R: Seperation of Church & State?

7,581 Views | 81 Replies | Last: 7 yr ago by Zobel
notwenpyeuh
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I want to start a discussion on governmental policy driven by religious beliefs. Do you think the legislators should allow their beliefs to drive policy decisions? i.e policy on abortion, marriage (esp. Gay marriage), etc. OR should the government not get involved in these matters and "live and let live" and only step in when someone's actions infringe upon someone else's rights.
Aggrad08
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AG

Quote:

only step in when someone's actions infringe upon someone else's rights.
Yup that one, that one makes a lot of sense.
Zobel
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notwenpyeuh said:

I want to start a discussion on governmental policy driven by religious beliefs. Do you think the legislators should allow their beliefs to drive policy decisions? i.e policy on abortion, marriage (esp. Gay marriage), etc. OR should the government not get involved in these matters and "live and let live" and only step in when someone's actions infringe upon someone else's rights.
The Liberals were the guys who applied the philosophy of the Enlightenment thinkers to politics. They were the original small-p progressives - they were against (then) conservative values like hereditary privilege, state religions, and monarchy (by extension). They took a founding position of liberty and equality as the two fundamental basics of human beings. From there, it followed that a government was a social contract between individual "kings" who themselves possess natural rights to life, liberty, and property -- and that since the government was formed by these individual kings, it couldn't violate those rights. However, those fundamental basic rights of human beings were not intrinsic to us as humans qua humans, but humans as created beings in the image and likeness of God. Our inalienable rights are inalienable because they don't come from us, they come from our Creator. The very concept of natural rights is founded in religious beliefs.

The Declaration of Independence was very much a Liberal document in that it took these Enlightenment philosophical points and applied them in a political way. Jefferson was intentionally (and provocatively) suggesting that these things (life, liberty, property / pursuit of happiness) applied to all men as opposed to citizens of various nations. To contrast, British subjects derived their political privileges and immunities from the divine right of the crown (God->King->subjects) while he was suggesting that there shouldn't be any intermediary (God->Men). Thus, the entire raison d'tre of our country was to establish a government based on these "new" ideas about men, and social contracts, without an intermediary. But it did not eliminate God from the equation.

TLDR:
The founding documents of this country were based on the philosophical principals of the enlightenment. The politicizing of these principles was called liberalism. You can't find much of a "pure" basis for the enlightenment without religious beliefs, which means liberalism is a political movement based on religious beliefs. If you want to scrap religion you have to scrap the enlightenment, and the philosophical basis for our government. Your question is flawed in it's premise.
amercer
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I don't see how you would expect someone to govern in a way contrary to their principals. Not that most politicians have any. Still, I won't ask anyone to change their beliefs, I'll just vote for people who don't believe the country should be run according to religious precepts
schmendeler
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I would think the religious would try to avoid government acting according to religious beliefs as not everyone believes the same thing in reference to the supernatural.
Sapper Redux
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You're really stretching it to include religion. Enlightment values can be reached rationally without the need for revealed religion. That was part of the whole point. The discussion of the Creator in the DoI was more a nod to the place of religion in society than a philosophical requirement. Jefferson didn't even include the Creator phrase in his original draft of the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness line.
Zobel
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Dr. Watson said:

You're really stretching it to include religion. Enlightment values can be reached rationally without the need for revealed religion. That was part of the whole point. The discussion of the Creator in the DoI was more a nod to the place of religion in society than a philosophical requirement. Jefferson didn't even include the Creator phrase in his original draft of the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness line.
OK. Go for it.

Please show me a rational proof that all men are equal.

That slavery (either true slavery or Locke's drudgery) is inherently immoral (this is a very modern concept).

Show me that a man has a "natural" right to own property from his labor.

Derive why a man has a "natural" right to life.

I don't think it can be done.

I'm not suggesting that it isn't empirically advantageous to assume men have these rights. That's not what the Enlightenment did. It wasn't an argument for efficacy of government but morality of government.

Jefferson may not have "needed" to reference the Creator. But Locke did. The enlightenment philosophers drew their basis for natural rights from the Creator. The word God appears 266 times in the First Treatise (although mostly in quotes) and 57 in the Second (almost never in quotes - the First is a polemic, the Second a positive work).

To do away with the bogeyman of "religion" in government you need a clean slate.
schmendeler
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There's no such thing as "natural" rights. Only those granted by government or fought for by those who want them bad enough.
kurt vonnegut
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schmendeler said:

I would think the religious would try to avoid government acting according to religious beliefs as not everyone believes the same thing in reference to the supernatural.


This is why I don't understand the current religious opposition to separation of church and state. Once upon a time, the 'Christian umbrella' didn't exist and we were a country of different denominations weary of the 'other' denomination gaining political power over them in a way that would affect them and their liberties.

People only really support the separation of church and state when they don't control the state it seems. People are awfully hypocritical that way.

K2 asserted a necessity for acknowledging a divinely given natural or inalienable right as the basis for enlightenment ideas. Even if we overlook the fact that enlightenment values can be embraced through secular philosophy, how far does this acknowledgement get us? Even if we grant K2's argument, how do we get from 'God gave us natural rights' to children must be forced to pray in public, sexual morality must be legislated and enforced upon threat of legal punishment, and public funds may be used to support specific religions and fund their activities and propoganda?
Sapper Redux
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k2aggie07 said:

Dr. Watson said:

You're really stretching it to include religion. Enlightment values can be reached rationally without the need for revealed religion. That was part of the whole point. The discussion of the Creator in the DoI was more a nod to the place of religion in society than a philosophical requirement. Jefferson didn't even include the Creator phrase in his original draft of the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness line.
OK. Go for it.

Please show me a rational proof that all men are equal.

That slavery (either true slavery or Locke's drudgery) is inherently immoral (this is a very modern concept).

Show me that a man has a "natural" right to own property from his labor.

Derive why a man has a "natural" right to life.

I don't think it can be done.

I'm not suggesting that it isn't empirically advantageous to assume men have these rights. That's not what the Enlightenment did. It wasn't an argument for efficacy of government but morality of government.

Jefferson may not have "needed" to reference the Creator. But Locke did. The enlightenment philosophers drew their basis for natural rights from the Creator. The word God appears 266 times in the First Treatise (although mostly in quotes) and 57 in the Second (almost never in quotes - the First is a polemic, the Second a positive work).

To do away with the bogeyman of "religion" in government you need a clean slate.
Locke had to ignore most of God's laws in the Bible that clearly demonstrated man was not born with unalienable rights. And the fact that Locke felt a deity of some sort was necessary does not establish some absolute that such a deity is, in fact, necessary.

You want a naturalistic argument for the equality of man? Ok. We are all born from the exact same species. There is no "higher" or "lower" human species. There is only Homo sapiens sapiens. We cannot see into the future and know what value of detriment a newborn human provides. As such, each person has a right to grow and test themselves in the world. Since humans as a whole advance best when cooperating, and since the individual is the smallest divisible aspect of a society, protection of the individual's life, freedom to act so long as it does not harm another individual, and freedom to hold justly acquired property provides a benefit to society and a benefit to humanity.

Even if you demand some higher power in order to ground these rights, the best Locke's logic can take you is to a Platonic form, not an actual, revealed and involved deity. If you assume some intelligence is required, then the best you get is a deist watchmaker God. Taking natural rights and positing that only religious belief can ground them just doesn't measure up to the actual implications of the logic.
Aggrad08
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I always found it curious that so many believe that god grants rights while simultaneously failing to note that never in the history of man has he made any effort to protect them and the holy books don't mention them. Rights are an acknowledgement of liberties that shouldn't be infringed by your fellow man in a civilized society. Your right to bear arms can disappear with an amendment, same as your right to a trial by jury. Rights are concepts and they are laws. You can argue the concept of a right is divinely ordained but the only practical rights are those agreed upon by your fellow countrymen.
Zobel
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I'm not debating the merits of Locke's philosophy, merely that the root of the concept of natural rights as expressed by the philosophy of the enlightenment period is an appeal to a higher authority. Like it or not, our government was based on this. If you want to make a case that we no longer base it on that you can try, but I think that will be difficult for one, and will come with as many articles of faith as the original premise for two.

Your argument for species equality is silly. First, what binding premise does a common species have on the relationship between beings? Why is a homo sapien a special species to give consideration to?

Dogs are all the same species. Are all dogs equal? And even in a more empirical sense, what are you going to do when objective measurements for actual distinctions between humans become unavoidable? We know that Africa has the highest genetic diversity of the world, so the fastest and slowest person lives in Africa. Probably the best and worst natural swimmer, and probably the tallest and shortest. And smartest and dumbest. By extension... Probably best and the worst human. An argument for equality between individuals is prima facie false without further definition (eg equality before the law). But those further definitions beg the question. Why must we be equal before the law? "Because we're the same species". Ok. Are you against laws banning pit bulls?

You mixed a "naturalist" argument with "should". You appeal to a moral idea, but back it with empirical ideas (this is better for us, collectively). If it could be shown that genocide of the worst humans would be better for us, would that be correct? Why or why not?
Zobel
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It doesn't bother me one iota for people to deny the conclusions or the reasoning of the enlightenment. They get the last laugh though, because you've accepted the meat of their thought even if you took away the dressing.

Civilized society is as meaningless as the word "rights" because it has been and will continue to be a moving target. What Medieval societies thought was civilized is different than the Romans, and that is different from the Greeks, that from the Egyptians and so on. Even the inheritance of your frame of reference is steeped in westernism wholly absent from the cultural matrix of a country like Japan.

What you're basically saying is "what I think is right because what I think is right".
Aggrad08
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Quote:

It doesn't bother me one iota for people to deny the conclusions or the reasoning of the enlightenment. They get the last laugh though, because you've accepted the meat of their thought even if you took away the dressing.

That simply doesn't logically follow. There are a myriad of ways to come to very similar conclusions on the rights of man. Many enlightenment thinkers were funny enough accused of being heretics for their reasoning which relied so little on religion.

Quote:


Civilized society is as meaningless as the word "rights" because it has been and will continue to be a moving target. What Medieval societies thought was civilized is different than the Romans, and that is different from the Greeks, that from the Egyptians and so on. Even the inheritance of your frame of reference is steeped in westernism wholly absent from the cultural matrix of a country like Japan.
It's only meaningless if you operate under the understanding that anything fluid is meaningless. In which case language itself has no meaning as many of the words I write will mean something else one day. I reject such a notion as poorly thought. But I do agree about the last part- which makes the argument that rights are divine all the more indefensible. What we consider our rights and what we consider our morals is undoubtedly part of our culture and peculiar to our place in geography and time. History has born this fact out time and again. Such a basic reality doesn't provide any trouble for me, but it does make a divine explanation rather hard to justify.

I'd also note that people who rely on religious reasoning are influenced just as much by their culture and disagree every bit as much as which rights should and shouldn't be as those who don't.
Quote:

What you're basically saying is "what I think is right because what I think is right".


What I think is right I consider right because I place high value in the positive practical effects of those ideas. You make the same argument, only you pretend to be speaking on behalf of the god of the universe. You are not on any more solid ground. This is the same flimsy argument of objective morality. It simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
BusterAg
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Aggrad08 said:

I always found it curious that so many believe that god grants rights while simultaneously failing to note that never in the history of man has he made any effort to protect them and the holy books don't mention them. Rights are an acknowledgement of liberties that shouldn't be infringed by your fellow man in a civilized society. Your right to bear arms can disappear with an amendment, same as your right to a trial by jury. Rights are concepts and they are laws. You can argue the concept of a right is divinely ordained but the only practical rights are those agreed upon by your fellow countrymen.
The old testament is full of stories about God hearing the cries of his people and handing out Justice to those who are oppressed by punishing the oppressors. I submit that this is evidence that the OT teaches that men have some amount of natural rights. If not, why would God intervene?

The Bible in general is chalk full of laws and commands about how not to unfairly treat other people. I am having a hard time drawing a distinction between "Thou shalt not kill" and "A man has the right to live and not to be killed by his neighbor"
BusterAg
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Quote:

Do you think the legislators should allow their beliefs to drive policy decisions?
Yes, as long as their beliefs don't lead to laws that are contrary to the Constitution.

If his/her beliefs are too unpopular, the person will be voted out of office.

If those beliefs lead to illegal laws, they will be struck down by the courts.
Zobel
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It's very easy to hindsight and say there are a lot of ways to arrive at the same conclusion. If we accept your statements as:
1. The concept of natural rights is the most efficient and best morality
2. There are many ways of arriving to this conclusion (ie. no religious component required)
We would expect to see people independently deriving these conclusions in isolation. But we simply haven't. In fact, we see very different basic foundations of systems of morality other than life, liberty and property. One (or both) of your premises must be flawed.

Whether the Enlightenment thinkers were accepted by religious authorities of their days is irrelevant. I'm not making the case that they were mainline religious thinkers (they were progressive, some radically so), but that their philosophy was rooted in assumptions which we today would recognize as religious.

As for words being meaningless, yes, I actually do think your definition is pretty close to the mark. And your argument in favor of the meaning of language is basically a rejection of twentieth century analytic philosophy. In that regard, I think you're a little outclassed to say its "poorly thought". I know I'm a broken record on here, but read Quine. (Or the wiki on it).

I'm not making an argument for objective morality at all. I'm not defending the philosophy of the enlightenment, either. I'm also not necessarily attacking the structure of government devised in the constitution.

Modern progressive thought is that we've tossed off the shackles of the foolish past, and moved forward into "scientific" morality, government, based on logic and rationality. All they've done is replaced one religion with another, until modernists actually completely rid themselves of all notion of morality in terms of right and wrong and fully embrace complete pragmatism (which you are arguing for).

I'm actually just fine with this, probably moreso than you actually are. I think a society's morality should be judged solely by it's ability to prolong that society's existence. In this regard, I am extremely pro-evolution, pro-speciation, and I see that with finite resources the society that adapts best will win. This is the only "scientific" test.

However, as I pointed out above, this path is fraught with dangers. It puts your morality in the crucible of time and makes it very vulnerable to being...wrong. In my regime, the victory of the Axis in WWII would prove that their morality was superior to ours (or their generals - in the end, pragmatism sees no difference, because their morality produced their generals). It also showed that the morality of the north was superior to that of the south (in spite of their generals). And with competing societies with no clear advantage, it demonstrates that neither morality is superior.

This means there is no right and wrong, only effective and ineffective. Is it right or wrong for a combustion reaction to produce water and carbon dioxide? Is it right or wrong for orbits to be elliptical? Is it right or wrong for irrational numbers to exist? These are meaningless questions to science - although the latter were not, to religion. In the absence of objective morality, it is the same level of absurdity to ask whether a society should have slaves, or commit genocide, on the basis of right and wrong. Are you comfortable with this?
schmendeler
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BusterAg said:

Aggrad08 said:

I always found it curious that so many believe that god grants rights while simultaneously failing to note that never in the history of man has he made any effort to protect them and the holy books don't mention them. Rights are an acknowledgement of liberties that shouldn't be infringed by your fellow man in a civilized society. Your right to bear arms can disappear with an amendment, same as your right to a trial by jury. Rights are concepts and they are laws. You can argue the concept of a right is divinely ordained but the only practical rights are those agreed upon by your fellow countrymen.
The old testament is full of stories about God hearing the cries of his people and handing out Justice to those who are oppressed by punishing the oppressors. I submit that this is evidence that the OT teaches that men have some amount of natural rights. If not, why would God intervene?

The Bible in general is chalk full of laws and commands about how not to unfairly treat other people. I am having a hard time drawing a distinction between "Thou shalt not kill" and "A man has the right to live and not to be killed by his neighbor"
the concept of god having a "chosen people" certainly doesn't line up with the idea that all men are created equal, though, does it?
Frok
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Our government is run by demagogues. It's just a power struggle to get in office. They will say anything to get your vote.

If these officials actually did have TRUE beliefs and acted on them we would all be better off.

Take a look at our current candidates and look at their statements from just 10 years ago. They've both 180'd on most topics in order to get to where they are.

Martin Q. Blank
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notwenpyeuh said:

I want to start a discussion on governmental policy driven by religious beliefs. Do you think the legislators should allow their beliefs to drive policy decisions? i.e policy on abortion, marriage (esp. Gay marriage), etc. OR should the government not get involved in these matters and "live and let live" and only step in when someone's actions infringe upon someone else's rights.
Why should a politician allow this belief to drive their policy decisions?
schmendeler
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Martin Q. Blank said:

notwenpyeuh said:

I want to start a discussion on governmental policy driven by religious beliefs. Do you think the legislators should allow their beliefs to drive policy decisions? i.e policy on abortion, marriage (esp. Gay marriage), etc. OR should the government not get involved in these matters and "live and let live" and only step in when someone's actions infringe upon someone else's rights.
Why should a politician allow this belief to drive their policy decisions?
I don't want someone to infringe on my rights, so it probably behooves be to prevent it from happening to others, lest it soon become my turn.
Martin Q. Blank
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schmendeler said:

Martin Q. Blank said:

notwenpyeuh said:

I want to start a discussion on governmental policy driven by religious beliefs. Do you think the legislators should allow their beliefs to drive policy decisions? i.e policy on abortion, marriage (esp. Gay marriage), etc. OR should the government not get involved in these matters and "live and let live" and only step in when someone's actions infringe upon someone else's rights.
Why should a politician allow this belief to drive their policy decisions?
I don't want someone to infringe on my rights, so it probably behooves be to prevent it from happening to others, lest it soon become my turn.
I don't want to deal in probability, but obligation. What obligation is there for a politician to allow this particular belief (and not others) to drive their policy decisions?
schmendeler
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Martin Q. Blank said:

schmendeler said:

Martin Q. Blank said:

notwenpyeuh said:

I want to start a discussion on governmental policy driven by religious beliefs. Do you think the legislators should allow their beliefs to drive policy decisions? i.e policy on abortion, marriage (esp. Gay marriage), etc. OR should the government not get involved in these matters and "live and let live" and only step in when someone's actions infringe upon someone else's rights.
Why should a politician allow this belief to drive their policy decisions?
I don't want someone to infringe on my rights, so it probably behooves be to prevent it from happening to others, lest it soon become my turn.
I don't want to deal in probability, but obligation. What obligation is there for a politician to allow this particular belief (and not others) to drive their policy decisions?
there's no "obligation" for anyone to believe anything. what are you talking about?
Martin Q. Blank
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Oh ok. OP made it sound like that was the only valid belief a politician could have when making policy. Thanks for clarifying.
BusterAg
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schmendeler said:

BusterAg said:

Aggrad08 said:

I always found it curious that so many believe that god grants rights while simultaneously failing to note that never in the history of man has he made any effort to protect them and the holy books don't mention them. Rights are an acknowledgement of liberties that shouldn't be infringed by your fellow man in a civilized society. Your right to bear arms can disappear with an amendment, same as your right to a trial by jury. Rights are concepts and they are laws. You can argue the concept of a right is divinely ordained but the only practical rights are those agreed upon by your fellow countrymen.
The old testament is full of stories about God hearing the cries of his people and handing out Justice to those who are oppressed by punishing the oppressors. I submit that this is evidence that the OT teaches that men have some amount of natural rights. If not, why would God intervene?

The Bible in general is chalk full of laws and commands about how not to unfairly treat other people. I am having a hard time drawing a distinction between "Thou shalt not kill" and "A man has the right to live and not to be killed by his neighbor"
the concept of god having a "chosen people" certainly doesn't line up with the idea that all men are created equal, though, does it?
Not really.

Doesn't invalidate my point.
Martin Q. Blank
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The concept of Down Syndrome doesn't line up with the idea that all men are created equal. Nor Olympic sprinters. Or ugly women. Or left handed midgets.
schmendeler
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Martin Q. Blank said:

The concept of Down Syndrome doesn't line up with the idea that all men are created equal. Nor Olympic sprinters. Or ugly women. Or left handed midgets.
are we talking equal in physical form or in favor toward god? because while people are all different I had gathered from the religious here that created equal by god meant that all people were equally valued.
Frok
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Yes. All men are created in the image of God.

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." Genesis 1:27

Equal in value but not in ability or status.

Martin Q. Blank
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schmendeler said:

Martin Q. Blank said:

The concept of Down Syndrome doesn't line up with the idea that all men are created equal. Nor Olympic sprinters. Or ugly women. Or left handed midgets.
are we talking equal in physical form or in favor toward god? because while people are all different I had gathered from the religious here that created equal by god meant that all people were equally valued.
Religious here say all men are created in the image of God. You'll have to ask Thomas Jefferson what he meant when he said "all men are created equal."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_men_are_created_equal
kurt vonnegut
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BusterAg said:


Quote:

Do you think the legislators should allow their beliefs to drive policy decisions?
Yes, as long as their beliefs don't lead to laws that are contrary to the Constitution.

If his/her beliefs are too unpopular, the person will be voted out of office.

If those beliefs lead to illegal laws, they will be struck down by the courts.

I think that it is impossible to totally separate someone's beliefs and philosophies from their decisions and actions. But, I think it is important to recognize what it means to enact policy based on one's belief.

For example, a religious politician that proposes or votes for a law banning 'x' is not simply acting in accordance with a conviction that 'x' is immoral, but also proposing that the social contract between the people and the government is such that the government shall be permitted to ensure, by force, that 'x' is banned.

Said another way, we don't get to pretend that some of these policies enacted based on religious convictions are simply a reflection of that conviction. These policies also take the position that the religious conviction may be forced upon the people at the cost of their individual liberties.
Zobel
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schmendeler said:

Martin Q. Blank said:

The concept of Down Syndrome doesn't line up with the idea that all men are created equal. Nor Olympic sprinters. Or ugly women. Or left handed midgets.
are we talking equal in physical form or in favor toward god? because while people are all different I had gathered from the religious here that created equal by god meant that all people were equally valued.
Which is why I said, equal is false unless it has an additional modifier (before the law, before God, whatever).

The problem is if you reject some supernatural or metaphysical sense of equality or value you're left with measurable equality... which immediately falls flat on its face. A society that scientifically determines morality invariably is forced to assign value to people based on some measurement. And those measurements will not, cannot be equal.

When Ford did this with the Pinto recall case the result was troubling to our society because we really believe that all people have an equal value, and this value can't have a dollar sign on it, even though an alien observer would find this baffling.
Aggrad08
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Quote:

1. The concept of natural rights is the most efficient and best morality
Maybe, maybe not. But it's pretty good especially for dealing with our current forms of government.


Quote:

2. There are many ways of arriving to this conclusion (ie. no religious component required)
We would expect to see people independently deriving these conclusions in isolation. But we simply haven't. In fact, we see very different basic foundations of systems of morality other than life, liberty and property. One (or both) of your premises must be flawed.
Uh nope. Whether people independently arrive at a idea or not has nothing to do with whether that's the only way to get at it. One doesn't logically necessitate the other at all. You can arrive at general relativity in a different way also, but we didn't have someone besides Einstein independently doing that at the same time.


Quote:

Whether the Enlightenment thinkers were accepted by religious authorities of their days is irrelevant. I'm not making the case that they were mainline religious thinkers (they were progressive, some radically so), but that their philosophy was rooted in assumptions which we today would recognize as religious.
It's curious that you regard flat deism as religious. I've never really viewed it so. I've always found the position has as much similarity to atheism as anything else as the adherents seem to be quite the skeptics. But either way, we don't have to accept the entirety of their ideas to see value in much of it.


Quote:

As for words being meaningless, yes, I actually do think your definition is pretty close to the mark. And your argument in favor of the meaning of language is basically a rejection of twentieth century analytic philosophy.
You weren't talking about quine. I'm speaking practically, quine still used language did he not? And we understood him? I'm not talking about language lacking the precision for a distinction between analytic and synthetic, I'm talking about each of us reading these post and gathering information on the thoughts of the other with a pretty high accuracy. If these words can have practical meaning than a word like rights certainly can. I care little for it's use with logical positivism.


Quote:

I'm not making an argument for objective morality at all.
It's very similar in nature. As rights are rooted in moral values.


Quote:

Modern progressive thought is that we've tossed off the shackles of the foolish past, and moved forward into "scientific" morality, government, based on logic and rationality. All they've done is replaced one religion with another, until modernists actually completely rid themselves of all notion of morality in terms of right and wrong and fully embrace complete pragmatism (which you are arguing for).
The words right and wrong are not limited to objective morality or pretending you speak on behalf of a deity.

Quote:


I'm actually just fine with this, probably moreso than you actually are. I think a society's morality should be judged solely by it's ability to prolong that society's existence. In this regard, I am extremely pro-evolution, pro-speciation, and I see that with finite resources the society that adapts best will win. This is the only "scientific" test.
I don't. It would very much depend on the quality of life in that society. A horrid dictatorship with severe population controls might be extremely stable long term. The prolonged existence of a society is only a piece of the puzzle.

Quote:


However, as I pointed out above, this path is fraught with dangers. It puts your morality in the crucible of time and makes it very vulnerable to being...wrong.
All morality is in the crucible of time and culture. It doesn't matter if you pretend to speak for god or not. History has proven this time and again. In so many way we find the often theistic morality of our founders to be down right rotten. They were wrong very often. They were wrong in the equality of women, wrong in the practice of slavery, wrong in the genocide of native americans. Wrong happens. It's part of the human condition. And it's a lovely thing to see that you or your ancestors were wrong. Its the only way to grow morally. And we certainly have.

Quote:


This means there is no right and wrong, only effective and ineffective. Is it right or wrong for a combustion reaction to produce water and carbon dioxide?

No it means there is no objective right and wrong. Which once again proves my point that this is merely an argument in favor of objective morality. And that's fine, there never was.The cosmos doesn't care what we do. We care.

As far as the laws of the universe being right or wrong. It's neither. It's the is-ought problem. You can't get from is (like the laws of nature) to Ought objectively.
Texaggie7nine
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Quote:

Which is why I said, equal is false unless it has an additional modifier
Pish posh.

If you were to throw 100 people onto an island and erase all memory so that they simply can function as normal humans but do not know why they are there. They can logically arrive at the notion that all of them are indeed equal.

You arrive at the fact that each one has rights because by default none have a right to infringe upon the others. What gives person A the right to not be enslaved by person B? Because person B has no logically found right to enslave person A.

Beings of sentience and logic can easily find equality when reduced to pure logical reasoning. Objectivism is very good at this but not perfect.

Only when religion and "meaning" is inserted into the picture does arguments for enslavement, entitlement, power, come into play.

The only tricky right one arrives at is that with parents over children and that with land ownership. The question of land ownership we just have to accept as settled unless we want to undo nations and societies.

One's right to keep that which he earns is simple logic as stated above. Because no other person has an intrinsic right to the earnings of another, that person by default has a right to their own earnings.
7nine
Zobel
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AG
I'm not sure why you keep trying to paint me with the brush of an objective morality. I haven't argued for it once, or suggested that any morality "spoke for a god".

I can't keep up with your train of thought because you talk out of both sides of your mouth. With one breath you assert that our ancestors were wrong, and with the next you reject the ideal in principle that there can be any standard morality of any sort. What is your standard for wrong?

If you're going to reject a real value assigned to words, and just say they have "practical" use, then what's the point of having this discussion? "Practically" the word rights has a different meaning today than it did a century ago, and will a century from now. "Practically" the Constitution means something different than it did when it was written. If we can't set actual definitions on terms, it quickly just becomes a debate where everyone creates their own facts.

You completely dodged the question though. If we reject right and wrong, because there is no right and wrong, how do you say that genocide is wrong? How do you say that universal suffrage (by race, sex, age, whatever) is better than limited or no suffrage at all? What constitutes a "horrid" dictatorship? How do you measure quality of life? It's just meaningless feelgoodery.
Zobel
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AG
This is so historically tone deaf it's laughable. From a historical perspective the most likely outcome of your scenario is that that tribe of 100 people will have a supreme ruler who is the strongest, smartest, cruelest, etc. one among them.

Suggesting that religion and meaning produces slavery, entitlement, and power is practically idiotic. Those are endemic to the human condition (note that the atheist communists aren't immune to these human foibles).

Your entire post doesn't begin with blank slate but accepts a massive number of preexisting premises, the very concept of a right among them.
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