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re: Can you be fiscally conservative and socially liberal?

Posted on 1/12/18 at 2:54 pm to
Posted by Centinel
Idaho
Member since Sep 2016
43480 posts
Posted on 1/12/18 at 2:54 pm to
quote:

The reason the founders put the framework in place was to protect natural rights that were endowed by my God.



so your judeo-christian god is the only one of the thousands of deities on this planet that cracked the nut on inalienable rights?

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If you reject God, you have no objective basis for human dignity and therefore human rights that need to be protected.


Ya, I do. It's called a natural right. God is irrelevant.

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the entire basis for a government set up to protect the dignity and rights of citizens is based on the idea that we have innate and inalienable dignity and rights as human beings,


This part is correct.

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which are created in the image of God, and are given a special status as such.


This is you imposing your religious beliefs.

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Whether you like it or not, you can't completely separate morality from government.



I have done just that already in this very thread.

Morality is irrelevant. Government exists to protect my rights from those who would wish to infringe on them.

That is neither good nor bad. It is inherently amoral.

Posted by FooManChoo
Member since Dec 2012
41871 posts
Posted on 1/12/18 at 3:18 pm to
quote:

so your judeo-christian god is the only one of the thousands of deities on this planet that cracked the nut on inalienable rights?
You have to start outside of humanity first before you can look for an objective standard. Any standard created by a human is subjective by definition and cannot be objective in relation to other humans.

If you want to discuss the existence of he God of the Bible and how other gods don't exist or are not in a position of authority over humans then I'd be more than happy to do so.

At this point in the conversation, I've gone from saying that government deals in morality whether we like them to or not, and am now discussing how all human-contrived standards (secular or not) have to be subjective and no better or worse than any other subjective standard without an objective standard to judge it by.

quote:

Ya, I do. It's called a natural right. God is irrelevant.
Absolutely not. If God is irrelevant then animals also can have natural rights (we're participating in animal slavery with our pets!) since in a truly atheistic worldview (practically speaking, at least) we are just animals and have no intrinsic value that is greater than any other animal. Natural rights, therefore, have to come from somewhere: either we make them up because we subjectively like the thought of them or they exist because an objective source (God) says so. Natural rights are like elements that exist in the universe that we can objectively study. They are immaterial characteristics related to our existence as human beings.

quote:

This part is correct
Yes, but it has no objective basis if you remove God from the equation. If you do that, it's just one opinion among many.

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This is you imposing your religious beliefs.
I'm stating my religious beliefs and the beliefs of the founders that were the ones talking about inalienable rights. "Imposing" would be forcing them. I have no authority or means to impose my beliefs on you.

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I have done just that already in this very thread.
No you haven't. You've given a secular, subjective opinion about what you think we should base our understanding of human rights, but that's not what I'm talking about.

If you think government should protect your subjective standard of human rights, you think government has a moral obligation to protect your subjective standard of human rights. If it doesn't protect your standard or it directly infringes upon on it, government is acting immorally and you are free to judge it so based on your standard. Your standard for role of government would therefore be transformed into a moral standard by which you, personally, hold governments accountable to in order to determine if they are acting rightly or wrongly. I think it's kind of ironic, actually.

quote:

Morality is irrelevant. Government exists to protect my rights from those who would wish to infringe on them.

That is neither good nor bad. It is inherently amoral.
There are many definitions of government and what their purpose is for. Some view government as a necessary means to enforce morality, to exact (and preserve) justice, to provide for those who need assistance or protection, or any number of variations of some power and authority acting in some way (hopefully positive) for those who are under that power and authority.

If rights have a moral quality to them and governments have a moral obligation to uphold and protect those rights, how can you say morality is irrelevant? Even if you accept the role of government as preserving your natural, human rights, you have an expectation that the government will do that very thing and you will judge it as a moral government or immoral government based on how it lives up to that responsibility.

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