Hi again Nash,
Sorry again about the delay. I'm doing a lousy job keeping up with the posts here. As you've already discovered I'm none to quick generally.
Originally posted by Nash
The source of these inalienable rights is ultimately inconceivable, but I'm fine with the word "God" just for expediency's sake. I don't believe that they were granted by God, but that they are just natural - a "way." It sounds trite, but I believe that these inalienable rights exist because that's just the way it is. They can no more be granted than I could grant you a square foot section of water in some river.
So to answer your first question, they are not granted... they are experienced.
How are they revealed and received? In my view, they are not so much revealed as discovered. They have always existed and always will, and man simply becomes more aware of them as he ages. I think it's less an accident that on one side of the world you had "Do unto others...." and on the other "Consider others as yourself," than it is evidence of the awareness of this. Certainly both men came to the same conclusion, yet there'd be some dispute as to how they arrived there.
"And how may one discern between truth and error in considering them?" I think our conscience guides us. For the most part, we have an innate sense of right and wrong. Justice and injustice. So we describe certain rights as inalienable, because to deprive us of them would be unconscionable.
So where we mainly differ is the source. You submit that God granted us these rights. I submit that in a strange way, God is these rights. If I choose to accept your belief that these rights are given, then it follows that they can be taken away. God isn't frozen in cryogenic chamber, and we're all aware of how many updates and patches the Bible has been through to get us to Christianity v20.05. First he giveth then he taketh away. Or some might say....
To me it's quite simple. In order to be inalienable they cannot be owned. They cannot be spoken for. They just are.
Again, I don't want to misrepresent you, so tell me if this is a caricature. It seems like you are saying that these inalienable rights and generally some sort of objective natural morals are woven into the fabric of the universe. That there have always been things that are right and wrong because they are. Further these eternal morals are discovered through our subjective feelings.
It seems to me that there are some insurmountable problems with that idea, not the least of which is that it makes morals so subjective as to be only of use to individuals and not societies.
For instance, lets take the current example. Your sense of these universal rights tells you that gay marriage is good, mine tells me that it is bad. We are instantly at an impasse. To what should we appeal to break the deadlock?
Well we could say that the greater the number of "receptors" whose sense we poll on the subject, the closer we come to an accurate reading of the true universal norm. But in this case, here int he United States, the greater number of people "sense" that Gay Marriage is wrong and have expressed this again and again via their votes. This methodology is therefore inevitably going to be unacceptable to proponents of gay marriage who are sure their sense is right.
So what recourse are we left with? To assume that high court judges have a more highly tuned sense of these universal morals than all of us combined and turn to them for an answer?
(Please note that these questions are not rhetorical, I sincerely want to hear what you think.)
But just for food for thought, let me ask you to also consider the Christian theists explanation for the differences and hear your reactions.
The Christian theist, as I said would indeed say that there are fixed universal moral laws (a synopsis of which can be found in the Decalogue), that these moral laws are an expression of the perfect and unchanging character of an all-good God, and that they find their source in him. In Creation they were imprinted on the heart of man, and for a short time man held them aright. But then in rebelling man fell, he transgressed these laws and his moral nature was itself corrupted.
Now man's conscience sometimes has glimmers of that true moral law, but the rebellion of the fallen human heart leads him more often to desire to do what is right in his own eyes. Therefore he now tends to call what God says is evil, good, and what God says is good, evil. Often he even denies that there is any way to distinguish at all and that everything is gray in an attempt to free himself from all responsibility, the old
"What is truth?" of Pilate.
This state of affairs is reflected at several places in scripture, the statement of Eccles 7:29 that "Truly, this only I have found: That God made man upright, But they have sought out many schemes" for instance, but it is nowhere more clearly expressed than by Paul in
Romans 1:18-32 Certainly that would explain the current state of affairs and even our current progress in legislation, wouldn't it? What objections can you see to the possibility that what Paul wrote is simply true?
- SEAGOON
PS: I disagree with the assessment that the bible has been updated or patched, but I'm out of time and don't have the energy required for a defense of what Theologians call "Progressive Revelation" or the Tripartite division of the Law, but if someone wants to prod me with a stick on it later on, I might be able to muster something.
Too...pooped...must...find...
sleep...
