Is that a serious question?  Of course they have rights, which are enumerated in the Constitution you refer to.  Among their rights is the right to believe in God or not to believe in God.

Peace

jofa, Aethists not only have rights, they also have greater access to the Divine Mercy of Christ than any others. In Sr. Faustina's diary she said Christ told her that the more a person sins, the greater is the love of Christ for that person and his desire to help them overcome what sin is holding them in posession.

King Henry 11 Holy Roman Emporer of Germany, Italy and Switzerland of the 10th Century: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ and May God Bless Us All!

Yes, this seems like an appeal to the existence of a moral law.

There is a classic argument from Philosophy 101: if there is no objective truth -- but morality is relative -- then why is it wrong to murder? 

The answer would be there is apparently a universal moral standard. 

The question then is, where does it come from?  If one is an atheist, believing there is no God, then it must come from somewhere else.

A gene perhaps?

Either that, or Hitler was right, there is no moral law, no universal moral standard, and we can come up with our own rules.

O'Malley

 Secular law or positive law, I think, cannot pretend to
 differentiate killing from murder. We need God's revelation, a
 vantage point beyond the human condition, to guide us to certain
 knowledge of human rights, especially the right to life.

 The philosophy of legal positivism prevents arguing for human
rights outside the legal system per se. Legal systems cannot criticize
each other. Under legal positivism, if legal system A, claims that
legal system B is immoral it must do so only from a reference to itself. System B does not recognize the validity of system A, so the criticism by system A of system B is correctly disregarded as baseless by system B.

 The Nazis leaders used legal positivism to defend themselves at
 Nuremberg. The only reason, the Nazis claimed, that they found
 themselves in the defendants' chair at Nuremberg was that they had
 the misfortune of losing the war.

 The Nazis granted that their legal system was different than the
 Allies, and granted that fundamental German values were different
 than the Allies, one of which was the supremacy of the Aryan race.
 They incorporated their values into their laws that included the de-
 valuing of Jews relative to Aryans. The Nazis argued, therefore,
 that the systematic elimination of Jews was, in the German legal
 system, entirely valid. And, since, under legal positivism, the
 Allies could not judge the Nazis legal system as invalid, the
Allies could they judge the defendants acts as criminal.

 Jackson, the lead prosecutor, had to depart from and ultimately
 debunk the philosophy of legal positivism and proceed to a higher
 authority, a new and higher vantage point to prosecute the legal
 system of another country. He appealed to the basic principles of
 civilization in order to prosecute the jurisprudence of the Nazi
 legal system. To transcend human law, Jackson, of course, had to
 take recourse to religion, to revelation.

 Peace,
 O'Malley

"Of course, without God in the equation there is no objective moral reason that Hitler was wrong."

That's absurd, and incredibly insulting to yourself. It suggests that if not for the writings in a book, you would have no regard for human life.

I don't believe in God, yet I value human life as much as you do. In fact, I could argue that I value life more than you do, because (1) my valuation comes from the empathy I have for other thinking, feeling beings, not from a book, and (2) I don't believe in an afterlife, which makes the brief life we *do* have unfathomably more precious and valuable.

"Our nation's constitution/bill of rights guarentees says that we have been endowed with certain inalienable rights 'by our Creator'. So, John Martignoni asks (philosophically), do athiests have rights?"

By that reasoning, it's not just atheist who lack rights, but also theists who aren't Christians, or even Christians who don't believe in literal Creationism.

Eric T you empathy is an emotion and therfore not objective in the slightest.
Without refrence to God you must be attribute it to nothing more then a function of your biology. Which is no way better or worse then a socio-paths predication who derives pleasure from the distruction of human life.

Why is your adaptation supperior or someway of greater merit then his?

"Eric T you empathy is an emotion and therfore not objective in the slightest."

Empathy is not an emotion, it's the recognition that other people have emotions.

"Without refrence to God you must be attribute it to nothing more then a function of your biology."

Right. It's a function of my biology. It's in that sense, and only that sense, that morality is objective.

It's absurd to think of morality as being objective in the same way that, say, the speed of light is. It's not a universally applicable property of the Universe, external to us, something that existed before us and will exist after us. It *depends* on us, it is a codification of our value judgments. The Universe doesn't value life, *we* do.

However, there's an objective reason we value our lives and that of our social unit: our predecessors who did not were less likely to survive. Most of our core values, those that are universal among humans such as 'life has value', are hardwired into us by nature, encoded in our DNA. Other values are cultural inventions (like the notion that pride is immoral), and are less universal.

"Why is your adaptation supperior or someway of greater merit then his? "

The way nature determines 'merit' is by survival value. No, that is not moral (again, the concept of morality doesn't apply to anything outside ourselves), but neither is it immoral; it's not smart, it's not dumb; it just is.

So, by the way nature determines 'merit' or 'superiority', his adaptation is poor, which is why it's the exception rather than the norm.

As for *our* determination of merit, using the values you and I share (such as 'life has value', 'suffering is bad', etc.), his adaptation is obviously inferior, because it ends lives and causes suffering.

"It's absurd to think of morality as being objective in the same way that, say, the speed of light is"

I'd like to point out that this statement makes an assumption. Specifically it makes the assumption that there is no diety. More to the point that there is no universal mind which knows all things, governs all things and indends creation.

If such a mind exists then morality is indeed an entirely objective fact , because creation exists for the explicit purpose of carring out the will of the creator. Right and wrong become absolutes and they can be known by consaulting the mind which intends those things.

"I'd like to point out that this statement makes an assumption. Specifically it makes the assumption that there is no diety. More to the point that there is no universal mind which knows all things, governs all things and indends creation."

All statements are based on assumptions. The question is whether they are reasonable. It is reasonable to assume gods do not exist, just as it's reasonable to assume you don't have a dragon living under your bed. Occam's razor selects for a Universe without either.

But even if we granted your Creator's existence, that does not make morals objective. It merely makes them His subjective opinion, rather than ours. Or perhaps his creator has an entirely different moral code, and his creator's creator has yet another.

"you are contradicting yourself"

Where? The statements you quoted don't contradict, you're just being confused by semantics. In my last comment, I distinguished between two meanings of the word objective, saying that morality is objective in one but not the other.

(1) Objective can mean 'not the product of personal bias'. Morality is *not* objective in this sense. It is a bias of our species that we are important, that life has value. It's certainly not part of the laws of physics. The Universe doesn't value life; when the Sun turns into a red giant and sterilizes the dust mote we live on, the Universe won't bat an eye. Objectively, life is no more inherently 'valuable' than non-life, that's purely our bias.

(2) Objective can mean physically real, extra-mental, tangible. In that sense, morality *is* objective, because our subjective biases *do* have an objective source: our biology. That makes them part of the objective universe, not in the sense that the Universe shares our evaluation of life (#1), but in the sense they that are physically codified in our DNA.

"Of course, without God in the equation there is no objective moral reason that Hitler was wrong."

by objective I mean a reason that exists without bias AND externally discernable to the human mind.

so it looks like we are basically in agreement on that statement.

Fishman

I am grateful to you for keeping this roundtable going.

However I think your arguments may have a number of "non sequiters".

You wrote:
"...from an athiest prepective all morality is muttalble, and a survival of the fittest is a rule".

This may not be fully accurate. The term "survival of the fittest" was first used by Herbert Spencer in 1864 to describe what is now called in Darwin's theory "natural selection".

One could imagine an atheist basing morality on patriotism, tribalism, humanism or utilitarianism "the greatest good for the greatest number" (Bentham). Other bases for morality may be envisaged.

I would imagine that we Christians base morality not on an intellectual conviction of a creator, but on revelation.

Mary
Many thanks for your most recent post.
We are fortunate to have you here with such an understanding of the faith and philosophy. There are others also who have sound insights. In my posts I do hope I have not misled anyone. In good faith I expressed my opinions. However your clear presentation of the relative roles of natural law morality and revealed morality is most helpful.
I had understood that up to the Catholic Reformation the basics of Catholic morality were expressed in terms of Aristotelian/Thomistic virtue concepts, related to the natural law. However from the Catholic Reformation onwards the emphasis was on commandment/laws. This was encouraged by Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits (Robert Bellarmine etc), influenced by Ignatius’s military background which emphasized commands, orders and laws. Thus the 10 commandments played a large part in discussing Catholic morality.
The CCC discusses morality by first considering the natural law approach and then the commandments, which are revealed.
I agree with you that a person has an internal “moral compass”, as I wrote in a previous post in this topic:
“14 When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. 15 They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them 16 on the day when, according to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.
The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version, Ro 2:14-16 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989).
Most Catholic philosophers believe in the concept of the Natural Law, by which ideas of right and wrong are hard-wired into a person.”
The natural law tells us that we should obey the golden rule “do to others as you would wish them to do to you” and also to do good not evil. Thus I agree with you.
So I do hope I did not mislead anyone by over-stressing revealed morality.

God bless,

Mary, natural law is a philisophical construct used to suggest that there is a law which can be discerned from nature. As such it makes perfect sense as a tool for facilitating discussion between various diests but I don't think it is really valid from an athiestic standpoint. Because in order for something to be a 'law' in the sense of a physical law, then it would need to be law that it is not possilble to violate. Since it is possible , the only sense in which there can be a natural law is if there is a nature law giver.

For instance , ( without refrence to God or right and wrong or sin) can you really explain a good reason a person should not steal , if the rewards outweigh the risks and there is near ceritude you will not get caught.

because 'right and wrong' are moral judgments that cannot exist without God in any real sense. You can define them in terms of human feelings but then right is only right and wrong is only wrong if you feel it is wrong, which is entirely beside the point for the original and more authentic meaning of the words. The best a athiest can argue for stealing is that it is rude. Not wrong, wrong implies the existance of a moral law.
Is it wrong for one wolf to steal from another no matter how upset the other wolf might be ? What about one ape? Without a refrence to God you cannot talk about stealing and right or wrong in anyway that does not apply equally between man and any other social creature, espically higher primates , because we are nothing more then higher primates with extroninarly useful adaptations. Any 'feeling' we have of what is 'right' or 'wrong' is a function of those adaptations and therefore may be logically disregarded if it can be shown the adaptation is no longer to the adaptive advantage of the individual or group, in the situation. in exactly the same way we build tools to extend our adaptive power we can certain create midicines that get you past guilt when there is no reason to feel guilty. ( prozac works pretty well for that as I understand and there are some better ones).

So if you don't feel bad about aborting your baby how can you say it was wrong. After all it was the right thing to do for yourself at the time.