Ethics

More on Rights & God

By Ed Brayton

I am happy with the discussion generated by my first post on rights and God. Here is some more food for thought. I think the Acton Institute does a credible job arguing a good scholarly case that religion or Christianity is necessary for human rights.

I saw their special "The Birth of Freedom" at its Washington, DC screening with my Positive Liberty co-blogger Jason Kuznicki. You can read my account of the program here and Jason's here. You can also watch the entire program in short clips on YouTube. The first one is here.

I think though, that, based on what the Bible says in its text and the history of the Christian West, groups like the Acton Institute will at best have a half-full argument. The other side will always have a half-empty critique. It's a "selective" reading of both the Bible and the history of the Christian West that supports notions of God given human rights, liberty and equality. And the most notable expositors of unalienable human rights were men like Thomas Jefferson who, though they believed in a rights granting God rejected every single tenet of orthodox Christianity as Jefferson did in his October 31, 1819 letter to William Short, where he listed by name and rejected the following:

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on January 14, 2009 (boomark / email).