Do our rights come from nature and God as Paul Ryan says?

[there4eyeM]

Yeah, we've gone over this: HOLD these truths to be self-evident. Believe it to be that way.

 

[Wiseacre]

I think some rights come from our own humanity, basic human rights such as the right to life, dignity, pursuit of happiness. Other rights are not so basic, like the right to vote, hold office, property rights, legal rights. More like civil rights that a society decides on, along with any limitations. The line between the two is somewhat blurry, which is which gets a little confusing. But one thing I know for sure, govt's do not grant rights or should not. It's basic function is to protect those rights rather than decide what they are.

 

[there4eyeM]

Governments are capable (can) do just about anything, it appears. If a government says it is giving rights, it may think it is and people may believe it, and it is thus true.
It isn't what you say I believe that counts to me, it is what I believe.

Belief is the most powerful thing a human has. Even Jesus gave it a very high place.

 

[thanatos144]

You idiots can wish my rights are not from God but they are....You know what that ymeans you ignorant sheep???? It means the government cant take them from me by any means but force or if I give them up.....I don't give them up.

 

[ConzHateUSA]

PHew, the moron who believes in the invisible man in the sky is calling the adults sheep

now
i
have
seen
everything

 

[GuyPinestra]

You're conflating "inalienable rights" with "rights protected by government". The former are existential and are by-products of volition. The latter are designated by government. The point of all of this is that rights aren't created and granted by government. We create government to protect rights we already have.

And that is backwards, according to OWS parasites. They want government to give out pretty much everything, rights included. To them, government is god.

Did God free the slaves or was that the product of man and government?

It was the product of men and women filled with the Spirit of God joining together to form the Abolitionist Movement.

And it still took 40 years and a Civil War...

 

[ConzHateUSA]

 

[there4eyeM]

"the government cant(sic) take them from me by any means but force or if I give them up"

Thanks again for confirming what was said about their being internal and, thus, inalienable in the existential/subjective sense.

Just don't try to exercise your right to freedom of movement when someone has a pistol trained on you and tells you to 'freeze!'. You are free to do it, but the consequences may be enough to convince you to suspend temporarily your 'right'.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Mind showing us the relevance of your comment?

But not in our Constitution. end of story.

Hardly. Habeas corpus in not defined in the Constitution, for example.

 

[Cecilie1200]

And that is backwards, according to OWS parasites. They want government to give out pretty much everything, rights included. To them, government is god.

Did God free the slaves or was that the product of man and government?

It was the product of men and women filled with the Spirit of God joining together to form the Abolitionist Movement.

And it still took 40 years and a Civil War...

Exactly. It was people struggling to recognize and respect the natural rights of people who had been enslaved, in order to more closely produce the ideal moral and just society.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

According to the philosophy of our founding, is the bolded, and that is what I'm disagreeing with.(the source they proclaimed - endowed by their creator)

Except I never once said anything about a creator, did I?

If rights come from a piece of paper, or a social contract, they can be taken away by the same means. That means that, unless they are natural, coming to us because we exist, they are not real, they are artificial, and you really have no rights.

No, the Founders said something about a creator. Not you, I know that.


by doing that "if they come from a social contract they can be taken away,"

You're not using reason to discover their source, but using fear and consequence to DECLARE their source. And, that's not logical.

No, I am pointing out the flaw in your logic. If rights come from something people say they can be taken away just as easily. The end result of that would be a word where all rights, and all truth, is subjective. We know that some things are wrong not because society tells us so but because we know that they are from somewhere inside of us. We call this our conscience.

We can debate about the source of this conscience. I believe it comes from God, others argue that it comes from evolutionary programming. It's source is irrelevant, but it does show that something guides us when we see an injustice. That, whatever you want to call it, is the source of our rights, not a piece of paper.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Not in this country. No offense, but that is almost as stupid a statement as the guy made that claimed we are a theocracy.

That is exactly how they are decided in this country. They always have been, and always will be. That is what makes them civil rights.

I'm somewhat shocked that so many cons don't understand the constitution.

Civil rights are not decided be referendums. They are guaranteed to us as citizens.

Really?

What makes us a citizen? Do non citizens not have civil rights? Last time I looked even non citizens have a right to a trial by jury, even if they don't have a right to vote. Can you explain that if only citizens have rights?

 

[Cecilie1200]

Except I never once said anything about a creator, did I?

If rights come from a piece of paper, or a social contract, they can be taken away by the same means. That means that, unless they are natural, coming to us because we exist, they are not real, they are artificial, and you really have no rights.

No, the Founders said something about a creator. Not you, I know that.


by doing that "if they come from a social contract they can be taken away,"

You're not using reason to discover their source, but using fear and consequence to DECLARE their source. And, that's not logical.

No, I am pointing out the flaw in your logic. If rights come from something people say they can be taken away just as easily. The end result of that would be a word where all rights, and all truth, is subjective. We know that some things are wrong not because society tells us so but because we know that they are from somewhere inside of us. We call this our conscious.

We can debate about the source of this conscious. I believe it comes from God, others argue that it comes from evolutionary programming. It's source is irrelevant, but it does show that something guides us when we see an injustice. That, whatever you want to call it, is the source of our rights, not a piece of paper.

I think you might have meant "conscience".

 

[Quantum Windbag]

No, the Founders said something about a creator. Not you, I know that.


by doing that "if they come from a social contract they can be taken away,"

You're not using reason to discover their source, but using fear and consequence to DECLARE their source. And, that's not logical.

No, I am pointing out the flaw in your logic. If rights come from something people say they can be taken away just as easily. The end result of that would be a word where all rights, and all truth, is subjective. We know that some things are wrong not because society tells us so but because we know that they are from somewhere inside of us. We call this our conscious.

We can debate about the source of this conscious. I believe it comes from God, others argue that it comes from evolutionary programming. It's source is irrelevant, but it does show that something guides us when we see an injustice. That, whatever you want to call it, is the source of our rights, not a piece of paper.

I think you might have meant "conscience".

I think you might be right.

 

[there4eyeM]

Freeing the slaves was the result of the evolution of morals. It was a very new idea in relation to the history of 'civilization'. It ran counter to 'scripture', where slavery is dealt with as normal. Even Jesus did not directly confront it.

People changed their minds. Rights were extended by individuals acting within their concepts of the social contract.

 

[antagon]

...we decide the rights that government puts foward through our representatives, referendums and so forth.

You could not be more wrong. The ENTIRE idea behind the founding of America, which is codified in the Constitution, is that no government nor any person can grant or take certain rights without due process. You and everyone is born with these rights. It matters not if you believe in God, you get the rights no matter what.

That doesn't really refute the point of the OP that rights are established and secured through social consensus. The fact that you can point to the importance of a foundational idea sewn into the fabric of American culture as the source of America's (not always uniformly sterling) dedication to the protection of human rights doesn't contradict the point being made at all.

Natural rights are not secured.. not even by consensus. Such is the point of many of the responses: that our rights to act freely are inherent and cannot be transferred to society or government, etc...

The enlightenment was about the recognition and management of these inherent rights. Many of the enlightenment/post-enlightenment scholars proposed that social precepts and consensus can only appeal to individuals for conformity to norms respecting which rights are exercised.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Freeing the slaves was the result of the evolution of morals. It was a very new idea in relation to the history of 'civilization'. It ran counter to 'scripture', where slavery is dealt with as normal. Even Jesus did not directly confront it.

People changed their minds. Rights were extended by individuals acting within their concepts of the social contract.

Morals don't "evolve". People do - within species, please; let's not derail into a different topic - and their ability to perceive and apply morals does. Slavery was always immoral; it didn't miraculously become immoral in the 1860s.

 

[there4eyeM]

The word 'evolution' is used in English far more flexibly than merely a biological term.
Develop could replace it if that pleases someone.

Morals, above all, are subjective. Slavery was by no means immoral to the hundreds of generations that practiced it. How can we call a Biblical institution immoral, unless you want to say the Bible is immoral?

I think slavery is and was wrong. I think the abominable treatment of women throughout time is humankind's biggest mistake. Society does not agree with me. To get along and not be incarcerated, I often keep my head down, but that doesn't change that I think I am right and society is wrong.
That is choice. That is not a human right, it is a human characteristic. We have no choice but to choose. We cannot get free of our freedom, though most people struggle very hard to do it.

 

[GuyPinestra]

Freeing the slaves was the result of the evolution of morals. It was a very new idea in relation to the history of 'civilization'. It ran counter to 'scripture', where slavery is dealt with as normal. Even Jesus did not directly confront it.

People changed their minds. Rights were extended by individuals acting within their concepts of the social contract.

Don't know much about the Abolitionist Movement, do you?

 

[Cecilie1200]

The word 'evolution' is used in English far more flexibly than merely a biological term.
Develop could replace it if that pleases someone.

Morals, above all, are subjective. Slavery was by no means immoral to the hundreds of generations that practiced it. How can we call a Biblical institution immoral, unless you want to say the Bible is immoral?

I think slavery is and was wrong. I think the abominable treatment of women throughout time is humankind's biggest mistake. Society does not agree with me. To get along and not be incarcerated, I often keep my head down, but that doesn't change that I think I am right and society is wrong.
That is choice. That is not a human right, it is a human characteristic. We have no choice but to choose. We cannot get free of our freedom, though most people struggle very hard to do it.

No, morals are not subjective. There are disagreements on how best to apply them to individual cases and circumstances, but there is surprisingly little disagreement on basic morals. What leftist-thinking people mistakenly see as "subjectivity" is actually people who know very well that what they are doing or wanting to do is wrong, and so are trying to rationalize and justify it to themselves and others.