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If there is no Creator, there are no unalienable rights. This is the conundrum Francis Schaeffer pointed out back in the 70's http://www.youtube.com/results?sea

by milesf 13y ago

If there is no Creator, there are no unalienable rights. This is the conundrum Francis Schaeffer pointed out back in the 70's http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=francis+schaeffer+how+should+we+then+live http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=francis+schaeffe... Unfortunately discussions about God in the general tech community are virtually impossible. Prov 29:9 talks about this too. I agree with you that the Chinese deserve the same dignity and respect that Americans and every other person in the world. That Schaeffer series is really dated, a bit corny, and difficult to get past the production values. But the content is still bang on.

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
"If there is no Creator, there are no unalienable rights. Unfortunately discussions about God in the general tech community are virtually impossible. " You consider that the creator has to be God. Why? Imagine that an intelligent, very advanced extraterrestrial form of life created DNA, and life itself in planet earth. It always amazes me how intelligent people could believe in evolution on earth totally isolated of the trillions of billions of galaxies out there. If you believe in evolution on earth(that just chaos and chance could create life), the probability that life itself was created outside earth is way higher. Discussions of hard believes(sex, politics and religion) are very hard in any public heterogenous group. I remember when Reddit was occupied by atheist they believed they were free there, but that was only if you were atheist.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Panspermia is an interesting hypothesis (and I would be delighted if we could find traces of life, living or fossilized, on Mars that we could discover shares a common ancestor with us), but I think the reason most people don't generally take it to be a serious hypothesis is because space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space...
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    Panspermia also has a parsimony problem, it ends up falling to Occam's Razor. In a sense, I think that, in the absence of evidence that particularly demands panspermia over more local theories of the emergence of life, this is a bigger problem than the "space is big" problem.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Well, to be fully accurate, panspermia doesn't even cover the origin or emergence of life anyway. It still had to start somewhere, panspermia just pushes that somewhere off of Earth (and perhaps to Mars, or perhaps off Mars and onto Earth). Panspermia is a distribution thing, and only an "origin" thing if you limit your focus to a particular planet. So basically even if you go with "aliens made us", you've still got to have abiogenesis for those aliens, or the aliens that created those aliens, or the aliens that created.... Running to panspermia to avoid the hypothesis of life beginning on earth out of natural processes is just silly. Silly because Occams Razor slices it off, and silly because it doesn't even get you away from life being a natural phenomenon.
jlgreco 13y ago
I don't need to believe in gods in order to demand that my government treat people as I expect they should be treated. Nobody does, though if some do, that is fine as well. Arguing that there are no unalienable rights because there is no gods is missing the point, unalienable rights are whatever we demand them to be. As sure as any hypothetical god could demand there be unalienable rights, so can we. This means that we will never all agree on an unalienable set of rights, but so what? With apologies to Sir Charles Napier, let us all act according to our own sense of morality.
- milesf 13y ago
  The point that the Christian makes is unalienable rights are given by God Himself, and that no human authority can take them away. You and I are valuable because we are made in the image of God. Without God, all morality and ethics are completely voluntary.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> If there is no Creator, there are no unalienable rights. The concept of certain rights being inalienable is a moral proposition that does not require a Creator -- certainly, the existence of a Creator who is also a moral lawgiver and who has defined certain rights as inalienable is a popular explanation for inalienable rights, but its certainly not a necessary condition for such rights.

by milesf 13y ago

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago

"If there is no Creator, there are no unalienable rights. Unfortunately discussions about God in the general tech community are virtually impossible. " You consider that the creator has to be God. Why? Imagine that an intelligent, very advanced extraterrestrial form of life created DNA, and life itself in planet earth. It always amazes me how intelligent people could believe in evolution on earth totally isolated of the trillions of billions of galaxies out there. If you believe in evolution on earth(that just chaos and chance could create life), the probability that life itself was created outside earth is way higher. Discussions of hard believes(sex, politics and religion) are very hard in any public heterogenous group. I remember when Reddit was occupied by atheist they believed they were free there, but that was only if you were atheist.

jlgreco 13y ago
Panspermia is an interesting hypothesis (and I would be delighted if we could find traces of life, living or fossilized, on Mars that we could discover shares a common ancestor with us), but I think the reason most people don't generally take it to be a serious hypothesis is because space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space...
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  Panspermia also has a parsimony problem, it ends up falling to Occam's Razor. In a sense, I think that, in the absence of evidence that particularly demands panspermia over more local theories of the emergence of life, this is a bigger problem than the "space is big" problem.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Well, to be fully accurate, panspermia doesn't even cover the origin or emergence of life anyway. It still had to start somewhere, panspermia just pushes that somewhere off of Earth (and perhaps to Mars, or perhaps off Mars and onto Earth). Panspermia is a distribution thing, and only an "origin" thing if you limit your focus to a particular planet. So basically even if you go with "aliens made us", you've still got to have abiogenesis for those aliens, or the aliens that created those aliens, or the aliens that created.... Running to panspermia to avoid the hypothesis of life beginning on earth out of natural processes is just silly. Silly because Occams Razor slices it off, and silly because it doesn't even get you away from life being a natural phenomenon.

jlgreco 13y ago

I don't need to believe in gods in order to demand that my government treat people as I expect they should be treated. Nobody does, though if some do, that is fine as well. Arguing that there are no unalienable rights because there is no gods is missing the point, unalienable rights are whatever we demand them to be. As sure as any hypothetical god could demand there be unalienable rights, so can we. This means that we will never all agree on an unalienable set of rights, but so what? With apologies to Sir Charles Napier, let us all act according to our own sense of morality.

milesf 13y ago
The point that the Christian makes is unalienable rights are given by God Himself, and that no human authority can take them away. You and I are valuable because we are made in the image of God. Without God, all morality and ethics are completely voluntary.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> If there is no Creator, there are no unalienable rights. The concept of certain rights being inalienable is a moral proposition that does not require a Creator -- certainly, the existence of a Creator who is also a moral lawgiver and who has defined certain rights as inalienable is a popular explanation for inalienable rights, but its certainly not a necessary condition for such rights.