Do you believe in the existence of inherent human rights that exist independently of any political or legal construction?
No, I do not. Much as I'd sometimes like to.
Why, or why not?
Because I'm a moral nihilist. Morals and related concepts such as inalienable rights are variable concepts that are fluid across time and space and have no other grounding. Even within the same culture and same time, moral codes can be quite different among varying segments of the populous. Morality is just a word and like many words, it can have multiple definitions. There is literally nothing in our Western Civilization that was/is not condoned by some other society with a different moral outlook.
The universe isn't ruled by morality. It is ruled by one thing and one thing only: Power. We aren't the dominant animal species on this planet because we're inherently good. We're the dominant animal species because of the power our brains give us. Pretending that we're good won't save us from the next extinction level event anymore than it would've saved the dinosaurs. At that point, it won't make a lick of difference who was supposedly good and who was supposedly evil and whether or not the giant asteroid/bee die-off/depleted ozone layer/ice age/whatever is violating our supposed "inalienable rights".
Science > Morality.
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Date: 6/4/10 01:03 (UTC)No, I do not. Much as I'd sometimes like to.
Because I'm a moral nihilist. Morals and related concepts such as inalienable rights are variable concepts that are fluid across time and space and have no other grounding. Even within the same culture and same time, moral codes can be quite different among varying segments of the populous. Morality is just a word and like many words, it can have multiple definitions. There is literally nothing in our Western Civilization that was/is not condoned by some other society with a different moral outlook.
The universe isn't ruled by morality. It is ruled by one thing and one thing only: Power. We aren't the dominant animal species on this planet because we're inherently good. We're the dominant animal species because of the power our brains give us. Pretending that we're good won't save us from the next extinction level event anymore than it would've saved the dinosaurs. At that point, it won't make a lick of difference who was supposedly good and who was supposedly evil and whether or not the giant asteroid/bee die-off/depleted ozone layer/ice age/whatever is violating our supposed "inalienable rights".
Science > Morality.