Are human rights contained within human nature?

Question

Human rights either have to be set down by a higher moral authority (God) or they are intrinsic to human nature. Because there is evidence for neither the existence of a Deity, or that they are intrinsic to human nature are they a fallacy? Yes I realize that they are applied by the U.N. but they are just a delusion if not contained within the essence of human beings.

ikiraf, you're first contention is incorrect on a scientific basis. Evolution did not evolve based on society. It based on individual needs and interests.

Answer 1

The laws set out by G-d, those in the Torah, we're for the individual to practice and live their lives by. The New Covenant through Jesus was more of a "human rights" themes covenant, as in love thy neighbour as you love thine self". Within that saying, one would have to feel love for themselfbefore being able to love anyone else. Problem is, we don't love ourselves, and we show that through our actions and treatment of others. Herein is where philosophy and psychology overlap one another. Dieties like the UN make up doctrines and such to remind us of how we should be treating one another, decently and with compassion. For example, do you think that a suicide bomber has love for anyone, especially themself? If they did, it would not be so easy for them to sacrifice their own live to irradicate so many others' lives. If they did, they would have the capacity to think of their potential victims as human beings, with the right to exist and live, they would think of the families of those victims and the toll it would take on them to lose a loved one, and they would think of their own families who will also be affected by such behaviour. Self centeredness is human nature, human rights are perpetrated and enforced by those who have the capacity to think outside the tiny bubble they know as "their world". It doesn't take much, but it takes a lot to have a higher level of thinking than one's primordal instincts to be able to function and behave in a humanistic and cilvilsed way. The events as of late are heart breaking to say the least, and were easily preventable if those responsible had love in their hearts, and respect for other inhabitans of this planet. Does it not break your heart to see the leftovers from poachers of endangered animals? Does it not break your heart to see film footage that the %&$#%#@@@) nazis took of their inhumane actions at Belsen? Dieties like the UN act like Big Brother and are looked at as "authority" because they are here, on Earth and can affect people, whereas G-d pretty much leaves it up us to do the right thing. Too bad we keep letting Him down.

Answer 2

You are wrong. It is intrinsic to human nature and it is based on evolutionary need and reason. There is significant amount of evidence for those, and very recently there was a major book on the subject. Can't remember the title or author on this instance. Evolutionary needs of social animals to have some functional fairness to others as well as social rules(some of which are no longer needed) The reason based ones are just pretty self evident. Mostly based on reciprocity.

No deity has ever had any role in morals. Even the Ten commandments are based in social needs and reasoning. Health, economic, and functional needs that existed in those days. Even the exclusive monotheism is based in social needs. Not many people can worship different deities in small space and not cause conflict for many reasons relating to or about it.

Answer 3

No that is why we need them ,
because it is mans nature to abuse other humans
so an authority is needed to install these human rights ,
but i would not rely on God ,most of the world atrocities have been done in his name .

The Spanish Inquisition wiped out and tortured thousands of people in My country ,so much so ,that we still hate the Spanish today.

And 400 years ago we kicked religion out of the government ,and control and today Holland is one of the leading countries with Human rights .

Answer 4

Yes they are, and it is based on our consistent nature, not our evolutionary nature. Our consistent nature is our soul, the characteristics of our soul, and our skills made by the growth of our souls into our body (this human one).

What is not rights, is the evolutionary nature, that is the aggression, killing, malice, deceit, abuse, corruption and total evil that this World has evolved to.

Our rights are pure and within us. They must be kept healthy beyond and within any evolutionary nature to have our consciousness to know that we have maintained our rights to exist existentially. If our evolutionary nature abuses our consistent nature, we have lost our rights through fear and abuse. We then have to stand up and argue for our rights whenever our consistent nature is being hurt, abused or made ill. Then we have some rights for our soul and character, and thus a universal right for any animal, species or spirit that lives. It is our consistent nature that matters versus the evolutionary even material nature that is the battle of rights. The consistent universal laws of nature must win and then we have our rights, in tact.

Answer 5

They most certainly not are human nature, the very word "nature" tells us that.

If anything we can say that they are the product of the need for Civilization, and the limits Civilization places on human nature.

God does not call for Human rights, but a sacrifice of your own desire, to lift up your fellow man

Answer 6

Everything religious is a fallacy. How ever I think that the human rights you speak of stem from love and love is what brings harmony the the universal conscience that we exist in.

Answer 7

I do think believing in rights is an unjustified belief. There are so many other moral theories which make so much more sense and do not rely on uncertain metaphysical principles. The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre claimed that a belief in rights is no more justified than a belief in unicorns - there is no proof that rights do not exist, but then there is no proof they exist either. You offer two possibilities, but I think on close examination neither is a satisfactory foundation for rights.

To take the deity route, there is simply no religious evidence for the view that God granted humans rights. There is the very large problem that this view of rights depends on a specific religious worldview, but even if we ignore this problem and take for granted the Judeao-Christian system, what reason is there to think God gave us rights? The morality of the bible is not a rights based morality, but a kind of virtue ethics (New Testament) or Divine Command Theory (Old Testament.) If anything, the idea of human rights is at great odds with the Christian worldview which sees humans as having obligations to God, rather than rights against God. Rights has no better footing in any other religion. Claiming that rights come from God answers nothing since no evidence can be offered to support this view. In fact Christianity existed for hundreds of years before anything like our idea of rights was developed.

Taking the other possibility also offers no reason to believe in any sort of ontological right. This option is the secular option, but if we graft it on to a secular framework, it works no better than when it is placed in a religious context. Why do humans have intrinsic rights? If we evolved from another species, can any non-arbitrary line be drawn at which one ancetor was born with intrinsic rights? What is it about our DNA that creates these ideas of rights? Now we can tie rights in with individual characteristics. Say, a person's right to comprehend voting gives them a right to vote. But there are a couple of big problems with this. 1: Why even create the unnecessary entity called "right?" Why not just say a person's ability to comprehend voting means that they should be allowed to vote because being forbidden to vote causes them hardship? This avoids all the complex metaphysical problem which have traditionally plagued rights theory. Instead of debating the irresolvable problem of who has what rights, why not just say that we should act so as to cause the least amount of suffering? If rights are based on individual characteristics, then rights are unnecessary for morality, since we could simplify moral problems by just examining those characteristics and avoiding any talk at all of rights. 2: The other big problem for human rights based on individual characteristics is that it can become arbitrary discrimination. If the human right to not be killed and eaten is based on our high intelligence, then humans lacking high intelligence have no right to not be killed and eaten. Humans who have less intelligence than pigs should, under this view, be killed and eaten before any swine is harmed. If its actual characteristics we have, very soon some non-humans will have more right than humans. I don't necessarily see anything wrong with this, but it is obvious that this is no longer "human" rights, and many supporters of human rights today would not be happy with the logical conclusion of this route.

Another possibility for rights is that they have a pragmatic justification. Rights are fictional creations of the legal and political systems, but there are fictions which help to organize society and prevent chaos. But if we do adopt this view, there is nothing special about rights. They can and should be cast off when a better theory comes along. Seeing how rights today justify things such as the horribly selfish behavior by the wealthy while people literally starve to death, the exploitation and torture of non-human animals for the most trivial human gains, as well as many other injustices, a strong case that the time has come for a new theory can be made. Rights have also had a dark history, having been used to justify slavery, patriarchy, and exploitation throughout American history. So if we are going to make a pragmatic case for rights, it is by no means obvious that our use of rights comes out intact in the end.

ikiraf: Ok, but if you base rights on reciprocity, you must conclude that humans who cannot have reciprocal relationships have no rights. The severely retarded, senile, handicapped, cannot reciprocate. Do they have no rights then? You also should not confuse rights with morality in general. Even if there is an evolutionary need for fairness and social rules, fairness and norms are an intrinsic part of nearly all moral theories. This provides no evolutionary explanation for rights, only for roughly fair moral theories. If evolution provides a justification for rights (versus other moral theories) the fact that roughly modern ideas of rights weren't developed until the Greek stoics, and weren't widely accepted until the 20th century is a bit of a problem. Whereas other traits with evolutionary explanations are found in all cultures, rights has been found only in a very few. Plus you face the big problem of violating the naturalistic fallacy. Even if there is an evolutionary psychological (EP) explanation for rights, why should we accept rights? There is after all an EP explanation for aggression and xenophobia, but we condemn these practices. If you say its because rights are "good" and xenophobia is "bad" you are only smuggling in a moral view not derived from EP. At most rights can be explained by evolution (like aggression can be), not justified by it.

Answer 8

Human nature tends toward the evil and human rights tends toward the good.
So human rights are to curb the actions of human nature.

Answer 9

Absolutely. The right to life belongs to the one who owns it, and no one has the right to initiate force against you in order to take what you perceive to be yours. If what you take and make of your life and it's liberties do not themselves initiate force against another, you have the right to do ANYTHING the existential world allows of you, and the right to anthing your own mind can thing of doing. Only the politics and the initiation of force prevent men from having all that is due them.