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Right Wing Terrorists Arrested in Plot to Murder Judge, State Troopers

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Mostly sane, most of the time.3/11/2011 1:49:08 pm PST

re: #161 Sergey Romanov

The idea that the rights are God-given is incoherent.

If these rights are not safe-guarded by God (and they’re aren’t because rights are violated on a continuous basis), in which way is the phrase “God-given rights” is meaningful? These rights don’t grow on trees, you can’t touch them, they’re just ideas. They don’t begin to exist unless they’re agreed on by humans. But they can be agreed on by humans without being God-given either. So God is an unnecessary link.

The idea that the rights are God-given is also dangerous.

What God? Christian God? If so, then only the Christian-delineated norms are to be enforced? Let’s take a single example. If we read the Bible we will see quite a restrictive sexual morality, with lots of activity being prohibited. So if we’re to follow the “God-given” rights logic in this context, then there is no right for two adults to engage in consensual sexual relations. (Look at history.) The same can be applied to other Gods and some other rights.

So “God” is quite a poor basis for human rights even aside from the grave problem of lack of evidence of existence.

Two points: I have been sitting here considering if there is anything I can say about the existence of God that would make any difference whatsoever in what anyone believes. Probably not.

Secondly, the idea of God-given rights was in contrast to the idea that the state gives the rights. What the state gives, the state can take. The idea that the founders stated was that their rights were not something the state could take at will, not legitimately at any rate, and this gave them the right to fight for those rights, and made the taking of those rights an offense.

The idea here is that if certain rights are taken away by the state, this is an illegitimate act which people have the right to fight against. This stands in contrast with the absolute monarch ideal, which states that God wants this monarch to rule, so he has all rights over you.