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Originally posted by vplee123:
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If human rights are god-given, why are they not more universal?
Can you expand on that?
What are the "god-given" rights we enjoy?
Freedom of expression?
Freedom of religion?
Freedom over our own bodies?
Freedom of thought?
These freedoms are rare. We are privileged to live in a country where we take them for granted, well most of us do.
These freedoms are not given by god. If they were, wouldn't they be everywhere?
Kidneys could be assigned to god. We all have kidneys.
Human, civil rights are nothing of the sort. Thomas Paine (god bless him) invented universal human rights less than 250 years ago. His declaration, explanation, and defense of that hypothesis was the high point of the Enlightenment. Before Paine, only aristocracy had rights. Divine rights. But Paine extended them to everyone.
If you want to worship someone for your freedoms and ability to express any intellectual or religious opinion you want, worship Paine.
I don't worship him, I'm not a worshiping kind of guy, and I would not insult Paine with worship, but to each one's own. I do respect the heck out of the guy, however.
It's another mystery why Americans have certain rights, yet Somalis don't. If rights were god-given, would not the Somalis have them as well? They have kidneys.
You know the answer to the mystery. Both rights and the gods are human constructs. Rights, however, are a fine and positive construct.