User:LockeShocke/Rights

Excuse this work in progress. I'm collecting quotes regarding the rights of human beings. We're all familiar with the unalienable rights as detailed in the Constitution of the United States. But why? In an agnostic or atheistic world, where man has no Creator (and therefor no endowed rights) do the same rules apply? Why would the absence of a god change the way man is allowed to treat other men?

Creation of rights by the state

From the Wikipedia article on Statism:

Some modern political philosophies hold that individual rights are in no way natural or absolute, but that they are social constructs; in other words, rights and freedoms are not assigned by nature or some other higher authority, but by human society itself. For example, we have the right to life not because there is anything natural about it (after all, nature does not condemn murder), but because the majority of the human population has agreed that it is in their common interest to respect this right. Therefore, individual rights cannot be separated from the public good, since the public good is the reason why individual rights exist in the first place. Some statists would say, therefore, that if one accepts that a state is necessary to protect individual rights, then one also accepts that a state is necessary to carry out other actions for the public good.

More evidence on the absence of natural rights

There's an excellent discussion in Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers regarding the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Mr. Dubois, the teacher of "History and Moral Philosophy," is speaking:

"The results should have been predictable, since a human being has no natural rights of any nature."

Mr. Dubois had paused. Somebody took the bait. "Sir? How about ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’?"

"Ah, yes, the ‘unalienable rights.’ Each year someone quotes that magnificent poetry. Life? What ‘right’ to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What ‘right’ to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of ‘right’? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man’s right is ‘unalienable’? And is it ‘right’? As to liberty, the heroes who signed that great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called ‘natural human rights’ that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.

"The third ‘right’? — the ‘pursuit of happiness’? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can ‘pursue happiness’ as long as my brain lives — but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it."