Do your Rights come from God or Government?

Or whomever or whatever you feel started life on the planet. I do feel that all humans should have the same basic rights, no matter where they happened to be born.

God does not exist, but rights do not come from government, so I had to vote for God. All powers of government come from the governed, not the other way around.

Jesus, you are deep.

I'm gonna have to buy a lottery ticket today, Disco Pickle and I agree on something.

Power goes this way - God, People, Government

Even if DP doesn't believe in "Nature's God" or a "Creator", at least he knows that it's the People that empower govenrment, not the other way around.

There may be hope for you yet DP.

noooo god

i dont believe in god so ill pick government

No one has the authority to tell someone else that their Godly rights have been violated, so it's meaningless. If someone violates your govt-mandated and legislated rights, there will be a remedy.

So if the fourth amendment was repealed using the proper process for amending the Constitution, you would then agree that the police could come into your house and take your property for no reason whatsoever? And you wouldn't be able to claim that your rights were violated because your right to be secure in your property would no longer exist.

However, if God gave you your rights, then they (your rights) could not be taken away from you. While governments can VIOLATE your rights, they cannot endow them or revoke them, they are in fact, inalienable.

Sure.../if/ it was repealed...but it won't be. Theoretically /all/ your rights could be taken away with various legislation, but the people won't allow that to happen, and certainly wouldn't cooperate.
But sure, /if/ it was repealed and America was some sort of dictatorship, then people can't claim their (no longer existing) rights are being violated.
Well....who is going to stop them with any kind of authority if all you have as evidence is that "God gave me this right"? Not everyone even believes in God.

That is where we differ, you believe that government has the authority to revoke your Freedom whereas I do not.

You also disagree with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of The United States of America on this subject. But not to worry, Freedom is not for everyone, in fact, most people in the world agree with you, which is why the USA is so different that all other countries.

There are various measures to ensure that the govt will not revoke our freedom even though they /technically/ could.

Yep, and here is one of them:

Regardless of your religious belief, if it is not written down by men in our law books is not a right, it is only your belief.

This is true to the point that we need to have on writing that life, equality, etc are among them. Which apparently were not that obvious, mainly because of cultural backgrounds, among which is religion to be considered.

But what if it is written that the People's Rights come from God in the founding documents of the country?

It doesn't really matters what the guy who wrote said. God did not write it. He did not have a chat with god to know what was in his mind, his will. And even when it is so, if it was not written it wouldn’t be a right. We do not what is right but what we are allowed to do, remember that. Lying is wrong (morals, religion, common sense, etc) for instance, but publicists are very welcomed in our law. All of the sudden some people have the right of deceiving others in benefit of business, without it being called fraud.

Take for instance slavery. The right of freedom was not given by god to those people but by human law, which was written or else would never be implemented. I am not sure about the US founding documents, but I’ll bet that at the time of slavery there was reference of god in them as it is now. Personal freedom is one of those called universal rights, the obvious ones.

Note: you will find reference to god in such documents accordingly to people's belief, the people that need to be organized, which makes it more acceptable and righteous.

Considering I am God, they therefore come from me :-p

make marijuana legal then god... pleaaaaseeee

He did, it wasn't illegal till the government said so.

Listen, if it were up to me, any bans on marijuana would be on a local/state level, not the Federal level.

If rights where god given, no government would be able to alter or negate them.
"Rights" are a human concept which another person can give you but you can not actually posses them.

Kinda like "right of way" when driving.

I have asked others but no one has yet been able to do it.

Can you quote a law that gives me a right? Oh, let's say the right of free speech, where did government bestow that right upon me?

You've never heard of the bill of rights, which is basically a list of rights the government has granted it's citizens.

Couldn't make up my mind about this. The Gov tries to control us with laws to obey and
if we don't we pay. But if we disobey god, we could perish. The Gov also tries to put
some of gods laws into theirs as well so we're like listening to both. I think ultimately
we do what we want and sometimes that can cause prob with both as well. I need to
add also that if we as humans feel somethings not right, we can complain and maybe
one day many will side with that cause and change it. In other cases we can refuse
to do something we don't feel is right or take to the courts. Our rights are limited and
many will fight for the cause if it's a maj problem. God gave us free will so I'm still
puzzled if our rights are from God or Gov. Maybe could be both.

Goverments, though they do like to think that they are gods.. ;-), either way your rights come from a document written by a person/persons, who through political ideals have determined your rights as a citizen of that country. Now religion plays a part in this to, as a politican will promote the religious ideal that is popular at that time or at the time that those rights were decreed. Either way your rights are decided by a person or group of people and it doesn't matter what country you live in its all the same :-)

"...either way your rights come from a document written by a person/persons..."

What document?

In America I thik its called a Bill of Rights, which is suppose to have your constitutional rights, the rights that everyone has a right to eg: the right to be armed.
In Australia its called the constitutional rights and is a doccument of over 700 pages.
Now these rights can be overwritten and changed if the senate, state and federal institutions feel that these rights are unconstitutional and do not apply to present day conditions anymore. But it has to be proven in a court of law and can not breach the constitunal rights. Is this obeyed to the letter???? look we both live in our countries and we both know what really happens... :-).
Politicians and those with their own agendas will try to bend the laws and will use what ever means available to them to avoid any close scrutiny of their actions because they are fully aware of any constitutional rights they have breached.. no one said such people were honest and honerable. As I said before it doesn't matter what country you live in its all the same :-)

Our Bill of Rights does not give the People their rights, it simply tells the government that they can not infringe upon the rights that God has given the people. Our "Declaration of Independence" says that our Rights come from our "Creator" and that government is created by the people so that it may protect those rights.

I understand that our Constitution is different from the rest of the world, that is kind of the whole point of this discussion.

//"I intentionally omitted an "undecided" or "all of the above" options, rights can not come from both, it is one or the other."//

Well, that would be fine if there were only two ways of looking at everything, but that is not the case. That's your opinion, but it's not necessarily the case, and you really should have given people another option for an answer. I don't consider myself to be either on the left or on the right. It depends on the issue for me. I only put down Government because it was the men who were in charge of our Government who wrote the original Bill of Rights, and I thought that's what you were referring to, and also because you only gave two choices. In my opinion, my rights are human rights. They weren't bestowed upon me by anyone. They aren't something on a piece of paper. They are mine because I am a human being and I am alive on this planet. Nobody can give me rights, nor can they take them away. They can only restrict my access to them due to the fact that they may have power over me.

All of people's rights come from God.

For those of you that are claiming that your Rights come from government, I ask that you provide a law or document that the government has produced that gives any Rights to the people, might I suggest the Right of Free Speech for example, can you produce any document or law where government has bestowed that Right upon us?

american bill of rights tells you about all yours rights

Everything I have came from God , the Government does not give anything they only steal from you.

All That Is determines my existence on this world

the laws of the universe are the only laws under which i give allegiance

in the USA, they are from government

Can you quote any law that the U.S. government has passes to give me any rights? Let's say for example, my right to free speech, what law gives me that right?

the question is a false choice so i picked the one with the most pragmatic application. we'll start with the bill of rights and the constitution.
if i was wrongly held for spouting off something in public then the government's laws would hold that i was wrongly held and that my freedom to exercise speech was violated. duh!

I think we can all agree that government is capable of violating our rights, the subject of this poll is from where they come. If they come from government, I am curious to know what document it has produced to give me my rights. I suggested focusing on the right to free speech and was wondering if you could present a document or law that the government has created that gives me that right.

I believe that my right to free speech comes from God, and I will let you off the hook because you will never be able to find any document produced by the government that gives me that right. In fact, I can produce one that proves that the U.S. Government recognizes the fact that God gave me the right of free speech, The Declaration of Independence. The fact that God gave me my rights is the very foundation of this great nation.

I do understand that people disagree on this subject, but at least I have the founding documents on my side.

i guess i am a conservative pragmatist and did not read the fine print of your poll