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

[there4eyeM]

"No, gravity wasn't "created" because gravity is not abstract. It's a physical force.
Whereas, rights are an abstract construct created in order to benefit, as cohabitative human beings."

Now, that's more like it!

Can you not see that rights are concepts?!?
Concepts are human creations!
The founders used the word 'creator' as a political statement to objectify as much as possible, with the language of the time, their claim to decide for themselves and against the 'divine right' of the king!
Come on! Did God create English?

Prove it.

Prove the God did not create English?!?

 

[there4eyeM]

if Ryan is wrong and our rights dont come from Nature and God...then exactly who are we to say people in China are not afforded their human rights?

They have all the rights we insist they have, because it is up to us and how far we are prepared to go to defend our choice. CHOICE! Get it? Freedom! CHOICE! That's what it is!

 

[Cecilie1200]

The question they won't answer is which rights came from God.

God gave you the right to be born and breath, numbnuts.

I realize you Liberhoids think some "Chimp" created everything along the Evolution Highway.

Flaming fucking idiot...

So you have to believe in God not to be a liberhoid? Your way of putting things seems to make you what you say so called liberhoids are. Intolerance and narrow thinking seems to come from many who beilieve in God. What about those of us who are conservative on some issues. Do we have to believe in God and that he gave us these rights? It's nonsensical!

You don't have to believe in God per se, but you do have to believe in something bigger than humanity and human institutions like government. One of the hallmarks of leftist thinking is the belief that humans - or, at least, the leftist-thinking person himself - is the pinnacle of existence and wisdom.

And honey, if you think religious people have a corner on the market of "intolerance and narrow thinking", that just shows you define "intolerance and narrow thinking" as "anything I don't agree with".

 

[there4eyeM]

"You don't have to believe in God per se, but you do have to believe in something bigger than humanity and human institutions like government."

And all 'belief' is personal and subjective.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Except for a woman's right to control her own body and for gays to marry and for all of us to consume whatever drugs we want, I don't doubt Paul Ryan is sincere in his statement.

Our right are give to us from nature and God, except where Paul Ryan is concerned.

Amazingly enough, just because you declare something to be a "natural right" doesn't make it so.

 

[there4eyeM]

Declaring something external doesn't make it so, either.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Dear, Paul Ryan keeps saying that because he's quoting our Founding Fathers, most notably in this case Thomas Jefferson. You might have heard of this obscure little document where he made the same assertion: The Declaration of Independence?

The entire foundation for our nation and our way of life is the idea that rights are NOT granted by "we the people", or by any other person or human institution, because if that is true, then they aren't rights at all, but privileges, dependent totally on the whims of others, the denial of which is morally neutral.

The concept of "natural rights", rights granted by the Creator or Nature or whatever you want to subscribe to that's a higher power than humanity, is that freedom and the recognition and exercise of those rights is the ideal state in which people should live, and that, while people can, through their free will, choose to block or interfere with each other's natural rights, it is wrong and evil and a perversion of the way things should be.

I'm flabbergasted that people aren't getting this.. or worse, rejecting it. I mean, what hope do we have for our country if its citizens are in such a rush to throw away their unalienable right to live as free people?

Is someone in here trying to throw them away? Let alone in a rush to?

The fact that you're not aware of the destination you're rushing toward in no way changes the fact that you're rushing there. Lemmings probably don't realize they're rushing off a cliff until they're airborne, either.

 

[G.T.]

I'm flabbergasted that people aren't getting this.. or worse, rejecting it. I mean, what hope do we have for our country if its citizens are in such a rush to throw away their unalienable right to live as free people?

Is someone in here trying to throw them away? Let alone in a rush to?

The fact that you're not aware of the destination you're rushing toward in no way changes the fact that you're rushing there. Lemmings probably don't realize they're rushing off a cliff until they're airborne, either.

I know the destination that you think is inevitable in not believing rights are somehow God given - I'm not in the dark about it.

I disagree with it.

 

[there4eyeM]

" Lemmings probably don't realize they're rushing off a cliff until they're airborne, either."

Don't change the subject to global warming!

 

[Cecilie1200]

You can still subscribe to the Constitution and amendments, including the DofI and not believe in God. God is not a necessary component for people who don't believe and we get along fine with the same Constitution and laws as those who believe. That is why this country is great because our Constitution protects us from discrimination and frees us to believe (as in any religion) or not and doesn't insist that we all agree -- just that we allow our fellow citizens to be free and have their own opinions on religion, civil rights and so forth within the parameters of the Constitution and laws formed around it by "we the people".

You really can't truly subscribe to the Declaration or the Constitution if you deny the foundational concepts upon which they were created. If you reject the notion that there are basic rights to which every person is entitled by existence, which supersede any other consideration aside from the same rights as possessed by other persons, and which must be respected by society in order to be a good and moral and just society, then you open the floodgates to the erosion of the recognitions of those rights at the whim of anyone and everyone who finds them inconvenient to his own selfish aims and acquires the power to do it.

 

[Cecilie1200]

if Ryan is wrong and our rights dont come from Nature and God...then exactly who are we to say people in China are not afforded their human rights?

Thinking humans with an opinion.

An opinion based on what, precisely? What is this alleged "thought" that forms this opinion?

 

[there4eyeM]

All one needs to do is agree personally that these are true, because, after all THAT IS ALL ONE CAN DO!

 

[there4eyeM]

"An opinion based on what, precisely? What is this alleged "thought" that forms this opinion?"

It is the only thing a conscious being has.

 

[Cecilie1200]

"You don't have to believe in God per se, but you do have to believe in something bigger than humanity and human institutions like government."

And all 'belief' is personal and subjective.

Who said it wasn't? The things believed in, however, are not necessarily.

But as it happens, you're conflating two different things, and I'm not interested in following you to an argument about one based on a remark made referring to the other.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Is someone in here trying to throw them away? Let alone in a rush to?

The fact that you're not aware of the destination you're rushing toward in no way changes the fact that you're rushing there. Lemmings probably don't realize they're rushing off a cliff until they're airborne, either.

I know the destination that you think is inevitable in not believing rights are somehow God given - I'm not in the dark about it.

I disagree with it.

Like I said, just because you don't know you're going there doesn't mean you aren't going there.

 

[there4eyeM]

"Who said it wasn't? The things believed in, however, are not necessarily."

How, precisely, can this be proved?

Whereas, it is self evident that all perception and all thinking is internal and subjective.

 

[Murf76]

It doesn't matter the source - it's irrelevant to whether or not "I'm in a rush to take them away," that's just dishonest hyperbole, all kidding aside.

And yes, I'm still of the opinion that men's sentience created said rights. That doesn't mean that I disagree with them or want to take them away, and YES I GET THAT it means "if we declare that as such, men can decide differently some other day," and that STILL DOESNT MEAN, I want to take them away, AM IN A RUSH to take them away, or THAT I DISAGREE THAT THEY SHOULD BE INALIENABLE.

That is honesty .... not projection, assumption, rudeness or anything of the like.

Your view would make right and wrong entirely subjective. It would then be okay to pass such laws as imprisoning freckle-faced redheads or hitting people with hammers. There's no scientific principles which would preclude such things. Slavery would have been completely acceptable until suddenly it wasn't.

You can't remove science (or nature) from the equation and expect that Law would not become entirely arbitrary. And yet, I do believe that is EXACTLY the condition so-called "liberals" are seeking. Because it would allow them to set aside the guarantees we've placed on Individual Liberty whenever those rights conflicted with the collectivist whim of the moment.

Right and wrong subjective? Yes.

Imprisoning freckle faces, as a Law? No, wouldn't happen unless Society somehow bumped their heads and thought "it's okay to descriminate based on looks alone." Society already discovered that that's wrong - and yes, subjectively and in my estimation - correctly. I am supremely confident that as a species - and more importantly as a society - we've moved past that.

Subjective is just a pleasant way to say arbitrary. And you have no right to impose arbitrary laws on other people. You have no right to impose ANY law on human beings who don't first agree to such laws. Hence our form of representative democratic governance formatted upon a framework of constitutional law. Unlike the republics of Iran and China, we guarantee the unalienable rights of individuals, and in so doing, we protect the rights of minority citizens. This is NOT subjective or arbitrary because our unalienable rights are NOT subjective or arbitrary. They are predicated on observable human characteristics.

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for lunch. It's an evil thing when left uncontrolled. It's mob rule, which says that if I can gather more guys than you can gather, I can kick your ass and toss you out of your own house. All I need is a majority to vote that it's okay. Your supreme confidence doesn't mitigate the fact that human nature still includes greed and violence which have not been eradicated over time. We're still human animals, each of us with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other.

There's not as much 'shades of gray' as the sinners of our political and entertainment class would have you believe. When, in the exercise of your liberty, you abrogate someone else's... you're wrong. Pretty simple, actually.

 

[there4eyeM]

"Subjective is just a pleasant way to say arbitrary. And you have no right to impose arbitrary laws on other people."

That is the point. It is agreeing together that we perceive things the same way; not imposing, agreeing.

Frightening to make decisions for one's self, eh? Freedom isn't free.

 

[thanatos144]

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


Seems straight forward to me you idiot.

 

[ConzHateUSA]

creator

LOLOL

jesus man, you were suppose to evolve in the past 200 yrs

you should be embarrassed