Francis Beckwith wrote:
The declaration says three things about rights:
1. That they are self-evident 2. That they are inalienable 3. That they have divine source
So, Ed seems to be suggesting that we jettison teaching the third because there is no principled way to teach it with out implying the falsity of other takes on God and rights. But, as you know, there are many who challenge the inalienability and self-evidence of rights precisely on the grounds that if rights have these non-material properties, it seems that some form of non-naturalism must be the case and theism is a form of non-naturalism. So, there's good reason to ignore 1 and 2 as well since it may lead one to think that theism has a lot more going for it in grounding rights than let's say materialism.
I'm not suggesting that we not teach that this is the philosophy behind the Declaration, I'm just saying that if we allow teachers to advocate that the theological position is true, how do we prevent them from advocating any other theological position? If we cannot do so, then we'll have quite a mess on our hands as Muslim teachers teach their students that the Quran is true, for instance, or atheist teachers teach that the bible is false. From a practical standpoint, this clearly isn't workable, but at the same time you cannot constitutionally say that we will allow teachers to teach some theological positions but not others. How would you address that question, which was at the core of what I said?
Ed Brayton _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw
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