{"id":2939,"date":"2020-08-12T16:19:26","date_gmt":"2020-08-12T16:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/08\/12\/god-and-our-rights\/"},"modified":"2020-08-12T16:19:26","modified_gmt":"2020-08-12T16:19:26","slug":"god-and-our-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/08\/12\/god-and-our-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"God and Our Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conservatives regularly say that our rights come from God, not from the state. It is true that they do not come from the state. But if they come from God, then their existence is as questionable as the existence of God. Now discussions with leftists are not likely to lead anywhere; but they certainly<\/em> won't lead anywhere if we invoke premises leftists are sure to reject.  The  Left has always been reliably anti-religion and atheist, and so there is no chance of reaching them if we insist that rights come from God. So from a practical point of view, we should not bring up God in attempts to find common ground with leftists.  It suffices to say that our rights are natural, not conventional.  We could say that the right to life, say, is just there, inscribed in the nature of things, and leave it at that.  Why wave a red flag before a leftist bull who suspects theists of being closet theocrats? <\/span><\/p>\n

Now I am not sanguine about the prospects of fruitful discussion with leftists, but we ought to make the effort since talking with<\/em> is better than shooting at<\/em>. Apart from our practical interests, the topic is theoretically fascinating. <\/span><\/p>\n

The following aporetic tetrad is a partial map of the conceptual terrain:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

1) Unalienable rights, and the duties they generate, have an absolute character incompatible with their being conferred or withheld arbitrarily by  those who happen to control the state apparatus.<\/span><\/p>\n

2) Rights and duties cannot have this absolute character unless their source is God.<\/span><\/p>\n

3) There are unalienable rights.<\/span><\/p>\n

4) There is no God.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Although individually plausible, the members of this foursome are collectively inconsistent.  So something has to give. (1) is a conceptual truth and so is not up for rejection.<\/span><\/p>\n

Suppose you endorse (1), (2), and (3).  You would then have a valid argument for the rejection of (4) and thus for the existence of God.  <\/span><\/p>\n

But (2) is not self-evident. And so the argument to God is not rationally compelling. It is epistemically possible that moral absolutes 'hang in the air' with no need of support by an Infinite Mind. An atheist could validly argue from (1), (3), and (4) to the negation of (2).
<\/span><\/p>\n

More drastically, one could validly argue that there are no unalienable rights via the acceptance of (1), (2), and (4).  Imagine a naturalist who argues that if there were unalienable rights, they would have to have the absolute character that only God could ground, but that, since there is no God, there are no unalienable rights.
<\/span><\/p>\n

From a logical point of view, that argument is as good as the other two.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have reasons to not be a metaphysical naturalist, and I have a strong intuition that some rights are absolute and unalienable; I am therefore within my epistemic rights in accepting the argument to God, despite its not being rationally compelling. But then no argument for any substantive thesis in a subject like this is rationally compelling. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conservatives regularly say that our rights come from God, not from the state. It is true that they do not come from the state. But if they come from God, then their existence is as questionable as the existence of God. Now discussions with leftists are not likely to lead anywhere; but they certainly won't … Continue reading “God and Our Rights”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143,311],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-god","category-rights-and-duties"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}