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Do You Believe In Natural Rights?

Do You Believe in Natural Rights?

  • Yes

    Votes: 36 41.4%

  • No

    Votes: 51 58.6%
  • Total voters
    87
cpwill said:
:shrug: It seems that if you have no natural rights, then effectively, you have no rights at all, only privileges. You therefore have no cause to complain when they are abused.

Yet abuse the rights of those who claim there are no such things and watch to see if they get upset. It is similar to those who claim that there is no universal morality, who will nonetheless get upset when you break in front of them in line, or steal their car. Quite quickly you will find that they appeal to a standard whose existence they deny.
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For that reason alone, only a few should be allowed to consider it a fiction.
 
Fletch said:
I think both issues are equally important. 1) that natural rights exist 2) that the Founders believed it and wrote it into our Constitution. If you want to see #2 eroded and destroyed, say nothing while they erode and destroy #1.
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We can test this. A natural right is said to be inalienable. Name the right, and let's see if anyone has ever been stripped of it. If no one has been stripped of the right you name, it is indeed inalienable and therefore a naural right. If any person has ever been stripped of the right you name, the right is certanly not inalienable and thus not a natural right.

Since I'm at work, my method of testing will be a Google serch. I will report back the key words I use for the serch and a link to resulting hits.

Please name a right and we'll put it to the question.
 
Cephus said:
You don't have a natural right to life. You have a granted right to life, provided by the society in which you live. Welcome to reality.
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Hitler murdered millions. So did Pol Pot, and Mao, and Stalin. When the leaders of those societies chose to end the lives of those tens of millions that was wrong, and you can't make it right simply by saying that's reality.
 
Ahlevah said:
Hitler murdered millions. So did Pol Pot, and Mao, and Stalin. When the leaders of those societies chose to end the lives of those tens of millions that was wrong, and you can't make it right simply by saying that's reality.
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If people had an inalienable right to life, Hitler could have shot them each 6000 times and they would be unharmed.

Hitler alienated their right to life from them, which demonstrates their right to life was not inalienable, thus not a Natural Right.
 
Ahlevah said:
Hitler murdered millions. So did Pol Pot, and Mao, and Stalin. When the leaders of those societies chose to end the lives of those tens of millions that was wrong, and you can't make it right simply by saying that's reality.
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For the sake of argument, even though I agree it was wrong because that's how we view things in the western world, how do you know those things were wrong? What is your criteria? Right and wrong are entirely subjective, surely the Nazis didn't think that what they were doing was wrong or they wouldn't have done it. So please, demonstrate that you have some kind of correct moral high ground that goes beyond subjective claims. I don't think you can do it.
 
cpwill said:
:shrug: It seems that if you have no natural rights, then effectively, you have no rights at all, only privileges. You therefore have no cause to complain when they are abused.

Yet abuse the rights of those who claim there are no such things and watch to see if they get upset. It is similar to those who claim that there is no universal morality, who will nonetheless get upset when you break in front of them in line, or steal their car. Quite quickly you will find that they appeal to a standard whose existence they deny.
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Is there a natural right to not get cut in front of in a queue? The recognition of morality as subjective doesn't make it any less important. Your founding fathers refused to recognise a natural right to property, does that make it OK for you to steal?
 
spud_meister said:
Is there a natural right to not get cut in front of in a queue? The recognition of morality as subjective doesn't make it any less important. Your founding fathers refused to recognise a natural right to property, does that make it OK for you to steal?
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Morality is the expression of the survival instinct above the individual level.
 
spud_meister said:
So is it more moral to betray your family for your country, or your country for your family?
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That depends on the family, country, and the spicific betrayal.

Is your 'family' your wife whom you once promised never to leave but now your country needs your skills in the military? Is your country ran by an unjust dictator whom you 'betray' by fleeing with your family?
 
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Jerry said:
That depends on the family, country, and the spicific betrayal.

Is your 'family' your wife whom you once promised never to leave but now your country needs your skills in the military? Is your country ran by an unjust dictator whom you 'betray' by fleeing with your family?
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But if morality is simply "the expression of the survival instinct above the individual level", shouldn't actions that support the survival of the most people be the most moral. Isn't a soldier more moral than a doctor, simply because they're committed to the survival of a nation, rather than individual patients?
 
TurtleDude said:
the issue is not whether natural rights exist or do not exist

the issue is-did those who founded this nation believe in natural rights (YES)

and as a result, did their belief frame the way the Bill of rights was written or how it should be interpreted (YES)
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They did not believe in he PR statement they released and their own lives unduly activities are proof that their words were obvious lies the moment they were placed to parchment,
 
Fletch said:
A belief in natural rights is just a recognition of reality. Man is a rational being whose survival depends upon his rational mind. Reason cannot function in a world dominated by force and violence. Rights will exist one way or another. Either they will be innate in each man equally, or they will be reserved to the strong whose rights are the product of violence and coercion. Reason demands the former because it cannot exist in the latter. To survive, as man, requires the freedom to act according to ones own conscience. Since it is necessary that man do so, it is right that man do so. That is basically all that natural rights entail.

I don't know about any of that. From everything I have heard, Jefferson believed it, as did all of the Founders.
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First, you are confusing simple abilities that the human species has with the concept of rights.

Second, Jefferson owned over 100 slaves in his lifetime and obviously did NOT believe that ALL MEN WERE CREATED EQUAL and had the rights of LIBERTY and LIFE among others.
 
Ahlevah said:
You can't separate the concept of a right from morality. For example, if a society decides as a matter of convention that a child has a right to eat an ice cream cone on a public street without being molested what would be the point if a bully could just steal it from him? But then I can see why you'd want to avoid the subject of making evaluative judgments, because then you're left with the ticklish task of explaining how the white majority in South Africa wasn't wrong in depriving blacks of basic human rights, since their ability to deprive blacks of their rights emanated from force. I suppose you could continue to keep your mouth shut, in which case, whether you realize if or not, you're nonetheless making a normative judgment concerning what the state of affairs in the country should have been. ("Force makes right. Ergo because the whites were more powerful, they were right." If rights emanate neither from force nor natural law, then you're left with convention, unless you can do what no one else has done and come up with another source for the concept of a "right." Good luck utilizing convention to explain how the black majority agreed to make themselves second-class citizens.)
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Lots of people and the government they create and the rules and laws they institute can be perfectly decent without any belief in natural rights. The ancient Golden Rule is one example.

a society can treat people decently or not and a belief in natural rights has precious little to do with it. The very man who wrote the clearest statement of a belief in natural rights in our Declaration of Independence -Jefferson - owned over 100 slaves and clearly did not practice the hollow words he placed upon parchment. The same could be same for other signers as well or those who later created a government that did nothing about millions of people in a legal condition of slavery which denied them both life and liberty.
 
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Jerry said:
If people had an inalienable right to life, Hitler could have shot them each 6000 times and they would be unharmed.
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You are confusing "natural rights" with "natural laws". The claim that there are natural rights does not mean that they cannot be abused.
 
haymarket said:
First, you are confusing simple abilities that the human species has with the concept of rights.

Second, Jefferson owned over 100 slaves in his lifetime and obviously did NOT believe that ALL MEN WERE CREATED EQUAL and had the rights of LIBERTY and LIFE among others.
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Actually he did :). He described slavery as an abominable crime, considered it a violation of the founding beliefs of the nation, tried to limit and restrict it so that it would die naturally (sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing), and lamented that he could not find a practical solution to its' absolution.

You could say that his actions were not perfectly self-sacrificial in order to serve his beliefs, and I think you'd get most folks to agree with you on the hypocrisy. But that doesn't change his belief system.
 
Cephus said:
No it isn't. If they wrote about unicorns and leprechauns, it wouldn't make unicorns and leprechauns real. That's what we're trying to establish here. It doesn't matter what they thought about gods or rights, it matters whether what they thought was actually so. Are these natural rights actually real? If not, all the faith in the world, all the belief in the world is entirely irrelevant because they were simply wrong.
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that's beyond stupid since unicorns are not the foundation of our law.
 
spud_meister said:
But if morality is simply "the expression of the survival instinct above the individual level", shouldn't actions that support the survival of the most people be the most moral. Isn't a soldier more moral than a doctor, simply because they're committed to the survival of a nation, rather than individual patients?
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A soldier who fights in wars unrelated to the survival of the nation, such as the US conflict in Afghanistan? Certanly not. Afghanistan is about imperialism, not survival.
 
haymarket said:
They did not believe in he PR statement they released and their own lives unduly activities are proof that their words were obvious lies the moment they were placed to parchment,
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you have made that claim many a time and it continually fails to accurately discuss the difference between scope and coverage. The founders certainly believed the natural rights were there for THEM
 
cpwill said:
You are confusing "natural rights" with "natural laws". The claim that there are natural rights does not mean that they cannot be abused.
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http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1206.html

"Political theorists since the time of the ancient Greeks have argued in support of the existence of natural rights, meaning those rights that men possessed as a gift from nature (or God) prior to the formation of governments. It is generally held that those rights belong equally to all men at birth and cannot be taken away".

If it can be taken away, it is not a natural right. Name something you think is a Natural Right and we'll test it.
 
Jerry said:
Natural Rights

"Political theorists since the time of the ancient Greeks have argued in support of the existence of natural rights, meaning those rights that men possessed as a gift from nature (or God) prior to the formation of governments. It is generally held that those rights belong equally to all men at birth and cannot be taken away".

If it can be taken away, it is not a natural right. Name something you think is a Natural Right and we'll test it.
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That is correct - your inalienable rights cannot be taken away from you. They can nonetheless be abused. Again, you are confusing Natural Rights with Natural Law.
 
spud_meister said:
Is there a natural right to not get cut in front of in a queue?
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That is an appeal to morality.

The recognition of morality as subjective doesn't make it any less important
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On the contrary - the argument that morality is purely subjective and cannot be universal makes it almost worthless. It is not a moral code at that point, it is simply a series of personal preferences, with no greater force than an attachment to speaking French instead of Spanish or preferring Amber over Barley beer.

Your founding fathers refused to recognise a natural right to property, does that make it OK for you to steal?
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The founding fathers of this country did, in fact, recognize property rights. They simply altered Locke's formulation of Life Liberty Property to Life Liberty Pursuit of Happiness in their most famous expression of inalienable rights.
 
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cpwill said:
That is correct - your inalienable rights cannot be taken away from you. They can nonetheless be abused. Again, you are confusing Natural Rights with Natural Law.
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You may want to look up the definition of "inalienable".

If it can be abused, it has been alienated from you, and is therefore not inalienable. Likewise an inalienable right is something which you can't give up volinteraly no matter how much you want to.
 
Sherman123 said:
This topic seems to have popped up in a few threads recently so I thought I'd put this together. Put simply do you believe in the concept of natural rights? That is to say rights that are "not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and therefore universal and inalienable".

Personally I don't. I think that Hobbes had it right when he intimated that the only 'natural right' that a human being possesses is the right to strive for their own survival. Everything else exists only at the sufferance of your own strength or the kindness of others. It is part of what makes civilization so essential and so valuable, because by creating a society we attempt to lift ourselves out of that war of all against all. This allows for freedom of speech, property rights, press freedoms, freedom of worship, etc. Absent organized society these 'rights' would be purely theoretical.
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There are no rights provided by nature, in fact if you look at nature in any sort of personified way, it pretty much wants to kill you and then recycle you. Its the job of any organism to carve out their space to live and any luxuries beyond that such as what we call freedoms.

The only way this really happens is through force. Even opening your mouth requires the use of energy which is force.
 
Jerry said:
You may want to look up the definition of "inalienable".
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Define: Inalienable
in·al·ien·a·ble
/inˈālēənəb(ə)l/
adjective: inalienable
unable to be taken away from or given away by the possessor.
"freedom of religion, the most inalienable of all human rights"​

Nope, I think I'm pretty much tracking, there.

If it can be abused, it has been alienated from you
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That is incorrect. If it is abused then its exercise can be taken from you, not the right itself.

Think of it as similar to ownership - if someone steals your car, that doesn't mean that they become the rightful owner of the car. You are still the rightful owner of the car, they have simply taken away your ability to exercise your ownership. You wouldn't run down the street, chasing your escaping vehicle, shouting "By Jove - they have taken the vehicle that once was mine but now is suddenly theirs through their exercise of physical control over it!", you'd be hurling obscenities at the people who took "your" car.
 
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