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Do We Have Rights? (part 2)

John Locke vs. Thomas Hobbes

  • 30 November 2020
  • Author: Guest Blogger
  • Number of views: 1458
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by Christian Ledford

John Locke’s 1689 
Second Treatise on Civil Government is, without a doubt, one of the most fundamental and foundational texts of the Enlightenment. Not only did the work of Locke directly inspire the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution, but Lockean Classical Liberalism has laid the foundation of modern day political movements such as American conservatism and rightwing libertarianism. Locke, in writing his Second Treatise, took Hobbesian philosophy on natural rights and extrapolated and elaborated upon it to produce a definition of natural rights that was in direct alignment with both capitalist social mechanics as well as Christian ethics. Rather than endorsing Hobbesian philosophy that argued for an idea of rights where the only rights an individual possessed were those they could personally grasp and defend on pure, brute strength alone (up to and including the very property and lives of other individuals), Locke distilled the idea of natural rights into a consistent, universal standard in which each individual, on pure basis of humanity alone and regardless of any natural strength, possessed inalienable rights: life, liberty, and property.

Do We Have Rights? (part 3)

John Locke vs. Thomas Hobbes

  • 22 December 2020
  • Author: Guest Blogger
  • Number of views: 1421
  • 0 Comments
by Christian Ledford

In analyzing the creation of Adam by God, Locke made two arguments. The first argument is relatively simple; Locke argued that humans have rights and are free because God created Adam with explicit intention for him to have rights and be free. Specifically, Locke said that, although natural, rights of humans do not come randomly from nature itself or natural processes but as a direct endowment by God to mankind. The second argument is a bit more nuanced; Locke argued that, because God granted the Earth not to Adam specifically as some sort of divine monarch but to mankind in general, all of whom would come to possess the exact same rights that God endowed upon Adam, no individual has the right nor allowance to violate the rights of another. Specifically, rejecting and rebelling against the brutish Hobbesian notion of rights, Locke said that the rights of one man end where the rights of another man begin.

A Message for Advent 2020

  • 22 December 2020
  • Author: Guest Blogger
  • Number of views: 1297
  • 0 Comments

Light of the World

Sunlight, Ultraviolet Radiation and Covid-19

  • 21 January 2021
  • Author: Guest Blogger
  • Number of views: 1615
  • 2 Comments
by Roland Clarke

The Covid pandemic has profoundly shaken the world. “Is this a wake-up call?” Many people in the west who've lost jobs because of lockdown are receiving government handouts as emergency relief. Meanwhile countless numbers of people suffer loneliness, anxiety and depression. In fact, suicide is increasing. It is no secret: Covid 19 elicits a deep-seated fear of death. In his book, 
Struggle to Dawn, Ugo Betty stated a profound, if obvious truth, “Every tiny part of us cries out against the idea of dying and hopes to live forever.”

"Personally, I Prefer Personalism" by John Shaheen

Why Personalism is a Better View for God than Classical Theism

  • 23 February 2022
  • Author: Guest Blogger
  • Number of views: 1150
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*John is a pre-med senior at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. He has been the student President of Ratio Christi all four years, as well as a co-founder and Vice President of Faith & Reason in his final year.

The discussion of God’s personhood is layered with philosophical, historical, theological, and personal aspects. The philosophical plausibility of this concept will be defended here, first against objections, followed by a discussion of alternatives. A brief examination of the prevailing views of the theistic God (at the most basic level) lead to classical theism and theistic personalism. The former is a view developed and perpetuated by medieval philosophers and purports that God is simple, changeless, timeless, and essentially indescribable by human thought. The latter is a more modern development that embodies the idea that God is more knowable and understandable than classical theists say, and may even change. Essentially, he is a person. Within each of these schools of thought, there are likely subsects of philosophers that adhere to weaker and stronger tenets of the ideologies, but generally, the above beliefs are held in common.

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