What is the true source of rights?

The Bible says nothing about anyone having innate, natural rights to things like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And as we've seen, the Bible says that God himself authored hereditary slavery; so either God doesn't believe in innate rights or he doesn't care about suppressing them. Either way, he makes a poor basis for those rights. We are better off looking at these rights as innate and natural than trying to credit them to such a God.

 

On that we will never agree. I believe in power. It exists and those who possess it determine the rights of those who do not.

At least we agree on something though it is more known today as filter bubbles.

 

I just gave you the direct quote! I even outlined what "their" means! It doesn't mean that everyone believes in the same Creator. It means just what it said - *their Creator".

And *you* are still stuck on the word "the"?

 

Of course it does.

Genesis 1: 26 "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."

Genesis 1: 27 "“Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it."

How does man and woman subdue the earth if they don't have the Creator-given natural right to do so?

 

Yet those Rights given to you by "Nature's God" can be taken away if sufficient people vote to take them away and pass an Amendment.

 

If the Bible celebrates life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, why did God murder thousands of innocent children to get the Pharoah to let Moses go?

 

If you had a natural right to bear arms, everyone would be born with a gun...

 

Why did God drown everyone except Noah and his family? Why did he destroy Sodem and Gamora?

In each case it's not like God didn't give multiple chances to avoid the fate he threatened!

 

You have a natural right to self-defense. What you use is immaterial as far as the right is concerned. Since a gun is the *best* self-defense tool yet designed by man, he has a natural right to use a gun in self-defense. Man has no authority to restrict the individual from his right to self-defense.

 

You have a hard time grasping things.
The only so called natural right is might makes right and that pertains mostly to life and ones possesions.
Cooperation is so might doesn't make right, but rights are agreed upon and an enforcement mechanism is put in place to protect the agreed upon rignts, including moral rights.

 

You've been proven wrong countless times.

 

You keep using the word the. Its you hung up on it to make an invalid point.
Remember I corrected you and your use of the word the.

 

True or false: The Bible states that it is okay to beat your slave so severely that they die, but so long as they don't die until the next day.

 

He threatened nothing to well more than 99% of those living.
And again you use a fable to make your point. Just like exodus.

 

What chance were those Egyptian children given to avoid their fates?

 

If you had a natural right to use a gun, you'd be born with a gun.

 

And I never claimed that you think yourself to be infallible, either.

I merely said that you do not impress me as being closer to mark of perfection than the Founders were.

 

Dekel: "I believe in power. It exists and those who possess it determine the rights of those who do not."

Me too. I have power time I switch a light switch on.Funny thing though, it was the man of the mind, not the man of the gun, that gave it to me. These means I 'll take John Galt any day over Attila the Hun, in any kind of exercise of power.

 

Well one thing I've learned in life is that you cannot impress everyone nor should you try but you can have an opinion that no one can take away from you.

 

None of the Founders--to my knowledge, anyway--ever asserted that either they, or the government they were creating, determined "rights."

 

I see, thank you for the information. As for your second paragraph, those three things may not exactly lead me to the concept of rights as most people see them. Instead they form my ideological principles and you could say I move on from there. Those are how I judge what I should and should not do. When I should fight or not. As well as how I deal with others. The concept of having some external source of validation for my rights seems irrelivant to me in a way.

 

Works for ants too. I doubt they have empathy; but if they do, I'd say that doesn't say much for empathy. Wouldn't you?

Then perhaps you'd like to explain why the overwhelming majority of our species has lived under despotism.

When there is a constitutional method of amendment available, why the hell would you not oppose an extraconstitutional method?

 

There is no evidence that rights objectively exist. What does exist is the real-world impact on polities and the fact that US healthcare costs 2 1/2 times more than developing world and costs here are increasing a lot faster yet they do well in overall healthcare outcomes.

 

True.

But I would regard that as entirely illegitimate--just as I would view authoritarian (and totalitarian) governments as being entirely illegitimate.

 

Are you suggesting, then, that a second Constitutional Convention (which I neither support nor oppose) would be...well, unconstitutional?