Human Rights Breakthrough

Hidden in plain sight for millennia, a physicist discovers the fact that the laws of nature and natural rights are two names for the same phenomena. A simple thread of logic proves that the natural rights in this human rights breakthrough are the same as those “endowed by their Creator”. He names them “temporal rights”.

Secular Proof of Traditional Natural Rights in 92 Words

1. 1. It makes no sense to say that a person has a natural right to do something he cannot actually do.
   2. Thus a natural right stems from a corresponding ability.
   3. Every ability must provide the right to exercise it: exercising an ability and exercising a right are just different names for the same activity.
   4. Each thing in the universe has rights corresponding to its abilities. A beaver has the right to cut down trees. Rocks have a right to the space they occupy.
   5. Each human ability conveys the natural right to exercise it.

   Temporal Rights¹

   There are many powerful features of this human rights breakthrough —

   1. It is 100% secular. Believers and nonbelievers can discuss rights without the religion obstacle. It forms a basis for religious and worldview freedom without an appeal to deity.
   2. It is unprecedented. This view of natural rights does not appear in the western history of natural rights dialog.²
   3. It is revolutionary. It vaporizes the wall between church and state.
   4. It is pervasive. Every activity in the universe is rights being exercised.
   5. Inalienability is intrinsic to temporal rights. You cannot separate the stone from the space it occupies. You cannot violate the right without violating the rock.
   6. The essence of a thing lies in its abilities. The violation of a natural right is more than it seems, it is a violation of the thing itself: for a human, an enslavement.
   7. All conflict is a collision of rights or of claims thereto. Temporal rights focuses conflict resolution on the fundamental issues and depersonalizes them.
   8. Temporal rights prove that traditional natural rights are part of natural law. A beaver has the right to cut down trees, and a person has the right to speak his mind.
   9. Temporal rights provide a natural law basis for morality and ethics. Honoring and protecting natural rights is good, their violation is evil. Good government protects natural rights, bad government violates them.
   10. Temporal rights support all the human virtues. The highest right is the right to choose. The highest choice is to love.
   11. The temporal rights view of the universe is very much like the ancient eastern view. Adoption by the west will help unify our cultures.

   The Caveats

   1. Rights created by legislation are at least a dilution of natural rights if not a corruption. We must be very careful when we “mess with mother nature”.
   2. If each ability or capacity does not have a corresponding intrinsic right, there is no such thing as natural rights.
   3. If you think that only human beings can have rights you might also think that the universe rotates around the earth.
   4. If you say that the whole idea of rights is an abstraction, then I respond: “Yes, but only to the degree that the idea is a description of a reality and not the reality itself. Rights are meta data.”

   Temporal Rights in Action

   In the Courtroom: Judges, jurors, and witnesses will think more clearly when they focus on the rights at stake. Lawyers will be more persuasive when they focus on those rights. SCOTUS opinions will be more comprehensible to the layman when cast in terms of rights.

   In the Marketplace: Marketers will create happier customers when they honor their right to facts and honest value.

   In Congress: Laws will be more effective and less intrusive when legislators focus on maximum protection with minimum violation.

   In Marriage: Spouses can depersonalize their conflicts by identifying their rights and restricting their discussion to that topic.

   In Parenting: Children understand fairness and respond well to instruction and discipline based on rights rather than otherwise arbitrary rules.

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   ¹ Temporal rights exist during the same period of time as their corresponding abilities: hence the label “temporal”.
   ² Many native American tribes have long held this attitude toward nature in general and animals in particular.