Does this comment make you scratch your head?

They considered certain rights to be natural, you are born with them. AKA inalienable. They formed gov’t to protect these rights and even they would tell you they are not granting them, they are protecting them. So even if you are an athiest like myself that comment actually still makes sense. IMO you have whatever rights you are able and willing to defend.

Thinking and thinking here….

God really has nothing to do with this. You have the right to protect your life, to do your best to be happy and to live by your own volition provided you are not depriving these things from others. If someone or some institution tells you otherwise you are being subjugated. This still does not remove those natural rights.

I know he doesn’t. But I fail to see why American’s are the only ones that God endowed with these “inalienable” rights. And THEN allowed a government who many think are trying to deprive us of those rights!

“God” was not always the God of christianity. The founders knew that defending these rights was going to be a hard uphill battle. Why do you think they included such things like checks and balances, the second amendment etc… When someone wants an institution to do something that denies this to any group of people you have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Sometimes it’s cut and dry and other times it’s blurry. I don’t use quotation marks around inalienable.

If you don’t believe in God and/or natural rights, then the whole idea of that commercial is going to seem like nonsense to you. But a lot of people believe in both God and natural rights, and a lot of people believe that our natural rights come from God. It’s even in the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

According to this view, natural rights are supposed to be human rights. Thus they belong to all people, not just Americans. But a governing document can only apply to those it claims to govern, and it can only protect the rights recognized by those who create it (regardless of whether or not those are all the natural rights one might have).

”...why American’s are the only ones that God endowed with these “inalienable” rights.

We Americans are not the only ones. Fundamental to inalienable rights was that all people are entitled to those rights. The Declaration of Independence was a statement that when those rights are violated; it is right and just to rebel against such a government.

The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights makes it clear that all are entitled to such rights.

once again, if you have those rights, it’s easy to claim that God or the devil gives them to you. Clearly, governments CAN deprive you of those rights, and this being the case, the phrase is little more than a lofty (and deceptive) platitude. And when deployed by so slippery an operation as an insurance company which by definition certainly knows the truth, such pap is downright sinister.

But we depend on our government to enforce those rights.

depend? the government is just as apt to deprive you of those rights “for your own protection” if permitted to get away with it.

And congratulations on being suspicious. Your instincts serve you well.

@ARE_you_kidding_me If I may get technical for a moment, being born with a right isn’t what makes it inalienable. It’s not being able to surrender it that makes it inalienable. But you can be born with rights that you can legitimately give up. In fact, every theory of rights relies on the assumption that at least some of your rights can be waived, transferred, forfeited, and/or abandoned.

denied, stolen, suppressed, suspended, ignored..

@stanleybmanly the fact that a government can uphold those rights or withhold them kinda tells me God’s out of it.

God endorsed an insurance company without a contract?... She’s gonna be pissed!

Right? Lol!

Sometimes you just have to give credit to people for having shit for brains.

@SavoirFaire see my first answer.

@stanleybmanly I picked the terms “waived,” “transferred,” “forfeited,” and “abandoned” on purpose. In rights theory, those are the four legitimate ways of losing a right (and if you read the previous sentence, I was only discussing legitimate ways of losing rights). Note also that rights are not lost when they are denied, stolen, suppressed, suspended, or ignored. There’s a difference between a right being lost and a right being violated.

@ARE_you_kidding_me It was your first answer I was responding to. You said “They considered certain rights to be natural, you are born with them. AKA inalienable.” The “AKA inalienable” is incorrect.

The founders spoke of inalienable to quote myself: “IMO you have whatever rights you are able and willing to defend.” Your propensity to nitpick notwithstanding.

Many believe our founding fathers had divine inspiration to create our country, our constitution. If you look around the world, one might argue that our country, founded by Protestants, is different than other countries, especially back at the time of its founding, because Protestants developed the American freedoms and rights. If it had been the Catholics from Spain, the Portuguese, even the French, then we would be just another country like Latin American countries more likely.

Having said all of that the God thing in that ad is just a marketing ploy obviously.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I never said that the founders did not speak of inalienable rights. Nor am I taking issue with your personal view. You said that natural rights = born with them = inalienable. Those terms are not equivalent, and the Founders did not think they were equivalent. That’s all I’m saying.

Gottcha, I suppose I would not consider the terms equivalent either then.

Many believe some of our founding father’s were secretly atheist too, @JLeslie.

^^So? The commercial is aimed towards the ones who think God, Christianity, and Christian men made this country. That’s what I think anyway.

I was shocked when politicians talked about Christianity in their commercials when I lived in the South. It’s was completely bazaar and uncomfortable for me the first few times I saw it. That’s what you get in the Bible Belt though.

I was responding to your comment that ”Many believe our founding fathers had divine inspiration…”

I know.

Read that as: You deserve all the heath care you can afford, and if you can’t, then go die quietly because Sky Daddy says Amerka is the Greatest Country in the World. I’m sure that will inspire you to the hilt, while you suffer from cancer.

Dutchess you are wrong in a profoundly disturbing way since the answer is their in basic Civics.

Jefferson famously wrote to Madison: “A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse or rest on inference.”

But you do rest it on inference !!!

Oh, stop already. You’re getting all emotional over superstition.