Esquilax – “Do you? How do you demonstrate the existence of human rights beyond their application and enforcement by government agencies? Your statement here implies that you have the means to detect them aside from their presence in our legal documents, so you go right ahead and do that.”
The contrary multicultural view you seem to be promoting makes rights under Sharia law as valid as those under constitutional Western democracies. It’s like saying that North Koreans have no rights because they have not been legally granted to them by Kim Jong Un.
The very idea of human rights is predicated on the notion that people have some basic rights by virtue of just being human and that someone’s’ rights are independent of the social order in which the find themselves. That is the reason why the writers of the American Declaration of Independence used the word ‘inalienable’; natural human rights cannot be separated for an individual’s existence. They are an essential part of what it means to be human. Thus a theory of natural rights rests on the understanding that it means something to be human. In short, it rests on there being an essential human nature.
So you see, my advocacy of natural law applies not only various prohibitions, but is also consistent with a theory of human rights. You, Esquilax, appear to have no theory, just unsupported opinions. Your contrarian stances, each suited to the moment, have wide ranging implications and come at a cost, like nihilism. You want to claim all the benefits associated with Divine Providence, like purpose and rationality, but you don’t want to pay the intellectual price of fitting your ideas together as an internally consistent whole.
Esquilax – “Sorry, but something cannot be complete and consistent, while still holding as many arbitrary lines as your position does. Leaving aside the fact that your position is entirely unjustified and relies entirely on assertions of spirituality that you cannot hope to even begin to prove, you still make claims about the natural order while ignoring those parts of the natural order that conflict with what you want to be true.”
Your first sentence is correct, so I claimed that the Neo-Scholastic philosophy was ‘somewhat’ complete and ‘generally’ consistent. As I noted elsewhere, perhaps not on this thread so I excuse your assumptions, the discovery of natural moral laws is based on empirical data and our ability to interpret what we observe. Natural law statements about functions and purposes do not qualify as certain knowledge. That honor goes to necessary truths known by reason applied to experience. So I’m open to changing my opinions about the essential nature of things and how those relate to the social issues of the day, but your insults, hyperbole, and diversions contribute very little to the discussion and do not help your case.
The contrary multicultural view you seem to be promoting makes rights under Sharia law as valid as those under constitutional Western democracies. It’s like saying that North Koreans have no rights because they have not been legally granted to them by Kim Jong Un.
The very idea of human rights is predicated on the notion that people have some basic rights by virtue of just being human and that someone’s’ rights are independent of the social order in which the find themselves. That is the reason why the writers of the American Declaration of Independence used the word ‘inalienable’; natural human rights cannot be separated for an individual’s existence. They are an essential part of what it means to be human. Thus a theory of natural rights rests on the understanding that it means something to be human. In short, it rests on there being an essential human nature.
So you see, my advocacy of natural law applies not only various prohibitions, but is also consistent with a theory of human rights. You, Esquilax, appear to have no theory, just unsupported opinions. Your contrarian stances, each suited to the moment, have wide ranging implications and come at a cost, like nihilism. You want to claim all the benefits associated with Divine Providence, like purpose and rationality, but you don’t want to pay the intellectual price of fitting your ideas together as an internally consistent whole.
Esquilax – “Sorry, but something cannot be complete and consistent, while still holding as many arbitrary lines as your position does. Leaving aside the fact that your position is entirely unjustified and relies entirely on assertions of spirituality that you cannot hope to even begin to prove, you still make claims about the natural order while ignoring those parts of the natural order that conflict with what you want to be true.”
Your first sentence is correct, so I claimed that the Neo-Scholastic philosophy was ‘somewhat’ complete and ‘generally’ consistent. As I noted elsewhere, perhaps not on this thread so I excuse your assumptions, the discovery of natural moral laws is based on empirical data and our ability to interpret what we observe. Natural law statements about functions and purposes do not qualify as certain knowledge. That honor goes to necessary truths known by reason applied to experience. So I’m open to changing my opinions about the essential nature of things and how those relate to the social issues of the day, but your insults, hyperbole, and diversions contribute very little to the discussion and do not help your case.
