What "rights" does nature give us?

[Jimmy_Jam]

I knew that this thread would eventually become a discussion about food and breathing. Damn. I should have called it when I suspected it. Too late now to impress anybody, I guess.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

There are no rights in nature. It's nature.

Rights do not come from God. We cannot prove the existence of God.

All rights come from man. Rights are the highest order of laws man creates to construct a civil society. Rights are rooted in philosophy.

If rights come from man then man can take them away. How can you take away my right to life? Please note that the fact that you can kill me does not prove you can take away the right to life, it just proves you have the power to kill. In order to prove you can take away my life, whatever it actually is, you have to prove you can give it to someone else. Until you can do that all you can do is remove my ability to live.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Well since the Founders all did, I'm working with what I inherited.


plz tell me you're not one of those nutters that want to do away with the Constitution b/c it's old

This Nation was indeed FOUNDED and thrives under the notion of our inalienable rights granted us by our Creator. They are explicitly supernatural, and America is a defacto theocracy.

Now all that's left is to properly define 'God'.

Good luck with that... I think I'll stick to promoting a dynamic Civil Law and adherence to the First Amendment.

Can you define life?

Didn't think so, yet we all agree it is real.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

There are no rights in nature. It's nature.

Rights do not come from God. We cannot prove the existence of God.

All rights come from man. Rights are the highest order of laws man creates to construct a civil society. Rights are rooted in philosophy.

Illogical.

It's illogical to suggest otherwise.

It's only illogical if God exists. Then, you have to prove rights were conferred onto us by God.

But since we cannot prove God exists and thus cannot verify His existence, we cannot know that God gave us rights. And even if He does exist, we would have to prove that He gave us these rights. We can't do either.

Man infers that God gave us rights, and uses the authority of God and religion to impose a legal structure on society. But man believing God gave us rights is not the same things as God actually giving us rights.

You are getting hung up in a logical paradox. We cannot prove the Higg's bosun exists, does that invalidate the existence of mass?

 

[Oddball]

Even the right to breathe clean air instead of pollution comes from agreements with other Monkeys that are enforced by government.

In nature, you have no right to breath, since you have no right to life.

If I'm hungry and better at killing than you are.

If I kill you first, I just exercised my inherent right to preserve my own life.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

About the only thing useful I've seen come out of this thread was the invitation by somebody to read John Locke. I hope a few people at least took the poster up on that.

I guess what I find ironic is that these debates always devolve into an argument over who 'gives' us our rights - God or Government. When the entire point of the 'natural rights' perspective is that freedom isn't a gift. It's what we have as a by-product of being able to think. If we are all alone, or with people we get along with perfectly, we don't need a government to protect our rights. But since that situation is the exception rather than the rule, since even reasonable people can disagree about where your right to swing your fist ends, we create governments to preserve as much of that natural freedom as possible.

I almost agree with that. I think it is entirely possible to develop a society that protects freedom without having to force government on the people that disagree with my version of freedom. The best example of that I can think of is from the story "Coventry" by Robert Heinlein. He described a society that, ultimately, only had one rule, leave me the fuck alone, and it provided an option for the people that couldn't handle that by allowing them to leave and let others impose rules upon them.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Illogical.

It's illogical to suggest otherwise.

It's only illogical if God exists. Then, you have to prove rights were conferred onto us by God.

But since we cannot prove God exists and thus cannot verify His existence, we cannot know that God gave us rights. And even if He does exist, we would have to prove that He gave us these rights. We can't do either.

Man infers that God gave us rights, and uses the authority of God and religion to impose a legal structure on society. But man believing God gave us rights is not the same things as God actually giving us rights.

Truth exists independently of any burden of proof. It either is or it is not true.

For you to make the claim something does not exist, but in the same breath admit you cannot prove it, is an illogical position.

And you come across looking like a damn fool.

Hope that helps!

You really should learn to debate so you don't look like a fool.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

This Nation was indeed FOUNDED and thrives under the notion of our inalienable rights granted us by our Creator. They are explicitly supernatural, and America is a defacto theocracy.

Now all that's left is to properly define 'God'.

Good luck with that... I think I'll stick to promoting a dynamic Civil Law and adherence to the First Amendment.

God doesn't appear in the Constitution..which is a founding and foundation document.

If you can't see God in nature how can you be sure he is not in the Constitution?

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

This Nation was indeed FOUNDED and thrives under the notion of our inalienable rights granted us by our Creator. They are explicitly supernatural, and America is a defacto theocracy.

Now all that's left is to properly define 'God'.

Good luck with that... I think I'll stick to promoting a dynamic Civil Law and adherence to the First Amendment.

Can you define life?

Didn't think so, yet we all agree it is real.

Here is my silliest post of the day.

Scientific. According to Daniel Koshland, it is the "characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not."

Biblical. All I can tie into a Biblical definition of "life" is from Leviticus: "the life of all flesh is in the blood." So, that which has blood has life I guess. Plants have no life. F-ing losers.

This begs the question, if God said life is in the blood, and rights are derived from God, does that mean that animals have rights according to God?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Really?

Have you ever read the Declaration of Independence?

Yeah. Beginning to wonder whether anyone else here has.

I've read it.

No laws are derived from it.

And King George is dead.

So..it was a one shot deal.

That explains why we keep a copy of it preserved under glass in the National Archives.

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

Yeah. Beginning to wonder whether anyone else here has.

I've read it.

No laws are derived from it.

And King George is dead.

So..it was a one shot deal.

That explains why we keep a copy of it preserved under glass in the National Archives.

I thought is was so tourists would think we were cool.

 

[Cecilie1200]

There are no natural rights.

In nature your predator or prey. Almost all nature is based around killing.

inalienable rights are different.

Um . . . did you read the thread at all before posting?

first page, then responded to the op

You might want to go through some of the MANY other pages, in which the meanings of "natural rights" and "natural law" were disclosed, to prevent wasting a lot of time - a lot MORE time, actually - going on about the law of the jungle as though it's relevant.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

With all this talk about "natural" rights..I was wondering. What are they?

There are no natural rights.

In nature your predator or prey. Almost all nature is based around killing.

inalienable rights are different.

Those don't exist either..except as a human construct.

Unless of course you believe in the supernatural.

Correct.

It’s a construct in the context of our understanding that our rights are indeed inalienable as a consequence of our humanity, rights that can be neither given nor taken by any government, constitution, or man.

This in no way diminishes the legitimacy of our civil liberties; indeed, it gives our rights greater value as something fought for to be acknowledged and codified: on battlefields, in legislatures, and in the courts.

 

[Cecilie1200]

With all this talk about "natural" rights..I was wondering. What are they?

There are no natural rights.

In nature your predator or prey. Almost all nature is based around killing.

inalienable rights are different.

Those don't exist either..except as a human construct.

Unless of course you believe in the supernatural.

So what you're telling us is that you believe that there's no such thing as morality, or right and wrong, absent the existence of God or some other higher intelligence?

Is anyone else utterly unsurprised, and possibly even bored, by the revelation that Sallow doesn't believe in morality?

What might shock YOU, Sallow, is that our laws weren't written by amoral sociopaths, and your declaration that their basis doesn't exist in no way changes anything.

 

[Cecilie1200]

There are no natural rights.

In nature your predator or prey. Almost all nature is based around killing.

inalienable rights are different.

Those don't exist either..except as a human construct.

Unless of course you believe in the supernatural.

Well since the Founders all did, I'm working with what I inherited.


plz tell me you're not one of those nutters that want to do away with the Constitution b/c it's old

No, he's one of those nutters who wants to do away with the Constitution because it's in his way.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I never said God doesn't exist. I said we can't prove the existence of God.

It should be an easy concept to discern. If you can't, you come across looking like a damn fool.

Hope that helps!

Wrong. Let me help you with your failing memory.

You said our rights are not granted by God, because God cannot be proven.

Which is patently illogical.

For rights to be granted from God -->

1. God must exist and
2. God must have communicated those rights to man

Otherwise, we are just guessing.


IF God does not exist, THEN God cannot have given us rights.

IF God does exist, THEN God may have given us rights.

IF God exists and did not give us rights, THEN God did not give us rights.

IF God exists and did give us rights, THEN God gave us rights.

IF God exists and gave us rights, THEN we must be able to verify that God gave us those rights.

IF we cannot verify the existence of God, THEN we cannot verify that God communicated those rights to us.

Otherwise, we are just guessing.


Concepts of rights changed fairly dramatically over the 1700 years from the birth of Christ to The Enlightenment and The Bill of Rights. If it were self-evident that God truly did give us those rights, then why wasn't it self-evident to the hundreds of millions of people who lived over those 1700 years? And why not to all men?

I'm very happy that it became self-evident late in the 18th century that these rights were self-evident, such as it created the most noble document that shaped the greatest nation on earth. But we are just guessing that they came from God.

I just want to point out the flaws in your argument here.

It is entirely possible for the Being we call God to have existed in the past and to have ceased to exist in the present without invalidating the claim that our rights were endowed to us by this Being. It is also entirely possible for those rights to exist without the exact nature of those rights to have been communicated to us by God. The simple fact that we cannot verify every single step of the process does not prove that the process did not occur anymore than the fact that we cannot verify every single step of evolution proves that evolution is not real.

Please note that my intent here is simply to point out that you aren't actually thinking your position through, not to argue that you are wrong.



PS:

My personal belief is that at least some of our rights come from God, but I am being careful to keep my argument here to the concept of rights emanating from the fact that we are alive, not the source of our life itself.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Wrong. Let me help you with your failing memory.

You said our rights are not granted by God, because God cannot be proven.

Which is patently illogical.

For rights to be granted from God -->

1. God must exist and
2. God must have communicated those rights to man

Otherwise, we are just guessing.


IF God does not exist, THEN God cannot have given us rights.

IF God does exist, THEN God may have given us rights.

IF God exists and did not give us rights, THEN God did not give us rights.

IF God exists and did give us rights, THEN God gave us rights.

IF God exists and gave us rights, THEN we must be able to verify that God gave us those rights.

IF we cannot verify the existence of God, THEN we cannot verify that God communicated those rights to us.

Otherwise, we are just guessing.


Concepts of rights changed fairly dramatically over the 1700 years from the birth of Christ to The Enlightenment and The Bill of Rights. If it were self-evident that God truly did give us those rights, then why wasn't it self-evident to the hundreds of millions of people who lived over those 1700 years? And why not to all men?

I'm very happy that it became self-evident late in the 18th century that these rights were self-evident, such as it created the most noble document that shaped the greatest nation on earth. But we are just guessing that they came from God.

Or in short: ain't no god; it's made up, by the folks who also conjurred up rights and shit.

That would work if Toro's argument was actually logical.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Even the right to breathe clean air instead of pollution comes from agreements with other Monkeys that are enforced by government.

In nature, you have no right to breath, since you have no right to life.

If I'm hungry and better at killing than you are.

And amazingly enough, the "law of the jungle" STILL has nothing to do with the concept of "natural law".

 

[Cecilie1200]

Those don't exist either..except as a human construct.

Unless of course you believe in the supernatural.

Well since the Founders all did, I'm working with what I inherited.


plz tell me you're not one of those nutters that want to do away with the Constitution b/c it's old

This Nation was indeed FOUNDED and thrives under the notion of our inalienable rights granted us by our Creator. They are explicitly supernatural, and America is a defacto theocracy.

Of course it is . . . if you have no fucking clue what the word "theocracy" means, and just react with automatic horror at the idea of anyone publicly professing belief in God.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Now all that's left is to properly define 'God'.

Good luck with that... I think I'll stick to promoting a dynamic Civil Law and adherence to the First Amendment.

Can you define life?

Didn't think so, yet we all agree it is real.

Here is my silliest post of the day.

Scientific. According to Daniel Koshland, it is the "characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not."

Biblical. All I can tie into a Biblical definition of "life" is from Leviticus: "the life of all flesh is in the blood." So, that which has blood has life I guess. Plants have no life. F-ing losers.

This begs the question, if God said life is in the blood, and rights are derived from God, does that mean that animals have rights according to God?

I am so glad you took the time to self label your post so I did not have to do it myself.

Am appeal to authority is a logical fallacy. If we were to use the "scientific" definition of life you supplied I could write a computer program that is, to all intents and purposes, alive. In fact, lots of people already have done so, and even built machines that are alive.

Keep trying though.