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I suspect my definition is broader than yours, but I'm happy to use "unreasonable" if that'll suit you better.

It's not about proof though, it's about a definition, and why you'd choose one. You've apparently made a choice to define a right as a certain thing, but have admitted you have no reason for that choice. At this point you're basically making irrelevant random statements, which I suppose can be fun.

Great, then let me know your reason. You think that rights (certain rights? all rights?) are inherent, due to the natural state of man. Please explain what you mean by this. What is the natural state of man, and how does it lead to rights?

I'm pretty sure that moe has no real interest in the discussion, hence his apparent unwillingness to explain himself.

This is getting silly now.

Done, read above.

The natural state of Man is that he is created. He is created endowed with said rights, they are not led to.

By the way, to any readers suffering from sandy snatch over my reference to the masculine, get over it. I think you all have rights, too.

Just not as many.

Do you allow for different kinds of rights then, inherent or otherwise? For example, we have the right to a fair trial, which would seem to fall under a different category. It seems to me that you're using rights, when you really mean ability, or maybe liberty. I would say you're created with the ability to speak, or not, but that for it to become a right, it has to be recognized by society and enforced as law.

I'm still unsure how you determine what is a right. What rights are we endowed with? How do we know what those are? How do we separate what we can do, with what we have a right to do?

I can't speak for the board, and for a lot of people you're probably right, but I don't tend to ridicule faith, as it's pretty integral to my life.

Edited, Feb 5th 2010 12:55pm by Xsarus

Ok I'm not going to even bother addressing the affront to logic that is need to protect inalienable rights from being alienated. I'm going to do exactly what Sweetums said.

Lets pull some inalienable rights for use as examples. Freedom of speech and right to a fair trial, these are what you would consider inalienable rights yes? If not, that's cool, just tell me something else you'd prefer me to use.

The year is 10,000 BCE. People live in tribal communities and small villages. Legal codes have yet to be invented, let alone juries to try people. Do they still have the innate right to a fair trial?

The year is 3,500,000 BCE. Australopithecus is the closest thing to sentient life there is. Communities of this creature have no language, at best they growl and howl at each other. Do they still have the right to freedom of speech?

What about Bonobos? Do they have any of these rights now? What if in 5 million years they become about as sentient as we are now? Do they then have these rights? At what point in this extremely gradual process do they gain these inalienable rights? Did they have them all along?

I think you're getting caught up on semantics. What we refer to as a "right to a fair trial" is more correctly defined as the "right to not be imprisoned or punished in some way". For convenience, we often refer to specific structures related to protecting "rights" or "liberties" as the right itself, but if we're going to assess this on a deeper level, it's important to go back and clarify that distinction.

The natural right is that we're free to come and go as we please. Obviously, this must be infringed to a small degree in order for a society to form (as most rights/liberties must be). The defined "right to a fair trial" is an attempt to protect as much of that original right as possible (allowing for the potential of imprisonment or other punishment, while ensuring it's only done when the rules agreed upon by the whole require it).



Of course they do. Why would you think otherwise? The inconsistency you see is derived from your own false assumption that rights (liberties) are synonymous with "ability". We've gone over this before. Remove that false assumption and the whole thing makes perfect sense. That person has the freedom to speak as he wishes. His ability to communicate effectively isn't the issue. The degree to which he can grunt and howl without having to get permission is.

First nose coke of the comeback. Many thanks.

I'm just mostly curious about how far you're going to take this.

So we've established that Australopithecus has the right to freedom of speech. This is a homonid from about 3 million years ago. What about the very first Hominadae from about 15 million years ago? Do they have the right to freedom of speech, fair trial (or whatever other natural rights you think we have)? These were pretty much like the bonobos and chimpanzees we see today.

What if we go farther. How about the first mammalian species? Some sort of rat thing. Does a rat thing have the right to freedom of speech?

Why not further? Back about 4 billion years to where there were only single cell organisms. Do single cell organisms have the right to freedom of speech?

Ooh, further. Before there were single cell creatures there were strands of protein that came together to form life. Do strands of protein have the right to freedom of speech?

And before that there was just bonds of carbon. Do carbon bonds have inalienable rights?

Edited, Feb 5th 2010 3:04pm by Allegory

No. I said false assumption because that's exactly the correct term. Allegory is operating on an assumption that rights and liberties don't exist unless the physical ability to perform the act in question is present as well. I believe that assumption to be false and have explained it to him many times. Strangely, no matter how many times he himself observes that his assumption leads to absurd results, he just can't bring himself to question it, much less abandon it.



Then we're talking about yet another semantic problem. The word "liberty" has a much more narrow and specific meaning than the word "right". In the context of Moe's statement about "natural rights", he's using the form of the word right which is effectively synonymous with the word liberty. I added the word liberty to make that connection clear, because otherwise some idiot will come along and use a completely different meaning of the word "right" and insist that we must use it despite the fact that it doesn't match what Moe was talking about.

Heck. Said idiot will probably insist that since his meaning of the word "right" doesn't match what Moe was talking about, that this is proof that Moe was wrong. Sad, but there you have it...

Edited, Feb 5th 2010 1:50pm by gbaji

Not that I care to have that discussion with you again at this time--unless people really, really want me to--but I do want to correct you on the facts. You never pointed out a single absurd result in our previous discussion. Every necessary conclusion from my premise I fully agree with. You might think I'm wrong, but I'm entirely consistent.

Read it again. Slowly.


What do you think you're doing when you "debunk" my argument? You're following my logic and arriving at a false (or absurd to use my term) result and therefor declaring my argument to be invalid. But it's your assumption of the need for ability for liberty to exist which causes that false result and leads you to that conclusion. I have repeatedly pointed this out to you, but you repeatedly refuse to even acknowledge it, much less examine the issue without that assumption.


As long as you cling to the "liberty requires ability" assumption, you will continue to arrive at a false result.