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  • Do rights come from God?

    From Herman Rubin@21:1/5 to mm2005@bigfoot.com on Sun Mar 13 20:50:47 2016
    On 2016-02-05, mm <mm2005@bigfoot.com> wrote:
    On Thu, 4 Feb 2016 16:39:16 +0000 (UTC), Yisroel Markov
    <ey.markov@MUNGiname.com> wrote:

    On Thu, 4 Feb 2016 03:32:59 +0000 (UTC), Shelly
    <sheldonlg@thevillages.net> said:

    On 2/3/2016 7:48 PM, Yisroel Markov wrote:
    On Tue, 2 Feb 2016 22:30:17 +0000 (UTC), Shelly
    <sheldonlg@thevillages.net> said:

    On 2/2/2016 3:17 PM, Giorgies E Kepipesiom wrote:
    On Tuesday, February 2, 2016 at 1:40:23 PM UTC-5, googy wrote:
    "Our rights come from God and not from the government."

    From the US Declaration of Independence:

    "...the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them
    "...they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

    So, it appears that rights are originally granted by God, according to the USA founding document. The function of government is to secure those God-given rights:

    "to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men"

    GEK

    Time, place, context. Yes, that is what it says. If it were written
    today, the use of "God" would not probably not have been included.

    AFAIK, in Old English the word "right" had the connotation of
    "privilege granted by liege lord, often against his will." The authors >>>> of the Declaration consciously propounded a revolutionary idea: That
    certain rights are so necessary to the function of a decent society
    that they must be placed beyond the reach of earthly rulers. Thus
    "endowed by their Creator", to invoke the highest possible authority.

    Without God, what authority could they invoke today?

    The individual.

    Not quite the same oomph, don't you think?

    No, not at all.

    Besides, we have plenty of
    people who believe that the individual is to be subordinated to the >>community. (Consider all the folks willing to vote for Sanders.)

    ROTFL. Voting for Sanders does not mean subordinating the individual
    to the community. At most it's about money, not about the person.

    Do you think when you give tsedaka that you're subordinating yourself
    to the community? Is that what you teach your children tsedaka is.

    Do you think when you pay taxes to fund public schools from 1-12 you
    are subordinating yourself to the community? Which is more
    important, school or medical care? Highways or medical care?

    Social welfare programs are an attempt by voters to do for people,
    with the force of American law, what much of tsedaka is, with the
    force of Jewish law.


    Occasionally those people win political power, and then you have
    places like the USSR.

    The problem with the USSR was not social welfare programs. It was totalitarianism, imperialism, and enforced to a great extent atheism.

    Yours is the kind of nonsense attacks on social welfare legislation
    that we will see plenty of if Bernie were to get nominated.

    But even in the minority they have an effect
    worldwide. To them, the individual is no authority.

    Again, laughing.

    IOW, without referring to God, neither yesterday nor today would the >>Declaration of Independence be nearly as powerful a document.

    i haven't had a chance to answer yours or any other of the original
    comments on that, but you have a strong point when you attribute iiuyc
    the origin of "Rights come from God" to the writers of the DOI. Sort
    of amazing considering that that was written 1700 years after the time
    of Jesus and 3400 years after Sinai. I guess those candidates who
    say "Rights come from God" attribute to the writers of the DOI the
    status of prophet, or at least the equal of the writers of their
    Bible. I wonder if they have noticed that.

    At the time Jefferson put down those words, just about everyone
    in the colonies, and indeed also in Europe, believed in God. Many
    were Deists, who believed that God created, and then let His creation
    evolve. Jefferson and Paine were both Deists. Believing the right
    come from God does not mean that God stated those rights, but for
    them it meant that man was created with those rights without saying.

    --
    This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
    are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
    Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University hrubin@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

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