Who owns you?

Who does your mind and body belong to? Who owns the unique entity that comprises "you"? Do you own yourself?

I put to you that I am a unique individual, as is every other human being, and as such, I own myself. No other human being is born with a right to my life. It is mine, my literal birthright. I was born in possession of it and no other human being has a logical claim to it that can trump my own. I, as well as every other human being, have an inherent right to life that is a direct result of that self ownership.

I have heard it said that rights can only be "granted" to you by a government. I have yet to hear a logical argument in support of that. I've only heard two supporting arguments for such a thing, neither of which were convincing in the least. One wholly consists of circular arguments that put the cart before the horse such as, "The government has the authority to grant rights because they are the government."

The other argument consists of a flat out rejection of self-ownership where the proponent of such has to literally resort to a claim that they do not own their body or even their own thoughts. I've actually seen a person disown their own cranium in an effort to deny that such a thing as an inherent right exists. Of course, said arguer didn't seem nearly as enthusiastic about his position when I asked if it would be okay if I came over and used his head since it didn't belong to him...but I digress...

So, I ask you, the lovely people of politicalforum.com, do you own yourself? Do you have any rights derived from the simple fact that you own yourself? Or do you only have "rights" granted to you by other human beings? If the only rights you have are those granted to you by other people then from where do these other people attain the authority to "grant" you rights that they do not have themselves? How can there be any such thing as a "human right" at all if it requires one human being to grant it to another?

 

No, every person is owned by God or the devil; and everyone owned by the latter will eventually deem it proper to either own or be owned by someone else, wherefore ownership of another may be considered legitimate only under the counterfeit justice that reigns supreme in Hell.

 

Not really. In this economy, I can only afford to rent.
Enjoy!

 

Okay, so we have one person who claims that everyone is owned by supernatural entities and another who claims to rent himself from an unnamed landlord...

Does anyone else want to chime in?

 

i own myself. i rent out my services from time to time and do my best to keep the government from taking ownership, but this is me and i'm all i really have.

 

yes, I believe in self ownership... which means the right to make the wrong decisions with your body, unfortunately the only country that seems to respect this right (as far as what you can put in your body) is Portugal


as for the belief that your body is owned by god.. I can respect that belief, but I feel the state must also respect the fact that it is not god.... in the name of the law we should be the owner of our own bodies rather than the government owning us


“To [man] it is granted to have whatever he chooses, to be whatever he wills.

Considering that we are born with this condition, that is, that we can become whatever we choose to become, we need to understand that we must take earnest care about this, so that it will never be said to our disadvantage that we were born to a privileged position but failed to realize it and became animals and senseless beasts.... Above all, we should not make that freedom of choice God gave us into something harmful, for it was intended to be to our advantage. Let a holy ambition enter into our souls; let us not be content with mediocrity, but rather strive after the highest and expend all our strength in achieving it" - Pico Della Mirandola (Oration On The Dignity Of Man)

 

Obviously, I own myself....rather a silly question. I do however allow a certain individual to sublet by contract.

Seems a good arrangement.

 

I'd like to say I own myself but the truth is humbling... mrs wyly owns my arse...

 

Funny responses.

So, who determines what rights we have if not society through the government? You? Me?

Does a woman have the the right to an abortion? Does a fetus have the right to be born? Does a woman have a right to take contraception? Does a person have a right to be gay? Does a gay person have a right to marry? Does a man have a right to have sex with and marry his sister? Does a woman have a right to vote? Does a person have a right to own a slave?

Are these "rights"? If the law says I have a right to do something, do I or don't I have that right? Do I have a right to have a gun? A machine gun? I RPG? A nuclear device?

I know where you are coming from. You're whole thing is about taxes. Another 1% apologist made you have to pay 20% on your investment income, am I right? So your whole thing is that we "own out body" and therefore whatever money we get is ours and the grubby Govt has no "right" to be taking our money. Am I pretty close here?

Maybe you'll address these issues you dodged in our last discussion. The problem with your position is that it is logical inconsistent. You want to claim you have "inalienable" rights like the right to keep your money, but you have nothing to nail your so-called "inalienable" rights to. Your argument is that rights come from reason and logic. But the point you kept dodging is that if we decide that reason and logic determine our rights, they everyone is going to have a different idea about what our rights are. And since people's views change over time, so does our collective idea of rights. One minute we think a woman has no right to vote, the next we do. And hence, there is can be nothing "inalienable" about rights based on your logic.

It is the fundamental inconsistency you keep dodging because you cannot defend against.

Not go on and hurl some insults or talk about how my position is circular. Anything you can do to avoid facing up to the truth of the fallacy of your position.

 

Yes, it's obvious to me, it's obvious to you...but you'd be surprised at the flailing some people will resort to in an effort to deny this very basic and logical concept. They think that they can have the "right" to own another human being as long as some entity with the label of "government" says it's okay. They think that an entire race of people don't have a right to life as long as there is a government somewhere who is willing to murder them.

 

You've already proven to me that you can't formulate an argument. This thread is an attempt to find out just how many of you are out there. I don't know where you got the "taxes" thing from...? This thread is about self-ownership and inalienable rights. There are many rights that can be derived from an inherent right to life and, sure, taxes would touch on some of those but that issue would be far down the line. More important are things like the right to not be murdered or enslaved by immoral simpletons who think that they have an actual right to murder and enslave other human beings just because a group of people calling themselves a government wrote down on a piece of paper that they could.

 

What I would like to hear is the atheists justifying their "rights".

As atheists, clearly you disagree with the Declaration of Independence which explicitly states that the rights of the individual is provided by the Creator. Unfortunately for you, that's essentially the only justification for those rights and the breaking way from an oppressive government that the Founders provided.

So where do your rights come from? Do you have any at all or are you just an animal that believes in subjective morality (which is, in effect, no morality at all)?

 

I doubt it, but I can certainly understand your desire to dumb the argument down to that.

 

Yeah all us atheists disagree with the Declaration of Independence, we all want to be under British rule

 

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.


Clearly as an atheist you disagree with the Declaration of Independence when it speaks of the Creator right?

And if that's true, do you have unalienable rights? If so, where do they come from?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights

 

JooDee would like to think he owns himself...however as soon as JooDee decides to take JooDee's life away JooDee will be shipped off to a psychiatric hospital.

 

Yes. However, that ownership interest is being violated by other humans who don't recognize that fact.

 

I look at it in more practical terms.

A right doesn't mean much if there is no force by which it can be protected.

For example, if you live in a lawless area, your own right to live is only protected by a personal arsenal or a militia (if you decide to join one).

Conceptually, I would agree that we all own ourselves and have a right to live. However, these things would mean nothing without having the ability to defend these rights against those who would abuse us.

This is why authority structures are necessary, or at the very least, a cache of weapons and a security system.

 

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my question.

As atheists, do you have, what is defined in that link as, natural rights? Being, those not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and therefore universal and inalienable. Also your link states, Natural rights, in particular, are considered beyond the authority of any government or international body to dismiss.

So, as an atheist, do you have any natural rights; rights that are inalienable and beyond authority of any government or international body to dismiss?

The Founding Fathers claimed these natural rights were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (originally right to own land), but they also claimed that they were derived from the creator.

Do atheists have any natural rights and if they do, where are they derived from?

 

Inalienable rights come from human nature. Suppose that a woman is walking down the sidewalk and I see you come by and try to steal her purse, there is a struggle. I drop my newspaper and bolt out the door to come to her rescue, maybe risking my own life. When I came to this womans rescue I was not thinking about sex or monetary gain, I did it because I knew that what I was seeing taking place was not right. I did it instinctively. The only reason I use a woman in the example is because if it were a man I might start using judgment about the mans ability to fend for himself. If the man were small and the attacker larger the same instinctive impulses would come forth. This is not to say that rights cannot be violated. If the attacker was in an armored tank with a machine gunner atop, then I might fight my instinctive reactions -- knowing that I was incapable of securing the womans rights and that any attempt to do so would just lead to my own death. But even if that were the case, you can bet that I would be plotting a plan to take that attacker down, to the best of my abilities, so that the violation of other individuals rights might not happen in the future.

At least that is my take on rights.

 

For the next 25 years or so I may be owned by Bank of America, or at least my backside is.

 

The rights are derived from being human. As humans we understand that we have intelligence, self awareness, wants, needs. It is only reasonable that we would infer natural rights upon ourselves.

 

A couple things on the Declaration.

First, it is just that. A declaration. An outline of grievances against England to justify an illegal action - succession. It's not the law of the land no matter how many times you cite it.

Second, as I read a book about how the religious right tries to hijack the Declaration, I'm finding that the Creator mentioned in the Declaration is hardly the concept today's Christians wish it to be. Many founders, and especially Jefferson, the author, did not believe in an intervening, reward-and-punishment, Christian god. In fact, he had a disdain for that kind of belief. Deism has pretty much faded into history and not understood in the terms of the Age of Reason where the founders gained their understanding of the universe. A universe, by the way, that appeared very much different than the one we know today. The Laws of Nature were those they referred to. Laws of Nature that applied to all beings. But that Declaration granted no one any rights. Not a one. Zip. Zero. Nada. And the Creator mentioned in that document does not appear once in either the Bill of Rights or the Constitution.

And yes. We are all just animals. One with, hopefully, a little more self-awareness than other animals. One who has developed superior reasoning skills to other species. And, using those skills, to think that you, or mankind, is anything terribly special in this universe is nothing but arrogance.

And your premise that atheists have no morality fails miserably. Your Ten Commandments, those which I presume you believe to be God given, are not superior to any set of laws a reasoning, non-believer would compose. Don't kill. Don't steal. Don't lie. Don't boink your best friend's wife. Big whoop. Nothing that any honest, moral, individual couldn't think of, god or no god. The rest of the 10 seem to be hardly much more than filler. Certainly not words to live by.