Do Natural Rights Exist Without Government ?

[Asclepias]

Tell me something, if natural rights do not exist, what possible objection could you logically mount to slavery? Or even discrimination and racism?

Who said I couldn't mount a logical argument and why would I have to mount a logical argument in the first place?

Remember all those comments you made about natural rights being an oxymoron? Any argument against slavery based on anything other than economics, which you don't understand, or natural rights will end up being an oxymoron.

As for your questions, I said you couldn't mount a logical argument against it, and you have to because you claim to be smarter than I am.

Its funny to see you so confident you think you can tell me my argument can only be based on economics. As for you mistaken belief I couldn't mount a logical argument against slavery please don't be naive. I can quickly dispatch your deluded, naive, assertion and send it off to the corner wearing a dunce hat.

 

[Asclepias]

Did I miss your responses to all the times I pointed out the fact that animals exhibit moral behavior?

Yes you must have missed them like you usually do. Animals don't exhibit moral behavior. Humans say animals exhibit moral behavior because they want to pretend animals feel the way they do. Never heard my dog tell me it was morally wrong he has to sleep outside in his run while I sleep in my bed.

The scientists are wrong?

Do you have evidence of that, or are we just supposed to take your word for it?

Are scientist humans? Did the scientists label the behavior morals or did the animals? If so please provide me some proof.

 

[dilloduck]

Yes you must have missed them like you usually do. Animals don't exhibit moral behavior. Humans say animals exhibit moral behavior because they want to pretend animals feel the way they do. Never heard my dog tell me it was morally wrong he has to sleep outside in his run while I sleep in my bed.

The scientists are wrong?

Do you have evidence of that, or are we just supposed to take your word for it?

Are scientist humans? Did the scientists label the behavior morals or did the animals? If so please provide me some proof.

Just where do scientists get their authority from anyway? Other scientists ?

 

[Asclepias]

The scientists are wrong?

Do you have evidence of that, or are we just supposed to take your word for it?

Are scientist humans? Did the scientists label the behavior morals or did the animals? If so please provide me some proof.

Just where do scientists get their authority from anyway? Other scientists ?

Are those other scientist humans? Quantums problem is he cannot mount an argument so his tactic is to nibble at the legs of other arguments hoping to wear you out with things that are not relevant.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

OK I can agree with the concept natural/inalienable rights are worthless if not protected. My point is if they exist what good are they if they have to be protected and what makes them different from legal rights other than the fact that our government put them in a different category to protect against tyranny?

Don't you realize that we live in a world where there is good and evil in which is demonstrated on a daily basis be it in proof there of ? If we lived in a world where evil didnot exist, then we would need not the protections of those rights in which we are born with. Now evil is not born, but rather it is something that has gotten loosed within the world in which we do live in, and it seeks to consume us if we do not recognize the very things in which we are born with that is good, and that is born within each and everyone of us from the beginning of our lives.

The Bible lays all of this out for us, and throughout the generations we see the results of it all, and we have made records that have been laid down through out history of it all just as well. Any man who claims he is ingnorant of these things, is either lying or playing Satans game for him.

Are we speaking religious good and evil or are we talking the behavior we label as good and bad? IMO there is no religious good except that which is inspired by the belief in a higher being. That is a construct of man. IMO there is no such thing as evil. There are only bad behaviors that are anti-social, detrimental, and frightening to our instinct to belong to a group.

Yes, I know freedom scares you, you have said so many times. That does not make it evil, or even bad, it just means you need to evolve.

That said, I can guarantee you that there are evil people. Sooner or later you are going to come across an example, and realize that, despite your naive beliefs that it is just a behavior pattern that is contrary to the need to belong to a group. In fact, evil people actually prefer to be part of a group, it gives them more power. Jim Jones had no problems with belonging to a group, and he even capitalized on the desire that weak minded people have to belong to a group to spread his evil to others. Charles Manson is another example, as is McCarthy.

The Bible is another example of humans getting together and deciding to provide a moral code that will safeguard the model of society they deemed desirable. The sad thing is that it has great messages and lessons for good living but it is so full of errors and contradictions that it is apparent it was not divinely inspired. That sounds suspiciously like the imperfect human mind at work to me.

Even if that is true, which is actually debatable, despite your claim of superior knowledge, it is irrelevant.

If I wanted a group of people to behave a certain way I would claim this way of living came from something more powerful and wise than myself. I would appeal to the human need for security in the context of social living. I would condemn the bad behaviour that anyone could easily observe that destroys the dynamic I wanted to create. Lastly I would make sure no one could ever prove that my source did not exist by making it invisible and unquestionable.

Funny how the last guy to start a brand new religion ignored that advice, isn't it? Maybe you aren't as smart as you think you are.

 

[NYcarbineer]

[

In my opinion, the prejudiced and tunnel visioned and close minded demand that natural rights be a human invention. The enlightened, the one who understands and appreciates what liberty is, knows better.

Rights are a human invention whether you call them natural or not.

Ask a conservative if the right to an abortion is a natural right. 99% will say no. If there were such a thing as natural rights, however, abortion would clearly be one of them.

Conservatives want to declare some rights as natural rights, but also want to declare which rights are not.

That is invention.

 

[Asclepias]

Don't you realize that we live in a world where there is good and evil in which is demonstrated on a daily basis be it in proof there of ? If we lived in a world where evil didnot exist, then we would need not the protections of those rights in which we are born with. Now evil is not born, but rather it is something that has gotten loosed within the world in which we do live in, and it seeks to consume us if we do not recognize the very things in which we are born with that is good, and that is born within each and everyone of us from the beginning of our lives.

The Bible lays all of this out for us, and throughout the generations we see the results of it all, and we have made records that have been laid down through out history of it all just as well. Any man who claims he is ingnorant of these things, is either lying or playing Satans game for him.

Are we speaking religious good and evil or are we talking the behavior we label as good and bad? IMO there is no religious good except that which is inspired by the belief in a higher being. That is a construct of man. IMO there is no such thing as evil. There are only bad behaviors that are anti-social, detrimental, and frightening to our instinct to belong to a group.

Yes, I know freedom scares you, you have said so many times. That does not make it evil, or even bad, it just means you need to evolve.

That said, I can guarantee you that there are evil people. Sooner or later you are going to come across an example, and realize that, despite your naive beliefs that it is just a behavior pattern that is contrary to the need to belong to a group. In fact, evil people actually prefer to be part of a group, it gives them more power. Jim Jones had no problems with belonging to a group, and he even capitalized on the desire that weak minded people have to belong to a group to spread his evil to others. Charles Manson is another example, as is McCarthy.

The Bible is another example of humans getting together and deciding to provide a moral code that will safeguard the model of society they deemed desirable. The sad thing is that it has great messages and lessons for good living but it is so full of errors and contradictions that it is apparent it was not divinely inspired. That sounds suspiciously like the imperfect human mind at work to me.

Even if that is true, which is actually debatable, despite your claim of superior knowledge, it is irrelevant.

If I wanted a group of people to behave a certain way I would claim this way of living came from something more powerful and wise than myself. I would appeal to the human need for security in the context of social living. I would condemn the bad behaviour that anyone could easily observe that destroys the dynamic I wanted to create. Lastly I would make sure no one could ever prove that my source did not exist by making it invisible and unquestionable.

Funny how the last guy to start a brand new religion ignored that advice, isn't it? Maybe you aren't as smart as you think you are.

You should be able to post where I said freedom scares me. I cant stand liars. I see you are back to your old tricks of diversion in the face of being unable to mount an argument that lasts beyond my very next post refuting it. You just earned a trip to the penalty box until you get your act together like the other adults on the thread.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

In the definition of value you will find the word worth. It is a inherent part of value. If it is in abundance it is worth less. If it is scarce and your need for it is greater it becomes more valuable. It is a natural need not a want.

Undiscovered penicillin has zero value as it is not needed nor is its presence detected. Inalienable rights are akin to penicillin. Once discovered they have some value but if it is taken you don't die because it is not needed in order to maintain the ability. Rights are things people want to have in order to empower themselves to exercise their abilities.

Well if you argue that there is no difference between 'value' and 'worth' then we are back to arguing silly semantics--like some want to argue that the definition of unalienable is the same thing as unalienable rights--even though some do use the two terms of 'value' and 'worth', usually erroneously, interchangeably.

The way I see it:

"Worth" indicates a quantitative or tangible price that one is willing to pay or attribute to something. And that indeed can rise and fall depending on supply and demand.

"Value" is the importance or significance of something. The importance may increase or decrease depending on the urgency of any given situation--for example, how much I value my 'right to life' would not be important in the moments when I risk my life to save my child from imminent danger. And some memento given to us by a parent or grandparent or some other significant person might be worthless as far as what it could be sold for, yet have great value to us personally.

For those who would benefit from it, penicillin is just as important and has value whether it is free or priced like gold, whether it is available or unavailable to us, whether it is discovered or undiscovered. And it exists.

For those who value liberty, unalienable rights have incalculable value as liberty cannot exist without them. Whatever 'rights' aka permissions are granted by a government are not the same thing as what the government allows can be just as easily disallowed.

The U.S Constitution is based on the concept that unalienable rights exist and it is the role of government to recognize and secure them. It is the concept that unalieanble rights exist and cannot be invented or ordained by any government..

And what is an unalienable right? It is whatever requires no contribution or participation by any other and does not infringe on anybody else's ability to enjoy and exercise their rights.

Seriously---you just invent your own definition of words ?

That would be Asclepias, which is why he never responded to my post where I asked him to explain why unalienable rights is an oxymoron.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

In the definition of value you will find the word worth. It is a inherent part of value. If it is in abundance it is worth less. If it is scarce and your need for it is greater it becomes more valuable. It is a natural need not a want.

Undiscovered penicillin has zero value as it is not needed nor is its presence detected. Inalienable rights are akin to penicillin. Once discovered they have some value but if it is taken you don't die because it is not needed in order to maintain the ability. Rights are things people want to have in order to empower themselves to exercise their abilities.

Well if you argue that there is no difference between 'value' and 'worth' then we are back to arguing silly semantics--like some want to argue that the definition of unalienable is the same thing as unalienable rights--even though some do use the two terms of 'value' and 'worth', usually erroneously, interchangeably.

The way I see it:

"Worth" indicates a quantitative or tangible price that one is willing to pay or attribute to something. And that indeed can rise and fall depending on supply and demand.

"Value" is the importance or significance of something. The importance may increase or decrease depending on the urgency of any given situation--for example, how much I value my 'right to life' would not be important in the moments when I risk my life to save my child from imminent danger. And some memento given to us by a parent or grandparent or some other significant person might be worthless as far as what it could be sold for, yet have great value to us personally.

For those who would benefit from it, penicillin is just as important and has value whether it is free or priced like gold, whether it is available or unavailable to us, whether it is discovered or undiscovered. And it exists.

For those who value liberty, unalienable rights have incalculable value as liberty cannot exist without them. Whatever 'rights' aka permissions are granted by a government are not the same thing as what the government allows can be just as easily disallowed.

The U.S Constitution is based on the concept that unalienable rights exist and it is the role of government to recognize and secure them and must never interfere or prohibit the free exercise of them. It is the concept that unalieanble rights exist and cannot be invented or ordained by any government..

And what is an unalienable right? It is whatever requires no contribution or participation by any other and does not infringe on anybody else's ability to enjoy and exercise their rights.

I agree it is not the same thing. I believe worth is inherent in the term value. Thats not semantics thats the smoking gun I saw in the dictionary. If worth was not inherent in the word value who would care about what you value? Its just a starting point. An idea you have in your mind to convey the worth. You may value your home at 1 million but if it will only sale for 500k then that is what it is worth. You are correct inalienable and inalienable rights are 2 different things. In the case of inalienable rights the inalienable is an adj. describing the right.

I dont get why we don't decree certain rights are not up for discussion and stop claiming these rights came from something invisible. It is an argument that shortly will hold no water as people start figuring out they are the victims of their instincts and over active imaginations.

I don't get why you think nature is invisible. I also do not understand why you think you are the only person on the planet that can think, especially when you don't actually think.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I agree it is not the same thing. I believe worth is inherent in the term value. Thats not semantics thats the smoking gun I saw in the dictionary. If worth was not inherent in the word value who would care about what you value? Its just a starting point. An idea you have in your mind to convey the worth. You may value your home at 1 million but if it will only sale for 500k then that is what it is worth. You are correct inalienable and inalienable rights are 2 different things. In the case of inalienable rights the inalienable is an adj. describing the right.

I dont get why we don't decree certain rights are not up for discussion and stop claiming these rights came from something invisible. It is an argument that shortly will hold no water as people start figuring out they are the victims of their instincts and over active imaginations.

Easier said than done---these are the things that give people hope and something to believe in. We would be alone without a back up if there wasn't something invisible running the show.

I think (hope?) people have grown to the point they can work toward the goal of everyone living in peace and prosperity and that be enough. It would still provide the security part. I dont even have a problem with people still exercising religion as long as it had nothing to do with our rights.

You would hope that everyone else in the world agree with you? Why would they do that?

 

[Foxfyre]

You mean of course that you think they are the same-----natural rights advocates and theorists would vehemently disagree with you. To them God is supernatural.

Sigh. Whatever. As I said some simply don't have the emotional temperament or the intellect to separate their prejudice against religion from a universal truth or concept. I don't think they are the same. I KNOW they are the same because I have studied and taught the concept and am very secure in how the Founders and those great philosophers who the Founders studied defined them.

ahhh those who disagree who are intellectually inferior and have the wrong emotional temperament ? How truly humble of you..

check this out and tell me who the inferior intellects are.

Human Rights*[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

And so often such intellectual inferiority is accompanied by a reading dysfunction as well???? I said no such thing about those who disagree with me. I said those who are incapable of separating a concept from whatever religious connotation some people put on it are temperamentally/emotionally challenged as well as being intellectually challenged. Try to keep up. I've always thought you brighter than the average bear. You are capable of understanding if you just will.

Or if you are intentionally using non sequitur and straw men to stir the pot, please pick on somebody else. I'm really not in the mood.

 

[dilloduck]

Easier said than done---these are the things that give people hope and something to believe in. We would be alone without a back up if there wasn't something invisible running the show.

I think (hope?) people have grown to the point they can work toward the goal of everyone living in peace and prosperity and that be enough. It would still provide the security part. I dont even have a problem with people still exercising religion as long as it had nothing to do with our rights.

You would hope that everyone else in the world agree with you? Why would they do that?

The UN certainly wants that.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Seriously---you just invent your own definition of words ?

No. Seriously I try to use words as they are intended. I leave selective defintiions up to those who have to do that to deny what to me is the obvious.

then taken in full context the Founding Fathers stated the rights come from God--not from mother nature

Not true, they believed rights came from nature as they understood it. The mere fact that we now understand nature better than they did does not invalidate the theory of natural rights.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

IMO there is no such thing as evil. There are only bad behaviors that are anti-social, detrimental, and frightening to our instinct to belong to a group.

I would quibble here. Nature is not perfect. Many traits and mechanisms that have some evolutionary value may also have severely deleterious results. When any such counterproductive mechanism gets established with regularity, some belief systems treat it as "evil" requiring conscious effort to avoid or overcome.

Take for example anger. You stub your toe and shout an expletive. It hurts. You are in a foul mood. As you pass your dog you are tempted to kick it too if it barks. You are having a bad day. If you don't make an effort to avoid it, you kick the barking dog. The dog in turn bites the mailman. To a Hindu or Buddhist this is passing on bad karma. Abrahamic faiths label it bad behavior or evil. Taoists and Confucians simply call it stupid.

But my point is that all mammals (at least) seemed programmed to react this way when encountering unexpected pain. There is something about the mechanism itself which is self-perpetuating and leads to negative outcomes. On an individual and social level it takes some affirmative recognition and action to stop the chain of events.

Maybe "evil" is too loaded a word for this kind of thing, but it exists and acts like a force of nature. With humans it is incomparably worse because we think about how we think and act. Most of our behaviors are habitual, or random, or instinctive; but we have a need to provide a rational justification after the fact for actions we took with no forethought at all. So we kicked the dog because he was "lazy and wouldn't get out of the way" etc. Do this often enough and you create a fantasy world of how you justify your own unthinking behavior.

And those fantasy worlds are what is truly dangerous. Maybe even evil.

Take for example anger. You stub your toe and shout an expletive. It hurts. You are in a foul mood. As you pass your dog you are tempted to kick it too if it barks. You are having a bad day. If you don't make an effort to avoid it, you kick the barking dog. The dog in turn bites the mailman.

Do you see what you did here? Did the dog bite the mailman because you kicked it or did the dog bite the mailman because the dog was protecting its turf?

Maybe perfect is not the right word for something a divine entity would create or be as in the term "nature" as it is not perfect in terms of the human belief. It supplies all of our needs but not our wants because our particular life form evolved dependent on what was supplied. That would really concern me if there was an imperfect entity making up rights for me and they didn't provide for all of my wants.

I feel that humans are lucky or unlucky enough to have developed the ability to think about what we think about. In doing so we have come up with some really good things for humans along with some really bad ones.

You don't believe in God because you don't have everything you want? That does say something about you.

 

[dilloduck]

Sigh. Whatever. As I said some simply don't have the emotional temperament or the intellect to separate their prejudice against religion from a universal truth or concept. I don't think they are the same. I KNOW they are the same because I have studied and taught the concept and am very secure in how the Founders and those great philosophers who the Founders studied defined them.

ahhh those who disagree who are intellectually inferior and have the wrong emotional temperament ? How truly humble of you..

check this out and tell me who the inferior intellects are.

Human Rights*[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

And so often such intellectual inferiority is accompanied by a reading dysfunction as well???? I said no such thing about those who disagree with me. I said those who are incapable of separating a concept from whatever religious connotation some people put on it are temperamentally/emotionally challenged as well as being intellectually challenged. Try to keep up. I've always thought you brighter than the average bear. You are capable of understanding if you just will.

Or if you are intentionally using non sequitur and straw men to stir the pot, please pick on somebody else. I'm really not in the mood.

The don't play Fox. You know full well that you don't get to post unchallenged here. That link plainly shows that those with the intellect and emotional temperament to separate religion from a universal truth STILL disagree with you.

 

[dilloduck]

No. Seriously I try to use words as they are intended. I leave selective defintiions up to those who have to do that to deny what to me is the obvious.

then taken in full context the Founding Fathers stated the rights come from God--not from mother nature

Not true, they believed rights came from nature as they understood it. The mere fact that we now understand nature better than they did does not invalidate the theory of natural rights.

and they understood GOD to be the creator of everything including nature.

 

[Asclepias]

I think (hope?) people have grown to the point they can work toward the goal of everyone living in peace and prosperity and that be enough. It would still provide the security part. I dont even have a problem with people still exercising religion as long as it had nothing to do with our rights.

You would hope that everyone else in the world agree with you? Why would they do that?

The UN certainly wants that.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Those guys are obviously dummies. They couldn't possibly count.

 

[Pennywise]

Asking if 'natural rights' exist without government is like asking if the Sun and Moon exist without government.

 

[Asclepias]

then taken in full context the Founding Fathers stated the rights come from God--not from mother nature

Not true, they believed rights came from nature as they understood it. The mere fact that we now understand nature better than they did does not invalidate the theory of natural rights.

and they understood GOD to be the creator of everything including nature.

Thats pretty inconvenient for his argument.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I agree it is not the same thing. I believe worth is inherent in the term value. Thats not semantics thats the smoking gun I saw in the dictionary. If worth was not inherent in the word value who would care about what you value? Its just a starting point. An idea you have in your mind to convey the worth. You may value your home at 1 million but if it will only sale for 500k then that is what it is worth. You are correct inalienable and inalienable rights are 2 different things. In the case of inalienable rights the inalienable is an adj. describing the right.

I dont get why we don't decree certain rights are not up for discussion and stop claiming these rights came from something invisible. It is an argument that shortly will hold no water as people start figuring out they are the victims of their instincts and over active imaginations.

Well that is one perspective, though I think you might have a difficult time providing a logical rationale for why you are right about that.

Some of the more devout believers here, for their own reasons, believe our natural rights do come from God. The Founders expressed it that way. Many/most of the great philosophers who preceded them did not express it that way. A concept of natural rights is not dependent on any form of deity.

But regardless of how they came to be--why is it so difficult to grasp/accept that some things just are? We create words to distinguish or identify them, but we do nothing to create them. Instincts. Appreciation/pleasure. Desire. Hope. A yearning for liberty. Thought.

Nobody taught us to know what is or is not pleasurable for us. Nobody taught us to know what is ugly or beautiful to us. Nobody taught us to desire. Nobody taught us to fall in love. Nobody taught us to imagine. All these come naturally to the human reality as does the desire for liberty. And as with all other components of humankind that exists whether we are aware of them or have words to designate them, liberty, as the Founders understood it, is expressed in natural rights that exist whether or not we are aware of them or have words to define them.

In my opinion, the prejudiced and tunnel visioned and close minded demand that natural rights be a human invention. The enlightened, the one who understands and appreciates what liberty is, knows better.

I may well be wrong but I think you would be hard pressed to come up with a logical explanation as to why.

Its not so hard of a concept to believe. Its actually quite comforting and easy to believe because I want to believe it. Nature, air, God...It makes no difference really if you endow these abstract entities with the qualities of invisibility and "all knowing" in the minds of the people you are speaking to. The net effect is that they are deities in the emotional response elicited from the people being convinced of the concept.

I disagree with your assertions that we are not taught quite a few things you seem to believe we just know. For example, we are taught what is beautiful and what is ugly. That is a entirely different thread though. You keep forgetting the founders were humans like everyone else. Just because they founded the country doesn't make them anymore correct about rights than a bum in the street.

Who told you that you were enlightened and I was prejudiced and close minded? Why did you believe them?

Somebody else tried to tell me that there was no logical argument that rights come from nature, I proved him wrong. Now you think I had to work really hard to come up with it. I didn't, and that is because I see logic for what it is, a tool. You seem to think it leads to answers that are definitive, all it really does is show how stupid it is to believe that logic is proof.

By the way, according to some scientists, beauty is actually a evolutionary concept, not something we are taught.

The Neuroscience of Beauty - Scientific American

Feel free to lay out your arguments that prove them wrong. I suspect you don't actually have any, but I am willing to be proven wrong.

The funny thing is that you never actually prove me wrong, you just continue to assert that you are right.