Life As a Divine Right Not a Human Right

The aim of this paper is to defend the following thesis: It is rational to believe that the right to life is restrictively a Divine right and not a human right; that is, only God has the (moral/legal/religious) authority to make and issue the laws surrounding life and death. This paper is structured as follows: after some introductory points are given, two arguments in favor of the above thesis will be formulated; the first argument is based on the fallibility of human knowledge and judgment, and the second argument is based on the rejection of the human right to life because of its implausible implications. Finally, some implications and advantages of the favored thesis will be explained briefly.

Introduction

Concerning the above questions, two main approaches are Natural Rights Theories and Legal Positivism. According to the first, the origin of the rights is natural laws (Kelsen, 2006: 392), and the main properties of the laws are Universality and Immutability. (Freeman, 2014: 128-9) Hence, the proponents of this approach try to find a solution to the question of how and why a natural law can produce a rational basis for the legitimacy of human rights and make justified decisions about them. The famous slogan of this group is: “Unjust laws are not laws.” (Finnis, 2020)
Natural Rights Theories can be placed into two groups. According to the first, natural rights are stemmed from Divine Will since men are the creatures of God. The proponents of the second group, however, have tried to secularize natural laws. According to them, natural laws are the ontological implications of Human nature such that even God cannot change or remove them. As Hugo Grotius, one of the founders of this school, says natural laws were valid even if there would not be God. (Bix, 2010: 215) So, human nature qua human nature is the origin of human rights.
At any rate, in all these approaches, despite all differences, the right to life is one of the most important rights, if not the most important, at least for the simple reason that without it other rights are useless and pointless. The right to life simply means that a human being has the right to live and, nobody, including governments, can try to end her/his life.
Now, concerning the right to life, the main question is who and which source has the right to make laws, issue judicial rulings, and issue death penalties. To find the answer, in this paper, I will try to defend this thesis: It is rational to believe that the right to life is exclusively a Divine right and not a human right; that is, only God has the (moral/legal/religious) authority to make and issue the laws surrounding life and death.

Methodology

The method of Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) will be used to evaluate and justify the suggested theory. The outcome of IBE can hardly prove the truth of an idea. However, the method can show which theory best explains available evidence among the rivals. In other words, IBE can show that belief in the truth of which theory is more rational and justified.

Results and Discussion

This paper is structured as follows: after some introductory points are given, two arguments in favor of the above thesis will be formulated; the first argument is based on the fallibility of human knowledge and judgment, and the second argument is based on the rejection of the human right to life because of its implausible implications. Finally, some implications and advantages of the favored thesis will be explained briefly.
The first argument can be formulated as follows: (1) All judicial rulings made and issued by humans are fallible; (2) In the realm of irreparable rights, humans’ (individual/collective) wisdom is not legitimately allowed to issue fallible legal judgments; (3) Right to life is an irreparable right; (4) So, humans’ (individual/collective) wisdom is not legitimately allowed to issue legal judgments about right to life; (5) Only humans or God are allowed to issue legal judgments/judicial rulings about right to life; (6) So, only God is legitimately allowed to issue legal judgments/judicial rulings about right to life. In the paper, it is shown that all premises of the argument are justified. So, the argument is valid.
The second argument can be formulated as follows: (1) A theory is wrong if its consequences/implications are wrong; (2) One of the implications of the theory that the right to life is a human right is passing the laws by humans’ (individual/collective) wisdom according to which killing people or execution of people are allowed; (3) A posteriori, it can be shown that such laws are obviously wrong or extremely controversial; (4) So, the theory that the right to life is a human right has wrong consequences/implications; (5) So, the theory that the right to life is a human right is wrong; (6) Only humans or God are allowed to issue legal judgments/judicial rulings about right to life; (7) So, only God is legitimately allowed to issue legal judgments/judicial rulings about the right to life.
It seems that premises 1 and 2 are unquestionable. Premises 4 and 5 are the consequences of previous premises. Premise 6 was explained in the previous argument. Premise 3, however, is controversial. So, this paper presents some thought experiments to justify premise 3. Consequently, the argument is sound and valid. It is worth mentioning that the two abovementioned arguments are philosophical and theological, and hence, their results dominate the limits of legislation laws.

Conclusions

In this paper, we tried to defend the theory that it is rational to believe that the right to life is exclusively a Divine right and not a human right. The implications and the scope of the theory are significant and wide. The first is that any kind of killing people, including capital punishment, is illegal unless it can be shown clearly and undoubtedly that God has allowed it. So, the number of legalized killing cases will decrease significantly. Moreover, in the case of conflict between rights, no one has the right to sacrifice the lives of people to reach other aims. Besides, some important theological and legal problems are solved or dissolved if the suggested theory is accepted. The author hopes that he can publish his notes on these topics soon. 

Selection of References

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