First, I will note that no atheist has taken up the challenge to answer those two questions posted here last weekend:
"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."
What would a secular paraphrase of that sentence look like?
In what nonreligious terms is human equality self evident?
Not getting an answer from anyone as to what a non-religious articulation of those self-evident truths on which depends, merely, the entire concept and justification of egalitarian democracy, I'm going to keep asking that. Not getting an answer is as telling as getting the one I'd expect, an ineffective, arbitrary mish-mosh of verbiage which might be acceptable to those who agreed to it, temporarily, as it served their purpose but which would change no reality.
As it happened, the other day Michael Brooks of Majority Report said something in passing about the atrocious Alabama ban on abortion that was passed into law this week that runs directly into that atheist-materialist-scientistic incapacity to come up with a durable and effective articulation of rights. My quick transcript of the relevant passage.
. . . You know, these things are settled legally, as written in a way . . .because - sorry to go all post-modernist here - but law is constructed - law is a political project that is not a natural thing that has descended from the sky but we've made a basic political-moral judgment that women's' capacity to control their own bodies their own sovereignty their own life trajectory is going to supersede the potential of life . . .
Ironically, right before he said that, he pointed out Ben Shaiprio was "trying to create a back door out for himself" something which Michael Brooks' substitute for the endowment of rights by God is. Clearly, as so many states controlled by Republicans, holding the entire legislative arms and governorships of many states are proving, they think the Republican-fascists - also holding the Executive, the Senate and the Supreme Court, will prove that Michael Brooks' claim that "we've made a basic political-moral judgement" supporting women's rights to the ownership and control of even their own bodies is about as dependable as rights writ in water.
I commented and got into a bit of a brawl on this.
Anthony McCarthy
1 day ago
I totally agree with where Michael Brooks comes out, that women have the right to self-autonomy and the ownership of their own bodies and, though he didn't say so, that the state has no legitimate right to regulate what happens inside her skin or within her basic human capacity to exercise her rights in but unless you found those rights in an assumption of supernatural endowment, then you can't possibly claim that there is any wrong in what the Alabama state government did which, apparently, is OK enough with the society that elected Republican-fascists to such an overwhelming majority as they certainly knew what they were capable of voting into law. Unless you hold, as Jefferson had to put it in the Declaration of Independence that rights are an inherent endowment by our Creator, then any level of depravity under law that has the temporary or long term acceptance of the majority in that society is as legitimate as the least depraved. I have never read any atheistic articulation of that which makes it impossible to justify actions as depraved as the ones that the Alabama State government just took and, literally, every other such depraved action of any government anywhere. I respect Michael Brooks' intelligence and if he knows of a secular articulation of what Jefferson wrote in the beginning of the Declaration of Independence that produces the same effect, I'd love to know about it.
Alas, Michael Brooks didn't give me one (as I suspect even an atheist of his intelligence would soon realize was impossible) but the usual level of atheist comment thread dolts typed unresponsively.
TheEvolver311
1 day ago
Jefferson pulled that out of his ass and it certainly wasn't pulled out of christianity.
Anthony McCarthy
23 hours ago
@TheEvolver311 Benjamin Franklin and John Adams were on the committee to draft the Declaration, they didn't come up with something better as an absolute foundation of egalitarian democracy, neither has anyone else I've ever read. Your declaration doesn't do a thing to found equal rights in anything that disqualifies what the Alabama legislature did because in Alabama, clearly, that is contained within the social consensus.
TheEvolver311
23 hours ago
@Anthony McCarthy actually it derives its power from the people and our government. The "creator" isn't even the god of the bible it was the prime mover from diesm. The bible actually advocates slavery and no human rights.
Anthony McCarthy
23 hours ago
@TheEvolver311 First, by The Bible, I think you must mean the Mosaic Law which envisages a slavery which was far less terrible than American slavery, if you knew more than you pulled out of your own ass, you would know that, among other things, the American abolitionists cited The Bible in their arguments to abolish slavery to far greater effect than they did even Jefferson's clear basis of why egalitarian democracy is the only morally legitimate form of government, based in the equal endowment of rights by God. Only that's a more complex argument than I've ever seen a blog comment thread atheist be able to encompass. I expect that the likes of David Walker, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman will be found far more credible in that than some inarticulate slacker gen blog atheist. When white abolitionists pointed directly to the Mosaic law to condemn the fugitive slave laws, they proved its moral superiority even to the secular Constitution which is far more a document motivated by the interests of the slave owners who wrote it.
Unless you hold that rights are an "unaienable" and equal endowment from God, all rationalistic, scientistic, atheist substitutes could be used to successfully argue that equal rights that are not a product of a majority opinion or whim are non-existent. You could argue that any state or polity where a majority held that women had no right to have an abortion were as right to make that the law than a state where the opposite had the approval of a majority. You could argue that Alabama and the rest of the Confederate states were right to secede so they could keep and entrench slavery. Michael Brooks, smarter than almost any comment thread atheist I've encountered, is about the best chance I can see of someone coming up with as effective a replacement for Jefferson's formula for making egalitarian democracy and unless he comes up with one, I'm going to conclude that is because an effective, durable one cannot be founded except in that assumption of endowment by God.
There's no real reason to go on, the atheist idiots didn't come up with anything but typical atheist slogans and bromides. None of which founded the rights of women to even the ownership of their bodies in anything stronger than the clear non-consensus that Brooks claims.
I did get to ask one who said that I'd have to "prove" the existence of God first" if that meant that any claims atheists made to equal rights would, likewise, depend on that proof. I don't think the boob even understood what the argument was about so I doubt he understood that without that Jeffersonian formula, all of the atheist whining about being deprived of their equal rights is as unfounded as Michael Brooks' substitute in social consensus is. Any society, any state or country that wanted to have legal discrimination against atheists or members of religious minorities which held that as a majority or even consensus view of it would be as justified in making that the law as the one which Michael Brooks, clearly falsely creates out of the Alabama or even the national electorate which has resulted in the current political power structure that is poised to strike down Roe and reimpose who knows what depraved violations of natural rights as a result of that expressed consensus.
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