Originally Posted by JeffLV

It seems to me this is just an argument about the definition of a human right, and not if they can exist or not with or without God. Is a human right something somebody has regardless of their ability to practice it? Or is a human right no longer a human right when it is "taken away"? It's a simple disagreement on scematics. Simply by definition, I believe human rights belong to all humans, even if their ability to practice it has been taken away.

That being said, it's a completely different argument if human rights exist at all. I'm still debating this in my own mind, but currently my position is that they can't, even with god. If a right doens't exist unless god says it exists, I don't think that's a "human right" at all. It's a "god given right" that exists independant of the nature of humans.

Thus I see Publius Infinitum's argument that human rights can't exist without God, and raise him the fact that they can't exist even with God.

So if god can't give a human right, what about nature? No offence to Kant, but I don't see how human rights can be derived from human nature. Unless someone can give some fantastic argument as for why being "sentient" somehow establishes rights, we are nothing more than animals who have no rights in nature. Just survival of the fittest.

All I believe in is civil rights created where we establish a social contract "under the veil of ignorance". This is done with a mutual understanding that we will all flourish togeather better than under nature's laws. The problem with this is we do not always function "under the veil of ignorance". Your slave owner ignores the fact that one of the slaves "could have been him" and instead benefits from the fact that it's not him.