Ghost Town not for sale, owner wants to erect giant cross

Yeah, my personal belief lies somewhere in the atheist/agnostic range.

I don't think there is a great creator, but I also believe it's impossible to know.

In other words, there's no way to know, but if I had to make a choice I'm going with "No God."

But I also believe that even if there is some great creator that is responsible for all we know, that he/she/it certainly isn't concerned with our day-to-day affairs and has no interest in guiding us in any way and in the great vastness that is everything, may not even know we exist. I'm just not conceited enough to believe we're that important.

And yes, Jeff is right. I tend to find that disbelief is often confused for some level of ignorance. That's just not true.

LostKause said:

The American Government absolutely does not "give" citizens rights. We are presumed to already have rights. The government is there to protect and support its citizens.

You might be thinking about privileges.

Nope, Slithernoggin is correct. The only things you're guaranteed in life (your rights) is what the government or ruling body of the organized society you partake in has stated is given.

In the case of our government we use the Bill of Rights - perhaps you've heard of it. ;)

That's why you have different rights than people governed by alternate bodies.

Actually, according to our founding documents, Travis is absolutely correct. I think it's an important distinction to make, that the founders recognized that there are inalienable rights (natural rights given all mankind) that we all have at birth, precisely because we are all created equal.

You are correct that man (and other circumstances) can infringe upon these rights, but to assume man grants us these rights is to assume that all men are not created equal.

You can argue that it's semantics, but again I think it's important to discern the two ideas because the inalienable rights that our government is based around exist regardless of whether they are recognized by governing bodies or not.

slithernoggin said:

Believing in nothing is still believing in something.

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice....

My initial post about the government "giving" citizens rights was initially a lot longer, but I edited it down to just a few sentences when I realized how off-topic I had gotten with it.

The key work in the Bill of Rights is "unalienable" (Sometimes known as "inalienable", because they both have the same meaning.) The wording assumes that our rights are given to us by God, and the government is there to see that we get to keep those rights by protecting us and providing services. The U.S. Government does not own its citizens. It's the other way around, or at least it's supposed to.

If you don't believe in God, your unalienable rights are still not given to you by our government. You already have these rights just for being born.

And I think it is so extremely important for people to understand this, especially younger people who have been growing up with a government that oftentimes oversteps its boundaries, that I wanted to post about it on CoasterBuzz. :P

And the problem most Chrisitanists have (yes, I'm using that word again, and I'm certainly looking up thread), is that the documents referenced do not say GOD. They say Creator. And that is a big honking difference than saying GOD.

IF the founders had wanted to name the god of the Judeo/Christian/Abrahamic religions they most certainly would have done so. They weren't stupid. (Christianists certainly point to the founding fathers as being nearly divine when it supports their theocratic view, although forgetting that many were slave owners, fornicators, deists, etc).

So, those inalieanable rights don't come from the Christian God, they come from the "Creator", which could just as easily have been the great big comet that dropped off some intergalactic microbe that started the whole evolutionary thing on Earth, or it might be the FSM.

Your God belongs in the Church, your home, your place of worship, and wherever you carry him. It doesn't belong in my school, my courthouse, in my Federal Statutes, and it sure as &*#^ doesn't belong in my Constitution.

LostKause said:

And I think it is so extremely important for people to understand this, especially younger people who have been growing up with a government that oftentimes oversteps its boundaries, that I wanted to post about it on CoasterBuzz. :P

Please elaborate on the areas where the government has overstepped its bounds (as you say for the young people who've grown up with that, as I'm assuming you mean within the last 20 years.) Just curious to see what you're referring to.

LostKause said:

If you don't believe in God, your unalienable rights are still not given to you by our government. You already have these rights just for being born.

I disagree.

And I point to the fact that if you're born somewhere else under the rule of a different governing body, you have different rights.

You're guaranteed nothing by default when you are born. Any right given to you is given by those overseeing you.

If you abandon a newborn child, what does it have? What God-given right does it have? Without intervention it will lay there until it dies. Anything it is guaranteed is given by man and the constructs of his society and it's value system.

Vater said:

You are correct that man (and other circumstances) can infringe upon these rights, but to assume man grants us these rights is to assume that all men are not created equal.

But we all are created equal. We're all helpless babies that have nothing and will die without the intervention of the society around us and it's values.

That doesn't make the men unequal, it makes the societies unequal.

Which makes perfect sense. Life isn't fair.

Problem with inalienable rights endowed by some type of divine being is humans are still left to discern what those rights are because such divine being has never produced an unambiguous list (in his/her/its own handwriting) which tells us clearly what those rights are. Because of that those inalienable, divine given rights end up effectively the same as what you would have with government given rights (with those in power at any given time being able to discern the bundle of rights).

The whole inalienable rights stuff was more marketing than anything else. Statement was made in a declaration to get away from a king. Its not as appealing to say you are seeking to get away from one man's rule to be ruled by another man/group of men. Sounds a lot better to say you are looking to move to something that is beyond all men. Best evidence of that? Once we got away from said king's rule, what is the first thing we did? We formed a government that denied the very same supposedly inalienable rights from various groups of people (non-white people, women and poor people).

Best you can say for inalienable rights is there is a limit to how oppressive a government can be. At some point, the masses will revolt and overrun the gates of the palace. But that limit provides a whole lot fewer rights than the ideological life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness many in the US like to say exist. And as we have become fat and happy, those limit gets pushed down that much further.

Lord Gonchar said:

If you abandon a newborn child, what does it have?

Oh who cares? They only seem to matter when they're pre-natal and not post... #winkyface

If you really want to blow peoples' minds, tell them the Koran identifies Jesus as The Messiah.

If you really really want to blow people's minds, start naming things that aren't actually in the bible.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18757_5-things-you-wont-believe-aren...bible.html

Lord Gonchar said:

Nope, Slithernoggin is correct. The only things you're guaranteed in life (your rights) is what the government or ruling body of the organized society you partake in has stated is given.

"Slithernoggin is correct".... who am I to argue the point? If only my mother could keep this in mind when she and I argue politics....

Yes: no one has innate rights gained by simply being born.

A woman born in the United States and a woman born in Saudi Arabia have very different "inalienable" rights.

I don't buy it. There are certain things which are simply right and certain things which are simply wrong, no matter where someone was born or what their local government says. I'm familiar with the precepts of moral relativism and I agree with it to some extent, but I also maintain there are some moral absolutes. What if people disagree with me about what those are? Call me arrogant, but they're just wrong.

What are some of those moral absolutes and how do you know someone disagreeing with you is wrong?

Certain things that are simply right or simply wrong are right or wrong based on your beliefs....aren't absolutes. Wherever or whenever you're born, upon birth you have no rights or privileges. What you have are the rights the government of where and when you're born confer upon you.

Killing an innocent is pretty much universally considered "wrong."

What is the universal definition of innocent?

Pretty much universally considered wrong and universally considered wrong are two different things.

And therein lies the problem with the idea that man decides what is right and what is wrong. Because there are always some men who think something is right that almost everyone thinks is wrong.

I agree with Andy that there are absolutes.

Again, this goes back to belief; it can be argued ad nauseum, but it can't be proven.

Sometimes you guys make my head want to explode. lol