Because God-Man Can: the Giving of Human Rights

FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, GOD gave commandments, but never any rights. Then came the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment. Suddenly, God started giving rights to human beings, and inalienable rights to boot. The right to Life, Liberty, And the Pursuit of Happiness. Jefferson couldn't be sure whether these rights came from God, or from nature, fromneither, or from both, but he knew they came from somewhere, by god, so just to be safe, he gave credit to both. Besides, when revolting from Great Britain, its best to be confident, and well covered. Rather interesting for Jefferson, the atheist, to be willing to utter such nonsense, considering his scientific training and inclinations. But Jefferson always did want to be liked, and badly. Like all politicians, he was willing to say or do whatever it took to get elected, though he hypocritically pretended to care nothing for politics. To this day we unquestioningly accept this belief, that God gives humans certain fundamental rights a priori, automatically. Just like humanity accepted a God of commandments for thousands of years. IN fact, the commandment-giving God is still every much with us. The Bible and the Koran still are held inviolable, and both do nothing but give commands, with no rights mentioned. American conservatives are particularly adroit at invoking a rights giving God in order to justify their fervantly held belief that America is the land of ultimate virtue. The truth is, of course, that we measly little humans don't even know for sure whether God exists, and if so, what God's nature is. Maybe somebody on another planet has it right, but we humans certainly don't, at least not yet. We have not the faintest idea where our rights come form, nor, for that matter where we come from. There is no evidence whatsoever that any God gives us any rights whatsoever, but there is a tremendous amount of good eveidnece that human beings often blather about the rights that God allegedly gives. The blather assumes many forms, depending on the particualr human blathering. But its all much the same; sheer, unsubstantiated speculation. Don't we wish we lived in a universe in which God gave us basic, decent civil human rights, ANY civil rights, rather than in a universie in which we have to fight for them, tooth and nail, like savage warriors, to get any rights whatsoever! Oh well. So be it. Right now we're in the stage where God gives us rights. Maybe someday our descendants will reach a stage where Humanity, God, and Nature are understodood as aspects of the same thing, and God-man will give rights to god-man, because god man can.