Is There A God-Given Right To Anything in This World?

[stopbush]

Poll question: Is There A God-Given Right To Anything in This World?

As an atheist, I don't believe in god. Ergo, I don't believe that there's a god-given right to anything as there's no god around to grant any rights to anything for anybody. I firmly believe that rights and privileges are the work of men, not any supernatural entity, be it freedoms, equality, health, land, the pursuit of happiness, whatever.

But others hold a different view. What's yours?

[Deja Q]

1. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. The fact Carly F. spat "no god-given right to a job" then

lost her job - it's at the least karma, and at best proof there is a God. She's a dragon, and not in a good way.

Just let me know what the rules of being a participant in a society are and I'll follow. Society is structure. And structure is the core element for anything. Random chaos doesn't get far in the end, unless rampant destruction is a goal. and even then some people are just blind or stupid anyway.

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

2. Yes. A quick and dirty version.

I believe that by virtue of humanity's uniqueness in creation (whether you want to call that the imago Dei or that God blew into some dust or the universal presence of Atman or whatever), we intrinsically have certain rights accorded to us. They are:

1) Life
2) Liberty/Radical Freedom (a theological term for free will)
3) Pursuit of happiness

and that they fall in that order.

[Toasterlad]

3. There Are Rights Given to Every Person By Society At Birth.

God has nothing to do with it. People are born into a society and given at birth the rights that society assigns them.

Your poll should include an option that there is no god, but rights are nonetheless granted by society.

[Deja Q]

4. Ah, the caste system.

Cool!

[Toasterlad]

7. That's Only One Society.

There are an infinite variation of societal mores, none of which need rely on a "god" to dispense rights.

[GA_ArmyVet]

6. Rights are not given

they are inherent and something everyone has.


This is why it is so abhorrent to anyone whose rights are infringed or endangered.

[Toasterlad]

10. They Are Given By Common Consent

Our society believes that people are born with certain rights. There are other societies that believe people are born with no rights, or some lesser or greater than what we have assigned. Ultimately, it is the societal norm that determines what "rights" a person has, or does not have.

[ColbertWatcher]

17. I'd like to vote for this selection. n/t

[MissMarple]

9. Bingo. I think we have a winner.

Claiming rights come from God gives the claimant a measure of inevitability. We have fought for every right we have, and must continue to do so, since some people in this country think the Constitution is just a god damned piece of paper.

[stopbush]

12. Well, I covered that in my intro to the poll.

[Taverner]

5. Yes, you have the right to do whatever you want

Kill, rape, steal - the world

There is nothing that can stop you other than other men

BUT - we long ago agreed on this whole social contract thing, and everything changed from there...

[guitar man]

8. "Natural rights"

Endowed by their "creator" with unalienable rights, Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness....

The key word here being "creator". I may believe my creator is God, Allah,The Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Big Bang, that's my choice of what to believe in that regard. I prefer to use the term "natural rights", ie, rights I and every other human being on the planet were born with. Whether one chooses to put a supreme being or beings into that equation is a personal matter, the rights are the same regardless....

[Hydra]

11. I'm an agnostic

So there may or may not be a god.

I CAN say this, though- as "god" is defined, he loves all of creation equally, and as such, no special rights are granted by such.

There are also no guaranteed rights in any society. Most of the time, if you want a right you have to pay for it in one way or another.

You have no rights. You have no protections. End of story.

[stopbush]

16. Or, as George Carlin said, we have no rights, only a set of

temporary privileges. He cites the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent during WWII as an example of how easily ones "rights" can be taken away.

[Hydra]

18. Yes, and that was only one incident in our history that I was thinking of

Consider what happened to that 12 year old girl in TX that was beaten and arrested for prostitution by 3 undercover cops when they got the wrong address...and the police are charging her and the dad with resisting arrest.

You have no rights beyond what is convenient at the time for our masters to grant- as you quoted Carlin, "Temporary Privileges"

[PurityOfEssence]

13. We do not have the means to determine whether there's a "god" or not, so it's a waste of time

There are so many things we can determine from our lowly mortal plane, and there are more things that need to be done than we can ever accomplish no matter how hard we try.

People have the rights they agree upon with others, and it's our obligation to make these decent and as fair as possible. Principal among these is that life should be as safe as possible, physically, financially and emotionally. The pathetic selfish waste of time of saving one's "immortal" ass is an embarrassment, and holding that up as a virtue rather than a weakness (or a neutral distraction) is abusive to others.

We have banded together with regulations to make life predictable, safe and consistent, and that's what has allowed us to advance beyond the age of mud huts.

[iquiring mind]

14. Is There a Right to Anything in This World?

So you disagree that people are born with certain inalienable rights?

That the only rights people have are those that governments grant them?
Ergo, no government=no rights?
Is this your view? If so I strongly disagree!
The belief that people are born with certain inalienable rights is the foundation of civil society.

Notice I purposefully omitted "God-given". I feel a belief in God is irrelevant to these rights. Call it "Natural Law" if you wish.

[stopbush]

19. In the purest sense, people are born as nothing more than biological life forms, yes?

It's not a matter of "government" granting rights, its a matter of humans evolving to the point where a common consensus emerged that individual human beings have rights.

You could call it natural law in the sense that we humans are creatures of nature who have evolved to the point where we intellectually conceived of human rights. I have no problem with that. But I don't think that humans as a species have had "inalienable rights" from the get-go, ie: for the past 125,000 - 200,000 years that we have walked this planet. Do you?

[iquiring mind]

27. Maybe we did

Perhaps, we just hadn't developed/evolved enough to realize it.

[GA_ArmyVet]

33. I disagree.

In the purest sense, you have the right to do anything you want.

Before civilization or societies were formed each man/woman was free to choose their own actions as they saw fit for themselves. In a society, the group decides which rights they wish to limit to facilitate the common good of the group.

[Stop Cornyn]

15. There is a God-given right to the separation of church and state (see Matthew 22:21)

[stopbush]

20. Only if 1. You believe there's a god, and 2. You believe that's the real deal when it comes to god.

[Stop Cornyn]

29. You know I was kidding, right?

[QueenOfCalifornia]

25. First you

have to believe that the Bible is penned by God... or people who are being told to write what God tells them.

[Stop Cornyn]

30. But Christmas comes whether or not you believe in Santa ...

[QueenOfCalifornia]

31. I thought

Santa just pretended to visit and that I was supposed to be the Santa. I know that Santa has never once paid me for the packages I sign "Santa" on when I gave them to my kids...

Now you tell me. I could have saved a lot of $$$$.

LOL

[QueenOfCalifornia]

21. Other

I am an Atheist too.

I do think we have rights as beings inhabiting the planet. Just not "God given."

It is a very difficult line to draw - and hard to grasp but we all grab for what we can. Just the term "rights" is somewhat difficult to define when compared to "privileges."

For example - the term "animal rights" is annoying to me. Animals can not, by definition, be granted "rights." They can be granted protection but rights? Hmmmm.....

[stopbush]

24. Any animal who is granted rights would be the last to know.

In fact, they'd never know.

[Two Americas]

22. which is it?

Which do you object to, the concept of inalienable rights or the concept of God?

[Lilith Velkor]

35. I believe it's the latter. n/t

[stopbush]

36. I've stated that I don't believe there is a god.

The idea that men have inalienable rights is a worthy concept. but the sourcing of those rights as limned in the Constitution is quaint and inaccurate when judged against the knowledge set that has been acquired by mankind since the Constitution was penned.

Had the Founding Fathers known of evolution, the true age of the Earth and the universe, and the appearance of homo sapiens hundreds of thousands of years ago, I believe that they would have been more than happy to aver that the source of our inalienable rights was our hard fought battle to gain those rights as an evolving species. In other words, that men themselves were the source of these rights, not an endowment by some unseen and unknown "creator" upon them. Indeed, the FF's language in citing "their Creator" as the source of these rights is a pretty large hedge to begin with - conventional speech at the time would have had them attributing man's creation to the god of the Bible or even Jesus, but they chose not to make such a specific claim.

"Their Creator" could mean anything that gave men life. In modern scientific parlance, that could mean the Big Bang. It could mean the evolution that brought man to believe in these rights after hundreds of thousands of years of having no concept of the same. What's important in the Constitution is the fact that the document is concerned with living human beings, not gods, the dead or the unborn. I'd like to think the Founders would have found evolution to be a perfect basis for the inalienable rights of man, because such a truth actually aligns with their enlightened thinking much more agreeably than does the concept of a deity bestowing said rights.

[Two Americas]

37. ok

So why is the word "rights" included in your poll?

The words I used are actually from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.

"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..."

In that context, especially considering that so many of the founders were Deists, "endowed by their Creator" means derived from a higher source and not subject to the whims or judgments of men.

The problem with seeing men as the source of rights, or some men, is that what men give they can take away. You are talking about rights as though you were talking about privileges or good ideas.

Are you trying to make evolution into a religion? If you merely swap put a few nouns but keep the conceptual framework of a religion, you still have a religion. All bow down to the goddess Evolutiana! Lots of confusion about that today, because we are living in a time and place where the traditional religions of the culture have collapsed, and people are looking for a new peg to hang their spiritual hats on.

"God is not 'the truth!' Look how wacky those God people are. Maybe evolution is 'the truth!'"

.

[natrat]

23. of course-to smile, to laugh, to cry, the whole deal

[ismnotwasm]

26. Not from any God I've read about

And I read a lot.

Gods seem obsessed with taking anything considered "rights" away, and put in the the province of a God Thing, and a God thing only. Easy to become lost in magical thinking with religion.

I don't care if someone has a faith, I care when that faith forces policy. When people mention all the good things religious folks do, one word comes to my mind, and that word is colonialism. But I'll stay off the soapbox.

Human rights, now is kind of a social contract we can form with one another. We have enough human history behind us to have a glimmer of what constitutes really shitty behavior, and what allows others to grow and change and be.

Long time ago, on my first day of nursing school, my instructor had one of those pull down pictures of a human body. "This is the human body. It's function is survival" Never forgot that.

Start out with mere functional survival and add some support for the quality of life of that survival--some of which you mentioned. Add a few things.

Freedom from torture now, basic human right. It could be easy if we let it.

[Stevenmarc]

28. I've never seen God

in a yellow Century 21 jacket. I have a feeling that God is more of a "big picture" entity who isn't involved in micro managing real estate.

[DainBramaged]

32. Why is the option for there is a God but rights aren't his business left out of the equation.

DU, the blood-sport of religion bashing continues unabated.

[stopbush]

34. That's actually choice #2 in the poll.

Try reading next time.

[LeftishBrit]

38. Other. IMO there is no God; hence no God-given rights; but there are basic human rights

[TahitiNut]

39. Apparently some think it's real estate ... above all else.

Strange, that. :shrug: