Is it possible to believe in individual rights, while also believing that god isn't real and that religion is a bunch of horse cock baloney, which it is?
So where do the rights come from? They come from us as people.
Not sure I get what you mean, but think I sort of do.
Do you mean if we can have individualism and rights as a concept without involving religion/religious beliefs?
Rights are supposedly tied to the country and its laws/what it stands for/the constitution/humanity/etc. I don't think religion directly has anything to do with the idea of individual rights or freedom or etc. in modern societies exactly, but not sure how far in to this you'd have to look to find more of a bottom line.
So I wouldn't think that believing in God or not would really overlap with the idea of freedom or individuality -- at least not significantly.
They always came from us as people.
Two thousand years ago you could have been a slave living in Rome and had few rights. Today it's different, and not because God intervened.
If they come from people they can be taken away by people.
shareThey come from the individual that has them is what I mean. I gave my rights to myself.
shareThose aren't rights, those are personal preferences. Others can have the preference to rob, kill, or enslave you with no less validity. You don't have the necessary authority over other people to dispense rights. An atheist trying to make claims about natural rights is babbling nonsense.
shareThose aren't rights, those are personal preferences.
"They're still personal preferences if you get them from your holy scripture."
No, if they come from God that's a higher moral authority than government, which at least creates the possibility of a universal, objective moral standard that transcends and is separate from government whim, and that includes immutable rights. By contrast given an atheist premise there is no higher authority than the state. There may be legal rights but those can change whenever the government says so. There are no higher natural rights.
You're right that it's a personal choice to be a Christian, atheist, or something else. But a theist at least has the possibility of arguing that there's a moral authority higher than government, as the founding fathers do when they wrote that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men".
That can be a powerful argument. It's why America is America while North Korea is North Korea.
I completely disagree. You argue that, "if they don't come from God, they can be taken away", and yet they are taken away, routinely and without consequence.
shareThey aren't legitimately taken away. They're violated, and that's the language we use when we criticize a government for trampling on people's natural rights. Without God there are no natural rights, and no basis for that moral condemnation. Contrast the theistic based American Revolution with the radically secular French Revolution for a case study on the difference between viewing your rights as coming from God and not doing so.
share[deleted]
You missed the point. Whether you believe in God or not there's a huge difference in a population generally believing that there's a moral authority higher than government whims, and being able to argue persuasively when earthly actions are seen as violating those whims, and believing there's no authority higher than the state. There's no "splitting hairs" about the difference between the American and French revolutions, or the USA and North Korea.
Fortunately God does exist so humanity has hope.
Fine, you know what, rights don't exist. They're made up. The government can't take away what isn't there. Now I'm going to go live my life however I please. That's true freedom. If it neatly fits my agenda of denying God, I'll take it. This debate is over.
shareAs long as you recognize that the freedom you say you enjoy hinges in no small part on other people believing in God.
shareRights have nothing to do with religion. I don't see the connection.
shareFrankly this thread is depressing. It's one thing to be an atheist, but some of the respondents here don't seem conversant at all with modern political philosophy and act as if religion's connection to rights is some strange notion they're unfamiliar with. It's as if they haven't studied John Locke or the Declaration of Independence at all, and have no grasp of natural rights theory.
That's a failure of the education system. I wonder if learning that material was displaced by "diversity" training. Regardless, if people forget the principles underlying our freedom we won't keep our freedom.