God given rights. Do you really have any?
God given rights. Do you really have any?
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.
When a right is given to us by governments, they assume and have a duty to ensure that they are never taken from us. If governments do not accept and do this enforcement duty, then citizens have a corrupted government.
If a right is given to a soul, by god, he would have a duty to ensure that they are never taken from us. The fact that they often are, indicates that he is shirking his duty.
To me, rights are like laws, completely useless and worthless unless they can be enforced by a given power when they are breached.
Do you have any real god given rights, or are god given rights just a feel-good lie that we tell ourselves we have so as to ignore that we have none?
Regards
DL
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.
When a right is given to us by governments, they assume and have a duty to ensure that they are never taken from us. If governments do not accept and do this enforcement duty, then citizens have a corrupted government.
If a right is given to a soul, by god, he would have a duty to ensure that they are never taken from us. The fact that they often are, indicates that he is shirking his duty.
To me, rights are like laws, completely useless and worthless unless they can be enforced by a given power when they are breached.
Do you have any real god given rights, or are god given rights just a feel-good lie that we tell ourselves we have so as to ignore that we have none?
Regards
DL
Comments (125)
I quoted from the constitution which posits a creator god, and while that document does not name Yahweh, being that the U.S. was a predominantly Christian nation then and now, I took it to mean Yahweh.
Yahweh is not my god but I think most Americans do claim that he is theirs.
Regards
DL
It appears that the only right gods (if there are any) are concerned with is the right to die.
Simone Weil writes about this. The Jews did not have a concept of rights in the way we do. Their concept was the justice of God. Weil points out that when Jesus was confronted they asked Him "By whose authority do you say these things?" not "What right do you have to say these things?" What mattered to the Jews was the authority of God, not rights. Rights are invented by statesmen. They are a codification of what was originally understood, by the Jews, as justice that comes from above.
Earthly laws are intended to try to prevent breaches and to punish (generally) breaches. Those goals overlap and different countries have different views on punishment (say, as opposed to rehabilitation). Pretty much every law is breached. Goverments may take the responsibility for completly eliminating a crime against rights. But generally this is an intent where perfection is out of reach.
A deity, on the other hand, it seems to me is saying that there would be compensation or ultimate justice for that person whose rights are taken away. That ultimately a breach is fixed. So, the good person gets into heavan or whatever.
The word 'right' has a lot of different meanings. It seems clear that pretty much any deity is not guaranteeing an earthly existence without injustice, victims, suffering, but most theisms present a sense in which ultimately or deep down or both, certain rights are respected. And justice is enforced.
The only thing we can be sure of.
I see it more as a privilege as life is built on death. I do not mind helping promote new life.
Regards
DL
Given all the modifications to the U.S. constitution, that should be telling us all that it's language is garbage as it is poorly written.
I think the founders wanted a secular world free of religions and their vile genocidal gods that are somehow good.
Regards
DL
What began above are laws were not worthy of men. The laws in heaven cannot be the same as laws on earth. Jews have always strove both for and against god. That is why they are mostly atheists.
Justice seek to punish the guilty and Yahweh's first justice call was for a bribe for him to punish the innocent instead of the guilty.
Yahweh is a high grade prick.
Regards
DL
True. They want there to be retribution so much, they forget they are to love their enemies that they want to see brought to heel.
That love to hate is what keeps Christianity and Islam alive.
Inquisitions and jihads. Got to love them.
Regards
DL
When people talk of god I tend to think of Father Christmas.
Does this help?
Also, rights aren’t the kind of thing that can be given, by anybody.
And an unenforced right doesn’t cease to exist, it just means someone is getting away with dereliction of their duty. Rights would be a useless concept if them going unenforced made them disappear, as they are most useful in appeals against the violation of them.
Rights are freedoms that the State allows you to have. We don't need rights, we need freedom to the individual. God is just an early phase of the embodiment of the State.
Liberty rights are only one kind of right. Just as important are claim rights (your right against being punched in the face, for instance). There are also second-order versions of each, called powers and immunities, and only those have anything to do with government: all the Bill of Rights rights are immunities from government powers, for instance.
Only one being can occupy his own space and time, and in that sense each one of us is wholly original and one of a kind. On those grounds I think everyone, by virtue of their existence, is endowed with enough worth and dignity and value to warrant a certain amount of respect and honor.
You don't need a bigger bureocracy telling you that you have the liberty to defend yourself. You should already know it.
And if you're punched in the face, your freedom says to you: - Strike back!
Human relationship is one of egoism, a competition for power, and in some cases, aggressive behavior is acceptable.
Rights say nothing about bureaucracy. Do others have a duty not to punch you in the face? Is it wrong for them to do that to you? Then you have a right not to be punched in the face. That’s all a claim right is.
Given? Is not anything of that sort taken?
Taken by people who accept other claims to authority than given by a State?
Christianity argued there was such a point of leverage before it became the State.
It seems that I don't have the right to post pictures in this forum. :lol:
The idea of rights seems to originate from admixing the heart and the brain - matters of the heart subject to analysis by the brain. Being that, I see it (rights) as an intersection of all that's good about the heart and the brain and that, my friend, is the mark of god's love and wisdom.
No expert, but that sounds like a serious misreading. I don't think the founders sought a world free of religions, they just wanted government to stay out of the religion business.
Not me, no. I've checked.
Too much truth in one post for most mortal men to comprehend.
Casual 1500s geocentricist attitude. Hey at least we advanced from imprisoning people for presenting unproven beliefs to merely insulting their intelligence. Progress is progress I suppose.
I agree partly, but if power were the only determining factor regarding rights validity, then why wouldn't a monarchy be the best choice? Concentrating all power in one omniscient individual that is more or less held above the people as a ruler? Couldn't they enforce this concept in its most pure form?
I don't think anyone would disagree that someone with this much power would be subject to corruption of the law to suit their own interests. And I think this is why having rights is superior to just a body that has ultimate power to enforce the law on a large number of unwilling subjects.
Rights being G-d-given seems to be just a way of saying they apply to every person regardless of their wealth, race, gender, and to carry with it the connotation that rights are part of the will of the people and liable to go away once they are no longer valued by them. It would be sort of laughable to actually think people thought G-d literally descended from the heavens to bequeath them rights in some type of material form.
Quoting kudos
:up:
Quoting kudos
Gravity is a force, law, or commandment even we all have to live with men had nothing to do with. If we all stop thinking about it will we suddenly be able to fly? Assuming you believe in a god, why would that even be necessary? Like stating it'd be laughable for me to have to get inches away from a deer to shoot it. It would be. Out of sheer irrelevance.
Basically that the connotation of dependent on the will of the people is arguable if one truly believes in rights given by God. What I was going on about at least. Of course since you mentioned 'seems' it doesn't specifically apply. As well as it being a document by men it very well could be a fallacy and exactly as you described. Per intent of those responsible for it. I was arguing more about the concept of such rights in a religiously absolute sense based on doctrine. Which of course is not necessarily here nor there.
Your final framing of the question reveals your bias on the question. You state unless a right can be enforced, it's not a right. I would argue that a right remains a right even without a remedy. The definition of "right" implicates ethics and the fundamental question of whether we should do the right thing even when there is no penalty for doing the wrong thing. There simply are not enough laws that can be enacted, enough courts to be funded, nor enough police to be hired, to provide a remedy for every wrong. Right conduct is based not primarily on the fear of penalties, but an ethical system that becomes part of a citizen's character. Imagine instead a society in which people just did whatever they could get away with.
But to address the political statement of rights in the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration assumes the protection of these rights is not with God, but with governments. So if we use the Declaration as the source document for the controlling premise, it does not allow for cross-examination of God, but rather the accountability of governments formed under God.
Finally, the word "inalienable" is both a legal term of art and a theological premise. The document has a bold literary flair, with overreaching terms that could be argued endlessly. For example, if your happiness entails stealing my property, that is not the inalienable right referenced in the Declaration. The Document's unstated boundaries on "life, liberty and happiness" become articulated by the civil and criminal codes of the individual united states addressing specific situations.
The document is just what it says it is: A Declaration of Independence. The Government to which it was addressed was King George's, and the audience was intended to be the world. What better way to make your case than to plant your argument squarely within the design and will of God? It isn't the first time God has been used for political purposes.
True. It just becomes meaningless. A wish list.
The first duty of anyone with a right, is to insure that he enforces it for others, who reply in kind.
Regards
DL
Yes. A childish one.
I do not use the term "freedom".
You nor I can ever be free of the tribe. We have liberty, as your Statue of Liberty shows. It is not a statue of freedom.
As Socrates said of freedom when he scraped any notions of it, who will make your shoes?
Regards
DL
Do you apply this respect and honor to Hitler, Stalin and Yahweh?
Regards
DL
Yes, and sometimes demanded.
Regards
DL
Who protects and enforces your will when you wish to exercise your rights?
Who do you call when being robbed.
A bureaucracy. Right?
Regards
DL
Which they enforced with inquisitions and murder. This aside.
Right can be taken once offered by the state.
IE. Governments give us the right to go at a given speed limit. Go over that and you come under a no right to exceed that limit law.
You swear your allegiance to the state and should not lie about it or just mouth the words without meaning them.
What state tells you to hold an allegiance to some other power or stste?
Regards
DL
I agree. A faith based garbage belief.
I also agree that the (cough), holy books need a lot of revisions.
So does the thinking of the homophobes and misogynous.
Regards
DL
Hmm.
Yet god so hated his son that he had him purposelessly killed.
One would really have to be a mad fool to see Yahweh, the genocidal Yahweh, as love and wisdom.
Regards
DL
Yes, and also wanted the religious to keep their religions out of politics. That did not work given your political faith test.
I used the word secular as the world will go to a more laïcité form of secularism, and the U.S. would be well advised to do the same.
Regards
DL
Yes they do as I enforce their right and do them when they fail to produce properly.
All parents do.
Regards
DL
Yet so many there for us to laugh at.
The problem with a monarch is that if he is good, all is good. If he is more like a Trump, then the country becomes the laughing stock of the world.
Regards
DL
No argument on your last.
As to your first, I prefer to keep political documents political with the crown having the final say and not some invisible guy in the sky.
I might feel differently if Yahweh was not such a satanic god.
Quoting Frank Pray
That rather excludes atheists from ever seeking office.
The U.S. has elected religious fools instead of intelligent and moral atheists as leaders in the past, and will likely do so till you have your next revolution to rid yourself of your vile two party polarized system.
Regards
DL
What do you mean by "religious to keep their religions out of politics"?
Are religious people not supposed to organize, advocate and vote like the rest of us? One rule for them, another for us?
I can agree that all laws should apply to everybody, and that there shouldn't be carve outs for religious people. If that's your complaint, I can share it.
Things like when Bush went to war with Iraq because god told him to.
I also would include the faith test that your politicians have to lie about in order to gain support.
Quoting Nuke
I do not care what the religious do except for picking my pocket with their un-earned tax breaks that you end I have to pay, thanks to the down fall religious exemptions create.
There should not be any difference in the law of the land they follow and what you and I follow.
J Ws for instance, cannot let their children die for want of a blood transfusion. I like that your government has forced your vile churches to pay for birth control even if they do not like it.
I assume you are an American and showed what they have done.
Regards
DL
Agree with you here.
1. The good book is god's word
2. If the good book is god's word then the good book is true
3. The good book is true (1, 2)
4. God is all good
5. If god is all good then god can't command genocide
6. God can't command genocide (4, 5)
7. If the good book is true and god can't command genoicde then we've misunderstood the good book
8. We've misunderstood the good book (7, 8)
Only as meaningless as any other moral claim. If someone grievously harms someone else and nobody stops it, does it become meaningless to say it was wrong? Saying the victim had a right not to be harmed is just saying it was wrong to harm her, so is only meaningless if that is meaningless too.
Arguing about previous arguments always has the problem of not being about a claim upon the present.
But some of those previous arguments tried to address that problem and not blow it off.
There is a certainty of self righteousness in your point of view that makes it as boring as other examples of self righteousness.
Of the kind you militate against.
Correct, by the literal reading of myths.
If god is all good, then genocide and infanticide, homophobia and misogyny, are all good.
Only the evil minded will see a good god come out of the bible.
Regards
DL
You have never let your children celebrate Christmas!
I see that as cruel.
Regards
DL
No. It shows a decent moral sense. That does not take away from the fact that if we do not all protect each others rights, they become meaningless.
Regards
DL
Correct. Morality is my forte and I proudly state my case and open myself to criticism.
I am not here to hide. If you do not like it, and think you have a better moral stance, share it.
Otherwise take your personal off topic criticisms and shove them back from where you got them..
Regards
DL
It is. The religious should stop lying to their children.
One does not lie to those we are supposed to love.
Regards
DL
Taking a high position is how one either gets knocked down by the opposition, or proves he is correct via debate and discussion.
Some mystics say that one should not be for or against any proposition, but to me, sitting on the fence just drives a fence post up the ass of the fence sitters.
Those who complain of my stance, just do so because they are not able to either knock me aside or refute my views. Losers are like that.
Regards
DL
I would die for it. I'd beg for it, I'd fight for it, I'd run for it. I'd do whatever it is in my reach to keep it with me. This survival instinct, I cannot say that it was given to me by a god since I cannot say that gods exist. However, it comes naturally to me as it comes naturally to any other living thing there is. This constantly-present wish/desire to keep my life is as mine as my own life is. Again, I cannot say it was given to me by a god because I do not know if gods exist.
Good thinking.
No one does. many lie about it. Especially lying preachers.
We have evidence of nature. We have no evidence of a god.
Nothing should be believed on faith without facts. Faith without facts is for fools.
Regards
DL
This is not true, I think. There are some experts who claim God has been identified by modern radio-telescopes, radio-astronomy at the very fringes of our own Universe, almost as if honeycombing this universe and all others too! I'm not kidding you. :grin:
Check for God on ghost setting of radio-waves frequencies! :grin:
You may. I don't think I will, only because I read somewhere that using the same first letter word in a sentence is supposed to give it flair. :-)
Yours is likely mare grammatically accurate.
Accuracy does not effect believers and I hope that flair does.
Regards
DL
I can really defend myself against your gratuitous insult, especially when I have no more clue of what you are talking about than you do.
Get smarter and less gauche or shove your worthless insult back up where it came from.
Regards
DL
I would rather check my toast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_BCNio07gU
Regards
DL
I did not mean my remarks about self righteousness to be a charge against you as a person. You see no good coming from a certain tradition. I recognize that it has brought much needless suffering. The language of tearing out something root and branch is in your language and the worst of those you condemn. I object to both.
I don't care as I have seen too many softer and gentler posters try to soften their blows and they get shit on even more than I.
The the vile Christians recognize them as weak and try to kill them verbally.
Jesus had to run from people more than once and so would I if I was speaking in a public place to Christians.
But I am willing to learn. If you think you can teach.
How would you tell Christians, in your softer terms, that to idol worship a genocidal prick of a god is immoral and so is being a part of his homophobic and misogynist religion?
Regards
DL
Thanks for accusing without showing anything.
You win this debate, a hole.
Oh, and you are one ugly guy. That is undeniable so I win on that one, ugly.
Regards
DL
You have already shown your garbage personal character with your gratuitous insults and claims without even showing what you are referring to.
Go away, fool.
Regards
DL
The Christianity I understand is not very soft. It calls for a lot from a person. Pretty much everything one has to give.
There are many points of view that object to that demand. They are interesting and include valid considerations arguing that such an either/or is not correct or necessary.
You stake out this other place that does not seem to have anything to do with that conversation.
Why should anybody think your point of view exists?
Quoting Valentinus
Read what I put again please. I said nothing of a soft Christianity.
Regards
DL
If no g/G, then no g/G-given X.
If no g/G is needed to explain anything that requires (a rigorously testable) explanation, then no g/G-given X explains, or justifies, anything including itself.
If communities do not assume (in order to tolerate varieties of) 'belief in g/G', then such communities do not recognize, or establish, any g/G-given X.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Rights, Bishop, are demanded and defended, not "given"; if only because whatever is "given" can also be taken back (or away) and therefore aren't ever "really had".
That is a bullshit response. You are the one who has put the the whole Christian tradition into question.
It was interesting until you abandoned your own project.
It will be best if you make your arguments in that regard as you see them.
I am a cantankerous old guy on the verge of being banned for losing his temper periodically.
This venue has given me more than I have given it.
I look at my objections as a call to do better, to myself as much as it may involve other people.
It is much easier to call out other people for their shortcomings than come up with something better that one personally understands. That contrast is what I understand is peculiarly Christian. A kind of self awareness more than a certainty about what is good and necessary.
Noah Harrari would agree with you. He believes that man was able to dominate the planet and coordinate on a massive scale due to legal fiction and fiction. Apes can coordinate in groups of approximately 150. Humans can coordinate in the millions and due to money in the billions. I'm not a big fan of globalism but its ok if you disagree. I'm sure you'll have a comment for me on that.
Rights are not given by God, nor are they self-evident and eternal in the way moral precepts may be. One may argue that the ten commandments are given by God since most of them correspond to universal moral concepts. Murder is a violation against nature, but from that it doesn’t follow that humans have a natural right to life. We were given life for free, but that doesn’t mean we have a right to it. If someone gives you a present, you don’t automatically have a right to it.
Do you have something to add to your expression of strong disapproval?
My statement was not a thesis as much as an explanation of interest.
What do you think it is all about?
I agree that rights and privileges are something taken and cannot really be given.
As you say there might be Indian givers out there.
Even some freed slaves did not want to accept their freedom when the North offered it to them.
Regards
DL
Yet you belong to a fascist religion that seeks world dominance and did not mind using inquisitions and murder to make it so.
Nice religion you follow. Not.
Regards
DL
I agree.
I do not think one can be given a right unless the means of enforcing it is also given.One can only take a right that he is willing to enforce himself.
Regards
DL
thats fair.
Without a definition on what you mean by god, this question is impossible to answer. Since you take the word 'right' out of the juridical context, you would also need to define what you mean by it as well. All we can know is that we exist (Descartes 'cogito ergo sum'), does that mean we have the right to exist?
Noah Harrari would agree with you (the book "sapiens"). He says humans were able to coordinate on a massive scale due to legal fictions and fictions. He points out that the ammorite Hammurabi in ~1770bc made a list of rights just like the US made a list of right in ~1776ad.
Apes can function in groups of approximately 150 and strangely enough there are ~155 nations on this earth. He says we dominated the planet due to legal fictions such as money and fictions such as human rights and religion.
I think his book is worth reading. I read the first 4 chapters and watched a bunch of his videos.
I always try to be.
Talk to your Christian friends and ask them to do the same for gays and women.
Regards
DL
God is well defined, to the Christians who wrote the U.S. judicial documents. I will not second guess them.
Quoting Tomseltje
Only if I have what it takes to defend my right to life. That or an enforcement mechanism that I can call to my rescue.
I do not see rights as being something given. They are something that we can only accept or take.
Regards
DL
There is some truth to that, but you forget that the religious fictions that Christianity used, where backed up by inquisitionsd and murder to grow Christianity as the did not have decent moral arguments to convert with.
You forget what made Christianity the size it is. Murder and lies.
Regards
DL
thats fair.
one of the forum moderators said i have to act like a christian so
i'm in the process of turning the other cheek, can you see me turning the other cheek through the screen, there i turned the other cheek.
I turned the other cheek.
Are you familiar with ancient Iraq temple prostitution and modern hindu temple prostitution?
How do you feel about the Roman Catholic (not all Christian) sex scandals?
Haven't we talked about the inquisition before.
i'm in the process of turning the other cheek, can you see me turning the other cheek through the screen, there i turned the other cheek.
I turned the other cheek.
My Christian friends are more ethical than your Christian friends so there. Ha!
We abort less Babies. Isaiah chapter 57, Exodus chapter 21 and Numbers chapter 5 says abortion is forgivable though. (KJV) The KJV doesn't support rape but the NIV does support rape. Strange how the more conservative Bible is less evil.
Uber is the future.
Since we are both Christianoid i don't have to turn the other cheek with you since we are both essentially equals as far as an online forum is concerned. I have no reason to believe you aren't more ethical than me considering i know nothing about you. I don't need to turn the other cheek since we are both Christianoid.
That's a rather narrower definition than I had in mind. First of all it's narrowing down the word 'god' to only mean the Christian god, and then further narrowing it down by how it's applied by a legal institution within a single nation. As someone not living in the US I'm not even familiar with what you are referring to.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
So your life was not given to you by God?
How can you even accept something that wasn't given to you to begin with? You seem to apply a vastly different definition of the word 'accept' as well.
What is god but the ultimate perfection of our moral sense? Therefore, it's absolutely ok to assert that, since our rights are simply outgrowths of our morality and since god is the flawless form of our morality, our rights trace their origins to god, the all-benevolent creator.
Look up the Jewish definition and custom to know what it means.
Thanks for the insult.
Regards
DL
Do you not have a mother and a father that are human?
I do.
If you think some god gives life, then explain why he produced the poor souls you see in this link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_-nHw0_Fos&feature=player_embedded
Do you agree that only a satanic creator would create those?
Regards
DL
Look at the link in my last post.
Now try to write what you did again without choking on your own words.
How you see benevolence in a baby torturing genocidal prick is beyond me.
Do try to justify your impossible to justify thinking.
Regards
DL
You've misconstrued my words. I don't mean that there's a being who resides in heaven called god. God, as I used it, is morality taken to perfection and being that, is the source of our moral sense and, because that's so, the source of rights.
Good.
I also define the word god similarly.
I define it as the best rules and laws to live by, so I think we are on the same page.
I think that that is the message of the Moses myth as he came off the mountain with laws from god and not with a god. The Jews, like us, quickly tried to improve on those.
The big 10 are rather vile when you think of them, so they failed in giving us the best rules and laws to live by.
I had forgotten that you were more agnostic when I replied and answered as I would have to a believer.
Regards
DL
:up:
edited. You insult me all the time. We both read the Bible and claim to adhere to Jesus's teachings.
How do you feel about Christians and Non-Christians working too hard in the work place? Is socialism the answer? check out this website. www.truefiscalconservatism.com
I insult you for your morals as you are following the Rome created Jesus.
I follow Jesus' more esoteric/shamanic ways.
Your way slaves you to religion while my way frees us from it.
Keep following a genocidal god if you like, but do not expect moral people to respect you for holding such a position.
Do you respect the old German S S's thinking?
You are thinking the same way if you idolize Yahweh.
Regards
DL
We have never had a true socialist system with a flat demographic pyramid so we have nothing to compare.
We do know that all societies are hierarchal and they are showing that socialism, whatever that is, is not what they want.
You might look at the happiness stats and recognize that the Northern European democracies have blende democracy with social programs in ways that have increased the happiness factor.
Regards
DL
nope
thats fair. did you check out my website? www.truefiscalconservatism.com
I agree.
Regards
DL
If you have an argument or statement yourself, bring it forward. I'm not going to watch links you post on the odd chance there is something useful in it if you can't even point out or summarize what's worthy of looking at in the link you mention.
What is worthy is contemplating why a creator god would intentionally create abominations of nature.
It is demonstrable that nature inadvertently creates for the best possible end to all life.
It is demonstrable, biblically, to see that that good standard is not what the genocidal Yahweh uses.
If your god is the Yahweh/Roman Jesus combo, you can do better.
Regards
DL
What abominations of nature?
So you are here to preach rather than to philosophize?
Are you a Gnostic Christian or a Naturalist? You sound much more like a Naturalist than a Gnostic Christian.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
What abominations of nature?
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Then by all means, do demonstrate so.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Then by all means, do demonstrate so.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Really, according to what standard of good? and what do you suggest to constitute as better?