Guns As A " God-given Right"

[Socrates]

Yeah.  It's weird how the fairly obviously and uncontroversial observation that the social power (which need not necessarily be physical violence) to assert and hold onto rights is a necessary precondition to having substantive access to those rights gets misconstrued into a normative claims that MIGHT MAKES RIGHT!!!!

 

Okay, so then what does make right?

 

Human legislation?  The majority opinion in a particular time and place?

[Winchester]

He's not so quiet if you happen to believe in Divine Revelation.

 

 

 

 

That would be a personal belief that imbues words and events with meaning for the believer. 

[Era Might]

The big issue here is whether there are objective standards of ethics and morality above and outside of man, which man is morally obligated to follow (what Russell Kirk called an "enduring moral order"), or whether man himself is the ultimate arbitrator of morality, and makes his own rules.

If there is no objective moral order, there can be no basis for rights beyond personal preference, government power, or majority opinion.

 

This has practical consequences.  For example, without an enduring moral order to appeal to, we have such absurdities as courts denying persons the right to life on the basis of a "right to privacy" and other such nonsense.  

 

You can have an enduring moral order without God. A society's mores bring together its experiences of the world. To speak of a "right to property" assumes a society where private property is practiced and valued, which is hardly necessary to human nature, though it is useful to Western mores. Just because a right can be conceived does not mean it is a divine decree. One could just as easily create a right to community, a right to kinship, a right to see the tribe's chief once a year.

 

Rights are based on human experience and the application of how we see what works best, what makes us happy, what creates order, etc.

Edited May 15, 2014 by Era Might

[Era Might]

The right to liberty. What a useless and elastic phrase, which only makes sense based on how we experience it in different ages. Even the right to life is hardly an "enduring moral concept." In Christendom, burning at the stake was acceptable, though today that would be a grave violation of the "right to life," because we have a different context and experience of the world than did medievals.

[Era Might]

The right to liberty. What a useless and elastic phrase, which only makes sense based on how we experience it in different ages. Even the right to life is hardly an "enduring moral concept." In Christendom, burning at the stake was acceptable, though today that would be a grave violation of the "right to life," because we have a different context and experience of the world than did medievals.

 

Actually, the right to liberty was not a useless phrase in the context it was written. It was a remarkable phrase for the stand it took, but it was simply an idea. To say that the abolition of slavery was a "better understanding" of the "right to liberty" would make rights like things trapped in stone, which we gradually uncover. I don't buy that. They are things we create through our experience.

[4588686]

 

 

The big issue here is whether there are objective standards of ethics and morality above and outside of man

 

 

 

Nope

[4588686]

The right to liberty. What a useless and elastic phrase, which only makes sense based on how we experience it in different ages. Even the right to life is hardly an "enduring moral concept." In Christendom, burning at the stake was acceptable, though today that would be a grave violation of the "right to life," because we have a different context and experience of the world than did medievals.

 

 

Pragmatismmmmm

[Anomaly]

Okay, so then what does make right?

Human legislation? The majority opinion in a particular time and place?

The closest thing would be the majority opinion. It is the nature of humans that we tend to develop and expand on intangible ideas and concepts. To hear you say it, we are just dumb animatronic creatures. I don't see where that is in conflict with a Christian concept of the dignity and valued nature of mankind.

Where we differ is some humans use the concept of God as a creator and how he interacts with humans as a foundation for the extrapolated idea that God established basic human rights. As been pointed out repeatedly, there exists no document provided as Gods word that establishes that.

It is just one philosophical school of thought of many. You claim a trump card of justification by the Supreme Creator. That still doesn't relieve you from the necessity of framing and explaining it within human context.

This topic was started with guns as being a god given right. That was stomped senseless as it should have been, but it was suggested that the right to self defense is the God given right.

Why? Where is that written? Has it always been preached? And the tough question, does the right exist if it isn't known or understood, or is it a symbiotic relationship with the development of human society AND understanding?

[Winchester]

More of the people who will enforce gun control: http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops-raid-wrong-house-owner-youre-lucky-fg-shoot-you/

[Socrates]

The closest thing would be the majority opinion. It is the nature of humans that we tend to develop and expand on intangible ideas and concepts. To hear you say it, we are just dumb animatronic creatures. I don't see where that is in conflict with a Christian concept of the dignity and valued nature of mankind.

 

If we stay consistent with atheistic materialism, we are in fact dumb animatrons.  If there is no spiritual dimension to reality, all our ideas and concepts are determined purely by the physical movements of atoms and such in our brains.

 

Concepts of human dignity and the intrinsic value of human life are obviously not in conflict with Christian thought, but their objective reality is in conflict with atheism, if we're logically consistent.  (Fortunately, most atheists are not.)

 

It's simple; if moral standards are the invention of man alone, man can just as easily deny or change them - there's no objective standard to judge by.

 

And the majority can easily decide to oppress or deny the rights of the minority if it sees fit (this has happened many times through history).  

If majority opinion is what ultimately makes right, then by definition, the majority can never be wrong.  We have no basis to judge anything the majority in a given society practiced or allowed.

[Era Might]

If we stay consistent with atheistic materialism, we are in fact dumb animatrons.  If there is no spiritual dimension to reality, all our ideas and concepts are determined purely by the physical movements of atoms and such in our brains.

 

Concepts of human dignity and the intrinsic value of human life are obviously not in conflict with Christian thought, but their objective reality is in conflict with atheism, if we're logically consistent.  (Fortunately, most atheists are not.)

 

It's simple; if moral standards are the invention of man alone, man can just as easily deny or change them - there's no objective standard to judge by.

 

And the majority can easily decide to oppress or deny the rights of the minority if it sees fit (this has happened many times through history).  

If majority opinion is what ultimately makes right, then by definition, the majority can never be wrong.  We have no basis to judge anything the majority in a given society practiced or allowed.

 

Materialism is, in a certain sense, more in touch with "objective reality" because that is all it has to go on. It is religion that tries to draw universal significance and situate man in something larger than his objective reality. To say we are a physical movement of atoms is beside the point...by whatever process, those atoms came together at a certain point in time, in a certain place, in a certain gene pool, and formed a particular material being (i.e., animal).

 

The "objective moral standard" of religion provides no guarantee of preserving some "objective reality." And in fact, it usually produces the opposite, because the "objective moral standard" exists apart from the objective reality of people with faces, in which case you get Christian societies where it's okay to slaughter heathens or brown people thousands of miles away, in the name of an "objective reality" that exists independent of people with faces (and includes a whole mythology of supernatural beings who take priority over people with faces).

 

Humans adopt moral standards because the standards suit them in some way, not because they bend themselves into an iron-clad, eternal "objective standard." When the early fanaticism of Christianity no longer suited the situation, the church settled in and became no longer a remnant awaiting the Lord Jesus, but the mistress of all the world and the "perfect society" where peasant, priest, knight, and lord all had a role. But in reality, regardless of this "objective standard," society was still society...the people still slept with each other's wives, raped, pillaged, gambled, got drunk (everything Chaucer narrates in The Canterbury Tales). The "objective reality" was a big cosmic game more than an actual reality...instead of shrinks people worked out their lives in the confessional, in the Mass, in penance, in feast days, in whatever. But society was not actually any holier...it was the same society it's always been, which is not to say it didn't make advancements, but that it made advancements to the extent that they suited society, which is true of every society, depending on how the material reality develops. When the objective material reality favored the rise of capitalism, individualism, industrialism...then it came along and got the church's blessing, and the old "objective reality" ceased to exist, or else we would still be medievals. Animals have no higher mental functioning, and they even manage to figure out that it's good to protect the pack...you don't need platonic "objective standards" to achieve that.

 

Concepts of human dignity don't require a Christian "objective standard." Peasants in Christendom hardly had the human dignity that was not earned for many centuries and many attempts to break free from the society Christianity had created (which was not all bad, just not some "objective reality").

Edited May 23, 2014 by Era Might

[Socrates]

Materialism is, in a certain sense, more in touch with "objective reality" because that is all it has to go on. It is religion that tries to draw universal significance and situate man in something larger than his objective reality. To say we are a physical movement of atoms is beside the point...by whatever process, those atoms came together at a certain point in time, in a certain place, in a certain gene pool, and formed a particular material being (i.e., animal).

 

 . . . 

 

Another long, unfocused rant which largely misses the point of my posts.

 

It's not atheists having morality or moral standards that is problematic or irrational, but rather their atheism.

 

My point is simply that if we are nothing but the purposeless,random dance of meaningless atoms and all our thoughts and ideals are nothing but the meaningless physical motion of electrons in our heads, then this whole discussion is ultimately pointless.

There's then really nothing to ethics or "human rights" beyond personal or majority preference.

 

Much of the rest of your post seems to boil down to the truism that oftentimes self-proclaimed Christians have failed to live up to the moral teachings of Christ, but that does nothing to prove those moral ideals false, mush less disprove the truth of the Christian Faith or the existence of God.  

There has been hypocrisy and evil in the Church since Judas Iscariot - wheat and chaffe, sheep and goats, etc., so none of that should come as a shock to the believing Christian.

 

At least with the Christian Faith, there are objective ideals against which to judge human behavior, while atheism gives no standard at all.  If atheism is true, there is really no good or evil - things just are.  An act of genocide has ultimately no more significance than one strand of bacteria wiping out another strand.

Ironically, atheists commonly use such purely immaterial concepts as justice, rights, or dignity to condemn religion or "theism."

 

And personally, I find the idea that randomly-existing, meaningless atoms just happened to come together by pure chance processes to form a human being who can love, think, and debate philosophy far more unbelievable than a Creator God who is the source of Existence itself, but if that's what you choose to believe, there's probably not much I can say to persuade you otherwise.

[Winchester]

What benefits me is if moral busybodies don't appoint a goon squad to attack me because they're afraid my gun might have a shoulder thing that goes up.

[Benedictus]

Glad guns are rare in my country (minus the odd landowner or farmer in rural areas), to the point that most police don't handle them either. They have enough trouble trying to handle batons, pepper spray and tasers without causing public outrage! I don't really trust the average person to have the brain power required to have access to guns.

[Nihil Obstat]

Glad guns are rare in my country (minus the odd landowner or farmer in rural areas), to the point that most police don't handle them either. They have enough trouble trying to handle batons, pepper spray and tasers without causing public outrage! I don't really trust the average person to have the brain power required to have access to guns.

Does that strike you as being at all misanthropic?

[Winchester]

Glad guns are rare in my country (minus the odd landowner or farmer in rural areas), to the point that most police don't handle them either. They have enough trouble trying to handle batons, pepper spray and tasers without causing public outrage! I don't really trust the average person to have the brain power required to have access to guns.

I have no problem with you having your opinion. I have a problem with those who wish to have their opinions inflicted upon others by the use of violence. 

[Anomaly]

If we stay consistent with atheistic materialism, we are in fact dumb animatrons. If there is no spiritual dimension to reality, all our ideas and concepts are determined purely by the physical movements of atoms and such in our brains.

Concepts of human dignity and the intrinsic value of human life are obviously not in conflict with Christian thought, but their objective reality is in conflict with atheism, if we're logically consistent. (Fortunately, most atheists are not.)

It's simple; if moral standards are the invention of man alone, man can just as easily deny or change them - there's no objective standard to judge by.

And the majority can easily decide to oppress or deny the rights of the minority if it sees fit (this has happened many times through history).
If majority opinion is what ultimately makes right, then by definition, the majority can never be wrong. We have no basis to judge anything the majority in a given society practiced or allowed.

I had expected better from you. Perhaps my expectations were misplaced.

Deists of all sorts and atheists use logic and reasoning to deduct and infer principles. You simply are claiming an ultimate authority because you were raised and live in a Judea-Christian culture and have placed your faith in God as the ultimate authority. You still have to use reason and logic to defend your principles. That've are no daily objective manifestations if God duels that establishes your cultural understanding of God as supreme.

You can use rational reasoning to defend your position, and do so to establish your position as the most reasonable, but you do not possess any objective evidence that could establish the superiority of your position.

You present basic logical fallacies as faults in others perspectives.

[Winchester]

There's a chance you wouldn't understand the advanced logical fallacies.

[Anomaly]

There's a chance you wouldn't understand the advanced logical fallacies.

I probably wouldn't even recognize them, much less understand them. It's my lot in life.

[Credo in Deum]