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

[SniperFire]

Nobody can prove there's any such thing, either.

It's demonstratively provable by simple observation. American slavery. Was it innately wrong or not?

That's not the question. Is it innately wrong because God said so or because laws were passed that said so.

You should look up the word 'innate. '

 

[Pho_King]

This all doesn't logically prove they are inborn.

All it says is that - humans have learned and continue to learn through thought and reason how to best co-exist as A unified Nation or (maybe one day) world.

That doesn't mean rights ARE inborn.

It means we have determined they SHOULD BE CONSIDERED inborn, as it's currently the most sentient way forward.

You are like a dog chasing its tail, equal parts amusing and retarded.

Yea, I'm sure you're self amused with your douchebagging on people for the day. Your god would be proud, my so humble and endearing.

I am not a god type. I am not an atheist, but I put absolutely no thought into whether or not god exists. It simply does not matter to me. See what I mean about you being a fuckin moronic douchebag?

 

[Murf76]

You misunderstanmd the very conversation we're having.

Nobody thinks they aren't "innate," they're saying "please offer a logical proof that they are "innate," please, and who gets to decide based on said reasoning, if you even have any.

Continuing to argue with what's not even being said is a waste of time. I'm not going to write off a discussion with you because you're trying, unlike sniper **** and soggy droors.

They're innate because in the context of peaceful civilization, we observe that when they are violated a predictable faction and tumult results. It's not any different that the scientific observation of other species. Put two equal bucks in rut with does on the scene, and there's gonna be a fight. That's the innate nature of deer. Enslave human beings and they will struggle for freedom. That's the nature of Man.

The reason the Ninth is open-ended is because we learn more about ourselves all the time. The idea that we can simply codify every natural right into law is ridiculous and unnecessary. When we leave citizens to exercise their freedom unmolested, just so long as they don't impede the like rights of other individuals, we've covered all our bases.

It's not necessary to believe in God in order to believe in unalienable rights. It doesn't hurt a thing when you do, but you don't have to. Whether God created Nature or not, doesn't mean Nature doesn't exist.

This all doesn't logically prove they are inborn.

All it says is that - humans have learned and continue to learn through thought and reason how to best co-exist as A unified Nation or (maybe one day) world.

That doesn't mean rights ARE inborn.

It means we have determined they SHOULD BE CONSIDERED inborn, as it's currently the most sentient way forward.

We aren't born as donkeys, dogs, or birds. We're born as human beings. This cannot be denied. So yes, we do have a human nature. And as I pointed out several times, we look at rights in the context of a peaceful society.

If your neighbor breaks into your garage and steal your lawnmower and say there is no law to protect you, you are left to the unpredictable consequences of vigilantism. By man's nature, you're unlikely to take it lying down. Without some sort of recourse for justice, who knows how far that squabble will go? Some of your other neighbors might side with you and go over and kick the thief's ass. Some others might side with him and retaliate. The strife is predictable. Your right to your personal property has been abrogated. By instating laws which protect your inalienable right to your property, your neighbor is less likely to steal from you to begin with, and you are more likely to call law enforcement to sort it out. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, your neighbors are less likely to become physically involved.

 

[Goodoledays]

Whether I labeled you right or wrong, either way 'The Declaration of Independence' gave me that right.
Now, go read it!

It gave you the right to be wrong and express it! I'm now retired but I used to teach constitutional law, thanks!

You and Obama have something in common, thanks.

Its got to be RETIRED.

 

[SniperFire]

I'll posit what I said from the beginning:

Rights are created through our sentience: our ability to read and determine the best scenarios to co-exist and relay that into practice.

This in no way is a disagreement with the rights we've come up with, or embrace.

Incorrect, in the context of 'our' inalienable rights in America, which is the OP topic.

As America is founded, our rights are innate and unalienable, and our 'sentence' is only an acknowledgement of them.

You have lost your semantics game.

 

[Murf76]

Nobody can prove there's any such thing, either.

It's demonstratively provable by simple observation. American slavery. Was it innately wrong or not?

That's not the question. Is it innately wrong because God said so or because laws were passed that said so.

On a believer's scale, we'd see Unalienable Rights >>> Nature >>> God.
Because believers believe that God created Nature.

On a non-believer's scale, we'd see Unalienable Rights >>> Nature, and Nature would be the end-point, because the non-believer doesn't believe in God at all.

In either event, there is no doubt that Nature itself exists. And just as there are unseen or even unexplained aspects of the natural world, such as gravity, these things DO demonstratively exist. You can't see gravity, but it's there. You can't SEE an unalienable right, but it too... exists.

 

[grunt11b]

The founders said so when they wrote our constitution,and yes I believe they do. So therefore...yes.

 

[G.T.]

I'll posit what I said from the beginning:

Rights are created through our sentience: our ability to read and determine the best scenarios to co-exist and relay that into practice.

This in no way is a disagreement with the rights we've come up with, or embrace.

Incorrect, in the context of 'our' inalienable rights in America, which is the OP topic.

As America is founded, our rights are innate and unalienable, and our 'sentence' is only an acknowledgement of them.

You have lost your semantics game.

I'm not questioning or debating what America, how America was founded. That's historical fact.

I'm questioning the philosophy itself. My god you're a dense ******* dweeb.

 

[Murf76]

Nobody can prove there's any such thing, either.

It's demonstratively provable by simple observation. American slavery. Was it innately wrong or not?

That's not the question. Is it innately wrong because God said so or because laws were passed that said so.

It's wrong because Nature says so. Whether Nature is created by God or not is immaterial to the Constitution's purpose.

If Law was all that was required, then slavery would not have been a condition which needed correction. Abolitionists would've been in the wrong for merely suggesting it, let alone going to war over it.

 

[Pho_King]

I'll posit what I said from the beginning:

Rights are created through our sentience: our ability to read and determine the best scenarios to co-exist and relay that into practice.

This in no way is a disagreement with the rights we've come up with, or embrace.

Incorrect, in the context of 'our' inalienable rights in America, which is the OP topic.

As America is founded, our rights are innate and unalienable, and our 'sentence' is only an acknowledgement of them.

You have lost your semantics game.

I'm not questioning or debating what America, how America was founded. That's historical fact.

I'm questioning the philosophy itself. My god you're a dense ******* dweeb.

Why question it? What does questioning the foundation of our country get you, aside from an ability to undercut that philosophy in favor of an "inalienable rights are a fiction of man and are really only given by the big government that I love" philosophy?

 

[Murf76]

I'll posit what I said from the beginning:

Rights are created through our sentience: our ability to read and determine the best scenarios to co-exist and relay that into practice.

This in no way is a disagreement with the rights we've come up with, or embrace.

Incorrect, in the context of 'our' inalienable rights in America, which is the OP topic.

As America is founded, our rights are innate and unalienable, and our 'sentence' is only an acknowledgement of them.

You have lost your semantics game.

I'm not questioning or debating what America, how America was founded. That's historical fact.

I'm questioning the philosophy itself. My god you're a dense ******* dweeb.

Where are you lost?

 

[Goodoledays]

...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 is what differentiated the USA from previous societies in which some rights could be granted by government and others taken without due process (it's good the be the King!). America was the first to say your rights are yours at birth. Nobody need grant them. And, if a right is to be taken away, it must be through due process (warrants, trial by peers, etc).

Read up on history. You're missing the idea behind the American experiment...the very heart of it.

You entire argument is dashed apart by history.

Native Americans and Africans were not protected by any "godly" rights. Neither were women or people without land.

That is true. And life is a domino effect. We learn from our progress and mistakes of the past and we take the proper road to go down. Many of those changes came from people who saw what the effect was and we made them better. It didn't happen over night but those changes were made. And of those people were either for or against God and made their decisions on what way to go. It was their right to believe or not to believe and that right is going to stay with us no matter what. And downing someone for their beliefs is not going to change that.

 

[SniperFire]

I think our rights come from our sentience, we became smart enough to realize the most practical or i.e. self evident if you wish - rights, that come with the freest possible society (to date, in theory).

God doesn't need to be a factor, as the only ones declaring where said rights came from, are men themselves - therefore, the source can be forever scrutinized.

You just said in your last post that you are only just debating the 'philosophy' of where our rights come from, instead of your first declaration here in this thread which belies that claim.

dance monkey dance

You have gotten your head handed to you.

 

[G.T.]

Incorrect, in the context of 'our' inalienable rights in America, which is the OP topic.

As America is founded, our rights are innate and unalienable, and our 'sentence' is only an acknowledgement of them.

You have lost your semantics game.

I'm not questioning or debating what America, how America was founded. That's historical fact.

I'm questioning the philosophy itself. My god you're a dense ******* dweeb.

Why question it? What does questioning the foundation of our country get you, aside from an ability to undercut that philosophy in favor of an "inalienable rights are a fiction of man and are really only given by the big government that I love" philosophy?

I'm not undercutting the rights themselves, as I believe that sentient men were wise enough to declare them inalienable.

I'm questioning the source:

Reason, man's brain

vs.

Nature.



It's a good discussion when the opposite point of view discusses with honesty, instead of hurling insults at everyone and arguing with points that WERENT EVEN THERE, i.e. the thread mostly up to this point.

 

[G.T.]

I think our rights come from our sentience, we became smart enough to realize the most practical or i.e. self evident if you wish - rights, that come with the freest possible society (to date, in theory).

God doesn't need to be a factor, as the only ones declaring where said rights came from, are men themselves - therefore, the source can be forever scrutinized.

You just said in your last post that you are only just debating the 'philosophy' of where our rights come from, instead of your first declaration here in this thread which belies that claim.

dance monkey dance

You have gotten your head handed to you.

No, it doesn't bely it you jackass. My god you're dumb.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

You are wrong. We the people, not god, not nature decide on rights and freedoms which are implemented by the government through the Constitution, amendments, laws, etc. God has influenced some of this as well as nature (I mentioned limitations nature imposes upon us) but the real determinants are the people!!! I never said government can take away rights or that government is autonomous and can dictate them. It is WE THE PEOPLE!!!!

Wow. How did I miss this thread yesterday? Forgive me for just skimming now, but you appear to be having an Unalienable Rights emergency.

First things first... one needn't be a Christian to understand that certain rights are "unalienable". You can say they're from nature, you can say their from God. The question as to how human beings came about isn't necessarily pertinent to understanding that we ARE human. And as has been suggested to you, our founders took their philosophy on the subject of Natural Law from such notables as John Locke.

We are HUMAN animals. Dogs will be dogs. Cats will be cats. Monkeys will be monkeys. Humans will be human. And because we are human, some behaviors are innate to our nature. We speak, therefore we have a right to. We can build tools and protect ourselves and our belongings, therefore we have a right to do that, etc.

We are self-fruitful in the matter of our unalienable rights. They are that which we are BORN with as human beings. Not provided to us by other people or by governments.

In order to understand the importance of unalienable citizen rights and how they apply to governance, one needs to consider just what we're trying to accomplish. What is the goal? And obviously, the goal is that citizens should be able to live harmoniously together. Toward that end, we note that in order to avoid conflict, the innate nature of human beings must be considered. There is predictable tumult and strife when the natural, unalienable rights of citizens are abrogated. If your neighbor steals you car... some shit is going to go down unless there's a law in place that will restore justice to you. That's YOUR property. You have a "right" to what is yours. Your neighbor has offended that right.

Imagine an invisible bubble around every citizen. Each has the perfect right to engage in their own "pursuit of happiness" just so long as they don't molest anybody else's bubble. And this is the basis of our understanding of Liberty. As long as we're not ******* with anybody else, we get to do what we want. And if we DO mess with somebody else's bubble, predictable strife will ensue, so we make our laws in order to avoid that or, failing to avoid it, provide a lawful means of redressing it.

This understanding CREATES the means by which we can have the freedom which is our birthright and also have a civil society. Our Constitution sets out the guidelines for what we must give in exchange for that... things like paying enough taxes to provide for the 17 enumerated powers we've agreed to. Our state constitutions do the same. They're essentially contracts saying what we've agreed to.

As you can see... there IS "method to the madness". Things aren't as arbitrary as they might seem. Our Founders were learned men. They studied their history. They studied philosophy. And what they arrived upon is that times might change, but human beings will still be human beings.

You can also see that there's no room in the nature of "unalienable rights" to TAKE from other citizens, to invade their "bubble" as it were. Our Bill of Rights is a partial list of negative rights, saying what the government cannot do TO you. The positive rights that Democrats would like to see instated would say what the government must do FOR you. Obviously, the negative set and the positive set could not coexist. To embrace one, you must give up the other. To say one has a "right" to open-heart surgery would impede the rights of another to refuse to perform it, since one certainly would be hard-pressed to operate on his own heart. If we take a "positive" right to its most extreme conclusion, say there aren't enough heart surgeons to go around, we can't import any more, we can't entice any more to enter the training... if it's a "right", we must conscript citizens to provide it. Freedom itself is abrogated. Citizens are enslaved by the State. And as unlikely as that sounds, it's still the litmus test to see if we're going too far down that slippery slope. The "unalienable right" to not be enslaved is abrogated.

While it's true that slavery was a horrendous 'kicking of the can' when the Constitution was written, it's likewise true that through the rear-view mirror of time, an "unalienable right WAS abrogated and the predictable tumult and strife DID ensue. That's how it works. We're human beings and we will predictably fight against tyranny.

You were doing more or less OK until you got to the bolded, then fell into the partisan abyss.

There is no American political party or philosophy which advocates the government ‘do’ anything ‘for’ anyone.

The Bill of Rights codifies the fundamental tenets of individual liberty, rendered inalienable and applicable to the states and other jurisdictions by the 14th Amendment. These rights are not absolute, and the Constitution’s case law defines the limits of these rights with regard to their expression – what the individual may and many not do, and what government may or may not do.

There is no such thing as ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ rights, and references to a ‘right’ to open-heart surgery is nonsensical and meaningless; Congress is authorized to enact legislation pursuant to a legitimate end, provided it’s not offensive to the Constitution, including regulatory authority. That some perceive Federal regulation, and the laws that enforce that regulation, as some sort of ‘infringement’ upon a right is an example of ignorance of, or contempt for, Constitutional case law on the issue.

The individual right in the context of ‘pursuit of happiness’ is not the right to own a business that pollutes the environment, markets unsafe goods or services, or endangers the health or safety of one’s employees; nor is it a right to function in a manner detrimental to commerce overall.

Are you telling me that no one thinks entitlement programs are a necessity? What planet were you one when people argued that we are the only country without universal health care?

 

[SniperFire]

I think our rights come from our sentience, we became smart enough to realize the most practical or i.e. self evident if you wish - rights, that come with the freest possible society (to date, in theory).

God doesn't need to be a factor, as the only ones declaring where said rights came from, are men themselves - therefore, the source can be forever scrutinized.

You just said in your last post that you are only just debating the 'philosophy' of where our rights come from, instead of your first declaration here in this thread which belies that claim.

dance monkey dance

You have gotten your head handed to you.

No, it doesn't bely it you jackass. My god you're dumb.

Sure it does, asshole.

You said our rights in America come from 'sentence.' I proved it by quoting you again.

But as you have painfully learned, our rights as constituted in America are God given and innate.

And you were forced to acknowledge that the 'sentence' was just our acknowledgement of said unalienable rights.

LOL

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Paul Ryan keeps saying our rights come from nature and God not the government. Actually, they come from "we the people" and we decide the rights that government puts foward through our representatives, referendums and so forth. Nature dictates some of our limitiations only. But we have been able to overcome a lot of those. God? If you believe in him, I thought he gave us free will to decide things for ourselves?

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.

Questions?

What a dumbfuck thread....

Not dumb at all, this was an immature assholish answer, though.

If rights are "self evident," that is a subjective statement thus open for discussion.

If they are self evident they are not subjective. Either we have rights because we are humans, or we only have rights if others give them to us. Do you really want to rely on the good will of others to be able to walk down the street?

 

[G.T.]

You just said in your last post that you are only just debating the 'philosophy' of where our rights come from, instead of your first declaration here in this thread which belies that claim.

dance monkey dance

You have gotten your head handed to you.

No, it doesn't bely it you jackass. My god you're dumb.

Sure it does, asshole.

You said our rights in America come from 'sentence.' I proved it by quoting you again.

But as you have painfully learned, our rights as constituted in America are God given and innate.

And you were forced to acknowledge that the 'sentence' was just our acknowledgement of said unalienable rights.

LOL

Sentience.

I didn't say that our sentience "Was just our acknowledgement," of the rights, I declared our sentience the SOURCE. Learn how to read.

My opinion of the SOURCE, outlines my disagreement with the wording of the founding documents.

Are you this stupid in real life?

 

[G.T.]

Questions?

What a dumbfuck thread....

Not dumb at all, this was an immature assholish answer, though.

If rights are "self evident," that is a subjective statement thus open for discussion.

If they are self evident they are not subjective. Either we have rights because we are humans, or we only have rights if others give them to us. Do you really want to rely on the good will of others to be able to walk down the street?

The term "self evident" in and of itself is subjective.

"Self," who?

"Evident," based on what?

That's why it's subjective.