Where do rights really come from?

[Inquiry]

Inalienable does not refer to them being impossible to infringe upon. Inalienable refers to the inability to take the right away. It is like dignity. Someone can treat you as if you don’t have dignity, but they don’t take your inherent dignity away. It exists independently of outward ability to express it.

Also, it is not a matter of it being taboo, you are just missing important elements of what is going on. We live in a complicated world and it is accepted that we can’t always find clean solutions. If you look at how the Constitution was written it is very overtly set up that the government can infringe rights but it needs to justify that infringement to the people. That’s why the restriction is that no one can be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

 

[Maximian]

Inalienable refers to the inability to take the right away.

That’s right. But the state in fact retains the right to take that right away. The state is not true to its own declaration of truths which it holds to be self-evident.

By the way the very first two words are in themselves problumatic, since a truth is either self-evident or it is not. It cannot be held to be so.

The whole document is suffused with the relativism which characterises classical enlightenment liberalism, and as such is incompatible with Catholic thinking.

 

[Inquiry]

No, it doesn’t reserve that right, which is why rights cannot be infringed upon without due process.

 

[ioannes_pius]

A right is a claim given by God.

 

[Cirdan_XII]

Cirdan_XII:

Rape is a grave sin, but a child born of rape has a right to live and has a place in the world

Rape is a grave sin, so we know that a person has a right to consent, for instance. I don’t think the logic above meant that a child conceived of rape has no right to live, if that’s what you’re implying?

I’m not sure if that alone is the justification.

I don’t think that’s all there is to it, but it’s a starting point.

taking of life that God is taking issue with but the actual act of murder

The ‘taking of life’ is the act of murder, though? It’s just rephrased. Murder is a grave sin, because it’s not our call to end the life of someone, a life that God decided to create. That very act is wrong because we are not in a position to take away life for no discernable reason. Hence, from this we can understand that we have a right to life, because nobody is permitted to take it as they wish.

What I was trying to say was that God is more concerend about the sinner than about the sin.

The person who murders is obviously killing another, but is also harming themselves by committing a sin.

So if God says, don’t commit this sin, how do we know he is not saying that primarily to protect the person who he is discouraging from sinning, rather than to protect or even bestow any hypothetical right to life on the potential victim?

If that right existed, surely somewhere in all those thousands of pages in the bible, somewhere it would have come up.

People die for all manner of reasons. So maybe God doesn’t mind people being dead. In fact we’re all going that way eventually. So he definitely doesn’t mind. If he had wanted us to have an inalienable right to life on this earth, he would have provided a means for us to avoid death (and thereby avoid his judgement). Such a concept would totally go against biblical teaching. It’s a fuzzy enlightenment or freemasonry concept that maybe bits of the Church have copied unthinkingly. But that doesn’t make it right.

He would rather we didn’t murder anybody, because of the damage this does to our own souls.

If people live a little longer as a result, that is a useful side-effect, but who are we to conclude that it must also be the main reason for the commandment?

 

[Lea101]

So if God says, don’t commit this sin, how do we know he is not saying that primarily to protect the person who he is discouraging from sinning, rather than to protect or even bestow any hypothetical right to life on the potential victim?

I don’t think you get what I’m saying. The act of killing is a sin because you’re taking the life of another intentionally. As humans and not God, we don’t have the right to do that. That’s why it’s sinful.

Additionally, you’re robbing the victim’s opportunity to repent, have a relationship with God, better their community etc.

I think your logic is circular here. You’re saying God says murder is a sin because it affects the murderer’s soul…but it only affects a soul if it’s a sin!

 

[phil3]

a while back I read an article, I wish I had book marked it, that when blacks were allowed to vote a politican told a black man “we gave the the right to vote”. The black man said “we always had it, we were just stopped from doing it”.

 

[Usagi]

In functionality, from the government. We like to dress it up with talks about inherent rights and God given rights but at the end of the day the government can take anything from anyone with the right cause.

Yes, but it is important (IMO) that we can then turn around and say that a government that takes certain things away is wrong and possibly even illegitimate. Hence documents like the U.S. Declaration of Independence, setting forth the reasons why we could justifiably seek separation from the crown of Great Britain. Sure, we still had to have a war, and the document wouldn’t have meant a lot if we’d lost, but it was important (and still is) to be able to hold governments to a standard, even if they can easily do terrible things.

 

[Usagi]

So it is not the taking of life that God is taking issue with but the actual act of murder. The victim can maybe go to heaven but the murderer has a serious sin on their slate. Maybe God is actually primarily concerned about the would be murderer and his or her soul, and this is what the commandment is about.

But the reason murder is a serious sin is not because God just arbitrarily decided that, but because human life has value. The murderer damages their soul because they have treated another person as an object.

 

[Usagi]

The point is, that a criminal’s right to life is not “unalienable”, it is alienable by the state. Upon that basis the whole idea of inherent rights collapses…

Im sorry, I know that contradicting the Declaration of Independence for Americans is a bit like insulting the Queen for us, a total taboo, but there it is.

I mean … clearly the concept of an “unalienable right to life” has never meant that it is impossible to kill a human being. It can often be fairly easy. It’s about permission and authority and justification, not capability.

It’s a statement that my right to keep my life supersedes J. Random Dude’s authority to take it. There are situations in U.S. and U.K. law, just as in Christian morality, where life may be taken nonetheless, but they have to involve a really good proportional reason. Just like restricting any other right. As we know, the death penalty is controversial precisely because, even though the person has usually crossed the line by taking someone else’s life unjustly, we’re still killing a defeated and helpless person, and thus not everyone agrees that their right to life has been surrendered (whereas we generally agree that a guy trying to kill you right now may be killed in turn if that is the way out of the situation).

 

[o_mlly]

Human rights issue from human needs. That which is required to live a decent human life becomes a human right. These include the material needs of food, clothing and shelter and, as rational beings, the need to know the truth. (Thou shalt not lie.)

Pope John XXIII put it well:

The right of every person to life is correlative with the duty to preserve it; the right to a decent standard of living with the duty of living it becomingly; and the right to investigate the truth freely, with the duty of seeking it ever more completely and profoundly. …
Those who claim their own rights, yet altogether forget or neglect to carry out their respective duties, are people who build with one hand and destroy with the other.
(Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII, Apr. 11, 1963, para. 29, 30)

 

[Servant31]

I’ll admit I sometimes struggling with organizing authority and rights. I think this is a great question, one which I myself still struggle with.

On the point, we are supposed to adhere to authority… I think in any civil society that’s a very good foundation.

However I have struggled because I often see authorities in place due to sinful behavior. The US revolution was a rebellion then was it not and therefore illegitimate?

So to my thinking when does an authority become unjust?

OP to address your question specifically. My fuzzy opinion is that just rights come from God ultimately. But as always there can be difficulty getting humans to respect those rights.