dk

Ion: dk,
you are still rambling on issues tangent to the thread.
dk: You still haven’t provided a rational source of UHR apart from the Nuremberg trials and UN. These are deontological sources that follow from the Rule of Law, and the Rule of Law tracks back to the 1st of the Ten Commandments or the 1st of the Two Greatest Commandments.
o
Ion:
Like for example, your rambling question of what is the source of the UN Code of Human Rights, brings your reaction "It's circular..." to my answer that humans are the source since a divinity doesn't exist.
dk: And peanut plants are the source of peanut products, banana plants are source of banana products, rubber plants are the source of rubber products,,, etc... A “rational source” requires elementals in relationship with some underlying reality to serve as an explanation. For example the Atomic Model is the basis of periodic table, and the periodic table is the basis of chemistry. The laws of chemistry govern chemical reactions and properties in elementary terms of Atoms and Molecules. See how a rational explanation works. The other alternative is to provide empirical evidence, and that would be why I provided the Israelis people as evidence, and the Bible as a source, the Bible being the source of Israelis History. My evidence isn’t rational, but empirical.
o
Ion: The thread is 'UN Code versus the Bible', and in spite of your judgements of 'fallacy' and 'unacceptable', it does compare the morals of the UN Code of Human Rights versus the Bible.
So, when you are in this thread, do it.
Otherwise what's the point of you being in this thread? Any?
dk: I happen to believe Human Rights and the Rule of Law are essential to human welfare, civilization and word peace. While its fallacious to equivocate the UDHR directly with the Bible, it IS essential to HR to recognize the origin of the Rule of Law, that in turn universally places all people under the law, or under God. Ion: dk,
you are still rambling on issues tangent to the thread.
dk: You still haven’t provided a rational source of UHR apart from the Nuremberg trials and UN. These are deontological sources that follow from the Rule of Law, and the Rule of Law tracks back to the 1st of the Ten Commandments or the 1st of the Two Greatest Commandments.
o
Ion:
Like for example, your rambling question of what is the source of the UN Code of Human Rights, brings your reaction "It's circular..." to my answer that humans are the source since a divinity doesn't exist.
dk: And peanut plants are the source of peanut products, banana plants are source of banana products, rubber plants are the source of rubber products,,, etc... A “rational source” requires elementals in relationship with some underlying reality to serve as an explanation. Let me try to explain... Chemistry rationally explains the nature of chemicals with the Atomic Model as the basis of the periodic table, and the periodic table has the basis of chemical properties and reactions. The laws of chemistry govern chemical reactions. A rational explanation works. The other rational alternative is to provide empirical evidence, and that would be ancient Israel documented by the OT Bible, the Bible being the source of Israelis History, traditional Natural Law, the Rule of Law, and the UHR written in 1948.
o
Ion: The thread is 'UN Code versus the Bible', and in spite of your judgements of 'fallacy' and 'unacceptable', it does compare the morals of the UN Code of Human Rights versus the Bible.
So, when you are in this thread, do it.
Otherwise what's the point of you being in this thread? Any?
dk: I happen to believe Human Rights and the Rule of Law are essential to human welfare, civilization and word peace. While its fallacious to equivocate the UDHR directly with the Bible, it essential to recognize the source of UDHR statutes originate with Rule of Law, that in turn universally places all people under the law, or under God. 1) the Jewish people have lived for over 3,000 years governed by the Ten Commandments; 2) Christians with the Greatest Two Commandments ushered Western Civilization from the Dark Ages into the Renaissance (last 1900 years). and 3) Islam, more indirectly, for the last 1,400 years have governed themselves by an interpretation of the Ten Commandments mapped in the Koran . I would be happy to discuss Buddhism, and Hinduism, but the Rule of Law has only recently arrived, (post 1945), introduced. Here’s a link, to the History of Human Rights and Law

1. c. 1750 B.C.E. -Code of Hammurabi, Babylonia
2. c. 1200 - c. 300 B.C.E. -Old Testament
3. c. 551 - c. 479 B.C.E. - Confucius - "Do unto others what you wish to do unto yourself."
4. c. 40 - 100 C.E. -New Testament
5. 644 - 656 C.E. -Koran (original text)
6. 1215 -Magna Carta, England
7. 1400 -Code of Nezahualcoyotl, Aztec dk comment: I have no idea why they included a civilization that practiced ritual human sacrifice and cannibalism.
8. 1648 - Treaty of Westphalia, Europe
9. 1689 - English Bill of Rights, England
10. 1776 - Declaration of Independence, United States
11. 1787 - United States Constitution
12. 1789 -French Declaration on the Rights of Man and the Citizen, France, dk comment: tainted by the French Terror, institution of total warfare and Napoleon’s Empire.
13. 1791 -United States Bill of Rights
14. 1863 -Emancipation Proclamation, United States
15. 1864, 1949 -Geneva Conventions, International Red Cross
16. 1919 -League of Nations Covenant
17. 1926 -Slavery Convention
18. 1945 -United Nations Charter, San Francisco
19. 1947 -Mohandas Gandhi uses non-violent protests leading India to independence.
20. 1948 - Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 10)

Let me offer MORE evidence ... a series of quotes I found at
-----

1. Have we forgotten that the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi placed the chief of the gods, Marduk, at its center?
2. What about Moses and the Hebrew Decalogue?
3. Demosthenes: "Every law is a discovery and gift of God"?
4. Aristotle: "He who bids the law rule may be deemed to bid God and reason rule, but he who bids man rule adds an element of the beast"?
5. Cicero, in De Legibus: "I agree with you, brother, that what is right and true is also eternal, and does not begin or end with written statutes . . . . Law began . . . with the mind of God"
6. St. Paul’s assertion in Romans 13 that all law and government is a product of God’s will?

----- George Mason Law School

1) the Jewish people have lived for over 3,000 years governed by the Ten Commandments; 2) Christians with the Greatest Two Commandments ushered Western Civilization from the Dark Ages into the Renaissance (last 1900 years). and 3) Islam, more indirectly, for the last 1,400 years have governed themselves by an interpretation of the Ten Commandments mapped in the Koran . I would be happy to discuss Buddhism, and Hinduism, but the Rule of Law has only recently arrived, (post 1945), introduced. Here’s a link, to the History of Human Rights and Law

1. c. 1750 B.C.E. -Code of Hammurabi, Babylonia
2. c. 1200 - c. 300 B.C.E. -Old Testament
3. c. 551 - c. 479 B.C.E. - Confucius - "Do unto others what you wish to do unto yourself."
4. c. 40 - 100 C.E. -New Testament
5. 644 - 656 C.E. -Koran (original text)
6. 1215 -Magna Carta, England
7. 1400 -Code of Nezahualcoyotl, Aztec dk comment: I have no idea why they included a civilization that practiced ritual human sacrifice and cannibalism.
8. 1648 - Treaty of Westphalia, Europe
9. 1689 - English Bill of Rights, England
10. 1776 - Declaration of Independence, United States
11. 1787 - United States Constitution
12. 1789 -French Declaration on the Rights of Man and the Citizen, France, dk comment: tainted by the French Terror, institution of total warfare and Napoleon’s Empire.
13. 1791 -United States Bill of Rights
14. 1863 -Emancipation Proclamation, United States
15. 1864, 1949 -Geneva Conventions, International Red Cross
16. 1919 -League of Nations Covenant
17. 1926 -Slavery Convention
18. 1945 -United Nations Charter, San Francisco
19. 1947 -Mohandas Gandhi uses non-violent protests leading India to independence.
20. 1948 - Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 10)

Let me offer MORE evidence ... a series of quotes I found at
-----

Ion

dk,

that you waste your life worshiping a God that doesn't exist, it's your choice, but here in the 'UN Code versus the Bible' think ink/data ratio:

I don't see a comparison of the UN Code versus the Bible in your posts, so what you ramble about has little value.

(Points that I tell you repeatedly that are wrong in your ramblings, are:

.) Jews are 3,000 years old and that's empirical of a dk's idea of something, who knows what; so what? Chinese are older;

.) the 10 Commandements inspire the UN Code; wrong: the 1st Comamnadment and the Article 18 are opposite; many other examples of opposition are in this thread; regarding the 10 Commandments business, believing that a Biblical divinity made up the 10 Commandments is dumb since the divinity described in the Bible doesn't exist and never did exist; you might have to swallow the "It's circular..." (or should it be "It's trapezoidal..."?) reasoning that humans do make the UN human rights, like in everyday's style of rights' examples I gave you).

lpetrich

The Chinese ethnicity has been around since the Shang Dynasty of ~1500 BCE.

The Greek ethnicity has been around for a similar amount of time; it goes back to the Mycenaeans of 1500-1200 BCE.

Deducing the idea of rule of law from "worship no god but me" is absolutely absurd. Because a leader can claim to only be following god's orders.

The general principle of rule of law, as opposed to laws simply being the decrees of leaders and deities, made an early apperance in the story of why Rome's Twelve Tables were composed. According to the story, some of the plebeians had become convinced that the patricians were twisting the law in their favor, so they wanted the laws written down, to keep that from happening.

The Bible, however, has nothing comparable; it's law-as-decree from beginning to end.

And I fail to see how the European Middle Ages were supposed to be some sort of saintly utopia.

Ion

This:
and the age of the Chinese culture, has been posted by Ipetrich before, in this thread.

I think that dk is a broken record of 'fallacy', 'It's circular...', 'reasonable' for a dk post, 'unreasonable' for a non-dk post, etc., who even doesn't learn here that his deity doesn't exist and never did exist.

I recommend dk, to think ink/data ratio before posting broken records.

dk

lpetrich: The Chinese ethnicity has been around since the Shang Dynasty of ~1500 BCE.
dk: The Shang nobility used Oracle Bones to ask question of their ancestors by offering human sacrifice. As far as pre-modern cultures go they did superior Bronze work, wonderful Chinese writing and were probably the most blood thirsty people that existed in the pre-modern world. When a King died a hundred or so of his favorite slaves were buried alive in an elaborate tomb. At any rate, whatever their accomplishments, virtues and vices they came to ruin after 600 years of bloody tyranny. I don’t think you’ll find much support for the UDHR, equality under the law, or the rule of law with these folks. They never ruled China but were the most powerful of several cultures in China.
o
lpetrich: Deducing the idea of rule of law from "worship no god but me" is absolutely absurd. Because a leader can claim to only be following god's orders.
dk: What? Contrary!!! According to the Bible God created mankind in his image. Humankind was split when Cain slew Able, and Cain was exiled. God didn’t kill Cain but exiled him and put His mark upon Cain for protection. In fact Cain was banished from the soil and went off to build a city that indicate superior technology. God’s chosen people from the line of Seth, down to Noah tilled the soil, and his son’s Shem, Ham, and Japheth took wife’s from the line of Cain; and when Ham slept with his mother(for Noah’s birthright) Noah exiled Ham, and Ham fathered the line of Canaan.

Israel never practiced human sacrifice, and when Abraham was tested by God's command to sacrifice his son Isaac, God relented at the last moment, and in Genesis 22: 17:18 said, “I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; your descendants shall take possession of the Gates of their enemies, and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing -- all this because you obeyed my command.” Abraham the Patriarch of all Israeli was thus put under the Law, just as Moses and David in the fulfillment of God’s Covenants with Abraham were put under the Law. This unequivocally serves to support the, “rule of law”, as the basis for UHR.
o
lpetrich: The general principle of rule of law, as opposed to laws simply being the decrees of leaders and deities, made an early apperance in the story of why Rome's Twelve Tables were composed. According to the story, some of the plebeians had become convinced that the patricians were twisting the law in their favor, so they wanted the laws written down, to keep that from happening.
dk: Read Roman Chapter 2, especially 14-20 “For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, 6 while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge people's hidden works through Christ Jesus. Now if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast of God and know his will and are able to discern what is important since you are instructed from the law, and if you are confident that you are a guide for the blind and a light for those in darkness, that you are a trainer of the foolish and teacher of the simple, because in the law you have the formulation of knowledge and truth-- “NAB Also see Jeremiah 31:33; “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD. I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Hey, I have nothing but admiration for the Law, and Jesus said in Matthew 22:21 "Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God." and in Matthew 5:18-19 “Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus refers to the Ten Commandments. If this isn’t enough support from the Bible for the rule of law I can continue, but I hope this suffices.
o
lpetrich: The Bible, however, has nothing comparable; it's law-as-decree from beginning to end.
dk: Well you’re simply wrong, I’ve provided ample support from the Old and New Testament.
o
lpetrich: And I fail to see how the European Middle Ages were supposed to be some sort of saintly utopia.
dk: If the Middle Ages were a Utopia then there would be no need of government, law or human rights. I don’t know where you got this idea from. In the Middle Ages slavery was virtually abolished in Christian Nations. On the other hand the Romans Empire was virtually build on slave labor, and they routinely lined their roads with crucifixes upon which decomposing corpses rotted as a warning to political dissidents.
I must also point out that one of Thomas Jefferson’s most ambitious works was to filter the Bible of any reference to God, to isolate the moral teachings of the Bible as the basis of a secularized law, even a Rule of Law.

Ion

dk,

any evidence for this, outside the Bible, corroborating the Bible?

Because with no evidence, you are worshiping an imaginary idol, and you think this idol makes and made laws for humans.

dk

Ion: dk,
that you waste your life worshiping a God that doesn't exist, it's your choice, but here in the 'UN Code versus the Bible' think ink/data ratio:
dk: Don’t be a hypocrite, pull the sty from your own eye. You still haven’t provided a rational basis for the Rule of Law, apart from a deontological source that follows from the Ten Commandments (OT), and the Two Greatest Commandments (NT). You are likewise unable to deny the living evidence of Israel, and the fact that Jews have lived, prospered and been a blessing to all the nations of the world under the Law. Not one Israeli Patriarch, King, Prophet or Disciple in the OT was loosed from the Law, and then in the NT the law was interpreted by Grace.

Ion: I don't see a comparison of the UN Code versus the Bible in your posts, so what you ramble about has little value.
dk: In my last 3 posts I’ve laid it out pretty explicitly.

1. Ion: (Points that I tell you repeatedly that are wrong in your ramblings, are:
   dk: You’ve repeatedly presented arguments that are circular (human nature is the source of human rights), fallacious equivocation (the Jews commit genocide), dogmatic (simply declaring God doesn’t exist, so the Bible doesn’t have any meaning)
2. .) Ion: Jews are 3,000 years old and that's empirical of a dk's idea of something, who knows what; so what? Chinese are older;
   dk: I’ve talked about the Shang Dynasty, its irrational to assert the source of UHR follow from a culture that practiced ritual human sacrifice. If I am to take this serious it means everyone has a liberty to ritually murder whomever they please. The UDHR says just the opposite, that people have a right to life, not a liberty to murder!!!!
3. .) Ion: the 10 Commandements inspire the UN Code; wrong: the
   dk: Well lets go through your evidence that the Ten Commandments are wrong.
   a) Ion: 1st Comamnadment and the Article 18 are opposite;
   dk: A dogma statement at best.
   b) Ion: many other examples of opposition are in this thread; regarding the 10 Commandments business, believing that a Biblical divinity made up the 10 Commandments is dumb since the divinity described in the Bible doesn't exist and never did exist;
   dk: The evidence I offered were the Jewish People, and they do exist beyond any doubt, and have lived and prospered for 3,000 years under the 10 Commandments, and have been a blessing to the world. Christians have lived for almost 2000 years under the 10 Commandments to guide Western European Civilization from the Dark Ages into the Renaissance, that became the Modern Age in the 19th Century. At which time nations states decided they were above the Law, under the Social Contract of Rousseau, Third Age of Knowledge envisioned by Comte, positivism of the Vienna Circle, Idealism of Hegel and materialism of Mars, and the Social Darwinism of Spencer. What fruit did these new nations based upon scientism bare, well there was the French Terror, Napoleonic Empire, the development of Total-warfare, Mercantilism, Machiavellians, enlightened despots, laissez-faire capitalist Robber Barons, Imperialism, Fascism, and communism,,, The carnage of the 20th Century under the new sciences of nationalism (scientific history, sociology, economics and psychology) defies any semblance of rational thought. For the last two centuries Christians have argued that “The ends can’t justify the means because human beings are an ends unto themselves”, while the rational philosophers argue, “the means justify the ends in the service of progress, by logical necessity through moral relitivism”. In totality all these arguments present a conundrum that holds about as much weight as a wet paper bag. (sorry about the rant, progress is seldom linear or necessarily forward, and I recognize much good has come from the rational philosophies)
   c) Ion: you might have to swallow the "It's circular..." (or should it be "It's trapezoidal..."?)
   dk: I have no idea what you’re talking about, could you please give an example of a trapezoidal argument?
   d) Ion: reasoning that humans do make the UN human rights, like in everyday's style of rights' examples I gave you).
   dk: Reasoning that humans are the source of human rights is like reasoning that circles are circular, trapezoids are trapezoidal, triangles are triangular, fish are fishy, water is watery, people are peoplish,,,, etc... I don’t know why you insist upon embarrassing yourself by repeating such meaningless statements.

dk

Ian, I'm not basing my argument on the existence of God, but the merits of Jewish people that have for the last 3,000 years held themselves apart from the rest of humanity the Chosen People accountable to the Mosaic Law. This is an empirical agrument that clearly stands the test of time.

1) UHR follows from the rule of law
2) Rule of Law follows from "equality under the Law"
3) "equality under the Law" holds all Jews accountable to Mosaic Law.

Point in fact... Moses, David, Solomon, every prophet, every bureacrat, every priest, and every Israili after Moses was held acountable to the Ten Commandments, and especially the 1st Commandment, "Thou shall not have false God's before me".
When Israel violated the Decalogue, especially the 1st Commandment, they suffered the curses consummate with God’s Covenants. That’s how the Law worked in the OT, and the Law sustained the Jewish people through the ages despite many trials. Today, the Jews believe they are preserved as God's chosen people, and have once again been restored to the Land of their forefathers. Truth being stranger than fiction, in 1948 the UN both recognizes the Nation of Israel, and declared the UHR. Some call it a coincidence.

lpetrich

I'll show how the Greek ethnicity has been more-or-less continuous.

Greece has had a continuous written history since ~700 BCE, when its alphabet was adopted. Greek was never supplanted by Latin in the eastern Roman Empire, despite Latin doing that to most of the other languages of the Empire.

Greek ethnicity, however, went into a partial eclipse at that time. The Byzantines preferred calling themselves Romaioi (Greek for "Romans"), and "Greece" survived as some communities under Ottoman rule for some centuries after that.

The Ottomans never created a shared ethnicity, and as the Empire shrank and broke up, its ethnicities started forming new nations and pointing to their histories. Greece was no exception, and some Greek nationalists even constructed a "purified" version of Modern Greek (katharevousa), partially based on Classical-era Greek, that got officially used until the mid-1970's.

Looking back further, the Classical era had inherited a rich body of mythology -- and some of that points to some actual history. It mentions places like Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Knossos, Troy, etc., and items like bronze armor and boar's-tusk helmets. Even some of the more farfetched parts of the Odyssey could have been inspired by real places -- the Cyclopes by the skulls of elephants and the Laestrygonians by Scandinavia with its fjords and long summer days.

And there is not only abundant archeological evidence of Mycenaean Greece, including evidence of voyages in search of Baltic amber, there are also some written records. These are all palace archives, but they were written in an early dialect of Greek, and they even mention the familiar Olympians as recipients of offerings. The Mycenaean Linear B script fell out of use when the palaces were destroyed, however.

And those palace records date back to 1400-1200 BCE, about the right time for the Exodus and the Sinai wanderings. However, there is essentially zero archeological evidence for either of those events, no written records, no big campsites, etc.

dk

Ok, I'll forget that the Spartans in 400BC conquered Athens to bring any hopes of an Empire to an end. I'll forget Philip King of Macedonia conquered, occupied, and took control of Greece in 338BC. I really shouldn't mention that the Greeks considered the Macedonians dangerous barbarians, not kinsman. I’ll forget Philip's son Alexander the Great conquered vast territories using Greece as launch pad into the Mediterranean. I won’t mention that Rome conquered the Macedonians in 146BC. I won’t mention that Greece didn’t regain its independence again until the 19th Century. I'll forget that Constantine split the Roman Empire and moved the Capitol to Byzantium (not even in Greece) then renamed it Constantinople. I'll forget the Justinian Code made the 12 Tablets of Rome obsolete. I'll forget the 1204 sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade. I'll forget the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople in 1453, and renamed the city Istanbul.

Other than that you make a real good point. I’ll say this for the Ancient Greeks, they had superior articians, philosophy, and science. Unfortunately they bled themselves to death fighting petty wars between city/states. Socrates tutored Alexander, and the short lived Macedonian Empire became Hellenism. The Greek artisans and scholars were in tern enslaved and taken back to serve the Roman Empire. Augustine interpreted the Bible with Plato, Islam (Averroes) and Aquinas developed metaphysics with Aristotle, as did Islamic scholars. I think one could say Greek philosophy was an essential aspect to Roman, Western and Islamic civilization, but only by proxy because Ancient Greece lay in ruins.