Sorry, but the logic doesn’t work, ironically. By your reasoning you can’t trust atheists or the non-religious who turn to religion for guidance … Well then, if you live in the States you’ll find yourself in short supply of people to trust, that is unless you live in a region like the NE or any urban area were secularism resides comfortably.

Let’s say A is accused of assaulting B. Without rights (here natural rights) what is B’s offense? What crime has B committed? Against whom?

Without rights, B can only be prosecuted for a crime against some third party or entity. Back in the day, it was the King’s peace, or the Law of the God(s). Today, notoriously, it is the all-powerful State.

Today, Prof. Bike Lock, having assaulted SEVEN people with a solid chunk of steel, received a misdemeanor:

http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=376490

Unconfirmed rumors are circulating that Clanton flipped on other Antifa suspects. But maybe it’s time we learn to prosecute our own cases.

Roy Nathanson on August 8, 2018 at 7:30 am at 7:30 am said:

SharonW,

Thomas Jefferson got that wrong. Rights do not exist in nature. They are a purely human construct. Furthermore, the concept of rights is under continuous development.”

Ask yourself this: do you have a right to breathe without my interference? If so, what kind of right is it? On what basis is it formulated? Your social utility? How rooted? In a more foundational right to life? Or, the mere fact that you happen by chance to fall under some (ultimately) arbitrary, merely convention based, category outlined on paper?

There are of course political rights, and civil rights, and contractual rights, and Constitutional rights, and common law rights and … even natural rights. And they are obviously not all the same thing.

However, although in granting the obvious that “rights” in general may be a human conception (as they obviously refer to and are formulated in terms of human law and ethics), they are in some cases inferences claimed to be drawn from nature: and thus form statements with a basis in man’s nature, thus: “natural” laws or statements. Now, this is not “Nature” as in the great outdoors, or the latest Discovery Channel special on the Wonderful World of Insects, but rather Man’s nature, that is to say his organic telos. And this is not law as in observed regularity in a stochastic context, but prescriptive in relation to that natural end.

So, if rights are imagined to be anything more than ultimately arbitrary – if proximately instrumental – stated permissions, granted by a few strong, or the many weak, to whomever is the subject, then, they must be rooted in some phenomenon that exists outside a “creative impulse” which is itself no more than a meaningless chance occurrence that this or that subset of conscious beings finds pleasing; because reality has by chance decreed that they individually come out that way.

Now there are some people who are intent on denying that man has a pattern of development from which any normative inferences may be drawn. Some also hold as an article of faith that no prescriptive conclusions may be inferred from a descriptive statement and believe that this rules out ethical statements as being in any sense real inferences from simple subject predicate statements. And apart from certain immediate forms of inference that is more or less the case:

But that misses the point; since in general no inference of any kind apart from obversion or contraposition type moves, can be drawn from just one narrow and non-contextual proposition: be it an ethical conclusion (an imperative in our case) or otherwise.

Even a legal positivist like Herbert Hart admitted that no sense can be made of the purpose of the law, unless it is granted that law is rooted in man’s natural purposes. What sense does it make to dignify an arbitrary command on a piece of paper that all 5 year old children shall jump six feet high to do a back-flip every half hour, as a law; when they not only lack the natural capacity to do so, but there is no human point in requiring it? Yet it makes perfect sense to say that these same children have a natural right not to be subject to such arbitrary and harmful commands.

Of course there are those who wish to deny 1, that natural ends are real, 2, that man actually has even psychological intentions that are not an illusory, and 3, that healthy human beings do have a natural telos in common.

But then, you have thrown out the denotative universal “man”, along with the connotative bathwater. You have even tossed out the notion of health, really.

At that point it ceases to make sense to talk of “man” as if it were one species with shared traits and rights derived from a common nature – which you have per hypothesis just tossed away.

There is no more man, and we do not share a species category in any morally meaningful sense.

In that case it is not surprising that, as there is nothing left to rely upon other than taste or force, some will resort to a joke like “empathy” as if it provides guidance to some logical conundrum. But it cannot in itself, ex hypothesi, carry any moral freight or be considered a moral attribute. It’s per definition just a happenstance trait that may have some utility for some in some circumstances and work to disadvantage in others. And if one chooses to empathize with hearty and mentally sharp types, and roll over the un-valued and the slow, who’s to say any wrong has objectively been done?

Thomas Jefferson got that wrong. Rights do not exist in nature. They are a purely human construct. Furthermore, the concept of rights is under continuous development.

Dennis Prager has posed the question, “Would you rather live in a society where a person is afraid of being caught by the police, or caught by God?” Shallow morality indeed. I know what society I would prefer. And what of the fact that our government was founded upon the principle that our inalienable rights are God given–not government derived?

Here is a good reference for Christian belief in America:

https://babylonbee.com/news/how-to-be-a-perfect-christian-is-out-now-and-it-will-literally-change-your-life/

Well it really isn’t but it may lessen your fear that Christians have no sense of humor.

You are a funny guy/gal to speak of peace and charity considering how often you write about killing people. Cognitive dissonance? “Lucy you got some ‘splainin to do!”

I won’t be holding my breath.