Where do rights come from?

[Sir Og]

BTW isn't agnostic the same as atheist for all intents and purposes. Do agnostics go to church, pray or do any of the things that religious people do?

[Elok]

Arguably, but since he said "mostly atheists," it was really a question of atheist vs. not-atheist. Not that it makes much difference to the question of rights, since not all religious people believe they're "god-given," and Jefferson himself was a Deist, which is also "atheist for all intents and purposes."

[Arrian]

What Oerdin said.

Apolyton Atheist (Agnostic, but for this purpose, same difference) checking in.

-Arrian

[Al B. Sure!]

No one likes my corollary to Oerdin's that rights come from the people with the biggest guns?

[BlackCat]

Wow. That second group is really full of WIN.

QFT

[DanS]

Endowed by our Creator.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Usually they are set up with a left jab.

[Kuciwalker]

And that works under a dictatorship how exactly?

Rights are whatever the people with the biggest guns say they are. That's real talk. All this Post-Enlightenment stuff about the rights of man only had the opportunity to be put into practice because the popularization of the means of destruction (ie- proliferation of fire-arms) gave commoners who benefited from these ideas the opportunity to revolt successfully (ie- English Civil War, American Revolution, French Revolution, Spanish colonial revolutions, etc.)

Think before you put your hands to the keyboard, AS. You are engaging in a tremendous fallacy of equivocation.

[Kuciwalker]

Oh and while the people with the guns may decide to do things in keeping with Kuci's practical solution to the welfare-optimization problem, human irrationality means whatever construction of rights they develop is likely NOT a solution to the welfare-optimization problem.

You're too dumb to understand why this is both irrelevant and largely untrue.

[Hauldren Collider]

Endowed by our Creator.

Thomas Jefferson

although I suppose he ripped off Locke a bit but I'm sure Locke wouldn't have minded.

[Kuciwalker]

To elaborate on "fallacy of equivocation":

OP is obviously unconcerned with the question "what privileges am I currently afforded by the society I live in, and what is their secular provenance?". The answer to that question is provided in grade school history classes. OP cares about the question "what privileges cannot morally be denied me through coercion" or "to what privileges am I morally entitled", in particular as a universal question, and he really wants to know "by what metaphysical mechanism was I endowed with these rights?". Common answers are "God", "the Constitution" (in the American civic religion), "um hey look over there!", "just because".

[giblets]

Maybe alby was trying to say natural rights don't exist.

[Kuciwalker]

That's exactly what he was trying to say, obviously. But he failed miserably.

edit: it should be noted that the position "natural rights don't exist" is basically equivalent to complete moral relativism, and no one is actually a true moral relativist.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

two groups equally balanced... the only way to settle this is - war.

might is right.

[Felch]

Rights come from God and guns. Anyone says different is a communist, or worse, a pacifist.