No God, no rights?

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Nightfall

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"...to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them..."

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Reading through the significant documents in American history, one often comes across ‘God given rights' in some form or another. The fore fathers seemed to have wrote this believing that basic human rights were inherent in being a ‘made by God' human, and that no man could take them away, only infringe upon them.

On the other hand, we have it clearly laid out in the 1st Amendment that no establishment of religion shall be respected above another. However, I'm unclear as to whether this means man is free to have any particular way of believing in a god(s) (maybe only as some religions see it, THE one God), or that one can forego the belief of any higher form of being altogether.

So... my question is: Does the BOR and the basic foundations of being a free American rest on the belief in a God? Are atheists such as myself left in the dust because, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, we are "endowed by their Creator (God) with certain unalienable Rights"? Or can Creator mean nature in and of itself, minus a higher being? Perhaps it doesn't matter what I believe personally, because it has been established that I am created by God and my beliefs hold no water with the government?

All opinions, particularly those that come with evidence and past decisions on the issue, welcome. :)

P.S. Keep it on topic please. Any personal inquiries addressing my personal issues with any god or religion should be resolved via PM. :D
 
Logical fallacy

Shifting the burden of proof
The burden of proof is always on the person asserting something. Shifting the burden of proof, a special case of Argumentum ad Ignorantiam, is the fallacy of putting the burden of proof on the person who denies or questions the assertion. The source of the fallacy is the assumption that something is true unless proven otherwise.


Argumentum ad ignorantiam means "argument from ignorance." The fallacy occurs when it's argued that something must be true, simply because it hasn't been proved false.

Prove that tiny aliens descended from rabid chiuahuas are not secretly using telepathy in order to subvert the judicial branch of our government.
 
I'm an agnostic (and possibly an athiest depending on what you mean by "God", but that's just my belief, because the probability that there's an all-powerful entity that demands fealty is, IMO, a bit slim, to be kind).

I don't agree that you can state that there is no "God" without proving it, though. The default state is that you don't know anything - in particular, whether there is a god or not. Saying that there is no God (no creator-of-the-universe, not necessarily no creator-of-Man) is just like saying there is one. Either something had to have created it, or we're lost... we have no frame of reference for understanding something that's always existed. It seems silly to say that that's the way things are "just because." It's not necessarily the simplest explanation because it isn't simple at all. I don't know of anyone who understands it. I don't even know of anyone who claims to.

And you can stack the arguments... "if there is a 'creator,' how was it created?" Obviously by another creator, or it existed always. But that doesn't mean this universe is the one true "universe" that has exited forever (a la 13th floor/matrix/whatever). There's no reason to believe either way.
 
My creator is....

Nature.
I don't see any conflict with "Who/What the creator is" it never specifies a "Christian God". Most of the founders were deists and there are many records on their thoughts. Jefferson even wrote a book on what he felt was the philosopher named Jesus and what may have been the facts of history seperated from the fiction based on his knowledge at the time.
BT
 
I'm not sure anyone has proof of a God or can disprove it.

On the other hand if you are asking for proof there isn't a god, perhaps you can shed some light on the fact there is a god by providing your own documentation to support your position.

The BOR was writen by mortal men who had certain religious beliefs and stated their opinions as facts in that parchment.

I had asked on anotehr thread and I'll ask again here of you-------
"God given rights"--
When did he give them and to whom did he speak? And don't quote the bible as it was not written by god himself but again by mere mortals [ who could be wrong, like all of us mortals ].

Until I can be shown who God spoke to at the convention or sometime before that in Philly in the 1700's it really isn't "god given" but rather an interpretation by mortals [ who could be wrong ].

What god given rights has god granted you personally?

Brownie
 
The Enlightenment era schism of whether God exists has been going on in public in the "modern" world since the early 1750s. Scottish Empiricist philosopher David Hume made it alright for atheists to come out of the closet so to speak. He makes a very masterful case for atheism in his writings. An excerpt:

"When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles [empiricism--if it cannot be proven it doesn't exist] any volume of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."

An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1758)

The philosophical gulfs between believers, agnostics, and non-believers finds a bridge with the language of political philosophy of the day. Believers used "God-given rights." Non believers used "natural rights." Agnostics were comfortable using either.

The use of "God-given rights" is a form of appeal to authority. The natural rights metaphor is tighter logically IMO.

I just thank God that Nature didn't allow men of lesser caliber write our governing documents.:D

On matters of religion, I go with Pascal: "The betting man bets on the existence of God." IOW, what do you have to lose if you are wrong?
 
"Come up with a logical proof that there is no God."

Oh please. Attempting to "prove" a negative is fruitless.

In the same vein, one could say that they require a logical proof that there is a God.

In the short run, though, NO. Not believing in some sort of supreme diety/entity, or even the same supreme diety/entity in whom the dead men believed is a requirement for admission into the "American Civil Rights Club."
 
Natural rights.… Human rights.… Civil rights.… What does God have to do with it?

Not much. God would be one more authority I would fail to recognize, if I found His commandments to be unjust or immoral. Furthermore, if he/she/it/they do exist, we were clearly created with free will. By extension, we have sovereign rights to exercise and even abuse, though we must always face the consequences of our actions.

If there are no deities, then there is clearly also no “higher†authority. If there is no higher authority, then we have sovereign rights by default, as one individual is no more entitled to exercise authority than another. Of course, these rights can still be unjustly suppressed … as they frequently are.

~G. Fink
 
the ultimate

Borrowing loosely from the great 20th century theologian Paul Tillich, your "God" is whatever is the "Ultimate" in your world view. To some, it is a masculine human-like figure, to others it is the set of all laws of physics, to others, "nature", etc. In my view, everyone who lives or who has ever lived has a unique idea of "God". Of course, that type of statement is unprovable; however, that is not a serious problem in this realm!

Bottom line, our rights come from God, nature, the ultimate, whatever you want to call it.

Peace,

(or if you like,
Sic vis pacem, parabellum)
 
When I die, I will have definite proof whether or not God exists. I'm not going to wait until then to start believing. If there really isn't a God, then I'll be dead and it won't matter. If there is a God, it will validate my life long beliefs and I will reap the benefits.

q: "What god given rights has god granted you personally? "
a: all of them

Morals are based upon religious beliefs. Without the religious aspect, morals are relative and can be shifted to suit the situation. Laws are (were, should be) written to reflect religious morals.

Our God given rights are offset by the responsibily to follow the Laws (of man and God).

But to answer the original question, yes you do still have rights even though you do not believe in God. Kind of like the protesters who bash America but are protected under the 1st A to do so.
 
Also, note how it was worded in the Declaration of Independence...

"...and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them..."

The way Jefferson wrote it, it would appear that he placed more importance on freedoms being inherent in nature, but not necessarily derived by the action of a god.

God is mentioned only once by name in the Declaration, and only obliquely "Divine Providence" in another.

I'll have to check when I get home, but I know that the Divine Providence was a suggested addition, not in Jefferson's original text.

The "of Nature's God" very well may also have been a suggested addition, not originally included by Jefferson.

If both are as I believe them to be, later additions by other members of Congress, that would give a very interesting insight as to where at least one member of the Congress believed that rights came from.
 
Good question. Full of holes, but good question nonetheless.

I'll start by saying I believe in God, drawn from my own conclusions and by personal revalation from my God. I'll try to be brief so as not to drag on...

If you conclude that there is no God because no one created the creator, then how is is that we evolved when there was nothing to evolve from?

Show me an example of evolution wherein the product was evolved into a more complex structure than before.

I just assume that I'm ignorant of how things really are, and after I cross over to the other side, the things I dont understand will be revealed to me and will make perfect sense to me then.

Evidence of God's existance is all around us, all you have to do is look without preconceived notions.
 
So... my question is: Does the BOR and the basic foundations of being a free American rest on the belief in a God?
Click to expand...
The answer is no.

There was a time when the words and perceived intentions of the Founding Fathers was taken as an absolute authority. A good example is the Dred Scott decision, which ruled that slaves did not have rights because some of the Founding Fathers were slave owners when they wrote "that all men are created equal..." Clearly, if they owned slaved then they did not mean to include them as equals.

The Court no longer does this because it elevated both the Founding Fathers' insights and oversights to a godlike level. But they were not gods...merely men. So the court have removed the "layer" of the Founding Fathers, and now depends upon the same law and history that the Founding Fathers did, as well as the law and history that has transpired since, in making its rulings.

So the fact that god is mentioned in the Declaration Of Independence does not mean that you must also believe in a god to be free, because the layer that introduced god into the picture has been removed. We no longer see truth through the Founding Fathers' eyes, but through our own.
 
I believe that "Creator" should be read as broadly as possible and the meaning could therefore be restated "You have these rights by virtue of the fact that you are breathing."

Whether your vision of the "Creator" is a bearded giant in an oaken chair hurling thunderbolts, a set of known and unknown scientific principles, or something else altogether is irrelevant. You have been Created by *something*, so you have Natural Rights so long as you're sucking air.

JR
 
"Show me an example of evolution wherein the product was evolved into a more complex structure than before."

Look in the mirror.

More specifically, crack your mellon open and look at your brain. FAR more complex than the brains of proto humans 250,000 years ago.
 
Proof of no God?

I have never seen a satisfying answer to Epicurus' trilemma from about 250-300 BCE:

Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; Or he can, but does not want to; Or he cannot, and does not want to.

If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If he neither can, nor wants to, he is both powerless and wicked.

But if God can abolish evil, And God really wants to do it, Why is there evil in the world?

The standard dodge, and remember I am not an atheist, is that God has endowed humans with free will and has not revoked that endowment. Thus humans are imbued with the capacity for evil.

My beef with that position is precisely that it is a dodge. God is allegedly omnipotent and omniscient. It is inescapable that God could not then make mistakes. Is it not "wicked" to create something, especially something made in His own image, that has the capacity to cause untold suffering onto undeserving others.

In fact, do we even have free will or is it only an illusory choice from a retrospective view?

Think about it. You are at dinner. You finish. The waiter comes over and asks if you'd like dessert. You say yes. There are only two choices: apple pie or chocolate cake. You decide you'd still like dessert in the face of limited choices. One might impulsively choose one over the other. Some may ponder it like life and death.

However are you really free to choose? What is actually going on in your thought processes? Every concious decision you make every day, if you are not suffering from diminished capacity, is really the culmination of every other decision you have ever made before. We all know people we could predict with near absolute certainty would have one of the two dessert choices and why they would "choose" it.

Perhaps every decision the diner ever made will lead him or her to picking chocolate cake at that moment of decision. It is only really afterwards, particularly in moments of dissatisfaction, that people say, "I could've had apple pie instead." It is the appearence of free will but how free is it really?
 
More specifically, crack your mellon open and look at your brain. FAR more complex than the brains of proto humans 250,000 years ago.
Click to expand...

You don't KNOW this to be fact. You're choosing to believe the written word of the scientist's. You choose to believe it. You got as much proof as I do which is none. I CHOSE to believe the written word of God over mans.

It's all about faith and making a choice to believe or not. Scientist are proving the old theories wrong every day, even dating. No one has proven God wrong yet.:scrutiny: Hmmm.
 
Which God? Oh, THAT God, the RIGHT God! Everybody knows Zeus, many have strayed though! The Founders didn't use generic terms like "Creator" by happenstance.

My thanks to Gordon Fink & Boats. I like it when I say hmmm???
 
[blockquote](John Ross) You have been Created by *something*, so you have Natural Rights so long as you're sucking air.[/blockquote]
So what? A tree leaf needs air too (CO2), so am I violating its natural rights by picking a leaf off of a low-hanging branch? Or does this only apply to things that have been "created" if they're self-aware? And how exactly do we measure the self-awareness of, say, a rock? No, I'm not joking, how do you explain the self-awareness (or lack thereof) of an ant if considering a rock is too silly? Presumably at some point of complexity animals are accepted as self-aware. So if it's not self-awareness, what could it be? Use of tools? Opposable thumbs? Ability to build computers? What exactly differentiates animals we use as test subjects from ourselves? What gives us "rights" where they have none?

...a few words from our sponsors...

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies." --Franklin (a satanist/hedonist at one point, by the way)

My earlier views at the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them. --Lincoln

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise. --Madison

The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity. --Adams

The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. --Paine

"Now is not the time to make new enemies." --Voltaire on his deathbed, when asked to renounce the Devil
 
I CHOSE to believe the written word of God over mans.
Click to expand...

Please show me where God has written anything.

~G. Fink

I was hoping this thread wouldn’t become a religious debate. Oh, well …
 
"I have never seen a satisfying answer to Epicurus' trilemma from about 250-300 BCE:"

There's a 4th element that Epicurus never examined.

That God knows that no singular absolute can exist, and therefore evil is as necessary as good in the world.


"You don't KNOW this to be fact."

Just as you have NO factual, or even faith-based, basis to believe that evolution doesn't result in more complex organisms.

You say you choose to believe the word of God.

Would that be the word of a Christian, Jewish, Native American, Ancient Egyptian, Japanese, Chinese, Sub-Saharan African or other God?

If you choose the Christian God, how do you filter out the many, and often clumsy, translations that have been done over the past X thousand years?

How do you know that today's translated word of God is, in fact, in concert with the supposed word of God as handed to the prophets who wrote it down originally?

No original texts of the Gospels exist by which comparison can be made.

Thus you have no way of knowing if the supposed Word of God is, in fact, even that.

Faith is a wonderful thing, unless it so restricts and blinds an individual that all other possibilities are excluded.
 
Please show me where God has written anything.

Ummm, The Bible, I know it was written by man, but is a record of man's visions of, interactions with, and messages from God. It is in all practical purposes the word of God. Not trying to convince you, but you asked.
 
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