Click Here For Atheism and Unalienable Rights - Meyer

OpinionEditorials.com � Atheism and Unalienable Rights - Meyer: "The Atheist, by virtue of his own theory of origins, is hard pressed to prove that rights exist. If humanity evolved with other animals from a common ancestor, then why don't other members of the animal kingdom have the same rights we do? Two possibilities may be logically extracted from such theories of ultimate origin. Either humanity and the animal kingdom both have the same rights by the reckoning of fiat, or neither have rights since such are not a necessary by-product of naturalism (that the universe is matter in motion and nothing more). Clearly we do not reason the latter to be true. When the seagull swoops down to the river to grasp a fish, and the eagle wrests it away from the gull with its talons, we don't declare the gull a murderer or the eagle a thief. A certain agency is necessary for a being to either be morally culpable or to possess rights. Merely declaring that the virtue of superior intellect imbues these rights on humanity is short-sighted hubris. Such attributes merely make for a more cunning 'survival of the fittest' paradigm. Ethicist Peter Singer would probably suppose the former of the two possibilities to be true. He calls the supposition of humanity having greater rights than animals 'speceism'. While many may consider his ethics wacky, his conclusion is logical if the premises are true. I suggest they are not."