Do Human rights even exist?

MayCaesar

Human rights are a concept. It is a great practical ideological axiom to have that every individual has some inherent rights, such as the right to live, the right to speak, the right to partake in voluntary interactions with other individuals, the right to pursue happiness... Great societal organisations follow when a large fraction of the population supports the idea of basic human rights.

Problems begin either when human rights are not respected, or when people start calling things rights that really should be classified as privileges. In those cases, human right violations are going to follow, making people less free and happy.

RickeyD

@ZeusAres42 ; Human rights exists within the moral law infused by our Creator at conception and human rights are validated by the truism that human KIND is created in the spiritual image of God therefore every human being has worth and that worth is articulated and codified via what has been written upon our heart by our Creator (Romans 2:15).

YeshuaBought

RickeyD said:

@ZeusAres42 ; Human rights exists within the moral law infused by our Creator at conception and human rights are validated by the truism that human KIND is created in the spiritual image of God therefore every human being has worth and that worth is articulated and codified via what has been written upon our heart by our Creator (Romans 2:15).

I know we don't have a very good history, but I agree that god gave us rights. What you do with my statement, is up to you.

Dee

@RickeyD

Fabulous piece of writing Ricky

Plaffelvohfen

There is no rights and certainly not any "god given" ones either... All we can claim to have are privileges that we "kinda" agree upon collectively but don't fool yourselves, all those privileges can be withdrawn at any time... Google Japanese US citizen 1942 and you'll see that "rights" mean nothing... Rights aren't rights if someone can take them away. They're privileges. That's all we've ever had... 

YeshuaBought

Plaffelvohfen said:

There is no rights and certainly not any "god given" ones either... All we can claim to have are privileges that we "kinda" agree upon collectively but don't fool yourselves, all those privileges can be withdrawn at any time... Google Japanese US citizen 1942 and you'll see that "rights" mean nothing... Rights aren't rights if someone can take them away. They're privileges. That's all we've ever had... 

I love and respect you, but i disagree with you. Are you interested in discussing this, further?

Plaffelvohfen

@YeshuaBought

Sure, what do you specifically disagree about in my comment?

John_C_87

I believe in right, Right's, and wrong, Wrong's. A human right has only one goal to meet a human must agree it is right. Little or no effort there.

Wrong -  in a wrong manner; not rightly; awry; amiss:

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/wrong

A toilet with four toilet seats is a human right. A bathroom with four toilets is a human right.

A bathroom with one toilet, one toilet seat, and one roll of toilet paper is a united state constitutional right.
- Where as -
A bathroom with one toilet, one toilet seat, and no roll of toilet paper is just a human right. 

On a scale measuring from right to wrong a civil human right is less than a civil constitutional right, a Civil constitutional right is less than a Civil United State Constitutional right, and a united state constitutional right is less than a independent wrong, but is still a basic human right.

As a high jump in track and field a Human Right is the bar at the knee height of the shortest possible contestant who is human.


The Point

A basic principle that is to be as close to describing of breaking law, without detailing a break of law, as it is at this point that many rights then become wrongs. No longer being right, Right's, or just Wrong's, Wrong. It is a Right at wrong.

YeshuaBought

Plaffelvohfen said:

@YeshuaBought

Sure, what do you specifically disagree about in my comment?

I believe that rights are given by God. I still respect you, though.

Plaffelvohfen

YeshuaBought said:

Plaffelvohfen said:

@YeshuaBought

Sure, what do you specifically disagree about in my comment?

I believe that rights are given by God. I still respect you, though.

I respect you too but tell me, could god withdraw those rights at any moment? (whether you think he would do so or not is not the point btw, I'm just asking if he could...)

ZeusAres42

Plaffelvohfen said:

There is no rights and certainly not any "god given" ones either... All we can claim to have are privileges that we "kinda" agree upon collectively but don't fool yourselves, all those privileges can be withdrawn at any time... Google Japanese US citizen 1942 and you'll see that "rights" mean nothing... Rights aren't rights if someone can take them away. They're privileges. That's all we've ever had... 

@Plaffelvohfen ; I agree both with there being no rights as well as they're not being any "God-given rights" either.  Also, it can get quite tiresome when you've got people shouting here, there and everywhere that it is there right to whatever it is they please; it's as if they think the world owes them something when in fact it owes them very little if anything at all that is. 

Furthermore, the idea of rights or the idea of God is not a good reason to justify a plethora of issues. This kind of thing makes for very weak arguments I think.

I think a number of people would do well to remember the following excerpt the next time they try using "It's my right" in an argument:

Defenders of free speech almost without exception recognize the need for some limits to the freedom they advocate. In other words, liberty should not be confused with licence. Complete freedom of speech would permit freedom to slander, freedom to engage in false and highly misleading advertising, freedom to publish sexual material about children, freedom to reveal state secrets, and so on.

https://blog.oup.com/2009/03/free_speech/

MayCaesar

@ZeusAres42

I think many people confuse freedom of action itself with freedom to take this action under all possible circumstances. For example, you have a freedom to drive a car; however, it does not mean that you can run over pedestrians or crash your car into a grocery store.

Regarding freedom of speech specifically, I do not believe in libel/slander laws and other similar things; I do not think anyone has the right to not be misunderstood/misjudged, as a right of one cannot demand any action from others, including refraining from unfairly criticising them. I have been criticised unfairly many times in my life, with rumors spreading about me that were not true, and every time I felt it was up to me to properly advertise myself so misunderstanding is cleared.

However, action itself can be a part of the bigger action. If I tell someone, "Please take a gun and shoot the person in front of you. The gun is not loaded, so it will be just a prank, and I will pay you money at the end", they take the gun (that happens to be loaded) and shoot the person in front of them, killing them - then obviously I will be responsible for what happened. The responsibility is not for my words themselves, but for the context I created by my actions that made these words harmful.

It is okay to spread lies about someone; I mean, it is not okay morally (in my view), but it should be protected by the law. However, if you spreading lies about someone leads to a tangible harm to their life, then they can sue you for compensation of damages. If you accused someone of a sexual assault on you, which caused them to be fired from their job and ostracised by their acquaintances, and could not prove their misdoing in the end, then you will have to compensate them for their losses.

Happy_Killbot

If human rights exist, they do so because people have the power and the will to enforce their existence. There is no physical part of reality that ensures humans will have rights, in fact, there is nothing that guarantees humans will exist. We can therefore conclude that for human rights to be real we must enforce that reality as a technological capability of our species, and verify that they are never violated by anything that threatens us, natural or artificial. It thus becomes possible, that the only thing that can destroy us is ourselves.