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Who created human rights? (and why it's a problem for atheists)
It is 70 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was
adopted by the United Nations. Following his Big Conversation debate
with Peter Singer, Andy Bannister says the document still poses a
significant problem for atheists
On the 3rd July 1884, four sailors aboard a yacht, the Mignonette,
encountered a terrible Atlantic storm. The yacht sank, leaving them
stranded in a tiny wooden lifeboat.With little food and no water, by
their eighth day adrift they were desperate and so made the fateful
decision to kill the cabin boy. For four more days until their rescue,
the three surviving sailors fed on the cabin boy’s body.
When they returned to England and the story broke, it scandalised the
nation and the survivors were charged with murder and made to stand
trial.
If you were the judge, what would you do? After all, the story leads
to two possible conclusions. The first is purely utilitarian: one
person was killed, three people survived. And the cabin boy, unlike
the older sailors, had no dependants; his death left no grieving
children.
But I suspect few readers would agree with that option. Most of us
have a more visceral reaction: what those three sailors did was
fundamentally wrong, because they violated the cabin boy’s human
rights and dignity.
Free and equal
Whether it’s a small crime against humanity (the murder of a cabin boy
under desperate circumstances) or a major one (the Rwandan genocide or Stalin’s Russia), most people have the same reaction: it is wrong to
violate the dignity of another human being. This year is the 70th
anniversary of the document that most famously encapsulates this idea:
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was adopted by
the United Nations on 10th December 1948 in Paris.
The UDHR opens with these powerful words: “Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the
human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the
world…All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
We’re passionate about human rights, we award Nobel Prizes for them,
but a fairly basic question is often overlooked. These rights, this
dignity that human beings are claimed to have – where is it located?
What is its basis, its foundation? In short, however noble the UDHR
may sound, is it true?
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights
These are trickier questions to answer than you might imagine, and the
options are limited. Perhaps one might suggest that human rights just
are; they just exist. This was the route taken by the secular human
rights campaigner Peter Tatchell whom I once debated on Premier
Christian Radio’s Unbelievable? show. Tatchell is passionate about
human rights, but when I pressed him on why we have them, he basically
said they exist because they exist. This is hugely problematic, not
just because it’s a circular argument, but because the racist can use
the same rationale – they can claim to be superior to other races and
when we ask why, reply: “I am because I am.”
Another popular secular route is to try to find something special
about human beings: perhaps the fact we have speech, or consciousness,
or creativity. Again, as part of ‘The Big Conversation’ series from Unbelievable?, I recently dialogued with one of the most famous
atheist philosophers in the world who holds this position. Peter
Singer is famous, firstly, for his commitment to utilitarianism – we
pick our actions based on what causes the least suffering or promotes
the greatest happiness (so cabin boy casserole is very much a real
option). But in our conversation Singer also said that what gives us
rights and dignity is not that we are human, but that we have the
ability to have preferences for the future, and that we can act in
accordance with those preferences.
There is a grave problem with trying to ground rights and dignity in somebody’s abilities. Even leading atheist Sam Harris has pointed it
out: “The problem is that whatever attribute we use to differentiate
between humans and animals – intelligence, language use, moral
sentiments, and so on – will equally differentiate between human
beings themselves. If people are more important to us than orangutans
because they can articulate their interests, why aren’t more
articulate people more important still? And what about those poor men
and women with aphasia? It would seem that we have just excluded them
from our moral community.”
Now the options are getting more limited. Maybe we can say that human
rights exist because they matter to me; because they’re personally
important to us. The problem, of course, is that when Martin Luther
King cries “I have a dream!” in his famous civil rights speech, how do
we answer the person who says: “I’m glad you care; but personally I don’t.” Isn’t the point about rights and dignity that we should all
care? We need more than mere personal preference.
The last option is to appeal to the state: human rights exist because
the government grants them. The problem here is that if rights are
something the state gives, the state can equally take them away. In
1857, an African-American slave named Dred Scott sued his owner for
his freedom. The US Supreme Court ruled against Scott, the Justices
stating that as a “negro”, he did not possess rights.
We hear a story like that, 150 years on, and wince with shame at how
our ancestors behaved. But if human rights and dignity are just
arbitrary inventions that the state confers, then the state can
equally arbitrarily take them away. Tax deductions today, rights
deductions tomorrow.
Invented or discovered?
So how do we solve the problem that many of us are committed to human
rights but we can’t ground human rights? Well, the first thing to say
is we need to get beyond preference. There’s a huge temptation today
to see morals, values and choices as just our personal preference.
I was surprised to discover that even Singer drifts this way at times.
I reminded him during our conversation of the passage in his famous
book, Practical Ethics (Cambridge University Press), where he
basically admits there isn’t really a way to differentiate between a
life spent stamp-collecting, a life spent watching football, or a life
spent helping the poor. If ethics is just something we make up, then I
can see why he is stuck here.
But what if ethics, human rights and human dignity aren’t made up? One
of the brilliant insights that the world leaders, philosophers and
theologians who crafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had
was the assumption that human rights and dignity aren’t invented but discovered. During our conversation, Singer actually admitted this,
remarking that he increasingly thinks that moral values and duties
exist independently of us, in a “similar way to mathematical truths existing”.
There’s a huge temptation today to define morals as just our personal preference
That’s a massive step for an atheist like Singer to take, for it means
that as well as physical things (atoms, particles, tables, chairs,
chocolate éclairs etc) you also have invisible, non-physical entities
floating around, principles such as “love your neighbour”. For
somebody like Singer, who believes human beings are the unpurposed
product of time plus chance plus natural selection, this looks
remarkably peculiar. As I put it to him in our dialogue: it must have
been an interesting day on the Serengeti all those thousands of years
ago when one of our ancient hominid ancestors woke up to discover
themselves bound not just by the law of gravity, but also by the law
of “do not murder”. Was their first thought: “Hoorah! I’m now a moral agent!”, or “Bummer, now I can’t whack the hominid in the next door
cave over the head and steal his lunch”?
By contrast, the Christian view of what it means to be a human being
and a bearer of rights and dignity starts from a very different place. Christians ground human rights in the incredible truth, proclaimed in
texts like Genesis 1:26-27, that human beings bear the image of God,
the imago dei. Incidentally, that idea is unique to the Bible. It’s
not found in Islam, or Hinduism or Buddhism – it’s a uniquely Judaeo-Christian concept.
Many atheists throughout history have reluctantly recognised this is a
far better foundation for human rights than attempting to arbitrarily
ground value and dignity in other places. Some of them have also
raised the next obvious question of what happens to value and dignity
if you pull God out as the foundation. The 19th Century German atheist Friedrich Nietzsche (who hated Christian ethics as he felt it elevated
the weak and the poor) was brutally honest: “The masses blink and say
‘We are all equal – Man is but man, before God – we are equal.’ Before God! But now this God has died.”
So, there is a stark choice: one can adopt a Christian understanding
of humanity – that we have real value and real dignity, because we are
made in God’s image. Or you can reject that narrative, ignore the consequences, refuse to answer Nietzsche and pretend everything is OK.
The Big Conversation
Should we end the lives of severely disabled children?
Moral philosopher Peter Singer (PS, pictured left) has provoked
controversy among disability rights campaigners. In this edited
excerpt from his debate with Andy Bannister (AB, pictured right),
hosted by Justin Brierley (JB), he defends the practice of euthanasia
for children born with severe disabilities.
PS: Perhaps we should look at this term ‘dignity’ first. An
anencephalic is an infant born with only a brainstem but no cortex, so
no capacity for consciousness. An anencephalic won’t recognise his or
her mother, is not capable of experiencing or feeling anything at all.
Now, compare that with a chimpanzee or a horse. Why should we think
that this human, who could have no experiences, has more dignity than
the chimpanzee or the horse or the dog who can respond in so many
complex ways to their environment?
JB: So you disagree with the declaration that “all human beings are
born free and equal in dignity and rights”?
PS: That’s right. There are exceptions.
JB: What do you think about human dignity, Andy?
AB: Peter, while you take examples of human beings who are born
profoundly disabled, I still think you’d recognise they had a degree
of dignity. If you met a parent of a child born like that, who was
proposing not just committing infanticide but then chopping the corpse
into little bits and frying them on the barbecue, you’d think that
there has been a failure of moral reasoning. Even in that tragedy
there is a degree of dignity.
Some of the great ethicists like Hobbes, Locke and Kant argued that
equality is not grounded in an ability that you have or you don’t
have. That leads to a sliding scale that says: “Maybe rationality is
what grants people inclusion in moral community.” Well, you’re a
brilliant philosopher – if we put you up next to Justin and we have to
make a choice [to keep just one of them], Justin may not be part of
that.
JB: I’d be mincemeat!
PS: We could just say there is a minimal threshold…
AB: We could go that route or we could go the route of Hobbes and Kant
and others of intrinsic human dignity. In terms of animal rights and
justice for the animal kingdom, that’s also grounded in human dignity
because I have a duty to the animal kingdom to treat it in a
particular way.
PS: Do you think that your duties to the anencephalic are grounded in
some rights?
AB: I think all human beings, whether they have capabilities or they
don’t, belong to the human family and with that come rights and
dignity. So I would agree with the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.
Watch the full debate between Andy Bannister and Peter Singer
Where are we going?
But one last thought. If human beings have dignity, why should that
affect how we behave? Suppose you are walking down your local high
street when a passer-by trips you up, pokes you in the eye, and steals
your Starbucks. “Hey!” you cry. “I have dignity! How dare you!” And they look at you and say: “So what?” How can you compel them to take
your rights seriously?
You see, you can’t talk about rights without talking about duties.
What is our duty towards a dignity-bearer, towards a fellow human, and
why? That question opens a whole new can of worms. Is there a way we
are supposed to be? Are some actions really wrong, and some really
right? Harvard University law professor, Michael Sandel says: “Debates
about justice and rights are often, unavoidably, debates about purpose...Despite our best efforts to make law neutral on such
questions, it may not be possible to say what’s just without arguing
about the nature of the good life.”
Sandel’s observation gets to the heart of what it means to be a human
being. Are we creatures designed to seek justice, goodness and
fairness? Or are we just primates that got lucky in the evolutionary
lottery and whose genes are purely directed at reproductive success?
This was a topic that Singer and I returned to many times in our ‘Big Conversation’ (see dialogue box above). I remarked to Peter that it’s
all very well calling a book Practical Ethics, but that only goes so
far. Imagine that I get home from a trip and I say to my wife: “Hey, I
just bought this amazing book, Practical Canoeing, at the airport!”
Next day I load my wife and children into a canoe and start paddling
out into the North Sea. “What precisely is the plan?” my wife begins
to ask, increasingly insistently. To which I keep replying: “Honey,
stop asking silly questions! Can’t you see how wonderful this canoe
is? It’s so practical.” Finally, she shouts at me: “But where are we going?”
Practical ethics, utilitarianism, human rights, and so forth – all
these things are all very well, but unless we ask what the purpose of
a human life is, what we are supposed to be, what we are supposed to
be aiming at, we really will just end up paddling in circles.
If Christianity is true, love is the supreme ethic
As the conversation with Singer shows, if you ultimately believe that
the universe is just atoms in motion, that there is nothing
intrinsically valuable about human beings, and if some humans have
more value than others, because the metric you use to measure ‘worth’
or ‘personhood’ assigns them a greater score, then you have a problem.
But by stark, beautiful contrast, if the Christian story is true, then
we were made with a purpose. We were made for something. Indeed, made
for someone. We were made to discover God’s love, to love God in
return, and to love our neighbour. If Christianity is true, love is
the supreme ethic – that’s what it means to be human and it gives a
value, a purpose, a direction to human life – and a basis not just for
human rights but also for our duties to one another.
This is why atheists face such a sharp dilemma. Only if the Christian
story is true do humans have dignity and worth. And only on that basis
can you talk meaningfully about rights and about responsibilities. Who
created human rights? The one who created humans.
Source:
https://t.co/0rhJBi0IQr
--
Stephen Hayes, Author of The Year of the Dragon
Sample or purchase The Year of the Dragon:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/907935
Web site:
http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog:
http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail:
shayes@dunelm.org.uk
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