I reject your premise. In fact, I think that ascribing our rights to a creator weakens them, as not everyone will agree on the nature and preferences of the creator. Moreover, people are more fickle with their beliefs than with their contracts.
But rights are not a matter of contract. They follow ineluctably from taking human life as the standard of value. That's all there is to it! Now, you may say that not everyone has to take human life as their standard of value, and you'd be right. But such people are often easy to spot: criminals (value money above human life), totalitarians (value the state above human life), terrorists (value their creator above human life), animal-rights activists (value animal life above human life), greens (value "nature" above human life), etc. But the overwhelming majority of people take human life as their standard of value, whether they acknowledge it or not, so this is a much firmer foudation for the Rights of Man than any book or sect.
u may reject gridlocks premise - but that doesnt make u rite
You reject the premise, but then give a laundry list of people who value the rights of everything from the ozone layer to the family pet above that of man.
The overwhelming majority of people in the United States at this particular time hold basic human rights as a irreducible necessity, but this condition cannot be divorced from the founding principles of the Declaration of Independence that brought it all about.
The fact of the matter is that agreement on inalienable human rights is more the exception than the rule. If there is not some reason outside of ourselves for them, societies have evolved time and again to the point of denying these rights. The pressures are always there. Even in the modern United States you have the promotion of abortion or the potential misuse of the Patriot Act to hold certain citizens without trial or charges.
We live in a happy time where Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are guaranteed to us. But if we throw the Creator over the side, this condition will not last for long.
The major religions of the ancient world (worship of Baal, Maloch, Adrammelech and Anammelech, etc) DID NOT value human life except as a sacrifice. Human sacrifice (including infants) was the norm.
The worship of Yahweh (YHVH or YHWH) was the exception and His followers were the minority. Life was given such a high priority that even the blood of animals was to be handled carefully.
Even with a creator, we humans did not value "human rights" until instructed to do so. Humans were TAUGHT to value life -our most basic right- by God.
WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
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I firmly agree that rights are not a matter of contract. Contracts are legal promises among men. A binding agreement that action 'A' will result in action 'B'.
Since our rights are not given by man, what agent is responsible and by what authority?
By saying that the rights we enjoy are not endowed by a Creator is an attempt to erase the first two paragraphs of the D of I.
America was not built on moral relativism.
"I reject your premise. In fact, I think that ascribing our rights to a creator weakens them, as not everyone will agree on the nature and preferences of the creator. Moreover, people are more fickle with their beliefs than with their contracts."
Your post is based on the false assumption that our beliefs about God actually control who he is. If in fact God is accurately described in the Bible, it matters not one whit what people actually believe about him.
If lots of people refuse to believe the theory of gravity, it doesn't mean gravity will cease to exist.
Your right about it weakening our rights however, for it takes away our right to be god ourselves. But then, the bible warns of the outcome of that thinking repeatedly.
Your post is exactly the reason the founders of this country made a point of saying that "we are enowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights" for if we are not then our rights, the right to life among them, depends on which of your laundry list is in power.
By making it clear that these rights are inalienably ours they make it clear that it is righteous to crapcan any group coming to power that seeks to abridge them.
Not if there actually is a creator. Your premise assumes a priori that there is no God and then tries to speciously inject this assumption into the internal logic of God-based belief systems. If there is a God who gave us these rights, then by definition our rights are not weakened by acknowledging what is then a fact; they are instead infinitely strengthened. On the other hand, if there is no God, then no-one has any rights outside his own ever-fickle mind or that of others because we are then nothing more than atoms and dust just doing what atoms and dust do.
...as not everyone will agree on the nature and preferences of the creator.
The proverbial five blind men feeling different parts of the elephant may have disagreed on the nature of the elephant, but it does not follow from their disagreement that there was no elephant.
Moreover, our courtrooms count as evidence that not everyone will agree on the nature and preferences of any contract. By your logic, we should no longer believe in the existence of contracts or agreements of any kind.
Moreover, people are more fickle with their beliefs than with their contracts.
Not in situations where their beliefs are enforced with the same degree of authority as their contracts -- which was the case for the vast majority of human history.
But rights are not a matter of contract. They follow ineluctably from taking human life as the standard of value.
True in the sense that sunny days follow ineluctably from the weather deciding not to rain that day.
That's all there is to it! Now, you may say that not everyone has to take human life as their standard of value, and you'd be right.
In terms of world history, you are living in the highly aberrational dream world of Western Civilization. 99.999999% of all humans who ever lived did not live in societies where human life was the standard of value.
But the overwhelming majority of people take human life as their standard of value, whether they acknowledge it or not, so this is a much firmer foudation for the Rights of Man than any book or sect.
False: See above -- the overwhelming majority of people do no such thing (SEE: WORLD HISTORY). They take their OWN human life as their standard of value but they have to be taught to apply this to others. The moment it appears advantageous to stop believing all human life is sacred and just do whatever you want, then this "firmer foundation" slips out from under us faster than a Malibu hillside in a downpour. As Doestoevsky said, "If there is no God, then everything is permissible."
An eternal omnipotent God who metes out eternal punishment in the next life creates a major and permanent disadvantage to abandoning the belief that all human life is sacred. There is no alternative to the Judeo-Christian value system that can be anywhere near as effective in this regard.
No God means there is no such thing as "rights"; there is only rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.