Do You Own a Gun?

[Aliantha]

Originally Posted by Radar

It's not a matter of what we "perceive" to be our rights. Our rights can't be listed because the list would be near infinite in length. You have the right to chew gum (if you've obtained the gun honestly), you have the right to walk back and forth across your own property, you have the right to do jumping jacks on your own property, etc.

We have the right to do ANYTHING we want as long as our actions don't PHYSICALLY harm, endanger, or violate the person, property, or rights of non-consenting others.

We don't have the right to physically harm, endanger, or violate the person, property, or rights of non-consenting others.

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.

[Aliantha]

It seems fairly obvious that some people are a bit confused between what is a natural right and what is a right within society.

[Yznhymr]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

It seems fairly obvious that some people are a bit confused between what is a natural right and what is a right within society.

You can say that again. It was a long time ago, but I think we learned about Natural Rights and Legal Rights (enforced by a gov't or society) in college. Most folks fall in one camp or the other. What's the old argument? Is it better for one to die and all to live, or one to live and all to die? Or something like that. Basically individual vs. societal rights. Is that what you were referring to???

Dude, my brain is rusty...

[Radar]

What I'm stating is FACT, not opinion. If you disagree with me, you're not a quack. You're an idiot, a liar, or both. In any case, I'm right and you're wrong. 99.9999% of humanity recognizes self-evident, natural rights that we're born with. The very few others are antisocial schizoid psychopaths and are no different than Hitler in their beliefs if not their actions.

Modern philosophers do not back you up. Only idiots do.

And yes, natural laws are enforced by nature, including natural rights. You can violate natural laws like gravity by jumping into a rocket ship. This doesn't mean gravity ceases to exist. You can violate someones right to life by killing them. It doesn't mean they didn't have a right to life. You can silence people through force or coercion, but it doesn't mean they don't have the right to think and express themselves freely.

[Happy Monkey]

Regulating the use of dangerous things is part of preventing harmful actions.

[piercehawkeye45]

What I'm stating is FACT, not opinion. If you disagree with me, you're not a quack. You're an idiot, a liar, or both. In any case, I'm right and you're wrong. 99.9999% of humanity recognizes self-evident, natural rights that we're born with. The very few others are antisocial schizoid psychopaths and are no different than Hitler in their beliefs if not their actions.

You still haven't proven natural rights. You just kept telling me that I have them and I am an idiot. (I feel like I am repeating myself)

99.9999% of humanity recognizes self-evident, natural rights that we're born with.

One, I would like to see you back that up because almost everyone I've talked too agrees with me.

Two, even if you were right about that stastic (you're not), it doesn't mean anything. 2,000 years ago you could say 99.9999% of the people believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and we know just how right they were.

You do not violate gravity by getting in a rocket ship, gravity just has as much effect on you when you are moving away from Earth as you do when you are falling from a ten story building. Using that logic I can say that I break the law of gravity by jumping. I dare you to go up to a physicist and say that. I dare you.

You can only violate gravity by making it disappear, which is impossible.

It doesn't mean they didn't have a right to life. You can silence people through force or coercion, but it doesn't mean they don't have the right to think and express themselves freely.

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.

[Radar]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

You still haven't proven natural rights. You just kept telling me that I have them and I am an idiot. (I feel like I am repeating myself)

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

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

One, I would like to see you back that up because almost everyone I've talked too agrees with me.

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.

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

Two, even if you were right about that stastic (you're not), it doesn't mean anything. 2,000 years ago you could say 99.9999% of the people believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and we know just how right they were.

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

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

You do not violate gravity by getting in a rocket ship, gravity just has as much effect on you when you are moving away from Earth as you do when you are falling from a ten story building. Using that logic I can say that I break the law of gravity by jumping. I dare you to go up to a physicist and say that. I dare you.

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.

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

You can only violate gravity by making it disappear, which is impossible.

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]

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Radar

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

What? Did you just not delete this or what?

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Regulating the use of dangerous things is part of preventing harmful actions.

Absolutely not, HM. The government has no right to tell me I can't own a stick, a gun, a kite tube, or a Cornballer. When I use the stick, gun, kite tube, or Cornballer as a weapon against a person, then I'm in trouble.

[Happy Monkey]

Then you oppose the concept of the drivers' license?

[Aliantha]

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.

[Ibby]

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.

[Happy Monkey]

How would the car companies do that?

[Ibby]

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

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Ibram

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

A driving course on every car lot? Why would they do it?