tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post1604699406264892349..comments2024-03-28T08:57:53.180+00:00Comments on Darwinian Conservatism by Larry Arnhart: The Genetic Basis of Human RightsLarry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-73876045481771521782009-11-25T22:38:40.886+00:002009-11-25T22:38:40.886+00:00If a right, such as the right to life, is inaliena...If a right, such as the right to life, is inalienable, as the Founding Fathers believed, then it can not be granted by an outside agency such as an ideology or religion or political doctrine. In this sense an inalienable right is a birth right, it exists simply because we are born. But because we have choice we can surrender this birth right either willingly or may be forced by a dictator, et al. to give it up. When the right is surrendered it becomes attached to the "thing" to which it was surrendered, usually an ideology, religion or political doctrine. It is then the ideology which has the inalienable right to "life," not the humans under its "care."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-74617648105782379042009-10-18T21:26:58.667+01:002009-10-18T21:26:58.667+01:00Here we can see the implicit worry that some human...<i>Here we can see the implicit worry that some human beings might be excluded from the human family because of genetic differences that some people would consider abnormal or inferior.</i><br />This is, after all, a very reasonable fear.<br /><br />Pope Paul III's 1537 bull <a href="http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul03/p3subli.htm" rel="nofollow"><i>Sublimus Dei</i></a> expresses views based on concepts of natural rights which are a direct intellectual ancestor of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet the same tradition essentially excluded a whole set of people from consideration as properly human on the basis of their sexual nature. (I have a post about this <a href="http://lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com/2009/10/function-and-form-of-marriage-sex-and.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>.) Apart from scriptural literalism (itself highly selective in which scriptures to be literal about) it is natural law thinking which is the main intellectual basis for denying the same-sex oriented equal protection of the laws.Lorenzohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00305933404442191098noreply@blogger.com