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Mike Winther lays the foundation of where our rights and authorities come from. He talks about how everything we deal with in government comes down to our rights. He talks about the political context of rights and how it’s what we are ethically allowed to do. He also explains why morality can be a relative term.
He also shares an exercise where he used logic to get students to conclude that God is the source of our rights. We learn about evolutionary thinking in law, government authority, and the rights of individuals. He also shares a process of elimination to conclude where authority comes from.
You’ll Learn:
- [01:07] We all want our rights, but do we really know what they are? Almost everything we deal with in government comes down to rights.
- [02:53] In a political context, rights are everything that you are ethically allowed to do.
- [04:17] Do you have the right to rob a bank? No, because that would infringe on someone else’s rights and it’s not ethical.
- [05:34] The morality of a society isn’t the measure of its goodness or badness. The measure of morality is whether it’s normal.
- [06:22] Depending on the society, morality can be a relative term.
- [08:01] We don’t have a right to things that are unethical. The only reliable source of right and wrong is the creator of the universe.
- [12:35] If we know the source of our rights, we can determine how they should be used.
- [13:03] Mike makes an apologetic or an argument for the existence of God through the lens of political science.
- [21:28] If the Government gives you rights. Government can take away those rights. If rights come from a majority, minorities don’t have protections. Do we want the Constitution to be our source of rights?
- [25:45] Mike gets to the argument that God needs to be the source of our rights.
- [27:27] Every academic discipline is really an evangelical discipline. All truth points back to the Creator.
- [29:47] Secured rights need to come from a non-human source.
- [34:04] Social organization varies depending on biological evolution.
- [35:04] Evolutionary thinking in the law is thinking that the law should reflect the society that it is in.
- [35:49] Rights and authority are flip sides of the same coin. Government should only have authority to keep me from violating someone else’s rights. It shouldn’t stop me from exercising my rights.
- [36:41] Government shouldn’t interfere with the rights of individuals.
- [37:10] Authority means you are authorized to do something. Process elimination of authority. 1. There is no authority. 2. Authority comes from power. 3. Government comes from the collective of the people. 4. Authority comes from the individual. 5. Authority comes from God in secret. 6. Authority comes from God through the outlined powers in the scriptures.
- [48:23] We need to have a government who can adjudicate disputes.
- [52:01] Our concept of rights and our concept of authority need to mesh together. They both need to come from the same source.
- [54:37] We were the first nation founded on the principle that our rights come from God. We also need to understand that the role of government is determined by God.