The Revolutionary, Secular Concept of Individual Rights | Ben Bayer
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ธ.ค. 2024
- As Ayn Rand wrote, “The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully-and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it.” We can see this failure of understanding in the view, advanced by many conservatives and libertarians today, that the concept of individual rights ultimately derives from or is at least consistent with the Judeo-Christian morality. In this talk by Ben Bayer, we’ll explore some highlights of the history of the concept to understand why it is essentially a secular innovation, even when thinkers who helped advance it held Christian views. We’ll especially focus on how Enlightenment views of human nature and knowledge helped untether “rights” discourse from its antecedents in religious thought.
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Ben, watching your development as a thinker, philosopher, and now intellectual has been an extraordinary joy. To take a topic like the "Secular Concept of Individual Rights" and condense it down to just its essentials in one talk is a massive undertaking that you met head on and presented excellently. Keep up the good work.
Wow Ben! Absolutely excellent! You have grown tremendously in the past few years! I found this talk to be very well thought out, comprehensive, informative, and very interesting. Keep up the great work! I can’t wait to hear what you do next! Thanks!
I hope this gets written up with the cut sections put back in. I really liked this talk.
Great talk Ben!
Have you ever had a philosophy class in college? I think I can explain how your course went like mine: "We did not learn about the difference between communism and individual liberty (for example). We learned about a bunch of lunatics who probably would have been institutionalized in a rational society (sans Aristotle, who was not taught correctly). We had no idea why we got a good grade, just glad the class was over, never to "think" about philosophy again. What a dirty trick.
I have come to the conclusion that politics is the application of philosophy to the citizenry, and we are simply following bad philosophy, not knowing the difference.
I had a really clear and concise philosophy professor in CT Richard Volkman. He presented the different arguments and their underlying assumptions clearly and was one of the few professors in that department who connected his thinking to the real world.
A right is a restriction against the state or the collective.
The “collective” is imaginary
@@darkslayer2912 A collective is a tribe, association, club, or cabal.
Def by non-essentials. Rights are moral judgments of freedom of action in society. The effect is what you say.
@@darkslayer2912 Are you kidding me?
We have come a long way from a faith^understanding asymmetry of the dark ages challenged by Aristotelian thinking through Averroes and Aquinas. Rights have value because they form an asymmetric relationship with freedom. Rights are selectively defined freedoms that are available to the individual as a logical use and 'outgrowth' of the acceptance of freedom - political and/or economic freedom (Rand's 'social context'). The greater our acceptance of the general volition of freedom (rather than duty or obedience, tyranny or enslavement) the greater the value of the freedom^rights asymmetry. Intellectuals, of course, will attempt, in a roundabout way, to logically justify rights that are compromised in their volitional freedom based upon duty, 'social contracts', obedience and enslavement. The Enlightenment thinkers highlighted the rational asymmetry of rights availability and freedom acceptance against the political challenges of their time. For the modern thinker rights form a duality with duties hence the rights confusions of our time.
BS “asymmetric”
So many insecure religious mystics having an existential crisis in the comments!
Like Rand's subjective output Ben is using a lot of words that when you think ab out them signify NOTHING.
1) Their is know such thing has natural rights.
2) The individual can claim rights for themself.
Example, never eat fish on a Friday.
However, those self made individual rights have no meaning in collective, government of the people, secular law..
3) Religious rights can only be rights t the particular faith they follow and are no more a "right" than individual "rights"
4) The only rights that have any true meaning are the rights handed to the collective via freely elected representatives of a fixed term Government .
Agree or disagree?
Yes because "endowed by the Creator" is secular and parchment guarantees are enough to defend individuals.
Don't be silly
> "endowed by the Creator" is secular
A ham sandwich is a black cat
Force is sometimes required to defend life and property. That doesn’t mean property rights don’t exist.
Aristotle’s natural justice (re:@49:50) is mentioned briefly; once in Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, part 7 and once in the Rhetoric, Book I, part 13. Political justice has two parts, one natural, the other legal. The legal part is particular and can vary from place to place, and often does. The natural part is universal and not found to vary, although it could.
Do you know humans who survive by faith and unable to survive by reason?
@@Chris67-p9v no
here's an example of a fundamental freedom. a natural freedom of the natural law of things not man-made law. I am endowed with the life and since I'm alive I have a right to defend my life against any thing with any means possible with equal or greater force to protect myself my property and the land that I'm indigenous to our homeland. no one gave me the privilege to do so I said I could do it. I just automatically can just like any living creature has a right to do so. quite frankly 81 human that's ever going to go to heaven if there is a heaven in the first place every living thing has a right to live. we're all going to burn in hell forever. and we will not see the devil going down. because where we're going he doesn't even dare.
There is no such thing as natural law. you are not knowingly endowed with anything.
The only laws that matter are law.s made knowingly by humans.
Nature does not knowingly do anything certainly it does not knowingly make law
Nature is a process that can alter" being" but nature does not knowing know it is a process.
Which law exactly gave you the right to be anything?
Nature unknowingly gave you existence but not the right to live it.
If that were the case why do pregnant women have miscarriages, still births, deformed or damaged children surely a knowing nature would not allow such waste.
If it were true why do we have natural disasters or pandemics that kill millions of all ages ?
Btw Nature does not do heaven or hell
Nature is just an" is" live with it (hopefully) .
. I don't know what you think you're supposed to sing as natural law but go look it up referred to as a circle of life or many other things is a natural law and order of things so yes there is such a thing as natural law go educate yourself before you speak
if there is no such thing as natural law then what is this?
natural law, in philosophy, system of right or justice held to be common to all humans and derived from nature rather than from the rules of society, or positive law. if it was not a thing there wouldn't be a definition for it now would there be. Crow brain people what you think you know nothing about.
You evade mans focused mind as source of rights. And mind needs rights to function as guide to life.
@@TeaParty1776
"You evade mans focused mind as source of rights. "?
You are either not reading my comments or you are more stoned than I thought you were.
My entire last comment was pointing out that it is man's brain that give the people "rights".
Nature has nothing to do with it.
Get a grip Tea Pot or you'll end up in the looney bin.
Values only come from existents.
LOL.
That must the most stupidly obvious comment I've read on YT.
While “jeep” is a fool and has always been.
So if rights are tied to what we think about the goodness of the person then those that are not as good have less rights than those we deem better?
Well a murderer loses his rights as far as I can tell.
@ fair enough but the person only loses that right in a very extreme circumstance. One could be very evil and still have a right to life
Rights are tied to property and self sovereignty/ownership. If you don’t steal or hurt, no one uses force on you. If you do, others (government) are allowed to defend their bodies and property with force.
@@Individual_Lives_Matterplease do not spread your libertarian garbage in Objectivist corners.
There's no such thing as "self-ownership." The owner owns things, i.e., things belong to him. He does not belong to himself, which is a senseless statement.
The nice thing about Judeo-Christian rhetoric is it can mean whatever you want. Is it the liberalism of Maimonides, Aquinas, and Moore? Is it the aggressive and homicidal sanctity of Augustine? Is it the obsessed epistemology of Paly?
So anything goes, there is no reality, no Truth? False!
@@timberskid *"So anything goes, there is no reality, no Truth?"*
For those who posit the existence of a magical consciousness that can do and make anything, that is EXACTLY what it means. For them, "reality" is but the WHIM of that being at any given moment.
Aquinas was a liberal?
@@ManofSteel007 compared to his contemporaries absolutely
you can be morally virtuous and not have any more values at all. as long as you have a conviction that's enough are the moral values that the person may have many bad beliefs for their morality. but to those people those types of moral values that they have still could be very virtuous to them when it's not the others. moral virtuosity depends on the person and how strongly they feel towards the topic that it may be under. morality is not finite it's not set in stone it is created by experience and being thoughtful of others. like being an honorable person I'm sure a lot of people would love to say that they're an honorable person but that does not mean they are. I hate to say it it's the latter truthfully most people whether they're male or female are lying degrading thieving puddles of spew. putting it nicely.
I believe that among mainstream religions, Christianity does a better job of emphasizing individual rights in its core teachings. However, throughout history, wherever the Church held political power, we’ve seen numerous instances of fundamental human rights violations, particularly against those labeled as heretics. Since the 4th century of Christianity as a state religion, the Church has persecuted individuals with differing biblical interpretations, sometimes resorting to execution. Secular philosophers have significantly shaped the idea of individual rights, so the West should be cautious about accommodating more authoritarian interpretations of religion, such as Islam, which promote Sharia law that severely undermines individual rights and favors collectivism over fundamental human right. .
what is the concept that comes from the Middle ages but it would be of the church and not die word of God has inheritance of the church because somehow the church became more powerful than the Creator God himself
A right is an abstraction of something possessed, intrinsically, that when exercised does not diminish another person's rights. Rights properly exercised enhance the practitioner and/or the receiver to accomplish a goal. That's as simple as it gets. Adding to it isn't necessary.
So having a "right" to a minimum wage is unarguably a "right"?
I don't think the ARI would accept that.
>A right is an abstraction of something possessed,
A right is a moral justification of freedom of action in society,
@@TeaParty1776 The only problem is that morals are not a right. Morals are an emergent property of the culture's belief mechanism, and completely subjective. A right is archetypal in concept.
@@AtomkeySinclair Your faith in society as God is noted. Your ideas are based in floating abstractions that rationalize your unfocused mind, not in the evidence of the senses,
Here are observed, concrete facts and facts abstracted by the focused mind from observation:
Mans focused mind is his basic method of survival. Eg, farming, manufacturing, medicine, sanitation, communication, transportation. In society, the initiation of force can stop people from using their focused mind to guide survival action. IF man desires to live, he must be free to guide his actions w/his focused mind. A morality of life justifies that freedom. That is a right.
@@TeaParty1776
A right is what the powers says is a right, even when the powers are wrong.
Interesting that he skipped from Middle Ages to enlightenment. He on,y briefly touch upon talking about renaissance and did not speak about the reformation. Surely the enlightenment will look much different. There was a change that is why we think of the enlightenment as a particular period in history. But gone is much of the development towards it. I could contrast views in the US at 1800 on race to today’s and see a sudden and dramatic change. But I would be skipping the civil war, separate but equal, and many more developments and events. He is skipping even more centuries here.
Every view is selective to focus on what is most important in a specific context.
@@TeaParty1776 okay but since he skipped so many centuries it is easy to see why there might be a drastic difference even if there was a change due to Christianity
@@carlpeterson8182 I believe you are right
incomplete and cherry picked
the only moral code behind our freedoms not write a write is something somebody gives you I give you the right to do so and I can have the right to take that back. fundamental freedoms that are given you are endowed with them and they literally say we are endowed by our creator with these on inalienable rights. go read the Constitution it's right there at the very beginning.
Look out at reality, not inward focus your mind
They find their roots in Judaism.
No.
@ yes. Ten Commandments are the first time individual rights are asserted.
Absent the premise that our rights extend from our Creator, there is no objective basis whatsoever for asserting there to be any rights at all. As asserting there to be such a thing as 'rights' is reduced to personal, subjective opinion. Regardless of how many agree, a conglomerate of subjective opinion, remains a subjective opinion. And who am I to insist that my/our subjective opinion be imposed upon you and who are you to insist that your subjective opinions be imposed upon me/us? So, if rights do not extend to mankind from their Creator... 'rights' are thus reduced to "Might Makes Right." Which is the natural domain of barbarism.
*"there is no objective basis for asserting there to be any rights at all."*
So, like ALL the rest of the Subjectivists, you blithely declare rights are NOT facts of reality *discovered* by man. You arbitrarily declare rights are merely the WHIMS of some consciousness, *divined* by man. You just squabble with the rest of the Subjectivists over WHOSE WHIMS you are going to WORSHIP.
Of course, contrary to the WHIMS of ALL you Subjectivists, rights are NOT the ARBITRARY DECREES of some consciousness(es). Rights are the same as the law of gravity - DISCOVERED FACTS of reality. Specifically, rights identify the FACT that the individual's hands are HIS hands, not the hands of someone else. Rights identify the FACT that the individual's brain is HIS brain, not the brain of someone else. Rights identify the FACT that the individual's effort (aka use of his body and his mind) is HIS effort, not the effort of someone else. Etc etc.
Put simply, rights identify the FACT of reality that the individual's LIFE and EFFORT is HIS life and effort, NOT anyone else's life and effort.
So much for your FALSE declaration that there is "no objective basis whatsoever for asserting there to be any rights at all" apart from the ARBITRARY DECREES of some magical creature. Talk about preaching and practicing the SAME "Might Makes Right" barbarism of those you rail against!
You ARE them.
@@bleigh3369
You are perfectly correct there is with or without your none exist god no "objective basis whatsoever for asserting there to be any rights at all."
However, If we assume you are a citizen of a Nation, let's say the USA, you as a citizen of that Nation have both rights and duties to and for that Nation.
You are like it or not a part of the collective.
That collective in order to survive has over time been forced by circumstances to introduce a wide collection of laws and rules in order that the collective will not decline into anarchy.
Those laws and rules have been made legal by the elected government of the collective.
Individuals can rebel or go rogue against those laws and rules but in doing so will become outlaws of the collective,
your choice.
Rand would have destroyed the mechanism that the collective have agreed to by denying universal suffrages ability to elect representatives to form a fixed term government of the people, by the people, for the people,.
Rand would replaced it with a self-selecting, self-appointing, self-serving, self-perpetuating small elite of the most wealthy and most powerful.
Think Elton Musk who apart from being fabulously wealthy has no redeeming qualities at all.
You, not being a member of the elite, would be a slave to that self-made elites power.
Your choice.
Prove me wrong.
To claim that rights come from a "creator", you first have to show there is a "creator". And to show there is a "creator", you have to show there is a possibility for a "creator" to be there in the first place.
Assuming by "creator" you mean a "god": by our current understanding of the world, consciousness emerges from brain activity. It cannot magically exist in a disembodied state. So not only is there no such "creator", but there was not even a possibility for there to be such a "creator".
Not to mention that talking about a "creator" presupposes that our world was created instead of existence having just existed at all times. Yet you not only presuppose our world was created, but that it was by a physically impossible mystic "creator", and one that your book specifically describes, instead of 6000 other books. And then you claim your rights are objective because it was granted not according to the whims of men but the whims of your "creator".
@@bleigh3369
Pity ARI can't accept alternative views.
What are these individual rights and why are they good? Please let me know who decides what is good? Example it is not an answer to say that human rights are good because human flourishing is good. Then one just asks why is human flourishing good?
And the presenter said Locke was different than the medieval view because he wanted reason behind and supporting one’s faith. Aquinas says to Christian scholastics,”Hold my beer.”
Life is conditional. It can cease. To live, man must distinguish life from death, thus "good" and "evil." But if you dont want to live, you dont need that distinction. If you desire to live in society, you need rights. If you dont desire to live in society, you dont.
@@TeaParty1776 you still have not answered the question. You state while they could be useful but not if they are good or where they come from
@@carlpeterson8182 I did answer. Again, man is alive and can die. If man wants to remain alive, he needs to distinguish life from death as effects of situations or actions, thus the concepts, good and bad. Your implicit context is the mystical claim that morality is transcendental. Ie, that man is not morally important that man needs moral permission to live. No! Only if man desires to live and focuses his mind onto concrete reality, does morality exist. If man does not desire to live and if man evades focusing his mind, then there is no morality.
The focused mind identifies mans survival needs, ie, morality.
With that as context, one moral problem is survival in society because man can initate force against otherr people, contradicting mans need to use his mind. All societies face this fact, despite their responses to it.
Rights identify and justify the moral limit to freedom of action in society. You may build a house but is it morally yours?
Rights Of Man-Ayn Rand
Your question is not really about individual rights, but about the good itself.
You seem to be setting up a Socratic method argument that without God telling us what is good, we have nothing at all to distinguish good from bad.
Can we just skip to that, or do we have to do the whole dance first?
@ not exactly but that one can different subjective opinions about what is good. So I can have an opinion and you can have your opinion but I do not have to care about your opinion. Not in morality. But all I asked was for a secular grounding to why an individual right is good. No matter what you think of God or Christianity a secular view has to have that. So let me ask for it again.
If your individuals rights come from papers written by men ( ie: your rights were granted by men) then in equity, men can write papers (laws) and stripe you off your individual rights. Think about it.
Did you listen to the talk before commenting? If so, you would have heard that according to the speakers rights are things that exist due to human nature, not something granted by men.
You are absolutely right.
@@IanGilmorethis is contraction. If they come from human nature then humans can take them away.
*"If your individuals [sic] rights come from papers written by men (ie: your rights were granted by men)..."*
The individual's rights don't "come from papers" nor are they "granted by men". Individual rights are facts of reality *discovered* by man. BIG difference! And, while human beings can act in opposition to those facts of reality, acting in contradiction to the facts of reality (ie "stripe [sic] you off [sic] your individual rights" aka *violating* your rights) does NOT make those facts disappear. Think about it.
Rights were not 'granted" by men. They are recognized by some men. Every time we say rights are granted by men,---we accept a dictatorship.
The problem with every ARI video is their seldom or never a counter point of view.
Nobody is their to say, your are wrong, and explain why,
This guy is being paid by ARI to promote sales of ARI products, nothing more nothing less.
Rand spent half her life writing and speaking about her dodgy opinions.
Everything after that is sales profit.
I’m with Aristotle on this one. Rights fall under the genus of Agreements. Moral-principle is the demolition of a word, principle, by attempting to qualify it with a descriptive word, moral. The new term, moral-principle clashes with the definition of the word being qualified.
Better to discern between principles as pertaining to nature and choices pertaining to man. A principle is that which cannot be otherwise. A choice can be otherwise. The best that could be attributed to the inclination is that it is a principle of human that it has the ability to choose. But, the term moral principle is mistaken.
So, too, is naming a genus as such. We put rights in the genus of Agreement and then, once we have a thing belonging to its proper genus, it must be differentiated from all the other similar things in that genus. This completes the definition - genus and differentiation. Other similar things that are agreements are a handshake, a contract, a promise, and an NFL playbook. What differentiates rights from other agreements is government protection. A right is an agreement protected by the government.
Too many speak of rights as if they are a bodily organ grown from birth, like a pair of lungs. This is what, today, has come to be known as a natural right, or an inalienable right, to be born with a right to %whatever.% Rights are as alienable as a supposed protector of them chooses to disagree.
"Rights fall under the genus of Agreements"
No. Rights identify facts of reality about human beings. They are discoveries *about* man, not *agreements* between men.
Of course, since man is a volitional creature, he is capable of choosing to act in contradiction to the facts of reality (ex: see "dishonesty"). Of course, such anti-factual actions do not make the facts of reality disappear (ie a LlE doesn't magically make facts of reality vanish in a puff of smoke). The facts of reality exist regardless of man's assent to them. THAT is the meaning of "inalienable" in regards to rights.
@@bleigh3369 I’m with Aristotle on this one. Rights fall under the genus of Agreements. Moral-principle is the demolition of a word, principle, by attempting to qualify it with a descriptive word, moral. The new term, moral-principle clashes with the definition of the word being qualified.
Better to discern between principles as pertaining to nature and choices pertaining to man. A principle is that which cannot be otherwise. A choice can be otherwise. The best that could be attributed to the inclination is that it is a principle of human that it has the ability to choose. But, the term moral principle is mistaken.
So, too, is naming a genus as such. We put rights in the genus of Agreement and then, once we have a thing belonging to its proper genus, it must be differentiated from all the other similar things in that genus. This completes the definition - genus and differentiation. Other similar things that are agreements are a handshake, a contract, a promise, and an NFL playbook. What differentiates rights from other agreements is government protection. A right is an agreement protected by the government.
Too many speak of rights as if they are a bodily organ grown from birth, like a pair of lungs. This is what, today, has come to be known as a natural right, or an inalienable right, to be born with a right to %whatever.% Rights are as alienable as a supposed protector of them chooses to disagree.
@@WolvesOfApollo So you can not even address, let alone rationally dispute, a single word I wrote in contradiction to your arbitrarily asserted claims. You can only copy and paste your statement, while completely ignoring the arguments made against it.
That certainly says all one need say about the rationality and honesty of your statement.
@@WolvesOfApollo This is a dumb view; in a democracy or republic (which is considered the least tyrannical system but with your beliefs I don't see why), at best, you have a government that supports what you agree with in terms of rights 50% of the time, unless the entire culture happens to agree. IE, if the government can change your rights, the odds of that being done in a way you support likely arent better than 50%. At worst, like in the US today, 25% of the population votes against the other 25% of the population in order to see who can exert force on the other. (~50% of the US voted; of that, ~25% is on each side)-
it gets even worse than that, as about half of Kamala voters and about 30% of trump voters DONT ACTUALLY SUPPORT THEIR CANDIDATE; they vote out of fear of the other side- which means that you have only 12.5% of the US population who actually wants Kamala as president, and only about 17.5% who actually want trump to be president.
Did the rest of the population "Agree" to be governed by the other side?
I am not arguing with your definition of a right; I am arguing that your definition and society's acceptance of it is the cause of force being used on the MAJORITY of the US population. If the definition of a right is an agreement between a citizen and an entity that can exert force on how much force can be exerted, RIGHTS ARE USELESS simply because people disagree.
The point of rights is precisely the opposite; a right is what other individuals cannot do to you, whether or not they are government- and if the government or other individuals violate those rights, that's considered morally wrong. It's a moral viewpoint, a moral principle- and the objectivist view is that only a society that defends that principle, where the government defends those rights (as a moral principle) instead of violating them- those are the societies that best allow individuals to flourish and pursue happiness.
@@jonathanbauer2988 Rights fall under the genus of agreements. What sets them a part from other species of agreements is that they are protected by governance. The best constitution, rule by excellence, can protect them.
Perhaps it is time to consider embracing the idea that no person or people is inherently born with greater or lesser rights than any other person or people.
Sound's great, now get the leaders of the world to agree with you.
:) we Jeep-ers are leaders. LOL
The American Revolution in thought considered and institutionalized that idea.
@@TeaParty1776
Didn't work very well did it.
@@TeaParty1776 I agree. This country was an experiment. It was by definition the first Self-Governing Free Constitutional Republic in the history of humanity. That required instruction and cultivation. That never happened. And now we find ourselves back to the beginning with the government having entitlement of the people. ( and thinking and believing we are a democracy)
LOL, a lot of truths said here, but talk about missing the actual point... Typical Objectivist tunnel vision.
I wouldn’t take seriously any defense of rights coming from Ayn Rand, she was crazy.
You must be "educated,"
That is a brilliant logical argument - not.
Typical trolling against the greatest of philosophers. I bet you are either a starry-eyed socialist or a Christian.
@@TeaParty1776
Better educated than you that's for sure..
@@aeomaster32
It's a more brilliant logical argument that Rand and her acolytes ever came up with.
I don't agree with your view of Christianity as not being about the individual; that its focus on Christians being a part of the Body of Christ as indicative of some sort of collective concept.
You have to do some mental gymnastics to avoid the necessity of the INDIVIDUAL to have a truly unique, personal epiphany that Jesus is the Christ, that He is the way to experience living in line with, in truth with God.
One cannot be a part of the Body of Christ via any other way: not your parents, not your friends, not your children.
Indeed, the biggest sorrow of Christians is knowing this truth: they have loved ones whom they will not be with in the glorious afterlife.
Belonging to the "Christ club" is a natural consequence of shared beliefs and love of Jesus.
The true follower of Jesus in America today at least is generous, time-giving, wealth-sharing, and active loving of those who are very unlovely.
These are to acknowledge that those who are poor and needy are deserving of respite of their circustances... even if self-inflicted. Loving the unlovely is to help raise the awareness of those who make poor choices, outright break the law, then bring them to the God who is loving but demanding (or rather, commanding).
The commandments (of the 10 commandments) of human-human interaction speak directly to the INDIVIDUAL as to what is acceptable (not acceptable).
Just a few thoughts.
*"I don't agree with your view of Christianity as not being about the individual..."*
Every one of your 'arguments' about Christianity being about the individual applies equally to communism and every other form of Collectivism. In other words, you need to check your premises when it comes to the concepts of Individualism and Collectivism. They aren't valid.
it is Christianity and it isn't Christianity. if you believe in Almighty Creator God has the Trudeau Christian belief. because our laws of our land are created under the fundamental laws and the fundamental laws are the natural law of things. and if you are in abrahamic believer or some Creator God believer then the natural law would refer to your creator God's word the creator of God's word is law. thus he is natural that is of the natural law of things.
First, you have to show there is a "god" at all before you can talk about whether it is the source of rights or not.
Scholarship nonsense. Battle of Meggido (1500BC ) Thutmose lll is your Moses. Yet if you read the scriptures you will discover how a matrix has been laid over our world and Christ is the escape route. The celestial sphere will show you the dragon,, which is El Shaddai in the hebrew text. Joshua son of Nun, is the egyptian myth of Nun, and the Ankh is an inverted Globus Cruciger... You can believe what you want, but what is called the holy spirit, was present before the big bang, and with the light of consciousness, one can unravel the mystery for yourself.
Do you ever get dizzy?
@@TeaParty1776 Turiya look towards its meaning. who is dizzy?
@@Bluebaggins Turiya?
dizzy is a jazz musician altho some say putin is dizzy
@@TeaParty1776 And individual rights are a concept that is created via a construct, yet those arguig the meaning have no concept of what the construct is. In my undersanding its a red herring created by a smoke screen. As for music, take three threads of fibre (as in lines of melody) and twist a thread (Chord) now weave the threads into a cloth and you get a veil., good luck. Classical Trivium.
@@Bluebaggins Rights are a moral view of freedom of action in society,a need of living in society. Every society has some moral view or it would disintegrate into constant war of all against all. Thats reality,not a construct. You,however, may be a construct.
This is ridiculous. Our rights come from God, that’s the core and heart and essence of our Divine constitution.
Even Ayn Rand had as her mentors Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas, two brilliant beings convinced in the Absolute nature of God.
Gloria in Excelsis Deo!
All the glory be to Thee O’Lord!
They why is this Pope (put in place during the obama administration), in bed with communism, and not rejected? Because you are not thinking. You are following. I don't reject God. I reject the teachings of him.
Which God? Thomas aquinas's or Aristotle's? Cuz they are pretty different.
@@gabrielduran291 More importantly, our rights did not come from a belief in any God. They came from our intellect as thinking individuals.
There is no God.
@ The concept of God certainly exists. So does the concept of magic, perpetual motion, Santa Clause and unicorns.
This is where you Objectivists go wrong. You start out with something which Rand says and you assume it is the gospel. ..But you never question Rand's foundation. You're starting at the conclusion and then walking it back to fit Rand. ..And don't get me wrong, I too love rand. But she's not infallible.
Despite her declarations, Rand take's much on faith and mysticism. For example the idea that only humans think, not animals...Or having this worship of the idea of the Enlightenment's spontaneous generation of truth, wisdom and overall goodness. ..Or about the clear existence of property/moralty eg Robinson's fishing pole vs Friday's fire stoking rod... No matter what you think about those things, they are based on faith. Faith is what we default to when our finite pools of reason go dry. ..Rand is a brilliant woman, don't get me wrong, ..But to you all objectivists, (Who I admit, are almost always incredibly smart bunch in most other regards in general), you are all so enamored with Ayn that I think you forget she's a human being, and as such is wrong from time to time. ..She's smarter than 99.99% of anyone out there, but she still is human. If she were alive today [and American born] I'd vote for her for President. ..But you take her on faith. ..And even she wouldn't want you to do that. ..You do have some great info and make a good argument. So I do appreciate that. ..This is just my feedback ..Objectivists have the same level of hubris the Bolsheviks did.. This should scare anyone. .
An objective mind isn't based on blind following a personality, it is based on the logic and evidence presented to it. One of the traps many so called readers of Rand fall into is to consider Objectivism as a set of commandments by a cult leader.
This is quite the opposite from the truth, because the moment you don't think for yourself, you exclude yourself from Objectivism's philosophy -- It is REALTY that must be obeyed using the faculty of reason, not blind following the thoughts of some other person. Rand insisted on independent thinking.
Moral principles are principles that a individual can voluntarily live by.
They are perfectly legal has long has the don't break secular law.
If those moral principles break secular law then that individual can be punished in law for breaking secular law.
Example, so called Sovereign-Citizens have a moral principle they don't need a Drivers license or Vehicle insurance when driving.
The secular law says otherwise, that's why Sovereign Citizens are a pain in the bum.
They waste police and court time cost and the tax payer time and money.
In other word secular law trumps moral law.
Religious laws are to be ignored.
Easy really
Secular law should never have violated individual rights. I’m no sovereign citizen but I see their point. Taxes are immoral and a violation of property rights.
@@Individual_Lives_Matter
Sir you are both morally and secularly WRONG.
Taxes lawfully applied can never by immoral or illegal.
I'll take it that your are a citizen of the USA has such you have a moral and legal duty to uphold your somewhat aging Constitution.
Like any citizen in any country you have both rights and duties of your citizenship.
There's no such thing has a free lunch.
"The US Constitution
"Article I, Section 8, Clause 1:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; . . .
Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution provides Congress with broad authority to lay and collect taxes for federal debts, the common defence, and the general welfare.1 By the Constitution’s terms, the power of Congress to levy taxes is subject to but one exception and only two qualifications.2 Articles exported from any state may not be taxed at all,3 direct taxes must be levied by the rule of apportionment,4 and indirect taxes by the rule of uniformity.5 The Supreme Court has emphasised the sweeping character of this power by saying from time to time that it reaches every subject,6 that it is exhaustive7 or that it embraces every conceivable power of taxation.8 Despite few express limitations on the taxing power, the scope of Congress’s taxing power has been at times substantially curtailed by judicial decisions with respect to the manner in which taxes are imposed,9 the objects for which they may be levied,10 and the subject matter of taxation.11"?
Take away the revenue raised by lawful taxes and America or almost every other nation* would collapse into anarchy and civil war within 24 hours.
Count yourself lucky you are in a position to pay tax.
*Saudi Arabian citizens don't pay tax,,
*"Taxes lawfully applied can never be immoral or illegal"*
So your principle is that law - regardless of content - can "never be immoral or illegal". In other words, your principle is that WHIMS backed by the gun of government are ALWAYS valid.
In other words, for you neither the facts of reality nor the ideas of man are 'valid'. ONLY a FIST fits your definition of 'valid'.
Thus assault, theft (taxes), r@pe, murder, slavery, etc etc ad nauseum are NOT immoral acts unto themselves for you. If the 'right' people, or 'enough' people, arbitrarily declare - at the point of a 'valid' gun - that r@pe is "legal", you accept such r@pe to be MORAL.
Talk about COMPLETE subjectivism - ie total WHIM WORSHIP!
*"rights and duties of your citizenship"*
Contrary to your principle here, the individual is NOT the PROPERTY of the State. The "citizen" has NO "duties" he must perform in the service of that State.
*"Take away [tax revenues] and America...would collapse into anarchy"*
A valid government - as the Agent of the individual's right of self-defense - indeed must be paid for. That is not in question. THE question is whether or not the State has the 'right' to put a gun the heads of everyone living in that State and FORCIBLY TAKE values from its citizens for WHATEVER ends it seeks - be it for defense or social programs etc.
Of course, since - contrary to YOUR principle - the individual is NOT the PROPERTY of the State, that State may not TOUCH (for ANY reason) the life and effort of the individual. In other words, the valid services of government (ie its actions as the Agent of the individual's self-defense - police, military, courts, etc) must be paid for VOLUNTARILY rather than through forcible CONFISCATION (aka taxes). You IGNORE that distinction, treating THEFT and TRADE as if they were *MORALLY* the SAME.
They ain't. Not even CLOSE.
But it is telling that you consider them to be the same here.
@@bleigh3369
Yes, because secular laws are the only principle that requires the individual citizen to have the self-discipline to maintain a stable civilised, law abiding society.
Moral principles and natural law are both meaningless.
Technically the money we pay in taxes never belong to us in the first place.
Assuming you are and a American citizen they belong to the US treasury, if you fail to pay you tax dues then you become a thief.
Taxes are neither an assault or a crime they are the dues we pay in order to live in a stable, civilised society and to have that society protected from outside and inside enemies .
You being and example of the later.
"law abiding society"
nameless here believes that "law" - regardless of context (ie laws which demand assault, theft, r@pe, murder, and slavery) - is of VALUE to him according to some standard he has yet to identify.
That places him in the same category as the Southern Slave owner.
Talk about the 'inside enemy' of EVERY individual in "society" indeed!
"civilized"
One thanks no name for identifying the fact that treating the individual as the PROPERTY of "society", to be disposed of as IT sees fit, to satisfy ITS ends, is nameless' DEFINITION of "civilized society".
Southern Slave Owner mentality indeed!
One thanks the troII here for identifying that fact. It's always helpful when eviI SELF-identifies.
Good bye to the creature.