What are the arguments for human rights? What are they based on? Where does the magical list of 'rights' come from? I've tried to discuss about it with some friends of mine, but it seems to boil down to something like "you're immoral/evil if you don't believe in human rights". The concept of human rights is not an obvious truth to me. I'd like to hear some arguments for it.
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CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.
Human rights
- Thread starter Hermit
- Start date
Clem is Me
Well-Known Member
As society has expanded to include more and more locations, and as humans have become able to deal with each other over vast distances in relatively short time, the empathy that used to extend only to your neighbors, then fellow citizens, then fellow countrymen has naturally progressed to include all people, as there is no reason to assume any individual is of lesser value to a society than you are. If you are afforded certain rights, having done nothing more remarkable than being born and not dying, certainly anyone else who has acomplished these things is as deserving as you are.
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Phred
Junior Mint
- Aug 12, 2003
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It's a difficult concept. "rights." Do we have a "right" to anything? No... we really don't. In nature you have a right to whatever you can get. A lion eats a gazelle... if she's fast enough to catch one. A lion with a broken leg is hyena food.Hermit said:
But we're human beings... we have a society that transcends the jungle. As members of that society, we would like to think we are granted certain things. If a gang of thugs comes in the middle of the night and takes you away, what can you do about it? Not a damn thing... standing alone, we're vulnerable. But standing together, nobody is alone. That's what "human rights" are... membership in society... a pact.
Sometimes we break that basic pact and look the other way. We stop fighting for our fellows and just quietly watch them be beaten, or starved, or tortured... We convince ourselves that there's a good enough reason to do it this time, or maybe that it's none of our business. We change from being a healthy lion to hyena food.
And then one night there's a pounding at our own door.
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