[Notwithstanding]

Lets back up a little.

Your premise is a wrong.

Even our founding documents acknolwedge that the really important rights come from God. Good governments recognize those rights and enshrine them in positive law.

Governments also create lesser rights (such as a right to a trial by a certain number of your peers), many of which derive from concepts derived from the God-given rights.

It’s called natural law.

It could be argued that animals have God-given rights.
It could also be argued that man should afford animals similar rights to those that humans have. I think doing so is a dumb idea, but your logical argument is flimsy at best.

[Freedom4US]

No, I said, human rights are a human construct. And you’ll notice, there are a whole bunch of them.

We have to use their logic against their claims - in this instance, they are positing that plants have “rights”, an impossibility. Animals do not have free will, they have very little in the way of planning for the future other than instinctual. Do you see where I’m going with this? Natural law and God given rights aren’t necessary to this discussion. I apologize if you misunderstood.

[jwalsh07]

It could be argued that animals have God-given rights.

OK, I'll bite. Convince me.

[Freedom4US]

It could also be argued that man should afford animals similar rights to those that humans have. I think doing so is a dumb idea, but your logical argument is flimsy at best.

That _would_ be a dumb idea, further it's not my idea, and inexplicably here try to tie it onto my argument. Has nothing to do with my arguments. Remember someone once wrote here on FR (paraphrased) - "Those that claim to want to treat animals like humans really want to treat humans like animals." There's a lot of truth to that I'm afraid. And how much you want to bed that the folks who want to confer "human" rights to plants, don't believe in natural or god-given rights! See how sneaky they are?