It would be nice if people realized that the United States was built upon the premise that the individual is sovereign, not the states. Your rights come from God, not government. Many think they have all the freedom they need, since they can drive (most places) with no papers and download whatever apps they want on their phones.
The government is heading down a very dangerous path and has been for a long time. Members of both major parties are too blame, for they have allowed government to grow to a scale that is far too large to leave room for the individual to be truly free.
No, my rights come what the people are willing to fight for and establish with government. Absent government, there are no rights, there is only what I'm willing to claim my rights are and what I can defend. There is no God and nature doesn't create rights.
You have rights regardless of the government. Absent government, you have the right to do whatever you want, as does everyone else. The proper purpose of the government is to protect your rights from other people; this is done by carefully and judiciously placing restrictions on everyone's rights via the law. Legal codes should be as minimalist as possible, to ensure people can exercise their rights as broadly as possible.
Of course, the question of whether rights exist in the absence of government or if rights are created by the law is as old as the hills, so we may have to just disagree on this one.
No, they don't; the premise of America is the Constitution and it doesn't mention God. You're thinking of the Declaration of Independence which is little more than a fuck you to England, it is not however our founding document nor does it reflect our principles which were actually hammered out by the Constitution as a that of a secular nation.
To one using "god" as a figure of speech, "self-evident" and "god" are sufficiently equivalent for the purposes of this discussion. You can consider both concepts to imply that the subject is considered beyond question and in need of no external justification. I have no literal believe in gods, but I use the terminology semi-frequently in the manner being described.
The word god is in no way equivalent to self evident and if you use it as such you're simply not communicating well and likely not getting your point across to those listening. Worse, you're using a term that will turn off listeners who tire of religious nonsense being injected in conversations about important issues. There's nothing less self evident than a god, they are certainly not synonyms.
What is "faith", if not considering something to be self evident? Something being self-evident just means that you don't care to provide any justification for it. I see no difference between it and faith. Gods are considered axiomatic by the religious just as the basic set of rights are considered axiomatic by American government literature.
Self evidence does not imply "correct". Far from it.
This has never before arose as a point of contention in conversation for me. You are being rather uniquely odd about it. And in case you missed it, I am not the person further up in the conversation.
Looks like I am on the edge of being hellbanned, as a full hour later I am still unable to directly respond to your comment... Just as well, I suppose.
To be explicit, I am an atheist. More to the point, I am an anti-theist atheist. I think poorly of those who believe in gods. There are very few things I think more idiotic in this world than the belief in gods of any sort.
This said I understand the terminology "self-evident" and do not pretent do muddy my understanding simply because I disagree and disrespect the beliefs of the religious. Things that are considered self-evident by believers are rarely believed by non-believers. Why should they be? If a follower considers something to be self-evident that means that they are not providing any justification to non-believers. Something that is self-evident has no justification outside of itself. There is a reason atheists such as ourselves find this to be absurd and damaging when applied outside of extraordinarily limited domains.
Believers in American style democracy consider certain rights to be self-evident, they provide no justification for these things. Believers of gods similarly provide absolutely no justification for their believes. Both are accurately described as "self-evident" believes, from the perspective of believers. Were they not considered such, then their believers would provide justifications.
While that is all true, none of it is a justification for using the word god as a synonym for self evident when it's obvious your audience isn't only the believers; it's simply an absurdly poor choice of words if the intent is communication to the widest audience. Saying rights come from god does not communicate the idea that rights are self evident well to anyone but a believer.
While the religious might consider it self evident, the non religious don't so your choice of wording has the opposite affect that you intend on those of us who consider it nonsense. You've taken something simple like the phrase self evident and replaced it with something provocative and not immediately apparent in meaning to the non religious.
Some people consider faith a virtue, others consider it idiotic, so it seems a poor thing to introduce when you can simply and unambiguously say self evident. I am not unique in this, and it's got nothing to do with being correct or not, rather its about a poor choice in communication by choosing language that means different things to different people. To consider god a synonym for self evident is simply an absurd notion to me and I'm sure to most atheists.
No, it is a figure of speech and it is pedantic to claim that it is about belief in any deity. It is similarly used in this context: "God gave you legs, now move your ass out of my way!" It is nothing more than a way to express the idea that rights are something people are born with, regardless of who is in power or what sort of government rules over them. That is how the founding fathers (another figure of speech, nobody is claiming that any of those men are any living person's father) used the term.
It's not pedantic. One of the most notable aspects of the US constitution is that its power is explicitly derived from the masses - "We the people..." - and not from some divine power, unlike the British monarchy.
Power is derived from the people, not rights. An early argument was over the very need for an explicit bill of rights. Even the text of the bill of rights suggests that the founders believed that certain rights are inherent:
Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech...
That wording seems to just assume that people have the right to speak freely, that no law is needed to give people that right, and that laws can only restrict that right (and such laws are explicitly forbidden). The phrase "God-given rights" is not meant to assert that God exists, it is meant to assert that certain rights transcend legal codes and exist regardless of what government happens to be in power (or even if there is a government in power).
I don't know whether I'll agree to any of it. I'm not that wise.
Humans are able to raise kids, leave knowledge to them, and as long as they don't believe so hard in rebirth, treat history with importance. As such many different laws were left - it's for us to decide which make sense.
If we are left to nature, then we are left with whatever the animals have. It won't be anymore our human "nature".
We were not born to speak, record, etc. - over the long period of evolution it developed around us - along with raising kids. This is where we recognize the nature as important force, but not really for guiding us what to do - it's our environment, and we should care about it, but there is hardly any guidance what to do.
When people use the "Nothing to hide", or "The government does not care about your cat videos, this is the equivalent of: I'm not using my liberty, so I don't care about it.
The government may not be interested in you specifically, but they are interested in the more influential figures who share those same opinions. The HBGary leak revealed the targeting of Glenn Greenwald, and surely you're aware of MLK. What if he had had some minor personal failing, and the FBI had used it against him to derail his movement?
The government is heading down a very dangerous path and has been for a long time. Members of both major parties are too blame, for they have allowed government to grow to a scale that is far too large to leave room for the individual to be truly free.