anotherneil
Active Member
I've repeatedly heard the assertion that rights come from God. Do you think rights come from God? If not, then where do you think they come from, or how do we have them?
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Do rights come from God?
- Thread starter anotherneil
- Start date
Rights come from personal mortality, society, the government and the UN.
Depending on which country you live some of those may not apply.
Depending on which country you live some of those may not apply.
anotherneil
Active Member
As a non-religious person, I do not think that rights come from God or any other deity.
Rights come from society coming together and establishing what rights we have, agreeing what they are, and adhering to such an agreement. Without this, we have no rights - unless we're willing to fight and die to keep and preserve them.
Rights come from society coming together and establishing what rights we have, agreeing what they are, and adhering to such an agreement. Without this, we have no rights - unless we're willing to fight and die to keep and preserve them.
anotherneil
Active Member
Did you mean personal morality, rather than mortality?
I think we may have common ground that rights come from society; the actual implementation of having rights is the result of society's actions.
Government is the label applied to what society creates to facilitate the implementation of having rights, but in some cases it's the actions of the state or government that's behind deprivation or infringement of rights.
Why do you include the UN? The way I understand what the UN is or does has to do with mainly being a multi-national diplomatic hub, with its main mission being to try to prevent or avoid violent means to deal with international conflicts. Granting rights isn't what the UN does.
I'm not familiar with that assertion.
Regardless, rights come from the way humans organize their societies. We're tribal creatures at heart ─ ask any football fan ─ and we organize our conduct in a variety of ways. We've evolved to have certain moral tendencies ─ dislike of the one who harms, like of fairness and reciprocity, respect for authority, loyalty to the group, and a sense of self-worth through self-denial. But on top of that instinctive base go a range of learnt behaviors, which may vary greatly from group to group ─ how to meet with family, with relatives, with strangers, those who are older, those who are younger, authority figures (parents, teachers, doctors, police &c), observation of milestones such as birth, pairing, and death ─ and so on.
That this mix contains rights as well as obligations is only as true as the recognition of those rights by the people you're dealing with, and rights were associated with chiefs and leaders long before they were associated with Everyman. But varieties of them have been known in Western societies since the time of the Greeks and their successors the Romans. In the US slaves were property hence had no rights until 1865, though in many cases nothing like equality until the social movements and marches of the 1960s and later.
anotherneil
Active Member
Here's an example of that assertion: Yes, our rights come from God: A needed lesson on America’s faith-infused founding
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
No. Lol. Rights don't originate from an imaginary dieity.
Yes, and it is my God given right to think that.
Rights come from people based on their moral and ethical standards.
That said, those who have based these rights on a belief in God will say these rights come from God.
Personal morality, everyone's morality is different. For example, people in the US are good at taking the rights of women people in Texas are talking about executing women for claiming their rights.
Re government, see previous paragraph.
The UN declaration of human rights is important. Just because some countries have mot adopted the charter and at least one wants to do away with it in no way interferes with its worth
Thanks. What rights, in particular, are referred to? The right to view a movie after you've paid for the ticket? The right to remain silent when charged with a crime, let's say a major crime? The right to vote? The right to dislike people for unstated reasons? The right to be an unbeliever or different-believer? The right to an abortion? The right to marry a person of the same sex?
McBell
mantra-chanting henotheistic snake handler
um...
The right to have rights?
All things are the/from gods. "Rights" - as nebulously defined as that concept may be in humans - are no exception. I don't really believe in God in any of the ways that matter, but the gods are law and justice as much as the gods are the sun and the moon. 
Given the one common denominator of gods across various theologies is that gods are that-which-are-greater, wouldn't some overarching agreement beyond the level of an individual human be a god by matter of course? It's basically a textbook "higher power" that is there to hold humans accountable to something greater than themselves as individuals. That's a god. It is treated as a god even by those that do not call it such - it modifies behavior and folks obey and placate the gods of law, as well as celebrate it and uphold it as a virtue.
To note, this is unsurprisingly why in some polytheistic culture, gods of law and justice were held in very high esteem. Our ancestors had a keen understanding of how we are all bound by higher powers (gods) like law and order... willingly or unwillingly.
Many animals form groups ─ herds, warrens, tribes &c ─ and herds are largely instinct but also partly learnt behaviors. They thus have a group identity, which for them has emerged as a system aiding survival and breeding.
And we're animals so we have such instincts ─ respect for authority, loyalty to the group, for example ─ as well as constructed rules (like annual fees to belong to a fan club).
I don't see any need to postulate a supernatural element.
Audie
Veteran Member
Neither do I. Not sure why you bring that up unless you're mistakenly equating gods with the supernatural in spite of most gods throughout human history being various aspects of nature and reality itself (aka, not supernatural or "above" or "beyond" nature).
osgart
Nothing my eye, Something for sure
To determine rights it's necessary to examine morality, and what constitutes quality of life for all living beings. To remain innocent as compared with virtues vs. vices it's possible to discover innate, self evident rights. Innate rights can be disasterously ignored and abused, and quality of life would severely deteriorate for most people. So for each morality there is a cause and effect that can be objectively assessed for their ability or inability to produce a quality of life and love.
It's evident that no benevolent God exists and that nature is indifferent, and often hostile to life on the whole.
It's evident that no benevolent God exists and that nature is indifferent, and often hostile to life on the whole.
They may have been aspects of nature, but they were also proclaimed to be able to hear and respond to human prayer.
"Supernatural" - or "magical" - would be the typical way to describe this sort of arrangement.
Ebionite
Well-Known Member
Those rights then which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as are life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolable. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture. Neither do divine or natural duties (such as, for instance, the worship of God, the maintenance of children, and the like) receive any stronger sanction from being also declared to be duties by the law of the land.
Blackstone, Introduction Section 2
Blackstone, Introduction Section 2
Most gods that I'm familiar with have had a supernatural place in the cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome and a brief overview of the Hindu and Shinto gods. The Great Spirit and the Rainbow Serpent are supernatural too. There are, of course,
Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm’d
The noontide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds,
&c but like Ariel, and as Prospero mentions, these too have supernatural powers.
What gods without powers do you have in mind? What is said to be the point of worshiping or placating them?