HUMAN RIGHTS

The United Nations pinpoint the origin of Human Rights to the year 539 BC. When the troops of Cyrus the

Great conquered Babylon, Cyrus freed the slaves, declared that all people had the right to choose their own religion, and established racial equality. These and other precepts were recorded on a baked-clay cylinder known as the Cyrus Cylinder, whose provisions served as inspiration for the first four Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The Cyrus Cylinder (539 B.C.)

The decrees Cyrus made on human rights were inscribed in the Akkadian language on a baked-clay cylinder.

In 539 B.C., the armies of Cyrus the Great, the first king of ancient Persia, conquered the city of Babylon.

But it was his next actions that marked a major advance for Man. He freed the slaves, declared that all people had the right to choose their own religion, and established racial equality. These and other decrees were recorded on a baked-clay cylinder in the Akkadian language with cuneiform script.

Known today as the Cyrus Cylinder, this ancient record has now been recognized as the world’s first charter of human rights. It is translated into all six official languages of the United Nations and its provisions parallel the first four Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Cyrus the Great, the first king of Persia, freed the slaves of Babylon, 539 B.C. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm

https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-writings/cyrus-cylinder-and-ancient-proclamationhuman-rights-002311

The Spread of Human Ri\ghts

From Babylon, the idea of human rights spread quickly to India, Greece and eventually Rome. There the concept of “natural law” arose, in observation of the fact that people tended to follow certain unwritten laws in the course of life, and Roman law was based on rational ideas derived from the nature of things.

Documents asserting individual rights, such as the Magna Carta (1215), the Petition of Right (1628), the

US Constitution (1787), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), and the US

Bill of Rights (1791) are the written precursors to many of today’s human rights documents.

Cyrus the Great, the greatest king of Ancient Persia, was the first documented champion of human rights.

He lived from about 600-529 BC, according to cyrusthegreat.net. He founded one of the first great world empires, and is the first world leader to be called “the Great.”

By the time he was done, his empire extended to cover parts of three continents and 25 nations, spanning millions of miles.

Cyrus the Great is said in the Bible to have liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity to resettle and rebuild Jerusalem, earning him an honored place in Judaism.

He wasn’t just a great conqueror, though, he was also a great ruler and leader. According to Persepolis –

Persian Encyclopaedia, the Persian Empire was the first example of the federal government in the world, where states were run autonomously by lesser rulers who were under the aegis of the empire.

Cyrus respected the languages, religions, and cultures of all the lands to which he laid claim. He also considered all nations and peoples to be equal in terms of their rights. Under Cyrus’ rule, the empire was religiously tolerant, equal, and, above all, humane.

‘I am Cyrus the king, an Achaemenid.’ in Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian languages. It is carved in a column in Pasargadae. Photo by Truth Seeker (fawiki) CC BY-SA 3.0

Cyrus’ stand on the issue of human rights is documented on a clay cylinder that was discovered in 1879, known as the Cyrus Cylinder. It’s written in the Akkadian language, using an ancient form of writing called cuneiform.

The four-winged guardian figure representing Cyrus the Great, a bas-relief found at Pasargadae on top of which was once inscribed in three languages the sentence ‘I am Cyrus the king, an Achaemenian.’

It was found by an Assyro-British archaeologist named Hormuzd Rassam, in Babylon, in the foundations of the Temple of Marduk, according to Iran Chamber Society. The cylinder is currently at the British

Museum in London.

Detail of Cyrus Hunting Wild Boar by Claude Audran the Younger, Palace of Versailles. Photo by Coyau CC

BY 3.0 https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


In 539 BC, Cyrus’ armies conquered Babylon. That’s when he started making some major changes, establishing certain basic rights for its citizens. There were three major premises outlined in the cylinder’s contents.

The first of these was the political establishment of equality of all languages, races, and religions. The next was that all slaves and any deported people were able to return to their homes, and, finally, he decreed that all the temples that had been destroyed were to be rebuilt. All three of these items, along with his other decrees, were baked into the cylinder Rassam found.

Cyrus the Great (center) with his General Harpagus behind him, as he receives the submission of Astyages

(18th century tapestry).

In one fell swoop, Cyrus had formalized freedom of speech and religion, abolition, and civil rights, and he did it all millennia ago. From Babylon, the idea that all people should have certain basic rights began to spread.

Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae receiving the head of Cyrus.

The idea made its way to Greece, to India, and finally to Rome. In Rome, the idea of “natural law” began to take root.

Slavery and Babylon

Collins by Martin G.

Forerunner, "Prophecy Watch," September-October 2009

Topics

 Abuse, Sexual

 Babylon

 Babylon the Great





Babylon, Coming out of

 Babylon, End-Time

Babylonish System

 Captivity

 More...

Related

 The Eighth Commandment

 Entanglement with the Yoke of Bondage

 The Second Exodus (Part One) https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


 The World, the Church, and Laodiceanism

 Habakkuk: A Prophet of Faith (Part Three)

 Communication and Coming Out of Babylon (Part 1)

 Prophets and Prophecy (Part 3)

 More...

Most people do not recognize that everyone in the world is under some form of slavery. We are all slaves to many things in varying degrees. The foundation upon which world culture is based encourages, promotes, and forces us into a life of slavery. Governments thrive on enslaving people. God warned ancient Israel about the suppression of freedom that results from having an all-powerful leader who answers to no one, but still they demanded a king. Notice I Samuel 8:11-20:

"This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots and to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariots. He will appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants. And he will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants. And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the Lord will not hear you in that day."

Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, "No, but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles."

The Israelites, then, who were greatly blessed under the judgment of God-appointed judges, rejected their

Creator by demanding a human king so they could be like the other, poorer, enslaved nations. Thus, the last true bastion of freedom established by God was rejected. Ever since, all governmental systems have been based on taking freedom from the people and enslaving them to pay for the desires of power and pleasure of their leaders.

A Global System of Slavery

Flee from the midst of Babylon, and every one save his life! Do not be cut off in her iniquity, for this is the time of the Lord's vengeance; He shall recompense her. Babylon was a golden cup in the Lord's hand, that made all the earth drunk. The nations drank her wine; therefore the nations are deranged. ( Jeremiah 51:6-

7 )

Literally, the original Hebrew of the first half of verse 7 means, "A golden cup is Babel in the hand of

Yahweh, intoxicating the whole earth ." Jeremiah sees the material splendor of Babylon, but the "wine" that she makes the nations of the earth drink will result in God's wrath coming down upon them. As God's https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


hammer, Babylon was strong, and as His cup of gold, she was rich and beautiful—but neither saves her from ruin. Jeremiah therefore admonishes everyone to flee this perverse, world-ruling system.

The global scourge of slavery is the essence of the Babylonian slavery system that the prophet Jeremiah warned about. It exists in its zenith in the last days. Babylon's perversion, audacity, and pride represent the height of direct defiance against almighty God. This humanly devised governmental, religious, educational, and economic system controlling the world today originates from Satan's initial rebellion against God. Satan , the Adversary , has done a tremendous job of enslaving the whole world under his system of slavery.

God reveals Babylon and its influence in Revelation 17:1-5:

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying to me, "Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication , and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication." So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead a name was written:

MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

This system and the source of its influence is a mystery to the world. Yet, her abominations and spiritual filthiness have kept human beings in a perpetual state of slavery to sin , governments, taxes, war, famine, pestilence, disease, and especially religious confusion.

Modern Slavery

Beginning in the twentieth century, human trafficking, modern slavery, and forced labor have been on a global rise. Earlier, with the demise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the nineteenth century, the world was told that chattel slavery—outright ownership of slaves—was over in the "civilized" world. However, debt bondage and contract slavery began to take its place with little notice from governments, law enforcement, and international organizations.

In reality, there are more slaves now than at any other time in history. Foremost among the victims of human trafficking are women and girls forced into the commercial sex trade, followed by agricultural slavery and domestic slavery. Individuals and groups at risk are often the result of irregular migration due to extreme poverty, internal conflict, natural disaster, and globalization. Victims are kept enslaved through fear, violence, and fraud.

There are no clear distinctions between different forms of slavery. The same families and groups of people are often the victims of several kinds of modern slavery—for example, bonded labor, forced labor, child labor, or child prostitution—with extreme poverty as a common, linking factor.

The most widespread type of human trafficking is debt bondage. The most common contemporary form of slavery is bonded labor, which accounts for more than 20 million victims. Human slavery statistics from the Giving Children Hope Organization and Anti-Slavery International, a British-based human rights organization, in addition to other sources, tell the grim story of this horrible injustice against human life. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


International Statistics

» There are at least 27 million slaves worldwide.

» Worldwide at least 1.2 million children are trafficked every year, and at least 800,000 people are trafficked across borders each year.

» Human slaves are cheap. In 1850, the average slave cost $40,000 in today's dollar. Presently, a slave costs $90 on average.

» At the extreme fringe, children are kidnapped, held in remote camps, and chained at night to prevent their escape. They are put to work on road-building and stone-quarrying. Such child labor, often hard and hazardous, damages health for life, and deprives children of education and the normal enjoyment of their early years.

» Forcible recruitment of children into military service occurs in many parts of the world. The consequences are devastating. Many have died or been disabled in armed conflict, while others have been interrogated, tortured, beaten, or kept as prisoners of war. An estimated 300,000 child-soldiers, some younger than 10 years old, are involved in over 30 areas of conflict worldwide.

» Some children between 7 and 10 years of age work 12 to 14 hours a day and are paid less than one-third of the adult wage. In addition, 126 million children work in the worst forms of child labor—one in every

12 of the world's 5-17 year olds.

» Child domestic servants not only work long hours for a pittance, but are particularly vulnerable to sexual as well as other physical abuse.

» Worldwide, the multibillion-dollar sex-trade industry involves an estimated two million children— including Cambodia, Thailand, and Costa Rica, where "sex tourism" is big business. The average age of women entering into prostitution is 14. The profits to be made are immense when 12- to 15-year-old children can be purchased for $800 to $2,000—and used for five to ten years before they are cast away.

American Statistics

» The United States is principally a transit and destination country for trafficking in persons. The U.S.

Central Intelligence Agency estimates that 50,000 people are trafficked into or transited through the country annually as sex slaves, domestics, and garment and agricultural slaves, of which 80% are women and children.

» Research conducted with Free the Slaves found documented cases of slavery in over 90 U.S. cities. States with the greatest concentration of trafficked persons are New York, California, and Florida. Washington,

DC, also has a large trafficked population.

» Between 100,000 and 300,000 children in the U.S. are at risk for sex trafficking each year. As many as

2.8 million children live on the streets, a third of whom are lured into prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home. The average age of a person's entry into pornography and prostitution in the U.S. is between 12 and 14. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


» Forced marriage is another form of slavery, and at least 200 "matchmaking" organizations operate in the U.S., arranging prospective "brides" for male clients.

These statistics paint a sickening picture of one area of the evil that is prevalent in the last days under the

Babylonian system. Most people would deny that they have any involvement or guilt in such slavery, but those who turn a blind eye to the suffering, employers who do not pay employees fair wages, leaders who do nothing to stop the trafficking, those who dabble in pornography, and many others share in the guilt of this slavery and abuse of woman and children.

Babylon's Fall

Because of this serious neglect of responsibility, more of this enslavement will come upon the U.S. and other Israelitish countries for their sins against God. He gave these nations His inspired Word in the form of the Bible, so they are without excuse for their wickedness (see Amos 3:2 ). Revelation 13:10 gives this condemnation in the form of an immutable principle: "He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity."

Physical slavery will end when Mystery Babylon falls, which occurs when Jesus Christ returns to rule with

His righteous rod of iron. Prophecy tells us that the ultimate downfall of this world-dominating system involves merchandizing, and slaves are a major part of the commerce of this system at the end time.

Human slaves are included on the list of merchandise sold under the Babylonian system mentioned in Revelation 18:11-13:

And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her [the Babylonian system], for no one buys their merchandise anymore: merchandise of gold and silver, precious stones and pearls, fine linen and purple, silk and scarlet, every kind of citron wood, every kind of object of ivory, every kind of object of most precious wood, bronze, iron, and marble; and cinnamon and incense, fragrant oil and frankincense, wine and oil, fine flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and bodies and souls of men.

The merchants, who gained wealth and perverse pleasures from this world's system of religion and commerce, cry and lament because it satiated their greed for materialistic acquisition and their lust for self-pleasure. As the Babylonian system incorporates every expression of corrupt government, so its prostitution includes every corrupt economic system and idolatry. Even human beings are reduced to cargo, traded as slaves to drive the engines of production, prosperity, and sinful pleasures.

Sadly, the modern descendants of Israel have promoted and become part of this self-serving, perverse world system. Sin inevitably brings its own punishment, and there are always consequences to disobedience. Thus, when today's Israelites go into captivity in the last days, they will have no excuse for their sin and no freedom whatsoever.

Ezekiel 5:11-13 prophesies that two-thirds of them will be killed and one-third scattered because of their sins: A third part is destroyed in war; a second third will die by pestilence, famine, and disease; and the remaining third is scattered to the winds. Israel's history shows that when her people are scattered, the majority of the men, women, and children go into slavery—into captivity. As we saw earlier, "He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity."

The reality of that penalty for corporate sin is beginning to form now. Long ago, God warned the children of Israel about what would happen if they committed idolatry, mistreated one another, and shunned Him. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you. And there you will serve gods, the work of men's hands, wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days. . . . ( Deuteronomy 4:27-30 )

He promises the latter-day remnant of the descendants of Israel that, if they genuinely seek to submit to

Him, He will save them from their scattered condition and bondage.

We have all been enticed by this anti-God, anti-Christ system of slavery to some degree or another. God urges us to take action:

And [the angel] cried mightily with a loud voice, saying, "Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird! For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury." And I heard another voice from heaven saying, "Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues. For her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities." ( Revelation 18:2-5 )

God always gives people an opportunity to repent of their ways and forsake the world. His people may live in this world, but they must not live as the world does. So God commands us to flee for our lives from

Babylon the Great to avoid being lured into sin by her evil ways and caught in her looming destruction.

Human Rights and the Cyrus Cylinder

Next week the Foreign Office will release its annual report on Human Rights and Democracy . It will showcase some of the work the UK has been doing to promote human rights around the world over the course of our current parliament (ie. the last five years), paying special attention to the value we place on civil society. It will also look in detail at 27 “countries of concern”, in which we consider there to be the most serious violations and abuses of human rights, and 10 “case study countries”, where the focus is on one particular ‘theme’.

Human Rights are sometimes portrayed as a “Western” concept or invention (usually most vociferously by those committing the most serious violations). This is, in fact, a misreading of centuries of history which led up to the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Way back in 539 B.C., the armies of Cyrus the Great, the first king of ancient Persia (modern day Iran), conquered the city of Babylon. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


In doing so, and as he prepared to govern his new territory, he declared that slaves would be free, people had the right to choose their own religion, and that different races living in the city would be treated equally. He recorded all of this on a baked-clay cylinder (known today as the Cyrus Cylinder and resident in the British Museum) – an ancient record that has been recognised by many as the world’s first charter of human rights. It is translated into all six official languages of the United Nations and its provisions mirror the first four Articles of the Universal Declaration.

Cyrus’ ideas, which played an important role in developing the concept that human rights are not limited to one cultural tradition, would be built upon by other great civilisations in the coming centuries. The

Edicts of Ashoka, 33 inscriptions recording laws set down by the Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan Empire between 273 and 232 BC, can be found across modern-day Bangladesh, Nepal, India and Pakistan. He is credited with promoting tolerance and understanding between religious communities, humanitarian ideals in warfare and the right to a fair trial. Some centuries later, the Prophet Muhammad would draft the Charter of Medina (c.622), which some academics have argued was the first constitution to enshrine a set of basic human rights.

Western countries would play an important role too, but later: the Magna Carta (1215) in England (we will shortly be celebrating its 800 th anniversary), the US Constitution (1787) and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) are all widely acknowledged to have played an important role in shaping the

Universal Declaration. That declaration would, for the first time, enshrine a set of basic rights which the governments of UN Member States were expected to ensure were granted to all their citizens.

International bodies, treaties and organisations were tasked with upholding these, and individual countries were able to hold each other account; for the first time against a set of commonly agreed principles.

The report is one way in which the UK seeks to do this. Disappointingly, Ethiopia will once again this year again feature as a “country case study” – together with five other African countries: Egypt, Nigeria, The

Gambia, Burundi and Rwanda. This is because Ethiopia’s impressive record on economic growth and development in recent years has not been matched by progress on civil and political rights. We continue to be concerned by the overly broad use of the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation; a lack of political space in the run up to the election; the behaviour, in some instances, of the security forces, and restrictions on media freedom – which this year’s report will look at in more detail. This assessment is shared by the African Good Governance Index , which uses African and global indexes to rank countries across a range of economic, social, civil and political rights. Ethiopia’s strong gains on issues such as gender and health rights are in stark contrast to its position, languishing at the bottom of continental league tables, on political participation and freedom of assembly and expression.

Most importantly though, these issues matter to more and more Ethiopians. It would be wonderful if next year we could see Ethiopia not included in the list of countries covered in our human rights report. More competitive elections than in 2010, narrower use of the ATP and better accountability for security forces would go a long way towards this. It would mean the country would have another good story to tell, as it already does on development and the role it plays on the regional and international stage.

The Cyrus Cylinder and the ancient proclamation of human rights https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


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More than 2 millennia before the French Revolution introduced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and

of the Citizens , an ancient Near Eastern monarch issued a charter that is considered to be the oldest known declarations of human rights. This charter is known today as the Cyrus Cylinder.

The Cyrus Cylinder was discovered in the ruins of Babylon, in modern Iraq, in March 1879. The ancient relic, which was a foundation deposit at the city’s main temple, the Ésagila, was made of baked clay, and measured 22.5 cm (8.85 in) in length. On the cylinder is an account detailing the conquest of Babylon in

539 B.C. by Persian king Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, who had created the largest empire of the era. It also describes the capture of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon. The account was inscribed in cuneiform text, and has been dated to between 539 and 530 B.C.

A painting of Cyrus the Great as he enters Babylon (Mani-Persepolis.nu).

The inscription on the cylinder speaks of Cyrus’ promotion of religious, racial, and linguistic freedom and his permission to those deported by the Babylonians to return to their homelands. It extols Cyrus as a benefactor of the citizens of Babylonia who improved their lives, and restored temples and cult sanctuaries across Mesopotamia and elsewhere in the region. Some segments of the text read:

“I announce that I will respect the traditions, customs and religions of the nations of my empire and never let any of my governors and subordinates look down on or insult them while I am alive. From now on…, I never let anyone oppress any others, and if it occurs, I will take his or her right back and penalize the

oppressor.”

“I will never let anyone take possession of movable and landed properties of the others by force or without compensation. While I am alive, I prevent unpaid, forced labor. Today, I announce that everyone is free to choose a religion. People are free to live in all regions and take up a job provided that they never violate

other’s rights.”

Some critics have argued that the belief that the Cyrus Cylinder is the world’s first charter of human rights is an anachronism, and ignores the context of the document. They claim that Cyrus seemed to be more concerned about the views of the gods, and merely took steps to appease them, rather than acting for the goodness of the people. For instance, it is written on the cylinder:

“the gods of the land of Sumer and Akkad which Nabonidus – to the fury of the lord of the gods – had brought into Shuanna, at the command of Marduk, the great lord, I returned them unharmed to their cells,

in the sanctuaries that make them happy.”

In exchange, these gods were supposed to return the favor to Cyrus:

“May all the gods that I returned to their sanctuaries, every day before Bel and Nabu, ask for a long life for me, and mention my good deeds, and say to Marduk, my lord, this: “Cyrus, the king who fears you, and https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


Cambyses his son, may they be the provisioners of our shrines until distant (?) days, and the population of

Babylon call blessings on my kingship. I have enabled all the lands to live in peace.”

Furthermore, they argue, the fact that the Cylinder was discovered as a foundation deposit of the Ésagila suggests that Cyrus’ intended audience were the various gods of the realm, rather than mortal beings.

Regardless of which perspective is taken, the Cyrus Cylinder is undoubtedly an incredible piece of writing that brings to life the events that transpired over 2,500 years ago and opens a window into the thoughts and desires of a powerful king that once ruled over an empire.

Who created human rights? (and why it's a problem for atheists)

It is 70 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations.

Following his Big Conversation debate with Peter Singer , Andy Bannister says the document still poses a significant problem for atheists

On the 3rd July 1884, four sailors aboard a yacht, the Mignonette, encountered a terrible Atlantic storm.

The yacht sank, leaving them stranded in a tiny wooden lifeboat.With little food and no water, by their eighth day adrift they were desperate and so made the fateful decision to kill the cabin boy. For four more days until their rescue, the three surviving sailors fed on the cabin boy’s body.

When they returned to England and the story broke, it scandalised the nation and the survivors were charged with murder and made to stand trial.

If you were the judge, what would you do? After all, the story leads to two possible conclusions. The first is purely utilitarian: one person was killed, three people survived. And the cabin boy, unlike the older sailors, had no dependants; his death left no grieving children.

But I suspect few readers would agree with that option. Most of us have a more visceral reaction: what those three sailors did was fundamentally wrong, because they violated the cabin boy’s human rights and dignity.

Free and equal https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


Whether it’s a small crime against humanity (the murder of a cabin boy under desperate circumstances) or a major one (the Rwandan genocide or Stalin’s Russia), most people have the same reaction: it is wrong to violate the dignity of another human being. This year is the 70th anniversary of the document that most famously encapsulates this idea: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was adopted by the United Nations on 10th December 1948 in Paris.

The UDHR opens with these powerful words: “Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world…All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

We’re passionate about human rights, we award Nobel Prizes for them, but a fairly basic question is often overlooked. These rights, this dignity that human beings are claimed to have – where is it located? What is its basis, its foundation? In short, however noble the UDHR may sound, is it true?

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights

These are trickier questions to answer than you might imagine, and the options are limited. Perhaps one might suggest that human rights just are; they just exist. This was the route taken by the secular human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell whom I once debated on Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable? show .

Tatchell is passionate about human rights, but when I pressed him on why we have them, he basically said they exist because they exist. This is hugely problematic, not just because it’s a circular argument, but because the racist can use the same rationale – they can claim to be superior to other races and when we ask why, reply: “I am because I am.”

Another popular secular route is to try to find something special about human beings: perhaps the fact we have speech, or consciousness, or creativity. Again, as part of ‘The Big Conversation’ series from Unbelievable?, I recently dialogued with one of the most famous atheist philosophers in the world who holds this position . Peter Singer is famous, firstly, for his commitment to utilitarianism – we pick our actions based on what causes the least suffering or promotes the greatest happiness (so cabin boy casserole is very much a real option). But in our conversation Singer also said that what gives us rights and https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


dignity is not that we are human, but that we have the ability to have preferences for the future, and that we can act in accordance with those preferences.

There is a grave problem with trying to ground rights and dignity in somebody’s abilities. Even leading atheist Sam Harris has pointed it out: “The problem is that whatever attribute we use to differentiate between humans and animals – intelligence, language use, moral sentiments, and so on – will equally differentiate between human beings themselves. If people are more important to us than orangutans because they can articulate their interests, why aren’t more articulate people more important still? And what about those poor men and women with aphasia? It would seem that we have just excluded them from our moral community.”

Now the options are getting more limited. Maybe we can say that human rights exist because they matter

to me; because they’re personally important to us. The problem, of course, is that when Martin Luther

King cries “I have a dream!” in his famous civil rights speech, how do we answer the person who says: “I’m glad you care; but personally I don’t.” Isn’t the point about rights and dignity that we should all care? We need more than mere personal preference.

The last option is to appeal to the state: human rights exist because the government grants them. The problem here is that if rights are something the state gives, the state can equally take them away. In 1857, an African-American slave named Dred Scott sued his owner for his freedom. The US Supreme Court ruled against Scott, the Justices stating that as a “negro”, he did not possess rights.

We hear a story like that, 150 years on, and wince with shame at how our ancestors behaved. But if human rights and dignity are just arbitrary inventions that the state confers, then the state can equally arbitrarily take them away. Tax deductions today, rights deductions tomorrow.

Invented or discovered?

So how do we solve the problem that many of us are committed to human rights but we can’t ground human rights? Well, the first thing to say is we need to get beyond preference. There’s a huge temptation today to see morals, values and choices as just our personal preference.

I was surprised to discover that even Singer drifts this way at times. I reminded him during our conversation of the passage in his famous book, Practical Ethics (Cambridge University Press), where he basically admits there isn’t really a way to differentiate between a life spent stamp-collecting, a life spent watching football, or a life spent helping the poor. If ethics is just something we make up, then I can see why he is stuck here.

But what if ethics, human rights and human dignity aren’t made up? One of the brilliant insights that the world leaders, philosophers and theologians who crafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had was the assumption that human rights and dignity aren’t invented but discovered. During our conversation, Singer actually admitted this, remarking that he increasingly thinks that moral values and duties exist independently of us, in a “similar way to mathematical truths existing”.

There’s a huge temptation today to define morals as just our personal preference

That’s a massive step for an atheist like Singer to take, for it means that as well as physical things (atoms, particles, tables, chairs, chocolate éclairs etc) you also have invisible, non-physical entities floating around, https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


principles such as “love your neighbour”. For somebody like Singer, who believes human beings are the unpurposed product of time plus chance plus natural selection, this looks remarkably peculiar. As I put it to him in our dialogue: it must have been an interesting day on the Serengeti all those thousands of years ago when one of our ancient hominid ancestors woke up to discover themselves bound not just by the law of gravity, but also by the law of “do not murder”. Was their first thought: “Hoorah! I’m now a moral agent!”, or “Bummer, now I can’t whack the hominid in the next door cave over the head and steal his lunch”?

By contrast, the Christian view of what it means to be a human being and a bearer of rights and dignity starts from a very different place. Christians ground human rights in the incredible truth, proclaimed in texts like Genesis 1:26-27, that human beings bear the image of God, the imago dei. Incidentally, that idea is unique to the Bible. It’s not found in Islam, or Hinduism or Buddhism – it’s a uniquely Judaeo-Christian concept.

Many atheists throughout history have reluctantly recognised this is a far better foundation for human rights than attempting to arbitrarily ground value and dignity in other places. Some of them have also raised the next obvious question of what happens to value and dignity if you pull God out as the foundation. The 19th Century German atheist Friedrich Nietzsche (who hated Christian ethics as he felt it elevated the weak and the poor) was brutally honest: “The masses blink and say ‘We are all equal – Man is but man, before God – we are equal.’ Before God! But now this God has died.”

So, there is a stark choice: one can adopt a Christian understanding of humanity – that we have real value and real dignity, because we are made in God’s image. Or you can reject that narrative, ignore the consequences, refuse to answer Nietzsche and pretend everything is OK.

The Big Conversation

Should we end the lives of severely disabled children?

Moral philosopher Peter Singer (PS, pictured left) has provoked controversy among disability rights campaigners. In this edited excerpt from his debate with Andy Bannister (AB, pictured right), hosted by

Justin Brierley (JB), he defends the practice of euthanasia for children born with severe disabilities. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


PS: Perhaps we should look at this term ‘dignity’ first. An anencephalic is an infant born with only a brainstem but no cortex, so no capacity for consciousness. An anencephalic won’t recognise his or her mother, is not capable of experiencing or feeling anything at all.

Now, compare that with a chimpanzee or a horse. Why should we think that this human, who could have no experiences, has more dignity than the chimpanzee or the horse or the dog who can respond in so many complex ways to their environment?

JB: So you disagree with the declaration that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”?

PS: That’s right. There are exceptions.

JB: What do you think about human dignity, Andy?

AB: Peter, while you take examples of human beings who are born profoundly disabled, I still think you’d recognise they had a degree of dignity. If you met a parent of a child born like that, who was proposing not just committing infanticide but then chopping the corpse into little bits and frying them on the barbecue, you’d think that there has been a failure of moral reasoning. Even in that tragedy there is a degree of dignity.

Some of the great ethicists like Hobbes, Locke and Kant argued that equality is not grounded in an ability that you have or you don’t have. That leads to a sliding scale that says: “Maybe rationality is what grants people inclusion in moral community.” Well, you’re a brilliant philosopher – if we put you up next to Justin and we have to make a choice [to keep just one of them], Justin may not be part of that.

JB: I’d be mincemeat!

PS: We could just say there is a minimal threshold…

AB: We could go that route or we could go the route of Hobbes and Kant and others of intrinsic human dignity. In terms of animal rights and justice for the animal kingdom, that’s also grounded in human dignity because I have a duty to the animal kingdom to treat it in a particular way.

PS: Do you think that your duties to the anencephalic are grounded in some rights?

AB: I think all human beings, whether they have capabilities or they don’t, belong to the human family and with that come rights and dignity. So I would agree with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Watch the full debate between Andy Bannister and Peter Singer

Where are we going?

But one last thought. If human beings have dignity, why should that affect how we behave? Suppose you are walking down your local high street when a passer-by trips you up, pokes you in the eye, and steals your Starbucks. “Hey!” you cry. “I have dignity! How dare you!” And they look at you and say: “So what?”

How can you compel them to take your rights seriously?

You see, you can’t talk about rights without talking about duties. What is our duty towards a dignitybearer, towards a fellow human, and why? That question opens a whole new can of worms. Is there a way https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


we are supposed to be? Are some actions really wrong, and some really right? Harvard University law professor, Michael Sandel says: “Debates about justice and rights are often, unavoidably, debates about purpose...Despite our best efforts to make law neutral on such questions, it may not be possible to say what’s just without arguing about the nature of the good life.”

Sandel’s observation gets to the heart of what it means to be a human being. Are we creatures designed to seek justice, goodness and fairness? Or are we just primates that got lucky in the evolutionary lottery and whose genes are purely directed at reproductive success?

This was a topic that Singer and I returned to many times in our ‘Big Conversation’ (see dialogue box above). I remarked to Peter that it’s all very well calling a book Practical Ethics, but that only goes so far.

Imagine that I get home from a trip and I say to my wife: “Hey, I just bought this amazing book, Practical

Canoeing, at the airport!” Next day I load my wife and children into a canoe and start paddling out into the North Sea. “What precisely is the plan?” my wife begins to ask, increasingly insistently. To which I keep replying: “Honey, stop asking silly questions! Can’t you see how wonderful this canoe is? It’s so practical.”

Finally, she shouts at me: “But where are we going?”

Practical ethics, utilitarianism, human rights, and so forth – all these things are all very well, but unless we ask what the purpose of a human life is, what we are supposed to be, what we are supposed to be aiming at, we really will just end up paddling in circles.

If Christianity is true, love is the supreme ethic

As the conversation with Singer shows, if you ultimately believe that the universe is just atoms in motion, that there is nothing intrinsically valuable about human beings, and if some humans have more value than others, because the metric you use to measure ‘worth’ or ‘personhood’ assigns them a greater score, then you have a problem.

But by stark, beautiful contrast, if the Christian story is true, then we were made with a purpose. We were made for something. Indeed, made for someone. We were made to discover God’s love, to love God in return, and to love our neighbour. If Christianity is true, love is the supreme ethic – that’s what it means to be human and it gives a value, a purpose, a direction to human life – and a basis not just for human rights but also for our duties to one another.

This is why atheists face such a sharp dilemma. Only if the Christian story is true do humans have dignity and worth. And only on that basis can you talk meaningfully about rights and about responsibilities. Who created human rights? The one who created humans. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Originally, people had rights only because of their membership in a group, such as a family. Then, in 539

BC, Cyrus the Great, after conquering the city of Babylon, did something totally unexpected—he freed all slaves to return home. Moreover, he declared people should choose their own religion. The Cyrus

Cylinder, a clay tablet containing his statements, is the first human rights declaration in history.

The idea of human rights spread quickly to India, Greece and eventually Rome. The most important advances since then have included:

1215: The Magna Carta—gave people new rights and made the king subject to the law.

1628: The Petition of Right—set out the rights of the people.

1776: The United States Declaration of Independence—proclaimed the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

1789: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen—a document of France, stating that all citizens are equal under the law.

1948: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights—the first document listing the 30 rights to which everyone is entitled.

For a more in-depth look at the history of human rights, go to the United for Human Rights

What Does It Mean to Be Human?

We can’t turn to science for an answer.

Posted May 16, 2012

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What does it mean to be human? Or, putting the point a bit more precisely, what are we saying about others when we describe them as human? Answering this question is not as straightforward as it might https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


appear. Minimally, to be human is to be one of us, but this begs the question of the class of creatures to which “us” refers.

Can’t we turn to science for an answer? Not really. Some paleoanthropologists identify the category of the human with the species Homo sapiens, others equate it with the whole genus Homo, some restrict it to the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, and a few take it to encompass the entire hominin lineage.

These differences of opinion are not due to a scarcity of evidence. They are due to the absence of any conception of what sort of evidence can settle the question of which group or groups of primates should be counted as human. Biologists aren’t equipped to tell us whether an organism is a human organism because “human” is a folk category rather a scientific one.

Some folk-categories correspond more or less precisely to scientific categories. To use a well-worn example, the folk category “water” is coextensive with the scientific category “H2O.” But not every folk category is even approximately reducible to a scientific one. Consider the category “weed.” Weeds don’t have any biological properties that distinguish them from non-weeds. In fact, one could know everything there is to know biologically about a plant, but still not know that it is a weed. So, at least in this respect, being human is more like being a weed than it is like being water.

If this sounds strange to you, it is probably because you are already committed to one or another conception of the human (for example, that all and only members of Homo sapiens are human).

However, claims like “an animal is human only if it is a member of the species Homo sapiens” are stipulated rather than discovered. In deciding that all and only Homo sapiens are humans, one is expressing a preference about where the boundary separating humans from non-humans should be drawn, rather than discovering where such a boundary lays.

If science can’t give us an account of the human, why not turn to the folk for an answer?

Unfortunately, this strategy multiplies the problem rather than resolving it. When we look at how ordinary people have used the term “human” and its equivalents across cultures and throughout the span of history, we discover that often (maybe even typically) members of our species are explicitly excluded from the category of the human. It’s well-known that the Nazis considered Jews to be nonhuman creatures (Untermenschen), and somewhat less well-known that fifteenth-century Spanish colonists took a similar stance towards the indigenous inhabitants of the Caribbean islands, as did North

Americans toward enslaved Africans (my 2011 book Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and

Exterminate Others, gives many more examples). Another example is provided by the seemingly interminable debate about the moral permissibility of abortion, which almost always turns on the question of whether the embryo is a human being. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


At this point, it looks like the concept of the human is hopelessly confused. But looked at in the right way, it’s possible to discern a deeper order in the seeming chaos. The picture only seems chaotic if one assumes that “human” is supposed to designate a certain taxonomic category across the board (‘in every possible world’ as philosophers like to say). But if we think of it as an indexical expression – a term that gets its content from the context in which it is uttered – a very different picture emerges. article continues after advertisement

Paradigmatic indexical terms include words like “now,” “here,” and “I.” Most words name exactly the same thing, irrespective of when, where, and by whom they are uttered. For instance, when anyone anywhere correctly uses the expression ‘the Eiffel Tower,’ they are naming one and the same architectural structure. In contrast, the word “now” names the moment at which the word is uttered, the word “here” names the place where it is uttered, and the word “I” names the person uttering it. If I am right, the word “human” works in much the same way that these words do. When we describe others as human, we are saying that they are members of our own kind or, more precisely, members of our own natural kind.

What’s a natural kind? The best way to wrap one’s mind around the notion of natural kinds is to contrast them with artificial kinds. Airplane pilots are an artificial kind, as are Red Sox fans and residents of New Jersey, because they only exist in virtue of human linguistic and social practices, whereas natural kinds (for example, chemical elements and compounds, microphysical particles, and, more controversially, biological species) exist ‘out there’ in the world. Our concepts of natural are concepts that purport to correspond to the structural fault-lines of a mind-independent world. In Plato’s vivid metaphor, they ‘cut nature at its joints.’ Weeds are an artificial kind, because they exist only in virtue of certain linguistic conventions and social practices, but pteridophyta (ferns) are a natural kind because, unlike weeds, their existence is insensitive to our linguistic conventions.

Philosophers distinguish the linguistic meaning of indexical expressions from their content. The content of an indexical is whatever it names. For example, if you were to say ‘I am here’, the word ‘here’ names the spot where you are sitting. Its linguistic meaning is ‘the place where I am when I utter the word

“here”.’ If ‘human’ means ‘my own natural kind,’ then referring to a being as human boils down to the assertion that the other is a member of the natural kind that the speaker believes herself to be. This goes a long way towards explaining why a statement of the form ‘x is human,’ in the mouth of a biologist might mean ‘x is a member of the species Homo sapiens’ while the very same statement in the mouth of a Nazi might mean ‘x is a member of the Aryan race.’ That's what it means to be human. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


Conscience and the gift of emphathy. Mercy!

Robert Schreib

- Robert Schreib, Toms River, NJ

The meaning of being human is to care for one another and to have the ability to pass on knowledge.

Keelan DeVogt

- Keelan DeVogt, Waterville High

War vs. crime, corruption, drugs advances human rights: Palace

By Azer Parrocha December 10, 2018, 1:38 pm

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MANILA -- The Duterte administration’s war against criminality, corruption, terrorism, insurgency, and illegal drugs advances human rights, Malacañang said on Monday.

Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea, chair of the Presidential Human Rights Committee, made this remark as the country joined the global observance of the 70th year of the adoption of the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

For this year's observance, the Philippine government has selected the theme ‘Protecting Human Lives,

Uplifting Human Dignity, and Advancing People's Progress!’

Medialdea stressed that “every administration has its own emphasis and approach” in its effort to make human rights a reality for its people.

He further said that despite allegations of human rights violations under the administration, “the rule of law is upheld.”

“To protect the lives of the innocent law-abiding citizens of the country, this administration remains unrelenting in its crusade against criminality, corruption, terrorism, insurgency, and the proliferation of illegal drugs that destroy families and the future of the young. In all these, the rule of law is upheld as the guilty are brought before the bar of justice,” Medialdea said in a press statement. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


“Indeed, our celebration of seven decades of the UDHR reflects our confidence that we are advancing human rights in a manner that truly values and responds to the needs of Filipinos,” he added.

Aside from the fight against illegal drugs among others, Medialdea said that government continues to effectively implement responsive programs that broaden people's access to education, healthcare, employment, shelter, food, and basic utilities and services.

“The government fulfills its aspiration of a respectable standard of living that benefits the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in the Philippine society. The government is resolute in uplifting the dignity of every Filipino,” Medialdea said.

Medialdea also noted that government is determined to work for sustainable progress that will provide a better life for all Filipinos.

“In our quest for economic development that impacts communities at the grassroots, aggressive horizontal and vertical infrastructure development shall be undertaken to encourage more internal and external investments and partnerships,” he added.

On Dec. 10, 1948, the Philippines became the first signatory to the UDHR, a milestone document proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations in human rights.

According to Medialdea, the Philippines has signed eight of these core treaties, incorporated them in domestic laws and policies, and made them part of governance.

In October this year, the Philippines was elected to its fifth term as a member of the 47-strong United

Nations Human Rights Council.

Malacañang described the country’s inclusion as "an affirmation" of its accomplishments and proof that

UN recognizes its respect for human rights.

“The Philippines’ re-election to the 47-member United Nations Human Rights Council for another threeyear term with a vote of 165 out of the 192 votes cast by member-states is a recognition that our government respects human rights and will not tolerate abuse by those in authority,” Medialdea added. (PNA) https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/03/cyrus-the-great/ https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1465/Slavery-Babylon.htm


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