No God, no rights?

[mercedesrules]

My friends Chris, Robert and I think that the only "rights" you can say you have are those that you can devise some way of defending.

MR

 

[Boats]

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.

Biblical literalism has always been of keen interest to me. God is infalliable. Man his creation, is not.

So if the Gospel is the transmitted word of God as recived by men, how can you be sure that you aren't worshipping with the aid of what amounts to a garbled transmission?

Case in point: Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden. They have Cain and Abel. Cain eventually marries a woman from the land of Nod. Where'd she come from if the Bible is the infalliable word of God?

Then we get into biblical prophecy, wherein lifetimes are not really lifespans, days are years or millennia, and other fantastical liberties are taken. That is, to be polite, an illogical approach to a text.

And where are the standards? God spoke to men, and they wrote it down, end of inquiry? Some would say that God spoke to Joseph Smith through golden tablets delivered by an angel. Some would say he is a fraud. Who can say one or the other? However, it is worth noting that one can check aspects of the Bible through the histories of other cultures and via archaeology. No such luck with the tale told in The Book of Mormon.

So who is the arbiter of whether God spoke to someone and whether what was allegedly said is accurate in any regard?

 

[scottgun]

how can you be sure that you aren't worshipping with the aid of what amounts to a garbled transmission?

I think if you screw up the word of God, there would be hell to pay, literally. Seriously, I think that God makes things pretty clear.

I'm not a biblical scholar so I can't refute every point. But readings and stories from other cultures do confirm and coincide with stories in the bible, ex: the flood, the exodus. Archaeology also confirms many of the stories. As for the ages of those during biblical times, they do seem to live a real long time, maybe different calendars or time tracking methods. In the period the Bible was written it was against the law to write facts or record events as they actually occurred. Liberties were taken, but the message is more important than the details.

The Bible has been translated by Monks in the middle ages, they had sworn their lives to serving God, they weren't making changes to suit their own agenda.

this is starting to resemble a religious debate......

 

[brownie0486]

It's not that i do or don't believe there is a god, I just wanted to hear from someone who had personally spoken to him where he stated that the right to carry a gun was a "god given right"

I have seen that quote here too many times defending their positions of a right to carry. I don't believe they are correct, and conversely need to be corrected so they won't continue to make such claims.

I am very impressed with the responses on this thread from all. Good points are made for both views, however, I'm still waiting for the ones who say it is a "god given right" to carry a gun for self defense to explain who god actually said this to.

The bible is not the word of god. It is written by mortals and is a translation which begs the question of mistakes due to human errors and the writers own thoughts and interpretations.

Brownie

 

[Mike Irwin]

"So if the Gospel is the transmitted word of God as recived by men, how can you be sure that you aren't worshipping with the aid of what amounts to a garbled transmission?"

And given that the transmission has been REworked dozens, if not hundreds, of times over the past few thousand years, there's also a very good chance that any resembelence to the ORIGINAL word of God is only marginal.

That's the danger of literalism, folks, when insisting on following, literally, the word of something or someone that very well may not have been the word for a thousand or more years.

"I'm not a biblical scholar so I can't refute every point. But readings and stories from other cultures do confirm and coincide with stories in the bible, ex: the flood, the exodus."

That they do. Navajo tribal customs have a creation story that's somewhat similar to that in Genesis, but at the same time is also very different.

The point of that, though, is what?

If you agree on certain specific instances, but diverge as many, or more, other issues, what have you really gained in understanding, other than two cultures, widely separated by space and time, have a similar basis for some of their beliefs.

For example, Christianity teachs of the existence of a single God, who created the heavens and the earth.

Navajo religion has many Gods, three of which were present at the creation -- First Man, First Woman, and Coyote.

Only the Navajo creation story doesn't stop there. It's a LOT more complex...

So which one is the true creation?

Christian?

Navajo?

Or one of the other myriad religions?

And the Celtic creation myth? Hell, that's UNBELIEVABLY complex, essentially Atlas World Builders at work all at once.



"The Bible has been translated by Monks in the middle ages, they had sworn their lives to serving God, they weren't making changes to suit their own agenda."

And the works from which the Monks were working were ALSO translations, and those translations, in many cases were ALSO translations.

It's very doubtful that any of those people were making changes in those translations just because they felt like it, or based on a particular political point of view.

BUT THAT CANNOT BE DISCOUNTED.

It also can't be discounted that the individuals who made those translations were human beings, and thus NOT infallible.

It's also known that from one language to another sometimes words, or even concepts, can't be directly translated, thus requiring best-guess transliteration.

The Bible is a wonderous book, full of incredible stories -- some doubtless true and some doubtless apocrypal. I've also no doubt that as the word of God, it lost true connection to that provenance many thousands of years ago.

I believe, however that it is fair to say that these are the CONCEPTS of God.

 

[Devonai]

My 4 cents:

God created man in His own image. The only thing I take from this is the endowment of free will, the most important of being human. God has free will. So do we.

God wants us to be happy and to believe in Him. The only way this can be accomplished is to give humans free will.

We can either accept or reject God. Accepting God by our own free will allows us to be sincere about our faith. God could make His presence known and demand He be worshipped, but that would completely defeat the purpose of humankind. He wants a real relationship with His creation, and free will guarantees that those who believe, believe honestly.

Because of this relationship, I also believe that God interferes very little in this world. Physics are the rules that God put in place to govern this universe, and that's why you get things like hurricanes, floods, and volcanoes. Free will results in people making their own decisions, good, bad or indifferent.

In response to a similar thread, I reviewed my exhaustive concordance for about an hour. I couldn't find much that directly correlated freedom (as in our BOR) with Christianity. I am not a biblical scholar, but the best I can do in this regard is pose the position above.

 

[Gordon Fink]

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.…

What Boats, Mike, and even brownie said.

~G. Fink

 

[Boats]

I have always had some conceptual difficulty as to why an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being, would need to be continually loved by a bunch of hairless apes. It always reminds me of that scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

...And spotteth twice they the camels before the third hour, and so, the Midianites went forth to Ram Gilead in Kadesh Bilgemath, by Shor Ethra Regalion, to the house of Gash-Bil-Bethuel-Bazda, he who brought the butter dish to Balshazar and the tent peg to the house of Rashomon, and there slew they the goats, yea, and placed they the bits in little pots. Here endeth the lesson.

CHAPLAIN:
Let us praise God. O Lord,...
...ooh, You are so big,...
...so absolutely huge.
Gosh, we're all really impressed down here, I can tell You.
Forgive us, O Lord, for this, our dreadful toadying, and...
And barefaced flattery.
But You are so strong and, well, just so super.
Fantastic.
Amen.

HUMPHRIES:
Now, two boys have been found rubbing linseed oil into the school cormorant. Now, some of you may feel that the cormorant does not play an important part in the life of the school, but I would remind you that it was presented to us by the Corporation of the town of Sudbury to commemorate Empire Day, when we try to remember the names of all those from the Sudbury area who so gallantly gave their lives to keep China British. So, from now on, the cormorant is strictly out of bounds! Oh, and Jenkins, apparently your mother died this morning. Chaplain.

[organ music]
CHAPLAIN and CONGREGATION: [singing]

O Lord, please don't burn us.
Don't grill or toast Your flock.
Don't put us on the barbecue
Or simmer us in stock.
Don't braise or bake or boil us
Or stir-fry us in a wok.
Oh, please don't lightly poach us
Or baste us with hot fat.
Don't fricassee or roast us
Or boil us in a vat,
And please don't stick Thy servants, Lord,
In a Rotissomat.

 

[scottgun]

Boats, I hope you didn't type all that from memory.

I have always had some conceptual difficulty as to why an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being, would need to be continually loved by a bunch of hairless apes.

Maybe because love is the answer, maybe because a group of like minded people focusing on a single thought can make positive changes.

Maybe because if I have to explain, you probably wouldn't understand.

 

[tyme]

I like Dershowitz's opinion of what rights are... those things that, when not protected, result in terrible abuses (by governments, other citizens, or whoever else). In essence, rights are a set of principles that contains the least abuse-prone element of every set of mutually exclusive harms.

I think this is well understood at some level. Polls indicate that while there's no concensus over precisely what rights ought to be protected, just about everyone feels that there exist rights that need to be protected.

For instance, having rights enforced preemptively is mutually exclusive of freedom from a police state. And a police state has been shown to be more abusive, so freedom from a police state is a right, while pre-enforcement of rights is not.

 

[Marko Kloos]

Morals are based upon religious beliefs. Without the religious aspect, morals are relative and can be shifted to suit the situation.

I disagree. Morality is not dependent on religious beliefs...I even propose that religious morality is more "flexible" than humanist morality. Scripture can be (and has been) interpreted to support any sort of morality. A mere 150 years ago, Scripture was used to support slavery, which is thoroughly immoral in my secular morality, for example. The Bible has been used to support polygamy, torture, slavery, disenfranchising of women, child abuse, and many other things which I would consider immoral.

Have you ever considered that it might be patently offensive to non-religious people when you suggest that they can't possibly have any morals?

Do you really need the threat of divine punishment and promise of reward after death to do the right thing? Do you really need a list pinned to a wall to tell you that killing people and stealing their stuff is *wrong*?



Dan Barker addresses the "no morals without God" issue quite well:

"Ethical systems are based on the worth humans have assigned to life: "good" is that which enhances life, and "evil" is that which threatens it. We do not need a deity to tell us it is wrong to kill, lie or steal. Humans have always had the potential to use their minds to determine what is kind and reasonable.
There is no "universal moral urge" and not all ethical systems agree. Polygamy, human sacrifice, cannibalism (Eucharist), wife beating, self mutilation, war, circumcision, castration and incest are perfectly "moral" actions in certain cultures. Is god confused?
To call god a "nonphysical being" is contradictory. A being must exist as some form of mass in space and time. Values reside within physical brains, so if morality points to "god," then we are it: the god concept is just a projection of human ideals.

"If there is no absolute moral standard then there is no ultimate right or wrong. Without God there is no ethical basis and social order would disintegrate. Our laws are based on scripture."

This is an argument for belief in a god, not for the existence of a god. The demand for "absolute" morality comes only from insecure religionists. (Voltaire quipped: "If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.") Mature people are comfortable with the relativism of humanism since it provides a consistent, rational and flexible framework for ethical human behavior--without a deity.

American laws are based on a secular constitution, not the bible. Any scriptures that might support a good law do so only because they have met the test of human values, which long predate the ineffective Ten Commandments.

There is no evidence that theists are more moral than atheists. In fact, the contrary seems to be true, as evidenced by centuries of religious violence. Most atheists are happy, productive, moral people.

Even if this argument is true, it is of little practical value. Devout, bible-believing Christians cannot agree on what the scriptures say about many crucial moral issues. Believers regularly take opposing positions on such matters as capital punishment, abortion, pacifism, birth control, physician-assisted suicide, animal rights, the environment, the separation of church and state, gay rights, and women's rights. It might be concluded from this that there is either a multiplicity of gods handing out conflicting moral advice, or a single god who is hopelessly confused."

 

[SkunkApe]

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

Stephen Roberts

 

[pax]

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?

Nightfall --

I don't know the name of the guy who built my house. My house exists anyway. My house's existence does not rest upon my belief in the builder's work; the house exists, and the builder built, completely without reference to me and my beliefs. The house would exist, and would be of the nature that it is, whether or not I believed in the one who built it.

Similarly, your rights which are a built-in part of your human nature exist whether or not you ever believe in or acknowledge the One who put them into your nature. Those rights are "inalienable" -- that is, they are part of your nature and cannot be made alien to your nature, cannot be separated from your nature. They are part of what it means to be a human being.

Now for my little lecture on the meaning of the word "rights." I've given it before, so feel free to skip it. But some folks may not have seen it yet.

Looking up in the old Websters I find rights are "something to which one has just claim" or "the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled."

As the dictionary implies, the whole concept of 'rights' comes back to the idea that it is morally proper for people to do certain things, and morally improper for them to do certain other things. That is precisely what is being discussed when someone talks about their "right to ____." At issue is whether someone else may justly deprive them of their ability to do that thing.

When someone appeals to "rights," they are really appealing to an almost-universally understood standard of what is morally proper (or 'just') and what is morally improper (or 'injust'). Arguments over what rights human beings have, if any, will nearly always boil down to such fundamental moral distinctions. That is why theists will usually take the shortcut of saying "God-given," since the moral code they claim is based on the idea of a God who endowed human beings with a moral sense.

This moral instinct or drive is something that most human beings have in common. Even those who reject the concept of a deity will generally find themselves saying things like "that's not fair!" when something bumps into this innate sense of justice, so it is possible to believe in, and appeal to, the human moral drive without believing in "God-given rights."

If you believe that it is not "right" for someone to kill you when you have done nothing to harm them; or if you believe that it is not "just" to throw someone in prison when they have committed no crime; or if you believe it is not "fair" when someone sneakily breaks the rules in a poker game -- then (by your appeal to it) you demonstrate that you do believe in the concept of innate human rights.

It is the nature of human beings to appeal to this moral code. It is built into the system, part of what it means to be human. If you are a theist, you can say that it is "endowed by the Creator." If not, you can say it is simply part of your nature, and leave it at that.

Human beings appeal to the innate moral code all the time. We regularly discuss the issue of who may justly do what to whom. The moral sense is there, regardless of how it got there. Thus we can see that your human rights exist completely without regard to what you believe about God.

Further, because of this, we can see that your human rights exist regardless of what the Founders said about it. Those dead white men were speaking the truth, but in one very large sense it doesn't matter whether they were or not. All that matters is that it was the truth.

Human rights exist, and the rights are not derived from some fading bit of parchment kept behind glass in a government-owned building. Human rights come from the nature of the human being, and cannot be separated from that nature.

pax

A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you. -- Ramsey Clark

 

[pax]

Addenda, partly in response to Lendringser's post --

I neatly dodged the question of why something is "just" or "not just." To answer that, religionists grab a Holy Book, libertarians refer to the NAP, curmudgeons and non-philosophers of all stripes just say, "you know!!! that's wrong..." (which is what Lendringser's post was addressing -- and he appealed to the built-in moral sense in order to do so. But where'd that moral sense come from? How'd it get in his nature?).

Interestingly, folks with radically different ideas as to why something is wrong will often still agree that it is wrong. And if something is truly wrong or truly right, there will usually be more than one reason why this is so.

pax

Truth is. Belief is not required. -- Gerry Roston

 

[hops]

'God given right's' comment in other thread.

Since someone wanted me to ignore my rights for the greater good of society- the right of self-defence, using a gun in this case, I got a bit passionate. God popped in to my thoughts quickly. Perhaps Nature given rights would have been better, I guess.

Someone gave me the right's I have. Could be god, could be nature, or perhaps the people who donated 1/2 of their chromosomes to me - Mom and Dad. They certainly gave me life, if god did not. I certainly feel that Goverment nor society gave me my rights.

Religion, like a gun can be used for good or evil, just like anything else.

Dennis Miller ; "Every time I now go to confession, I say, 'You first.' ".

 

[Tom B]

Since part of this discussion deals with the afterlife let me suggest some interesting reading. The book "We don't die - George Anderson's conversations with the other side" by Joel Martin & Patricia Romanowski. As far as Atheists I say sad...sad...sad....some day they will be all dressed up and no place to go!

 

[Marko Kloos]

As far as Atheists I say sad...sad...sad....some day they will be all dressed up and no place to go!

That's your opinion, not verifiable fact. I have no issue with the idea that I will cease to exist when I die. It helps me live this life to the fullest, and find meaning in my current existence, instead of spending the only life I'm conclusively *known* to have with collecting brownie points for a possible afterlife.

But that is my preference, and I am perfectly comfortable with people who take the celestial option, as long as they both recognize a.) my right to not indulge in their beliefs, and b.) my status as a full human, without declaring me to be stunted being that can't possibly have any morality or happiness.

"Nyah, nyah, my God will show you when you die" is not really high on my list of acceptable debating techniques on the subject.

 

[boltaction]

I'll take up that challenge too...

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

Happens all the time, AND is not actually what happens in biological evolution when you get down to the details (the devil is in the details, but I will NOT go there):

1. liquid water turns to ice on a pond as darkness falls (the H2O "orders" itself, but the (thermal) disorder in the surroundings INCREASES.

here is a more complicated case but the physics is pretty close to "life physics":

2. pot of water is put on the stove on very low "heat"; the water at the top of the pot gets hot by conduction of heat through the static (not moving) water column. Then, the heat is turned up - the thermal energy in the lowermost layers of water in the pot builds to a critical level, and the water SPONTANEOUS ORGANIZES itself into a complex structure known as "Rayleigh-Barnard Convection" - that is, the water spontaneously starts to move, or convect upwards, carrying the heat with it.

In case 2, the system has organized itself so that it can create "disorder" more rapidly (in physics we say that the rate of entropy production has increased). This is what life is from the point of view of physics: systems of organization that have high "order", and that are "allowed" by the laws of physics exactly because they creat havoc around themselves. I hate to be crude, but in goes the broccoli, and out goes the.....

That is, elementary thermal physics shows us CLEARY that we cannot simply look at whether a given "thing" is more or less ordered with time.

BTW, biological evolution is not just an idea - it is written very clearly in the rocks - evidence for the evolution of plants and animals is seen in the millions of sequences of sedimentary rocks from around the world, which show, if you will allow me to GREATLY oversimply, that "germs go to worms, worms go to fish, fish go to amphibians, amphibians go to reptiles, reptiles go to mammals", etc. Note that it is NOT always increasing complexity - some of our modern organisms are also mosquitoes. Further, do not confuse intelligence with biological complexity. I do not want to belabor this, but using Evolution as proof of deity in theological arguments is futile. It never works.

 

[Strings]

two thoughts...

... before this thread gets closed...

1) Speaking of translation problems with the Bible: remember that some words can be translated in several ways. IIRC, the Aramaic(?) word for "salt" is also the word for "steam". Make that little switch, and read the story of Lot's wife (leaving the destruction of Sodom and Gamorrah)...

2) Y'all are talking about DIETY... something that transcends humans. There is no way any one human is gonna understand every bit of Diety, so we all understand little bits of it...

 

[Standing Wolf]

This lifelong atheist is a believer in inalienable human rights. That's a belief. If I wanted to bother with proof, I'd be a philosopher or a logician rather than a gun nut.

 

[SkunkApe]

But where'd that moral sense come from? How'd it get in his nature?

-Pax




On Goodness

...One thing I often hear from theists is that without god, a person can not be good. To that, I have two comments:

...When I (as an atheist) am good. When I
don't steal when I can, when I don't lie even
when it would benefit me, when I return a lost
wallet, when I help others, etc... I do it for no
other reason than to be good, my actions are
selflessly good.
...When a theist does good, he usually does it
to please his god or avoid his god's hell, the
theist is selfishly good.
...also...

...What if I could prove to you beyond the
shadow of a doubt that there was no god
(hypothetically that is), would you immediately
run out and become a horrid murderer,
content only in the pleasures of yourself?
Or would you remain a basically good person?
...If the former, then you are a scary individual,
for only your timid faith keeps you decent. If
the later, then why do you need god to tell
you good?
...When I first realized I was an atheist, I had trouble reconciling goodness with atheism. Over time, I grew more certain in my choice and I began to understand what 'good' is. I recommend that you read up on evolutionary psychology.

...'Goodness' is a requirement for any animal that wants to live in a communal society. Early humans were such beasts, and it was through cooperation that they survived. Only early humans who behaved could live in the community, so they were more likely to find mates and pass along their genes... the genes that encouraged behaving.

...In addition to this, there is the question of is an action right because god says so, or is it right anyway. If it is right because god says so, then we are at the mercy of god's whims, and he may turn around and say something that is wrong today is right tomorrow (as he did during the O.T.). If things are good anyway and god just does them, then goodness is defined outside of god, and it is possible to be good without god.

...It is not sufficient to say that god is good because god is good or that it is his nature to be good. In either of these cases, then goodness is still defined outside of god.

...So round and round we go. But the basic point is that most atheists are good, law-abiding citizens. They are good people without some god out there to threaten or reward them. Think about it.


-Stephen Roberts

 

[brownie0486]

On another note with the same theme.

You have inalienable/natural right to defend your life and very existance as a human once you are here on earth, you are a christian carrying a gun.

Are you obeying your gods commandments to their fullest if you then kill another human being for any reason? Is this a dilemma for you, and if so why or why not.

Which takes precedence?

Brownie

 

[pax]

...One thing I often hear from theists is that without god, a person can not be good. To that, I have two comments:

SkunkApe,

I hope that wasn't really in answer to my post, because I said nothing of the sort. What I said was that human beings, atheists and religionists alike, have an innate moral sense. To assert that atheists cannot exercise the faculty of morality is just silly -- as silly as it is to assert that Christians cannot exercise the faculty of reason.

Are you obeying your gods commandments to their fullest if you then kill another human being for any reason? Is this a dilemma for you, and if so why or why not.

Brownie,

You could open another thread with that question. Quick answer is that "Thou shalt not kill" is properly translated "Thou shalt not murder" -- a different thing entirely. There are other commands, precepts, and examples to analyze, but that's the one most folks only vaguely familiar with the Bible would think of, and that's my quick-and-easy answer for it.

pax

"But, as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren't a priest."
"What?" asked the thief, almost gaping.
"You attacked reason," said Father Brown. "It's bad theology." -- G.K. Chesterton

 

[Boats]

I'm no expert on the nature of good and evil, free will or determinism, religion or atheism, but I absolutely know one thing:


I have never seen an innately evil baby.

 

[SkunkApe]

I have never seen an innately evil baby.

My sister's kids were pretty close...