we’re using words, and what we mean by “rights.”
Way back near the beginning of the thread, @Roderick_Femm clearly spelled out where he was coming from:
Clearly, not everyone agrees with statements like “rights are not granted, they exist.” And these disagreements may or may not be over semantics. But I appreciate attempts like these to clarify at least one person’s beliefs.