There are no natural rights— rights one has just by virtue of being human. (The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, p. 288)
This runs very counter to what most people believe, but, given atheism, it seems very hard to deny. After all, the materialism which is the basis of nearly all modern atheism denies the reality of any moral truth or value.
Most atheists I know would agree with this, but would emphasize that a person need not believe in moral truth in order to be a nice person. One can claim that morality is simply culturally relative, biologically advantageous, or otherwise subjective, and still be a good person.
This seems true enough, but is a side issue. Whatever I may think of a particular atheist, or even the impact of atheism on social health, the question is over truth. Is it more likely that humans have rights, or that God does not exist? Personally, I think most of us wouldn’t be confident enough of God’s non-existence to accept the idea that people don’t have rights beyond what governments happen to give them. Rather, I think we would say that a government which enslaves its people, or slaughters a racial minority, is in the wrong.
And this is because we have a sense of the moral that is as basic as our sense of the physical. The fact that there is no physical evidence for the moral no more refutes the moral than the lack of moral evidence for the physical refutes the material.
But this does make materialism seem rather arbitrary. It would be rather tidy if we could dismiss all knowledge that isn’t as easily reduced to mathematics as the material. But, setting aside the convenience of it, and the rhetorical value of being “scientific”, I don’t see any reason to think that it is true.
Rejecting a basic fact of human experience as illusory requires a reason that is more palpably true than the experience itself. This could be done in theory, but no one has yet to offer a reason to believe in materialism (or in atheism) that is as obviously true as the fact that it is wrong to torture innocent people.
Fide Dubitandum 
June 5th, 2013 at 3:36 am
I used to think I was freely choosing all actions I took. There is absolutely nothing we see, touch taste smell, that promotes the idea that God IS.
There is nothing that proves God isn’t; only arguments that try to state their case.
If I follow the pure logic and reason for a man’s Atheism, I understand why it makes sense to him. Who am I to tell a man he has to believe ANYTHING?
I believe that God IS; that is what is important FIRST. My responsibility is to share the “Good News” the bible proclaims, i.e. God proclaimed, Moses proclaimed, Abraham proclaimed, Daniel proclaimed, Ezekiel proclaimed, Isaiah proclaimed, Jeremiah proclaimed, Solomon proclaimed, David proclaimed, Jesus proclaimed, Peter proclaimed, Matthew, proclaimed, Mark proclaimed, Luke, proclaimed, John proclaimed, Paul proclaimed, etc.
We are the only living souls with the ability to be conscious or aware of even the idea of there being a God. Animals do not have free will. They have no concept of anything beyond what they see or touch. They behave just as creation intends them too. They have no choice in the desire to promote and protect their offspring. A wounded bird being chased on the ground will go in the direction that is away from it’s nest that has eggs in it. I have seen a doe feign injury and run away from it’s fawn in sight of a fox, to protect the fawn.
These are strategies animals always use to protect it’s young the BEST that they can. Can’t think of one animal that doesn’t instinctively do this. If food is scarce, an animal, in the wild, will allow the stronger offspring to thrive, at the expense of the weaker ones’ life! The animal never gives up trying to keep all it’s offspring alive. Animals do have a reaction to the death of offspring, that is notable. They certainly do seem to have a easier time in accepting death than we do.
I can’t count how many times I have heard and seen the mistreatment of children by their parents! How many parents have actually killed their own children?? People who make decisions that harm others in an effort, not to survive; but to please themselves. People taking more than they need while other people starve. People killing each other in the name of their ‘god’. We actually have to have organizations raise money to help starving children. The more time goes on, and the increasing lawlessness continues, the love of the greater many just keeps cooling off. One walk down the street is easy enough to prove that. People have nothing to give of their own accord. He that has insight can see it plainly.
We live in a world NOW that, when any sane person really thinks about it, is going to need and intervention from OUTSIDE the world to change it.
Governments have become the dependents of ALL nations.
It is man’s pride in his achievements that highlight the news and peoples interest. Either that or the worst that man can do to his fellows. Once and a while Governments that promote ONLY their own self interest, and always bringing God into their motives. The world empire of false religion is the beast behind it ALL. It is responsible for the worst atrocities in the history of the world. The motives of governments, in world affairs are justified by ‘faith’ of the nation. Slander God all day; but DON’T YOU DARE step on that flag! “In God We Trust” ??
How can anyone believe there is a God using the evidence of history ?? How many religions back the young men that go off to war??
Jesus said that he was no part of this world.
It seems to ME that it wouldn’t take something ELSE to be Atheist; if one weren’t just brought up in it.
I had a woman in my life when I was a young man of 21-22. She had helped me a great deal. I was the guy that your mothers didn’t want you hanging around. She was a behavioral psychologist and therapist. I had been going to see her weekly for about 6 months. I looked forward to it because I was becoming enlightened to myself and the flaws in my character. Anyways, at around 6 months she drops the bomb on me that she’s an Atheist!! Being curious it boggled my young and ignorant mind.
Preconceived ideas, or pre-judging, prejudice. Period. I had assumed an Atheist could not have any concern for another human being, AND still be an Atheist. Like it would be breaking their code or something.
It’s looking at the physical evidence and making up ones mind about it all. It is clearly logical, BASED on the physical evidence that God isn’t.
That IS, the physical evidence, that is physically provable.Atheist make up their mind or just always believed they way they do.
Not so with people that believe God is; OR more specifically, those that come to depend on God, for everything.
The idea that THIS is all there is, completely makes absolutely NO sense to us. I would find no reason for living if it were not for God.
Screw that. This world is absolutely too tough for me, without enduring it for a promise of something MORE than what currently is, and having faith in that. I am absolutely not tough enough to live without dependence on God. Wouldn’t ya know it; it turns out to be prophetic.
There’s just one little item that has brought me to first believe that God IS. Actually, it grew into God. It started with the Creator of the Universe for me.
Logically follow all material nature back to it’s beginning; and no matter what the argument, there had to be an INTELLIGENT ENERGY FORCE that began it all. If it weren’t for that little ‘bugger’ I may not have found all that isn’t tangible, and the Bible that expanded it all for me. Either God is everything or God is nothing. What is your choice to be ?
June 27th, 2013 at 11:01 am
I’m glad to read a part of your story like this, and hope that God keeps sharing wisdom with you.
Personally, I become more convinced of his reality all the time, but it seems to be taking me quite a few posts to explain that.
Best to you.