Originally posted by AThousandYoungDepends on how you define rights.
That's not true. Rights are opinions an individual has about a moral issue. One does not need to enforce one's opinion about how things should be in order to hold it.
In definitions such as yours, rights are indistinguishable from individual moral preferences and are therefore, in my opinion, void of meaning.
A simple question to illustrate this: Are your rights your moral preferences or are your rights those defined in the code of law where you reside?
Originally posted by Red NightThe moral preferences that are translated into rights are, indeed, prior to the establishment of rights. However, as I try to argue with ATY, I think that the two are not one and the same.
(Without writing a dissertation.)
"If god didn't exist man would be forced to invent him."
First Commandment: Though shall not kill.
Zarathustra: "Do not do unto others that which you would not want them to do unto you." circa 750 B.C.E. (Though probably not original.)
These last two are a sampling of what we westerners think of as "God's" m ...[text shortened]... se are examples of the natural laws that society enforces on itself without government.