Americans are being burdened by a historic expansion in the federal government. It has effectively nationalized much of banking, bailed out financial and car companies and arrogated the power to override bondholders’ rights, fire corporate officers and control executive compensation. Health care ‘reform,’ will impose new taxes, fees, deficits, regulations, bureaucracies and price controls, and may mandate that individuals buy insurance as well. Massively expensive new environmental policies are next on Congress’ agenda. And those are just the ‘highlights.’
This metastasizing of government control has led to a great deal of public opposition and objection, from Joe Wilson’s ‘You lie’ to a massive march on Washington (illustrating how vain the hope of unity through government is).
Instead of addressing the real core issue behind such objections, the party in power and toadies in the media have tried to shift the focus onto the supposed rudeness of the objections and the lack of decorum it exhibits. This both misdirects our focus and introduces a false standard, as if at America’s creation, decorum, rather than the rights that were being violated, was the most important issue.
The real issue is whether what the federal government is imposing is legitimate, not the civility of the objections. Since the only constraint involved seems to be what can command a bare majority in the current Congress, its acts clearly violate Americans’ natural, inalienable rights to self-ownership, as described in the Declaration of Independence, and the enumerated limits on federal powers laid out in the Constitution.
Those who oppose the accelerated bloating of the federal government have tended to focus on analogies to a similar (but now dwarfed) expansion under FDR. While that is instructive, American history offers an even more dramatic case of the federal government imposing its will on an unwilling minority — the Civil War.
From the founding era on, there was widespread acceptance that states who found federal policies illegitimate, exceeding the power they had delegated to it in the Constitution, had the right to secede to defend their rights and that of their citizens. But under Lincoln and his successors, those willing to exercise that previously acknowledged right against the federal government were redefined as treasonous, to justify Union depredations during and after the Civil War.
In response to the redefinition of exercising the defensive right of secession as treason, perhaps the most important response was that of Lysander Spooner, who Murray Rothbard called ‘the last of the great natural rights theorists.’ In No Treason, Spooner derived the right to secede from both our natural right of self-ownership and a Constitution based on voluntary consent, both of which made government coercion of peaceful people illegitimate.
As Rothbard put it, ‘Spooner knew that … The State is far mightier than the individual, and if the individual cannot use the theory of justice as his armor against State oppression, then he has no solid basis from which to roll it back and defeat it.’ As a result, ‘an action to be prohibited by the violence of law … should be confined strictly to the initiation of violence against the rights of person and property.’
Since we are certainly no closer to that moral standard than when Spooner wrote, and seem to be rapidly accelerating in the opposite direction, it is even more important that we take him seriously today. So consider some of his argument from No Treason, and see if it doesn’t speak directly to Americans’ current circumstances:
That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want…No principle … can be more self-evidently false than this; or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom … a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference, in principle — but only in degree — between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man’s ownership of himself and the products of his labor; and asserts that other men may own him, and dispose of him and his property, for their uses, and at their pleasure.
[T]he inconsistency between profession and conduct… to compel men to live under and support a government that they did not want…in behalf of the of the principle that government should rest on consent.
[G]overnments…formed simply by the consent or agreement of the strongest part…will act in concert in subjecting the weaker party to their dominion. And the despotism, and tyranny, and injustice of these governments consist in that very fact.
[T]wo men have no more natural right to exercise any kind of authority over one, than one has to exercise the same authority over two. A man’s natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber or by millions, calling themselves a government.
Our Constitution does not profess to have been established simply by the majority; but by ‘the people;’ the minority, as much as the majority.
If our fathers, in 1776, had acknowledged the principle that a majority had the right to rule the minority, we should never have become a nation; for they were in a small minority, as compared with those who claimed the right to rule over them.
Majorities, as such, afford no guarantees for justice… They [are] … likely to be equally — perhaps more than equally, because more boldly — rapacious, tyrannical and unprincipled, if entrusted with power. There is no more reason, then, why a man should either sustain, or submit to, the rule of the majority, than of a minority.
Majorities and minorities cannot rightfully be taken at all into account in deciding questions of justice. And all talk about them, in matters of government, is mere absurdity. Men are dunces for uniting to sustain any government, or any laws, except those in which they are all agreed. And nothing but force and fraud compel men to sustain any other.
To say that majorities, as such, have a right to rule minorities, is equivalent to saying that minorities have, and ought to have, no rights, except such as majorities please to allow them.
The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves …
How does [a man] become subjected to the control of men like himself, who, by nature, had no authority over him; but who command him to do this, and forbid him to do that, as if they were his sovereigns, and he their subject; and as if their wills and their interests were the only standards of his duties and his rights; and who compel him to submission … this is the work of force, or fraud, or both.
[T]he whole Revolution turned upon … the right of each and every man, at his discretion, to release himself from the support of the government under which he had lived. And this principle was asserted…as a universal right of all men …
[U]nder the principle of individual consent, the little government that mankind need is not only practicable, but natural … the Constitution of the United States authorizes no government, except one depending wholly on voluntary support.
[W]ithout his consent having ever been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments… be finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave.
One essential of a free government is that it rest wholly on voluntary support. And one certain proof that a government is not free is that it coerces … persons to support it, against their will … all governments … [are] tyrannies to that portion of the people — whether few or many — who are compelled to support them against their will.
Either ‘taxation without consent is robbery,’ or it is not. If it is not, then any number of men who choose may … call themselves a government; assume absolute authority over all weaker than themselves [and] plunder them at will …
[P]olitical liberty always means liberty for the weaker party. It is only the weaker party that is ever oppressed. The strong are always free by virtue of their superior strength. So long as government is a mere contest as to which of two parties shall rule the other, the weaker must always succumb.
The practical difficulty with our government has been that most of those who have administered it have taken it for granted that the Constitution, as it is written, was a thing of no importance; that it neither said what it meant, nor meant what it said…
[G]etting the actual consent of only so many as may be necessary to keep the rest in subjection by force. Such a government is a mere conspiracy of the strong against the weak … a presumption that the weaker party consent to be slaves.
As taxation is made compulsory on all … a large proportion of those who vote no doubt do so to prevent their own money being used against themselves; when, in fact, they would have gladly abstained from voting, if they could thereby have saved themselves from taxation alone, to say nothing of being saved from all the other usurpations and tyrannies of the government. To take a man’s property without his consent, and then to infer his consent because he attempts, by voting, to prevent that property from being used to his injury, is a very insufficient proof of his consent…
The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: ‘Your money, or your life.’ [But] The highwayman … does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a ‘protector,’ and that he takes men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to ‘protect’ those…who…do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection…he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.
[W]hoever desires liberty, should understand…That every man who puts money into the hands of a ‘government’ (so called), puts into its hands a sword which will be used against him, to extort more money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will. That those who will take his money, without his consent, in the first place, will use it for his further robbery…That the only security men can have for their political liberty consists in their keeping their money in their own pockets, until they have assurances, perfectly satisfactory to themselves, that it will be used as they wish it to be used, for their benefit, and not for their injury. That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted for a moment, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support.
A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.
If [Congress] own us as property, they are our masters, and their will is our law. If they do not own us as property, they are not our masters, and their will, as such, is of no authority over us.
No man can be my … representative, and be, at the same time, uncontrollable by me, and irresponsible to me for his acts…The only question is, what power did I put in his hands? Was it an absolute and irresponsible one? or a limited and responsible one?
On what ground can those who pretend to administer ‘[The Constitution] claim the right to seize men’s property, to restrain them of their natural liberty of action, industry, and trade, and to kill all who deny their authority to dispose of men’s properties, liberties, and lives at their pleasure or discretion?
A tacit understanding between A, B, and C, that they will, by ballot, depute D as their agent, to deprive me of my property, liberty, or life, cannot at all authorize D to do so. He is none the less a robber … as their agent…
[W]e are insane enough to call this liberty! To be a member of this secret band of robbers and murderers is esteemed a privilege and an honor! Without this privilege, a man is considered a slave; but with it a free man! … And this they call equal rights!
Murray Rothbard recognized Lysander Spooner’s natural rights conception of justice, in which he followed our founders and founding documents, as ‘a great bulwark against the State’s eternal invasion of rights,’ and he urged Americans to ‘recapture that once-great tradition of objectively grounded rights of the individual.’
In an era where the tattered remains of our rights are threatened with accelerated evisceration, we should rediscover Spooner’s insights. No Treason could have also been titled Not Reason, because he showed that reason cannot derive the requirement of coerced obedience from either our natural rights or our Constitution rights. That remains true today. In contrast, reason is only the only way to reestablish the individual rather than the ever-more-powerful State as the basis of social organization.
{ 38 comments }
To undermine Spooner all one need do is refute ‘natural law’ and then make the argument for positive legislation to counteract any power inequities. Some positivists call natural law a construct based on mysticism- but some supporters of natural law back up their claims with God.
How solidly reasonable is a purely non-metaphysical basis for natural law that implies self-ownership and free-market liberty?
“and may mandate that individuals buy insurance as well.”
I think there is a real risk that this country will go into civil war over this “mandatory” clause. This is scary.
Fallon:
The same reasoning we give to people when they say supporters of the free market are closeted, rabid puritans who don’t want the supporters of all that’s right and good to mess with the “invisible hand.”
Natural law is nothing more than the sum of opinion in society as to what is “right” and “wrong” similar to the way “market demand” is the sum of the wants and needs of people. There is no “invisible hand” and there doesn’t need to be.
Fallon
“How solidly reasonable is a purely non-metaphysical basis for natural law that implies self-ownership and free-market liberty?”
Bingo. Natural law has already been refuted, by G.E. Moore’s naturalistic fallacy. All politics is just a matter of preference. We can make some headway with normal people, if we can convince them that a more natural rights based society will result in what they value, while a socialistic society will result in unintended consequences that they don’t desire. Against people who really want equality of outcome at all costs, however, there is no convincing them. They are like a mirror image of the people here who believe that anarcho-libertarianism should be pursued for its own sake, no matter the consequences. Kinsella believes that the impossibility of anarcho-libertarianism is irrelevant. There are socialists who believe that the horrible consequences of socialism are also irrelevant.
Fallon,
There is a great tradition of non-religious based support for it by many fine thinkers:
http://mises.org/daily/2426
Rothbard:
Another common charge is that natural-law theorists differ among themselves, and that therefore all natural-law theories must be discarded. This charge comes with peculiar ill grace when it comes, as it often does, from utilitarian economists. For economics has been a notoriously contentious science — and yet few people advocate tossing all economics therefore into the discard. Furthermore, difference of opinion is no excuse for discarding all sides to a dispute; the responsible person is the one who uses his reason to examine the various contentions and make up his own mind.[22] He does not simply say a priori, “a plague on all your houses!” The fact of man’s reason does not mean that error is impossible. Even such “hard” sciences as physics and chemistry have had their errors and their fervent disputes.[23] No man is omniscient or infallible — a law, by the way, of man’s nature.
[22] And there is a further point: the very existence of a difference of opinion seems to imply that there is something objective about which disagreement can take place; for otherwise, there would be no contradictions in the different “opinions” and no worry about these conflicts.
[23] The psychologist Leonard Carmichael, in “Absolutes, Relativism and the Scientific Psychology of Human Nature,”…writes:
We do not turn aside from what we know about astronomy at any time because there is a great deal we do not know, or because so much that we once thought we knew is no longer recognized as true. May not the same argument be accepted in our thinking about ethical and esthetic judgments?
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Terrific for Russ to show up: he is the mirror image of the type Spooner started off fighting as an abolitionist. Imagine, silly folks like Nat Turner didn’t even care what would happen to them as the result of their emancipation!
Wishful thinking from Russ about some great mass of very reasonable people he imagines.
Russ’s more than usually strained shoehorning of the major pet peeve he’s invented is too off-topic to counter here. I’m SURE I’ll get another chance soon. I will laugh at it, however: Ha ha.
Wait, scratch that: “mirror image” is wrong. Russ is the modern equivalent, as he uses many of the identical arguments for political slavery as were used for 19th century chattel slavery (and self-admittedly for some of the same reasons).
“Another common charge is that natural-law theorists differ among themselves, and that therefore all natural-law theories must be discarded.”
A strawman. No sensible person believes that differences of opinion are not possible with respect to matters of fact that are non-obvious.
“…the very existence of a difference of opinion seems to imply that there is something objective about which disagreement can take place; for otherwise, there would be no contradictions in the different “opinions” and no worry about these conflicts.”
Nonsense. Peoples’ opinions can differ about things such as cultural tastes, which are not by any stretch of the imagination objectively true, and yet people still fight over them.
“We do not turn aside from what we know about astronomy at any time because there is a great deal we do not know, or because so much that we once thought we knew is no longer recognized as true. May not the same argument be accepted in our thinking about ethical and esthetic judgments?”
No, because ethical and esthetic judgments are statements of value, not of fact. They are *categorically* different.
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As for the insults… please, keep them coming. They help my cause.
To undermine Spooner all one need do is refute ‘natural law’
Pfah. Do you believe in gravity? Or is that mysticism?
Russ,
You bet, you get at least one back for everyone you throw. Interesting; do you think your insults of us (mirror image of socialists” “wishful thinkers” “contrarians”, “arrogant” “revolutionaries” yada, yada, yada) help OUR cause? I’d say it’s a wash. No, I take that back: my counter-insults strike very close to home, whereas yours are wrongheaded and strained. That’s why you always get so angry and I don’t.
Not a straw man. Some people argue that. He goes on to other arguments. I merely reprinted this one for Fallon because G.E. Moore’s argument in refutation of moral subjectivism was referenced by Rothbard here.
“No, I take that back: my counter-insults strike very close to home, whereas yours are wrongheaded and strained. That’s why you always get so angry and I don’t.”
Well, you have just said that I, a believer in minimal government, am no better than a slavery apologizer. I think that is a just a tad more “wrongheaded and strained” than me calling anarcho-libertarians “contrarians” or “arrogant”. If I am such a monster, that implies that you consider the average, middle-of-the-road lurker to be the moral equivalent of the bastard love-child of Hannibal Lector and Elizabeth Bathory. So, you’re wrong, I’m not angry at all right now. I love it. Keep it up. You’re making my point for me.
BTW, saying that some anarcho-libertarians are the mirror image of hardcore egalitarian socialists was not even an insult. I was just pointing out that you both consider “doing the right thing” to be more important than anything else, and that consequentialist arguments don’t work on you.
No, it is not strained in any way, because it is based in accurate observations. You use the identical arguments they did, and for many of the same reasons. You ARE closely related to them; you merely advocate a different form of slavery. On the other hand, you constantly try to tie us to our polar opposites to further your dubious cause; very different.
Hannibal Lecter…you’re being dramatic, as usual. Some chattel slave masters were believers in kind paternalism and minimal whippings; so what? I’m sure (if you ARE a magic-badged or titled man) you have benevolent feelings toward your supposed inferiors just as many of your 19th century counterparts did. Almost all of our political slave masters have the best of intentions. Like you, their (greater) evil comes from their massive ignorance and hubris. That’s where it comes from and why you will forever serve their interests until you quit being an overseer (or decide to become emancipated).
You are probably completely off-base here though with what you think I’m calling you. If you haven’t got a magic badge or title you aren’t personally anything like a master. You are most probably just another house slave who has fully swallowed the medicine the master told him was for his own good. Don’t take on airs: Hannibal Lecter! No, no one nearly so daring and free (in his fictional, sick, misguided fashion), something much sadder and all-too-common (and thus more harmful), as you indicated.
It IS an insult to absurdly tie – in any way – someone who believes he has nor needs no master to someone who advocates murder and robbery for literally childish reasons. A weak and silly one, but an attempted insult. You consider it an insult for someone to recall the base feelings you have cited as your motivation for habitually attacking free-men. You’ve gotten angry about this trade of insults over and again, don’t pretend you haven’t.
For those interested, Marc Stevens did a nice audio of Constitution of No Authority here:
http://www.marcstevens.net/media/audio/32-no-treason-the-constitution-of-no-authority.html
Nice listening for the road.
Yeah mpol – beat up on poor ol’ Russ because it’s easy to do and makes you feel good. The real reason many people are so-called ‘slaves’ is merely because they are not strong enough to be free. You can rant all you like about shooting tax collectors but you don’t have the guts. Likewise the other Conservatives/Libertarians whose idea of tax protesting amounts to public engagement of an act which is usually considered the preserve of what little girls do.
“Shooting all the tax collectors”
Hittin’ the bottle pretty hard there tonight, Gil?
Shooting a tax collector would be pretty stupid of me as I have already identified the source of the problem and it ain’t him. Nat Turner found out the hard way.
What happens when you blow a balloon too much ? It pops.
When is a ballon easier to expand ? At the very end of it’s blowing life cycle.
It’s easier to put more air in a full balloon than in an empty balloon. I remember this experiment in a chemistry class, the teacher wanted to remove myths and misconceptions.
When a balloon is expanded, it is actually easier to further expand because the membrane is softer.
Well, this government is expanding so fast, we can easily predict that in the USA, government has reach the end of it’s lifecycle and is about to pop.
When it pops, it will not come back.
The expansion of government in the USA is not historic, it’s legendary, it has never been so huge in the history if mankind.
I believe that the over-blown concept of the nation state is about to pop.
The problem is that the tax collector also happens to be your boss.
In America, business owners are being coerced and drafted into collecting taxes on behalf of government, directly at the source: your wages.
And if the government can’t collect your wages, he will simply devalue your currency.
There is no target to shoot at.
Gil,
There is no such thing as a tax collector in America. Are you going to shoot your boss or the pay clerk ?
If you do that then you will have to shoot the SWAT and they will keep on coming until you run out of ammo.
Then, must you shoot your boss or pay clerk or the bureacrat at the government reviewing your tax form ?
There is no one person to shoot that will stop this.
Even if you detonated a 100 Megaton nuke in Washington D.C. that would not stop the “taxman” and it would even make things worse because of martial law and police state etc.
The best is to be your own boss and to cheat on your taxes and keep a low profile.
There is one thing you can do, and that is to stop spending as much as you can. Government seems addicted to consumer spending. If you stop spending, this will so badly hurt government that it will give you bargaining power.
That and stop making kids. If you go on a shopping strike and a kid strike, you basically own the government.
If the middle class stops spending and stops breeding, then the government will lose tremendous power.
“How solidly reasonable is a purely non-metaphysical basis for natural law that implies self-ownership and free-market liberty? ”
It’s not. The argument cannot imply metaphysics (self, ownership, free, market, liberty) and remain purely non-metaphysical.
Philosophy deals with Metaphysics as well as Physics. Natural can mean “of nature” but “nature” is not limited to just physical being. Metaphysical being is also natural, just non-phsyical. It’s metaphysical.
So “Natural Law” comes out of Metaphysics as well as physics.
It is natural for my consciousness to be my own.
It is also impossible, even by my own choice, for some other consciousness to “own” mine, unless I am a subset of a larger consciousness. In which case the ownership of my thoughts is still within the boundaries of a single unified entity of which I am a part. But my natural experience of my individual consciousness is unique and has given me no indication of a higher level that is present and not in agreement with my will. Furthermore, there is no possibility of anyone, physical or non-physical having my experience of being other than me. Same is true for you. Even if I am a subset of a larger consciouness, my unique experience adds to, rather is exploited by the larger system, but only if my identity is left intact. To be subjugated metaphysically or otherwise is to loose my very being, my self.
Read Heidegger.
Uniqueness of Being and Uniqueness of experience are the Natural Law regarding all consciousness. It is the diversity of experience that is the source of knowledge for any form of consciousness, including an all-seeing and all-being God.
To claim the power of will on another individual, whether by coercion, fraud, or force is wrong.
To subjugate ones own will to that of another is to refute ones responsibility for ones own behaviour.
But this act is not the same as cooperation. To cooperate, the will and the ownership of it must remain with the individual. The choice to act one way rather than another must be made consciously and wilfully for it to be a moral choice for the individual. This is how a free society must function.
Thank you Russ, mpolzkill and Deefburger for your takes. Lots to think about in the comments, links and Heidegger recommendation.
Even if I am a subset of a larger consciouness, my unique experience adds to, rather is exploited by the larger system, but only if my identity is left intact.
Typo: Should read:
Even if I am a subset of a larger consciousness, my unique experience “adds to”, rather than “is exploited by” the larger system, but only if my identity is left intact.
You bet, Fallon. Press Russ and you are bound to find he is opposed to natural law theory because he believes his imagined force for good in the world, the United States government owns you.
Being and Time – Martin Heidegger
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FBeing_and_Time&ei=saa5SuHuGoWcsgPy8fAa&usg=AFQjCNG0SJs7361buTQHKarcRhE1IVQnrA&sig2=tSvlokT_vkL4Bk1ZdHqlQw
You might also be interested in Thomas Campbell’s My Big TOE. Metaphysics unified with Physics is necessary for a “Big Theory Of Everything”.
The assumption that all reality is consciousness fits with Heidegger and, as it turns out, Einstein.
E=mc^2 is a description of the energy of interaction in physical reality. Metaphysically, it is the description of the fundamental Awareness Interaction. That is the interaction of awareness between two conscious objects. Time is the interaction potential that communicates awareness between the two entities. The two experiences combine to give c^2. The mass is the presence of consciousness in absolute metaphysical space. c is the limit of interaction as well as the constant “velocity” of conscious experience. The energy is the interaction itself, and the appearance of a physical phenomenon to be aware of.
Don’t poo-poo philosophy and metaphysics as outside your reality. You can’t experience physics without a conscious metaphysical being!
There is much more to existence than just physics!
“There is no such thing as a tax collector in America. Are you going to shoot your boss or the pay clerk ?
If you do that then you will have to shoot the SWAT and they will keep on coming until you run out of ammo.” U. Today (formerly 2A?)
Pfff. If you have “live free or die” sticker on your car then you should consider peeling it off.
No mpol, ‘natural’ law is “nonsense on stilts”. People don’t have ‘natural’ rights they have natural abilities. Some people are born strong and others are born weak. People who are born weak can plead as much as they about equal rights but they can never stand toe-to-toe with strong people regardless of how free society is or isn’t. I’m sure you, mpol, would roll up like a bug in an instant if you were in international waters and your boat was being boarded by extra-national sea pirates.
Nature used to be a term for God in the old days. The original natural law thinkers tried to discern how God wanted mankind to act by using reason. When they referred to natural rights, they referred to those rights that they believed came from God. As the West became less Christian, it expelled God from the meaning of “nature”. It came to mean simply what is. That’s why modern people can’t understand natural law theory. And it’s the reason that rights are manufactured every day like sausage. Like morals, rights have become whatever anyone wants them to be, or they can have none at all if they want. There is no objective way to determine rights outside of a concept of God.
You’re a sick puppy, Gil. Man has a nature. I can’t describe it exactly, but I think the clear minded can get close enough. In one way it’s no different than the nature of the fly. They even made a saying about it. Try using honey when encountering your “inferiors”, Gil, you’ll get more out of them.
You’re the one preternaturally scared of pirates, Gil. You want a bazooka to defend yourself from mosquitoes (MORE bugs!)
Yes, take care “live free or die” bumper sticker patrons. If Gil isn’t a cop himself, he’s showing you an all too common cop mentality. One of his spiritual cousins in blue just may play out Gil’s sick philosophy on your brainpan (and he’ll get away with it.)
fundamentalist,
That is no help of any kind. What we have all over these forums is a swarm (bugs on the brain) of folks trying to put their pet causes above liberty. You all only help to prove how crucial liberty really is…so I guess what you’re saying isn’t as bad as I originally thought, 38 seconds ago, ha ha.
You believe your god designed the human mind and gave it a nature, right? You believe he is just and good, in fact perfect, correct? Would he make man’s reason so weak that no man could use it to discern what his own nature was?
@Fundamentalist – ” There is no objective way to determine rights outside of a concept of God.”
You are absolutely correct except for this statement. However, your error is understandable because there has been little written or thought about the “bigger picture” beyond the physical. And even less has been discussed in widely public forums. Atheism still must deal with the “natural” laws of conscious interaction. Rand’s Objectivist Epistemology is such a work.
The god concept probably came about because the workings of the bigger picture are by their nature mysterious. We cannot know any more of the god mind than we can directly observe or experience for ourselves. Except for that which we can imagine.
And here’s the rub. We can only imagine that which we have already experienced in some way, and then project that thought onto the realm of the unknown and mysterious. So we think of God as a human being, because that is what we know. But this anthropomorphism of God is largely incorrect, and leads to other non-related attributes that are natural for Humans but not necessarily natural to the Bigger picture, the god-being, if it exists.
@ Gil – “No mpol, ‘natural’ law is “nonsense on stilts”. People don’t have ‘natural’ rights they have natural abilities. ”
Not so. All entities have natural “rights” AND natural abilities. It is the “natural” rights that Jefferson was refering to when he penned “inalienable rights” in the Declaration of Independence.
The right to life and the right to liberty are the same as the natural law that your conscious experience can not be experienced by any one else, your existence at any given moment is real, and your will is yours. Only God, if he exists, could effect those conditions. We are all created equal in this sense.
Our entire systems of Law and Ethics have these basic concepts as the basis of the laws. They follow, or should follow, natural law. It is the foundation of moral thought. It is the foundation of the knowledge of our existence.
What form the bigger picture takes, where it is and what it’s will might be are irrelevant to the question of self and the condition of self from moment to moment. It is the consistency of the fundamentals, both physical and non-physical that define the limits and boundaries of our individuated existence. Fortunately they are consistent!
You exist as a complex system of fundamental interaction. You exist in a world of complex fundamental interaction. The fundamentals are easily observed. The systems of fundamentals are not so easily observed.
As complex beings, we spend the majority of our lives learning about those systems. (Women for instance are a major puzzle to me).
The reason I mention Campell’s Big TOE is that this work assumes only three things: Time, Consciousness, and Entropy.
It is possible to construct a model of both physical and metaphysical reality from these three basic components. The natural laws pop out of it because they are the only answer that satisfies the conditions. Call the big picture metaphysical stuff anything you want, and the laws don’t change. Basic fundamental thought and phenomenon must still follow basic fundamental rules of interaction.
Increasing the complexity of the interaction systems, does not mean breaking the laws of fundamental interaction. Just because you “multiply” some numbers doesn’t change the rules of addition. Addition is a fundamental in relation to the system of multiplication.
Your body is a system. Even an Atom is a system. A photon is a fundamental. An electron is a fundamental. All the force-carrying particles are fundamentals.
The body’s complexity gives it the ability to accomplish what the smaller systems and the fundamentals that make them up cannot achieve or even conceive of.
Why stop at the body? Our minds are aware of much more than just what we can physically interact with. Try computing the distance to a star with only the concepts available to the five senses. You can see the star, but you cannot know it. Yet, you can concieve it’s being. You can compute it’s presence beyond what your body can directly interact with. You can predict somewhat it’s behaviour.
These are not the workings of the body. They are the workings of the mind. The conceptualisation necessary to achieve these thoughts implies the existence of a system of mind that is more than just fundamental physical phenomenon.
So, we have a “nature” that does not need a God for proper analysis. But that does not mean that our nature must be limited to just the physical or that God must be left out of the equation. We must look to the fundamentals of metaphysical existence to see the natural laws as they are, and try to keep the systems in their proper hierarchy.
Let me give you an example of hierarchy.
Quark, Electron, Photon, force particle – fundamentals.
Proton, Neutron – First order system
Atom – Second order system
Ion – Third order system (proton + electron, proton – electron, proton, nuetron + etc.)
Molecule – fourth order system
……. complex molecular systems:
DNA, water (oceans for instance)
Plants,
Animals
Humans
It keeps going. These systems from this point all the way back down to the fundamentals are all dependent on the subsystems and ultimately the fundamentals for their experience and interaction.
It is this relationship between the fundamentals and the complex systems that lead us to the understanding of “natural” law, if we care to look at the evidence.
Doesn’t the irrefutable statement “Humans act purposively” express natural law without invoking the Creator?
Mpolzkill: “Would he make man’s reason so weak that no man could use it to discern what his own nature was?â€
That’s a theological question, but briefly, God created mankind perfect but our rebellion has damaged our ability to reason well.
Deefburger: “We can only imagine that which we have already experienced in some way, and then project that thought onto the realm of the unknown and mysterious.â€
The God of the Bible is very different from humans. We share some limited traits, such as the ability and desire to communicate, which is why communications from God to humans is logical. It would be illogical if the God of the Bible existed and he hadn’t communicated with mankind.
Deefburger: “It is the “natural” rights that Jefferson was refering to when he penned “inalienable rights” in the Declaration of Independence.â€
And by natural Jefferson meant “God-given.†Jefferson was a deist, not an atheist and he believed that rights came from God.
Rights are closely connected with morality, for it is immoral to deprive someone of their rights. As atheist philosophers have demonstrated, morality and rights don’t exist universally without God. Every man is free to invent any rights or morals he wants, or to have none at all.
Fallon: “Doesn’t the irrefutable statement “Humans act purposively” express natural law without invoking the Creator?â€
It’s not so much a part of natural law as a statement of fact. Are you familiar with Rothbard/Hoppe’s ethic? It’s a close to a system without God as you can get and in fact it’s pretty darn good. It fails on a couple of levels. Being manmade, it has no claim to universality. It is arbitrary in that it requires that you start with self-ownership as the beginning assumption, whereas a socialist might want to start with something else, like the right to health care. There is no reason to start with self-ownership as the beginning premise. Also, it arbitrarily makes property an absolute. Other than those criticisms, I doubt anyone will ever come up with anything better outside of the old natural law.
If you’re interested in natural law, “Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume” by Stephen Buckle is a good intro.
“Every man is free to invent any rights or morals he wants, or to have none at all.”
No, He is free to act in any way he wishes, and to suffer the consequences there of. He is also free to invent any god he wishes or non at all, and suffer the consequences there of.
He is not free to abrogate natural law, except to his own destruction. God or no god, morals or no morals. He either exists, naturally, or does not exist. He either coexists with his fellow beings, or suffers alone. He either accepts his limitations, or suffers the consequences of reaching the limit.
God is Ok to have, if one wishes to have one, but is not necessary to establish the existence of natural law, morality, or ethics.
Jefferson was a deist, yes, but he was also a rational thinker who was not bent on making god the centrepiece of morality, justice, and law. He had seen too much of that already.
And why not? What purpose does it serve to have others depend upon your beliefs?
Isn’t it better for all if we leave belief out of the question altogether? What do we KNOW is what is important to the rational mind, not what we believe.
Belief is for the self only. It is personal to you and irrelevant to me.
Deefburger: “He either coexists with his fellow beings, or suffers alone.”
Or he invents a system, like socialism, and convinces enough people to follow him that he can murder anyone who opposes him.
Deefburger: “God is Ok to have, if one wishes to have one, but is not necessary to establish the existence of natural law, morality, or ethics.”
God is necessary to establish a logical basis for rights and morality and to establish their universality. Without God, those things are just preferences.
Deefburger: “Jefferson was a deist, yes, but he was also a rational thinker who was not bent on making god the centrepiece of morality, justice, and law. ”
I think you’ll find just the opposite if you learn enough about him. Jefferson saw God as absolutely necessary for morality. Natural law for Jefferson was God-given law.
Deefburger: “Isn’t it better for all if we leave belief out of the question altogether?”
You assume that religion is irrational belief. I realize that is the popular way to view religion today, but the natural law theorists, including Jefferson, didn’t see it that way. For them, reason proved the existence of God. Their concept of God was not based on a leap of faith. The leap of faith nonsense got started with Keirkegaard. Jefferson would never have accepted the existence of a supreme being on irrational faith. He was too much a man of his times and a man of reason and logic. Reason and logic, not faith, convinced natural law theorists that God was necessary for rights, law and morals. And ironically, the great atheist philosophers who followed centuries later reaffirmed their convictions.
I am a deist. I Believe in the existence of God.
“Or he invents a system, like socialism, and convinces enough people to follow him that he can murder anyone who opposes him. ”
We all know the consequences of THAT decision!
“God is necessary to establish a logical basis for rights and morality and to establish their universality. Without God, those things are just preferences.”
God is not necessary to establish universality. Only the existence of the universe is necessary, logically, to establish a universally applicable law. HOW that consistency in manifestation of law occurs, and whether or not there is some conscious force of will behind it is irrelevant. Only the fact of it’s universality need be considered in the logic of the law. There is no logical argument for the existence of God. Only the lack of knowledge and understanding of the Universe as a whole.
I do not consider Religion to be irrational per se. And even though I can not argue for the absolute existence of God, I can not argue against the possibility either. On the contrary, I see the greater mind and the physical world we live in as the mind of the creator, God if you will.
But Logic has no God. Logic and Reason must stand on their own and not be propped up by your guess at the Big picture or mine! Belief is a heartfelt guess. It is very personal, and illogical by it’s very nature. I feel the presence of something greater, but I can’t touch it directly. I sense there is more to existence than just the mundane, but I cannot know directly what it is. Belief is not irrational, it’s just not reasonable to any one but me through my experience of being.
Natural Law is knowable directly through interaction with the Universe. Jefferson and others saw the relationship between Universal existence and the notion of God as one and the same. This is understandable. But it is wrong to assume, even if you are Jefferson, that Natural Law requires the existence of God. Again, it only requires the existence of the Universe.
The problem I see with bringing God into the argument for Natural Law is the Faith problem you speak of. Unfortunately, many of us who believe in the existence of God begin to fall back on our faithful understanding rather than logic and reason when faced with tough problems of morality and ethics. This is an unfortunate consequence of belief and faith. It is a mistake. An honest and understandable one, but a mistake none the less.
For us to remain free, to be the creatures we are, believe what we will, have faith and moral and ethical behaviour, we must reduce our understanding of Law to logic and reason only, lest we give too much weight to what might be a narrow view of the world and disregard others perspectives on the unknown.
By sticking to logic, I leave you your faith, belief, and personal experience of God. I do not wish to impose on you my experience of God, except for that which we both agree exists, logically and rationally. Logic and rational thought then become the glue that binds our mutual understanding of the Universe, yet, lets us see the God we believe must exist. This is not denial of God. This not the removal of God. It is the clearing away of the unkown aspects, in order to clarify the analysis of the known.
What we know, in common, is Natural Law. What we experience in common is the Universe. What we interpret that to be, is up to our understanding of ourselves and place in this universe.
I believe the reason God is called upon for moral and ethical backing is that most philosophers fail to extend their cause and effect arguments into rational metaphysical logic. They are looking for a logical purpose, which requires a will, to explain morality and ethics, and so must turn to God for purposeful support of their arguments. But this turn is a guess, an assignment, and an assumption of need.
Our understanding of Natural Law, ethics and morality must come from within our selves to have meaning to us. To assign purpose of right action to a being outside ourselves is co-dependent. Rand came the closest in my opinion with her arguments of rational self interest.
Let’s assume there is a God and that this mind is rational. Now what? We have just introduced a logic, the rationality of thought, which existed already to a source which is unknown! Why? when all we really need to argue for rational thought is the logic. Logic, if it is self supporting stands on it’s own. Such as the axiom of existence; existence exists. Rational logic supports itself through the mechanism of self-evidence. Like a geometry proof, the framework of logic exists. Invoking God, State, Majority, or any other being serves only to supply a purpose outside of the self. If you need to look outside of yourself and your experience for purpose, then you are no longer an individual.
This does not mean that experience of others as it relates to you is disconnected from your experience of self. It just means that you and your experience of creation must be the source of your purpose in acting within this framework of universality.
Invoking God, State etc. to explain Natural Law is a shortcut, not a necessity. It is a convenient replacement for logical reasoning.
Deefburger: “God is not necessary to establish universality.â€
Yes, God is necessary for a very simple reason: no man has authority over another man in the areas of morals and rights. This principle is recognized by all of the great atheist philosophers of the past and most of the present. It’s is completely ignored by philosophers of ethics, not because they have solved the problem of authority, but because if they don’t ignore it they won’t have anything to do.
Deefburger: “There is no logical argument for the existence of God.â€
The reasoning logic for God is has been refined for over a thousand years. You can ignore it if it makes you happier to do so, but you can’t say it doesn’t exist. That flies in the face of the historical fact.
Deefburger: “Logic and Reason must stand on their own and not be propped up by your guess at the Big picture or mine!â€
Logic and reason are mere tools for correct thinking, as a hammer is a tool for carpentry. Try to use a hammer where you need a screw driver and you’ll have disaster. Reason is only as good as the assumptions you start with. If your assumptions are false, or you start with the wrong assumptions, the best reason and logic in the world won’t prevent you from arriving at faulty conclusions. Socialism is perfectly logical if you accept its assumptions. Starting with correct assumptions and using logic appropriately, you will arrive at the necessity of God.
But I have to stop at this point and say that it’s really amusing that you think all of the great atheist philosphers did not use logic and propped up their atheist philosophies guesses at the “big picture.†Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, Foucault, Derrida all agree with the idea that without God there can be no universal morality or rights.
Deedburger: “Invoking God, State etc. to explain Natural Law is a shortcut, not a necessity.â€
That merely shows that you are totally ignorant of natural law theory, especially that beginning with Grotius. Check out the book I mentioned above and you’ll see how wrong you are.
Deefburger: “It just means that you and your experience of creation must be the source of your purpose in acting within this framework of universality.”
That’s seems naive. You don’t think that people can interpret experience differently? That’s the crux of the matter. Socialists, Islamists, everyone interprets reality and their experiences differently. In fact, Mises agreed with many philosophers that without God, the possibility of objective knowledge is called into question.
“That merely shows that you are totally ignorant of natural law theory, especially that beginning with Grotius. Check out the book I mentioned above and you’ll see how wrong you are.”
I agree with you. All those you mention, Mises, et al, saw the need for God to explain Natural Law.
I am familiar with Natural Law theory, and I am not saying that God is not a factor in Natural Law. I am saying it is unnecessary to invoke God, or any other deity to explain morality or ethics. Everyone who has written about these subjects has eventually invoked a deity to support their claims.
I don’t see the need. I believe in God. I recognise the role my God plays in my world. But I disagree with all Philosophers and Theorist that fall back on belief in a deity to support a logical argument.
It does not matter who said what, when and then collapsed into “Because that is how God would want it”, or “Since there is a higher authority….” and such. I don’t disagree with their reasoning, just the need to support Morality and Ethics and Natural Law with the belief in God.
That said, I admit there is no other work to date that has avoided the need for the invocation! Neither has there been a satisfactory account of Gravity. Yet, like Gravity, we can point to the facts of existence and determine outcomes based on what we DO know about it, and make valid arguments about the consequences of not adhering to it’s principals.
Natural Law, Morality, and Ethics have a similar problem. The solution lays in thinking without the god and finding rational justification for the just arguments that do contain a god. This is the work undone, so far. Perhaps I will succeed where other perhaps greater minds have failed. I hope I do.
I would also like to explain Gravity I Believe it is Possible. But for now we are left with an idea unfinished.
What leaves a bad taste in my mouth is the need to invoke God to explain anything natural. The experience of God, the Belief, the Faith are all intensely personal, immeasurable, unknowable experiences to anyone but the person who has this particular experience of God.
It would be like having to hold the universe together with a ghost. That may be our collective experience, but it is a very poor logical explanation.
I see the failure in the arguments that invoke God not as a failure to apply reason or to even reach a correct conclusion to their arguments. Not so at all. I love and respect them all for the great work they did and the clear reasoning of their minds. The failure, as I see it, is that the logic and sound reasoning was not carried far enough, and that with some more effort, and perhaps new knowledge of the world, we might be able to prove Natural Law without invoking deity.
I think we are at the crux of knowledge in our day and age. There are only a few difficult fundamental problems left to solve. But there is a lot of new thinking about Physics and Metaphysics that shows promise in the possibility to explain these things in ways that do not require the invocation of deity.
I see the great mind of God as so much more than just the reality we live in. I know that there is much to know that is totally beyond my ken. But I would at least like to explain the world I DO see with out having to resort to gods and demons and ghosts. What little of God I can see, is mysterious enough. I want to get to know him, and to do that I have to be able to explain his parts as parts, without invoking the rest of him that I cannot know. I just want to be able to explain what I can know, myself.
I don’t think he’ll mind. I’m sure he would prefer my knowledge of him over my faith and belief.
“Reason is only as good as the assumptions you start with. If your assumptions are false, or you start with the wrong assumptions, the best reason and logic in the world won’t prevent you from arriving at faulty conclusions.”
What if the assumption is false, but the conclusion is correct? The best reason and logic in the world won’t prevent you from believing in your false assumptions.
“But I have to stop at this point and say that it’s really amusing that you think all of the great atheist philosphers did not use logic and propped up their atheist philosophies guesses at the “big picture.†Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, Foucault, Derrida all agree with the idea that without God there can be no universal morality or rights.”
Muse away my friend! I didn’t say they did not use logic. I said they failed to continue to use logic and invoked deity. If I did that in a geometry proof I’d get an F. But if I do that in Philosophy I get an A. If I invoke “Animal Spirits” in an Econ. class I have to cite Keynes.
I’d rather not do any of that. I’d rather find the answer that satisfies the logic AND the experience, and thereby KNOW a bit more of God.
I’m not saying that any of the great thinkers failed to advance knowledge and understanding because they invoked deity. They certainly did not fail in that respect. I’m not saying that the conclusions reached, albeit logically, were incorrect or that the path pursued from the point of the deity assumption was incorrect. I’m saying that the assumption needs to be more concrete and tangible than a great unknown diety. The failure lays in the choice of assumption, not the logic, the path, or the conclusion. Stretch out and reach past that assumption and you will find yourself closer to the truth that is your God. Not further away as some might fear.
All of these thinkers tried to reason wherever they could and invoked God only when they had exhausted the limits of their knowledge and understanding. It has always been so in great works and ideas of metaphysics and philosophy.
But how many more millennia must pass before we stretch our imaginings past the mysterious veil of deity and uncover a logical reason for our human condition?
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