...and I suggest that based on Santorum's recent tirade;
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/02/rick-santorum-draws-crowds-raises-nearly-1-million-after-tuesday-trifecta/
As a reflection of the argument from http://dancarlin.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30831 where I was viciously attacked by members for suggesting that we needed to separate our arguments from the language of religion, and where Dan poo-pooed my concern with "everyone knows what I mean". Yes. Santorum agrees with you. Completely.

If human rights come from government, then government can take them away.
If human rights come from God, then government can still take them away with enough force.

But, for some reason, people who think they have God-given rights will defend them more vigorously than people who think their rights come from government beneficence.

Is it shocking both Dan and Rick can see the simple logic there?

Neither opinion is actually true;

...and if you had read the other thread, you would have understood the argument instead of stepping on a rake in a cartoonish fashion.

Asking anyone, including extreme masochists, to reread a thread in these forums that involves religion is, and I am using only the slightest hyperbole here, a hate crime.

Just sayin.

I linked it for a reason. Boethius on the other hand, read the thread in question, because he posted in it. He apparently simply prefers to be comical.

Ah that is funny, remove religion from a country and you get Communism HA. Actually i was involved in that thread, and Dan stated that he meant nothing by it, it was a throw away line like "God Damn".

Discount the above posts feeble attempts to defend Dan because i have a better way. Recently i have been listening to a lot of Hitchens debates about religion, in them he is often asked alot of questions about why famous scientist used the word god, his response was that it proves how primitive our language is that we don't have a better word to better describe things that are so awe inspiring. I would say that Dans use of the term "God given rights" shows that our language is primitive, Dan didn't mean a all powerful celestial dictator when he said God, he meant some thing that goes above human laws.

You mean like "awe-some"?



Time to reclaim the word from these guys:

OK maybe awesome wasnt the best word to use, prehaps Dan can elaborate.

I'm genuinely interested in an atheist's opinion about what this "thing" is.

Well like Hitchens said (and this is only my view, it may not be the view of the others) our vocabulary isn't evolved enough for me to properly describe what the thing it, it often leaves atheists borrowing from the theists vocabulary because, while we don't believe in god, we dont have a word that has the weight of the word god. I suppose in relation to your question it refers to rights that have been with humanity since we first became socially aware animals, that's a piss poor way of describing it but its the best i can do.

Am I missing something or is he saying that rights can't exist without religion and using the pre-revolutionary French Monarchy as his example?

That's what he is saying, yes. That is the argument that relying on phrases such as 'god given rights' enables.

Hamster and Dan are both OK with enabling these types of bullshit arguments, as well. More than happy to use 'throw away' phrases and tiptoe around the religious and the clueless (damn repeating myself again) for fear of upsetting too many people, I guess.

Human rights or Emergent principles of human nature; they are essential parts of what makes us human, and therefore cannot be removed from us as long as we live. they are by there very nature greater than law, greater than a bronze age prayer-answering skyman even, because they predate both those concepts and the language they are formed from. We cannot be human without them. One might even go so far as to suggest that you cannot be human if you deny them...

Did you read my post, or just assume it was bullshit.

Yes. You offered the argument that Dan was too lazy to actually craft language that didn't give cover to nutcases like Santorum. Two different version of the same argument. When Hitchens spoke, you'll notice that he didn't make the same lazy mistakes.