The original doc. at http://freeassemblage.blogspot.

com/2009/03/mans-rights-
without-gods-existence.html contains hyperlinks to references.

Man's Rights Without God's Existence

If God does not exist, then where do the "rights of man" come from? Glenn Beck, a
good man with good intentions, said that without God man's rights would not exist
because God gave them to us.

But the American Founders believed in something called "individual sovereignty"

and that concept has as much validity with or without God. Natural rights are
those said to belong to every human being by virtue of his rationality. This is
because no man can have the right to decide another man's use of his will, and it
is free will that is always at the center of the concept of "individualism".

It was Aristotle who termed man "the rational animal." Reason was a natural
virtue, given by nature to every man and woman of normal mental capacity. Some
people have better than normal, some people have less than normal and must be
cared for. But virtues came in two varieties, according to Aristotle: mental, such
as perception, abstraction, analytics, conceptualization, etc.

The second kind of virtue he termed "habitualized." This is virtue of character.

This virtue is habitualized because only by acting on one's moral beliefs and
practicing the principles in all our affairs can we gain what we call our
"character" and our "integrity."

"Character" is the specific manner in which we practice the principles of our

virtues, which by the way, is the practice of morals. Practicing principles of
virtues is the practice of morality.

"Integrity" is the virtue itself of being consistent in the practice of one's

morals. If we are seen to be relativists, doing one thing this time, another thing
another time, and we cannot be counted on to be the same person each and every
time, if we cannot be counted on for consistency in our means and objectives, if
we cannot be predictible in the sense that our character can be known, then we
have no integrity.

The life of habitualized virtues as the "central issue for Aristotle is the
question of character or personality — what does it take for an individual human
being to be a good person?" Character and integrity "must essentially involve the
entire proper function of human life." Britannica

"One leading commentator says you could easily think of Aristotle as a

supercilious prig. Aristotle purports to set out for us how we should live. I
suppose this is consistent with his being a prig. But it is also what a lot of
people think philosophy should be providing. Not logic chopping, not playing with
bizarre ideas which bear very little relation to the world we have to live in, but
offering wisdom, serious, considered, guidance on what life is all about and how
we should deal with it." Aristotle's Ethics

How does this correspond with "natural rights" as "sovereignty" which pertains to
what the law can and ought to guarantee, when the proposition is made that God did
not provide us with these rights?

Let me reverse the question and ask: Why are natural rights with the attendent
sovereignty of the individual only possible when given by God?

These two questions can be reconciled with the premise that "rights from God" and
"natural rights" come from the same place; and, that one camp says if we don't
accept rights as a gift from God we have nothing to be responsible toward, while
the other camp says it is individual men to whom we must be responsible because if
one wishes one's own sovereignty to be respected one must then respect the same
sovereignty as it applies to another and all individuals.

Ayn Rand Predicted Today's World

Atlas Shrugged Tops Amazon's Bestseller List --Earlier this year Ayn
Rand'sprophetic novel Atlas Shrugged was selling at triple the rate it soldat in
the beginning of 2008. Now the novel is soaring to even greaterheights, and its
trade paperback edition is currently in first place in the Classics category on
Amazon.com's best-seller list forsales in the United States. The 50th anniversary
mass-market paperback edition of Atlas Shrugged ranks as #2 and the trade
paperback Centennial edition ranks as #3. For several weeks Atlas Shrugged has
been holding steady in the top 10 best-sellers in the broader United States
Literature and Fiction category, and as of the writing of this release, different
editions of the novel stand at #3, #5 and #6 in Amazon'sranking.
http://www.aynrand.org/site/R?i=JlsV9sK8abvp7QWvpCXtNg..http://www.aynrand.org/sit
e/R?i=dqrrXDpVYiPsqpgXhwAlCg..

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