From Wiki on natural rights:

The first philosopher who fully made natural rights the source of his moral and political philosophy was Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Hobbes argued that it is human nature to love one's self best and seek one's own good (this is a view known as psychological egoism). Since it is unavoidable ("necessity of nature") for human beings to follow their nature, it becomes a right to do so. According to Hobbes, to deny this right is to deny that we have a right to be human, which would be absurd, just as it would be absurd to demand that carnivores reject meat or that fish stop swimming. However, this was not a right in the conventional sense of imposing obligations on others, but merely a "liberty." Therefore, we have no obligations by birth or nature, but only unlimited rights - leading to a situation known as the "war of all against all", in which human beings have to kill, steal and enslave others in order to stay alive. Hobbes reasoned that this world of chaos created by unlimited rights was highly undesirable, causing human life to be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". As such, if humans wish to live peacefully they must give up most of their natural rights and create moral obligations in order to establish political and civil society. This is one of the earliest formulations of the theory of government known as the social contract.

Hobbes objected to the attempt to derive rights from "natural law," arguing that law ("lex") and right ("jus") though often confused, signify opposites, with law referring to obligations, while rights refer to the absence of obligations. Since by our (human) nature, we seek to maximize our well being, rights are prior to law, natural or institutional. This marked an important departure from medieval natural law theories which gave priority to obligations over rights. However, some thinkers such as Leo Strauss, maintained that Hobbes kept the primacy of natural law or moral obligation over natural rights, and thus did not fully break with medieval thought.

Actually I rather do. I think that you should be taken OFF the road the moment you drive recklessly and that car companies should probably self-regulate and make sure you know how to drive before you buy a car, but... That's not the government.

How would the car companies do that?

"Now before we can sell you this SUV, we need to see if you can drive it, please come this way..."

And if all car companies did this, it'd be great, but what standards would they set? Would they all adhere to the same rules? Would some companies exclude certain people and allow others?

Hmmmm...sounds like things like this need to be regulated.

Let's bring in the government, for the good of the people.

Hey, whoa, fuck you and your stupid 'reality' bullshit.

I'm talking ideals here. The world will never, ever conform to my ideals - but y'can't blame a guy for trying.

stupid reality bullshit?

c'mon Ibram, reality is what it is. All the ideals in the world aren't going to solve problems, although nice to have.

In an ideal world, no one would need to be regulated for anything because all our knowledge about right and wrong would be intrinsic. Unfortunately, human beings decided they wanted to live like...well...humans beings instead of animals.

The problem is, not everyone got the memo. ;)

Yes I have; many times over. You just keep denying it because you don't like the truth.

None of them are on this board that I've seen, and if there are any they most likely aren't the brightest bulbs on the tree.....much like you.

My statistic was right now, was right at the dawn of creation, and will be right until the end of the universe.

Yes, you do violate gravity by going against it. Gravity pushes toward the center of the earth, and you are going away from it. You violate gravity when you jump, when you get into a rocket ship and escape from the gravitational pull of our planet, etc.

It's no more impossible to make gravity disappear than it is to make natural rights disappear.


I can say I have the natural right to own slaves and use the same arguments as you and we would be at the same place.[/quote]

Philosophers have argued the case for and against natural rights throughout the ages.

I don't see how you can be so sure you know exactly what the answer is when men with far more intellect than you've shown can't come up with a feasible answer.

Hence my use of the word 'perceive'. Obviously it depends on what your own idea is, particularly as the subject is philosophical and not factual.

Then what are they? Because I keep missing your proof.

Obviously not on this board and you are criticizing people you do not even know. Way to be ignorant and close-minded. *high five*

I can pull stats out of my ass too. Doesn't make them right.

I have a feeling you don't have a degree in physics do you? Gravity is an acceleration that is directed towards the center of the Earth. When you jump you produce a force that will accelerate you away from the Earth. While you are moving away gravity always has an effect on you, which is why you slow down, stop, then come back down towards Earth. If you broke free of gravity then you would just fly off into space.

The way a rocket ship works is that it produces an acceleration that goes in the opposite direction of gravity's acceleration. These two accelerations will always be in battle with each other and to get into orbit you have beat out gravity's acceleration with your own. Once you get into orbit, gravity is still affecting you (that is why you orbit), just that you are moving fast enough tangent to the Earth that you can stay in orbit.

It is not about making them disappear, it is about breaking them. You can break any one of your rights. You can not break the rule of gravity because you can not make gravity not effect you.


What? Did you just not delete this or what?

There are a few people who I'd like to see 'break free of gravity' and 'fly off into space'. :)

pierce, babe.....and i say babe cuz yer like 12....


life is a natural right. you have the right to be alive. not because the government or the neighbors say so, but because you JUST DO.

is that simple enough for you to get wrapped around?

We only have that right because we say we do. Do other animals have this right?

In nature we see other animals killing other animals for food. This is natural. We live in a world of birth and death.

It is our pride as humans, and I'm included in this, to say that we specifically have a right to live. So we say we have a right to live. I do not disagree with this right because I want to live but you have to realize that it is humans that made this right not nature.

Nature does not care about humans anymore than it cares about a cow. We are not anymore special then them. To protect ourselves from ourselves and other animals, we created a right to live.

I agree with us having this right it is just I do not think it is a natural law.

not a natural law, no. but was that ever the argument?

all animals have the right to life. and when one animal is eaten by another, it's rights are being violated.

the point is that government is created by man to limit. it is a construct. go back in time to the first people walking around.....before there was a government. the natural rights of those people were uninhibited completely. the could do what they wanted. as radar said, limitless, infinite. it is only because we have such a complexity of realities inter-meshing that we need a government to hold it all together and prevent the chaos that unlimited rights would cause.

radar is an idealist. he's absolutely right about natural rights... I believe that the spirit of the constitution tells us that those rights are the most important element of our government. the role of our government is first to protect our rights. unfortunately, the actual real world truth is ...that this is not the America our founding fathers intended.

I just don't see the relevance when every animal has the right to live when we have to kill thousands of organisms to breathe or have to kill another animal to survive. If I don't kill the deer, my children will starve to death, violating their rights. If I kill the deer, I violate it's right. It is always a lose-lose situation.

The way nature works is if I protect my right to live, I will have to deprive another animal of its right to live.

From looking at nature from this perspective there is no evidence that nature will enforce any right of life to any animal seeing that we need to kill to live.

The only way to break free for this reality is too say humans are better than other animals which has no proof in nature as well. A tornado will kill a human just as quickly as it will kill a dog.