Is the right to LIFE an inherent right?

Rights are a belief sometimes coded into law. There are no universal or absolute rights because there is nothing that exists powerful enough to make universal or absolute rights. When I said that the right to life is inherent, I was speaking about our laws, not in an absolute sense.

 

We have government killing people through wars and state sanctioned killings. And we have non-government individuals and organizations killing people for all sorts of reasons. And they we have most everyone eventually dying from some reason or another.

So if that is the definition, then there definitely is *not* an inherent right to life.

 

If there is an inherent right to life, how is it people die?

 

That would be a short conversation - unless we both had chutes.

You seem to think that a "right to life" would make someone immortal, Mayor.

No-one is claiming that.

The right to life (Your right to your life) is simply based on your claim to it. It belongs to YOU.

You have a right to defend it - because - it belongs to you. (inherently)

For some, it's easier to look at it like this: "The right to life = the right to not be murdered."

I hope this helps.

See above, it doesn't look like you understood my questions or premise.

You said "someone else's life" - that shows possession by "someone."

Doesn't it?

Correct.

 

The dictionary says:

Inherent
adjective
1. existing in someone or something as a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute:
(example - an inherent distrust of strangers.)

I hope that helps.

 

It does, thanks. It helps prove and clarify we have no inherent right to life. If we did no one would die.

 

No? If you have an inherent right to life that is "a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute" then you'd have to be immortal.

The fact that something belongs to you (whatever that means) doesn't make in inherent.

You have a right to defend it, until you don't have a right to defend it.

People get murdered all the time. That is no "inherent" right either.

 

Why?

Don't you have a right to your own life?

Don't you have a right to defend your life?

Did you have to know up front - where - those rights came from - before you could have them?

 

This poll has nothing to do with those justifications for or arguments against abortions.

How can we argue your premise - above - if we can not first establish the fact that the woman ever had an 'inherent right' to her life to begin with?

 

Nope.

Not really. You can try, and in some cases it is recognized as a right.

It helps.

 

Just wow.

I have no other response to that.

 

I'm not too surpised you wouldn't have a response, but I did think you might come up with some lame ass attempt to explain how we have a "a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute" of life notwithstanding the obvious inconsistencies and contradictions in your positions.

 

If we found life on Mars... in a single celled creature - somehow living and surviving on the Planet's surface...

In your opinion.

Who (or what) would that life inherently belong to?

 

You're question contains the dubious premise that life has to belong to someone or something.

 

I'm not being dubious.

You can claim that the life the creature is living doesn't belong to anyone or anything - not even to itself - if you want to.

 

How can you say that life "belongs" to someone as if it were a possession? It doesn't belong to anyone. It simple exists. I suppose you could say for purposes of argument that a life "belongs" to the organism but we're getting into semantics here.

 

You have to consider, that rights function only in relation to other humans, not to the nature. And if you object, that many people´s death is caused by other humans, than you have to be aware of the fact, that rights can also be violated. So you can´t draw the conclusion that we have no inherent right to life from the fact, that we will die somedays (caused by nature as well as by other human beings).

However, I agree, that we don´t have an inherent right to life. Rights are an idea or a model invented by humans. So only humans can attribute certain rights to others, which always will happen by legislature or jurisdiction. This has to be true a fortiori if you consider, that rights are worthless and thereby non-existent, if they can´t be secured somehow. But rights can only be asserted and secured, if there is some kind of government or other institution, that will take care of this. So there is no way, that the right to life can be inherent.

 

If it is an inherent right, defined above as "existing in someone or something as a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute" then you absolutely can draw the conclusion that we have no inherent right to life from the fact that we die.

If we die, how can you say life exists in a person as "a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute"?

It cannot be.

If you want to call it some other kinds of "right" we can discuss it, but it cannot be an "inherent" right. By definition.

Or custom or social more.

That makes some sense, but I don't quite agree that "rights" are worthless or non-existent unless secured. The concept of rights embody important ideas of how we should interact with one another, and the idea or concept can be very important, even if not secured.

 

I don't believe in rights in any absolute sense. It's all subjective. There is no absolute morality. And again, you have to ask at what point something should get these rights you believe we have.

 

Is a woman a man? Uh oh.....

See what happens when you play with semantics?

 

For me, that's determined by by association and the fact that it can't be transferred to another being, Irieman.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Semantics:
noun ( used with a singular verb )
1. Linguistics .
a. the study of meaning.
b. the study of linguistic development by classifying and examining changes in meaning and form.
2. Also called significs. the branch of semiotics dealing with the relations between signs and what they denote.
3. the meaning, or an interpretation of the meaning, of a word, sign, sentence, etc.: Let's not argue about semantics.

What more than semantics - do we have to communicate our thoughts and ideas with one another?

 

I have to revert to the question I asked in my first poll question:

" Is the right to self defense an inherent right? "

I notice that you haven't answered in that poll - yet.

 

OK. So back the subject. How does that give you an "inherent" right to life?

Arguments based on semantics are often pointless.

Facts and logic.

 

My life is inherent to my being because my body without it would be dead.

My life and everything I can do or have done with it - is associated with MY body.

My life and my body is inseparable - in the sense that they can not be re-united once they are in fact completely separated.

Therefore - my body is just as inherent - to me - as my life is.

Are you saying that my arguments are only based on semantics?

You have been presented with both.

You have an ability to dismiss them (for who knows why) as semantics.

If I can't overcome your ability to deny anything... please let me know soon - so I won't waste any more of my time trying.

 

And when you are dead you won't have any life. Therefore by your own definition is cannot be "a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute", or "inherent."

So what?

So what?

Neither are particularly permanent. But so what? We are talking about rights.

The "belongs" line was pretty much.

I pretty much dismiss them as not addressing the issue. You still have yet to demonstrate that you have an "inherent" right -- "a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute" -- to life.