In A Hurry So This Exchange From A Blog Brawl I'm Having

BEFORE THIS I'd pointed out that according to this anti-religious atheist that a. "Christians" deprived atheists of their rights and b. that rights aren't an endowment of God to all people but that "people and governments" create rights and, by this atheist's theory of rights then until "people and governments" created rights for a list of people then their belief they had rights was a delusion and that, for example, the Nazi government could extinguish any rights that Jews had in Nazi ruled territories, the Dred Scott was a correctly made decision and Black People had no rights and that if "people and governments" wanted it so, atheists had no rights they didn't want them to have.

 

RuleofFive 10 minutes ago

 @Anthony McCarthy  1. Unfortunately governments do take rights away from people. Look at how Israel treats Palestinians. As you said the Nazis took rights away from Jews. Christians took rights away from atheists here in the US. Seven states still have laws barring atheists from holding public office. Those "good" christians busy at work again! 😉 So who gives rights? If god is all powerful and all knowing then surely she can grant rights that cannot be taken away? Yet people take rights away from each other all the time throughout human history. The reason? Because god isn't real. If god is real and watches all the suffering injustice in our world and remains indifferent then god is evil. I think god is just part of the imagination of man.   People obtain rights by fighting for them. They can be taken away too should people take them for granted. Powerful people almost never give up power without struggle.

 

Anthony McCarthy

@RuleofFive  YOU are the one who said rights came from people and governments, if that's true until people and governments "give rights" to atheists to run for and hold office then atheists living there don't have a right to do that. THAT'S ACCORDING TO THE ATHEISTS' OWN THEORY OF RIGHTS AND WHERE THEY COME FROM, NOT MINE. I would hold that atheists have every right that everyone else does to run for office and hold office because they are endowed with that right by God whether or not people or governments choose to respect those rights.  According to you, rights exist only so long as "people and governments" want them to exist.  So, you see, my theory of rights is far more generous to atheists than your atheist, materialist theory of rights. Under your theory of rights then the Nazis could remove the rights of Jews, male chauvinist pigs could remove the rights of Women (if they got a few Women to go along with them and they did) white supremacists could deny the rights of Black People, as they did under the United States Constitution, that idol of your secularism which religious abolitionists, including almost all of the Black abolitionists and the White ones too fought. The Spirituals making veiled references to escaping slavery just about all use Jewish religious Scripture as their source of inspiration, not atheist polemics. And under YOUR theory of rights then if states choose to deny atheists the right to run for or hold office then atheists there have no right to do so and if they complain that they have a right to that they are delusional believers in something that doesn't exist. Ironic, isn't it but, then, I have not found atheists to be especially deep thinkers.

The January 6th fascists claimed they were fighting for their rights, the gun nut fascists claim to be fighting for their rights, the Confederate states and armies claimed to be fighting for their rights. Under your theory if they prevail they will have created their rights to overturn elections to put a fascist dictator into office, shoot up schools and nightclubs etc. and maintain slavery. No, the atheist theory of rights and where they come from is too stupid and dangerous to not fight against. 

Update:  The Brawl Continues:

 
RuleofFive
1 hour ago
 @Anthony McCarthy  Yes rights are granted by governments and people. I don't believe in god so of course I don't think rights come from her.  If human rights were "god given" we wouldn't need human documents providing and outlining what rights people have.  

Actually, as I just told you, atheists don't have the right to hold public office in seven US states right now and are denied those rights by christians who feel threatened by them.  

Maybe you believe everyone should have rights.  Good for you.  So do I.  In practice it doesn't work that way.  Black people organized under MLK to fight for the right to vote.  Women fought for the right to vote.  Some laws preventing atheists from running for public office in some places have been fought and overturned.  Are you understanding the key term here?  They "fought for their rights".  

Yes sometimes bad people prevail.  Sometimes bad people win.  You're under the delusion that there is a supernatural arbiter that jumps in and grants things to people universally or corrects wrongs.  I would say that is a figment of your imagination.  

Homo sapiens have been around for 450,000 years approximately.  So just in the last few thousand years god got around to establishing rights?  Please.  As I said even in the Bible slavery is okay, women are second class citizens, children have no rights.

As you said the US founding fathers were only okay with white men with property holding power or even voting.  Women, children, black slaves, native Americans had no rights under the original constitution.  So if "god" is granting rights but those "god given rights" can be taken away by mortal men then what good are "god given rights".?  If god can be ignored or her will thrown out then it's really not worth much to the person that's been disenfranchised.  That's why it's up to people to fight for the government that they want. The way you describe it god is more like an advocacy group instead of an all powerful being that makes declarative statements without the force or authority to make it reality.

Anthony McCarthy
 @RuleofFive  First,  what Homo Sapiens thought before there are actual, readable written records of what they thought is unknowable so any resort to making arguments about that period of humanity are specious at best.  I've had that argument with atheists before,just  to keep you from pulling the Code of Hammurabi on me because in that very early document it's claimed that the right to make the code was given to him by heaven.  Why atheists don't bother reading documents they cite so regularly is something I don't understand but it's my experience they seldom if ever do.  So you have no idea how rights may have been explained by our early ancestors.

I have explained to you that, given your atheist articulation of the origin of rights, you can't claim that atheists denied rights by governments or people really exist, under your framing those rights are mere figments of your imagination and, though you weren't honest enough to admit it, rights that cease to be a majority or consensus view of "people and governments" can disappear as magically as they appeared, wished into existence.  So atheists whining about the fact that large numbers of People wouldn't vote for a known atheist are making resort to a form of rights and, inevitably an origin of those, that many atheists will then refute as possible.  Either the right is there before "people and governments" create them or they are imaginary or originate in magical thinking.  

The actual text of the Jewish Bible is rather more an impressive examination and discussion of those issue than I've ever heard or read from any atheist, though as I mentioned above, it doesn't claim an exclusive right to be the source of that knowledge.  Atheists who like to whine about their denial of rights would do a lot better to adopt that framing than the one their ideology leaves them with.   They'd have a leg to stand on as they cut the other one off, themselves.

Oh, and, by the way,  you apparently don't know that "MLK" was THE REVEREND Martin Luther King jr. a Baptist minister who almost never gave a speech without framing the reality of rights that were denied by the secular governments of various states and the United States in terms similar to the RELIGIOUS ONES I am using here.  Not only him but the large majority of those who put themselves on the line during that dangerous and difficult non-violent struggle for equality, an equality that, as well, is impossible to find in any materialist articulation of things because equality is a right as well, one which must precede any consensus or majority view of "people or governments" which deny those rights.   Atheism is an entirely inadequate, unreliable and unsafe ideology for people who are denied equal rights and the even more elusive right to justice.