We really cannot speak of "unalienable" rights if man is the grantor of those rights. All we can speak of are alienable rights. What man's law gives can be rescinded by man. The Framers understood this. Which is why the Declaration of Independence states that we have our unalienable human rights as grants of our Creator. Because they are divine grants, man cannot rescind them.
Do you have any problem with this, Gondring? Do you think the Framers were foolish men?
If man can grant rights to non-human entities, e.g., apes (as recently happened in Italy I believe), then what do rights actually mean? What is a "right?"
Do you believe you have a soul? Do you think there is such a thing as human nature?
Just wondering....
Quite so, boop. The inflation of rights destroys the value of human rights just as monetary inflation destroys the value of money. One can’t believe the cause/effect is either accidental or incidental.
So it is that the idea (inflation) has more than one kind of application in more than one field (as in, economics, cosmology, and, now it seems, in human rights). Maybe that is why we should insist that the idea of ‘rights’ must continue to be modified by the idea ‘human.’
I never said that man is a grantor of the rights...I was quite explicit in saying the opposite.
While the concept might be a human construct, that doesn't mean they don't exist without a name.
Do you have any problem with this, Gondring?
Not at all. Like many of the Founding Fathers, I recognize that our Creator doesn't have to be "God" of Christianity.
Your question about apes has man granting rights again, which I dismissed above.
Do you believe you have a soul?
Define a "soul"... First we define terms, and then discuss things...I don't want "proof by definition" or other postmodern lib garbage. Depending on how "soul" is defined, then yes. Could that soul be the result of chemical and physical interactions? Yes.
Do you think there is such a thing as human nature?
There are certain traits that are normative for humans. Does that mean every human will have those traits, that nature? No. But there could be described a normative "nature" of humans, I suppose, if we consider specific traits.
Just wondering....
Hope I satisfied your curiosity :-)