Thread: Separation of Church and...

Originally Posted by honedright

Just that whole little thing about "Inalienable rights" is dependent upon a higher power. If there is no higher power, then where'd those so called inalienable rights come from? Who or what gave them to you? And if they didn't come from a higher power, then they aren't really inalienable, are they.

Really, you want to go there? Here's the quote you are referring to:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

There is nothing inalienable with 'Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness', as was demonstrated by the exact same people who wrote those words. Good deal of those same people treated human beings with gender and/or skin color different than theirs as property and livestock, denying them any of those so called rights on a regular basis. They formed governments and their descendants fought bloody war with their fellow citizens just to preserve this oppression.

The only reason people have certain rights is because of the social compact that is being agreed upon. Which has been changing dramatically over the history of humankind as we know it, and thus there is is no evidence for the existence of some absolute 'inalienable rights'.

Even if there are some hypothetical higher power from which some inalienable rights derive, as long as that power is unable to secure them on its own, it is all nothing more than a thought construct with no bearing whatsoever on real life. And if that power was able to secure such rights all of its own, there would not be any need for governments, as the quote continues.