;-P
Thing is, I can find a pretty good _logical_ justification for most of the "morally sponsored" rights that relgious folk tend to "have".
An easy one is the right to life. A society cannot exist if all the members are dead, so we should protect the lives of the members. Thus, we tell them they have that right.
Stealing, too, should not be tolerated. To steal, you must have a concept of property - which most societies have nowadays. Thus, you must also have desire and/or need for property. Allowing people to take things you own will only make your life worse, and that does not make for a happy society. So we give you the right to own property and punish those who try to deprive you of it.
And so on. The neat thing is that I can do all that without relying on the vague, imprecise notions of whatever the heck some unknowable God wants us to do. I like my rights spelled out for me, and I want to know what will happen to anyone that tries to take them away from me. Preferably, I would like to see it happen, too, rather than "have faith" he'll eventually get what he deserves.
Someday, when mankind has advanced socially and mentally, we will no longer need to "own" things. (This is a long way off, so no need for a silly little communist revolution.) And when that day comes, if the right to own things was based on religious principles, we would be thoroughly screwed. It's a bad idea to revoke or alter a right "given" by God, don't you think? However, if those rights were given by men, then it's not only acceptable to change them, it should be expected to change them as societies needs change.
Morals pretend to have a higher authority behind them, so anyone who dares to contradict them is automatically a sinner - or sometimes worse, an actual agent for Satan.
Ethics should be determined by Man for Man, and be changeable as needed.
Rights based on moral principles will never be universal.
Rights based on ethical principals will just take a long time to be universal. |
