Robert E. Meyer wrote and article for the American Daily on Atheism and Unalienable Rights. I found his article offensive to Atheists and juvenile in its reasoning. His basic argument goes something like this, Atheists are infidels, but they must believe in something, so they must believe the state grants “rights”. But, that leads to tyranny, and the eventual loss of “rights”, so “rights” must come from God and Atheists are just stupid.
Hmm, no, I don’t think so. Have you ever heard of John Locke, the Philosopher? Can you say philosophy? Locke put forth the idea of government with the consent of the governed, and that our natural “rights” are actually inalienable rights according to natural law. Natural law is the doctrine that just laws are immanent (meaning exists in our minds) and cannot be created by a Kennedy speech or a piece of paper. To make it simple for you Mr. Meyer, my inalienable rights as a human being exist in my mind just as much as God exists in your mind.
Now, I know this might be hard for you to understand Mr. Meyer, but history teaches us the Locke had more influence on the creation of our country and the philosophy of inalienable rights, than God did. The basic concept that Locke put forth, government with the consent of the governed is the foundation of our Republic. You do know about history, right?
There are several publications that can help you understand Lock’s concepts. However, I would recommend reading Locke’s The Second Treatise of Government; it is a good starting point. A great discussion of free will and inalienable rights can be found in Hegel’s Elements of Philosophy of Right, which is another pivotal work in the history of Philosophy and the development of the concept of rights.
Mr. Meyer, I have one other thing for you to consider. The United States Declaration of Independence actually reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. The framers of the declaration of Independence deliberately used "inalienable", which came directly from philosopher John Locke who developed the concept in his writings. The word "unalienable" was not used in the Delcaration of Independence, but is often mistaken for "inalienable" by the uneducated.
Your argument assumes Atheists remove God from the equation. I’ve got bad news for you, God is not in the equation. You put him there to justify your baseless attacks against your fellow Americans. It is easy to kick sand on the poor Atheists from your position of absolute moral superiority; it is another matter when you realize your whole argument is illogical and is based fallacious conjecture.
Ignorace is a conveinent excuse for bigotry and hatred.
4 comments:
Mojoey,
I don't know much about whether tyranny comes from atheism. Of course in the 20th centry the big tyrannies came from atheism but that isn't the point. My only point is
John Locke believed that rights came from God and John Locke was a religious liberal not an atheist. Lockes actual points about religion was that faith was reasonable when a person has a direct experiecne of God in his senses. His point was the relation between science (data coming from experience) and religion. As opposed to data coming from deduction first.
but whatever,
Faith and Reason
Faith is a special case (iv 16.14). At one point Locke defines it in terms of revelation from God.(5) Faith is "a settled and sure principle of assent and assurance, and leaves no manner of room for doubt or hesitation." But there is an irony in this apparently quite positive definition of faith. You can have such faith only if your assent is a response to testimony received from God himself, i.e., through revelation. God himself does not lie. For, in Locke's view, it is a self-evident truth that God, if He exists, is good (p. 667.25-26). And Locke believes that we can prove that God does exist (see iv 10)."
passthebread
I noticed that the link from my own response to Meyer was dead, so I looked around and found yours ...
All those early founders and philosophers would be atheist/agnostic if they lived today with our current scientific knowledge. They were deist before the discovery of the age of the universe was noted and evolution by means of natural selection. And most modern skeptic atheists are not post modernists or believe inalienable rights come from government. That's a canard. If anything post modernism or natural rights coming from government is a liberal non denominational religious person or a liberal humanist without scientific literacy. Great response piece to that intellectual light weight Meyer. What an uneducated fool. I wish everyone would embrace Transhumanism. It's post humanist with purpose for our species, all species and the universe.
If those smart men were skeptical of religion 200+ years ago, they def. would be atheist/agnostic today.
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