Does God Ground Human Rights?

"we hold these truths to be self-evident..."

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”

So said some ancient North Americans, many hundreds of years ago. Fast forward to the present day, and some philosophers believe that these primitive thinkers were on to something. Specifically, some philosophers think the best explanation for our moral intuitions about human rights is that there is a perfect God who endowed us with those rights.

This is not your Grandmother’s moral argument for theism — the sort advanced by people like William Lane Craig and C.S. Lewis. According to that moral argument for theism, God is needed to undergird the truth of moral realism (moral realism being the view that there are objective moral facts [‘pleasure good’, ‘torture bad’, etc.] which hold true regardless of what anyone feels or believes about them.) I don’t think the traditional moral argument works, but I won’t say an unkind word against it here. (OK, I will. The traditional moral argument is so dumb it thought Tupac Shakur was a Jewish holiday, tripped over a cordless phone, and once tried to hotwire a trolley. Boom, roasted!)

Some philosophers — unimpressed by the traditional moral argument, because it is bad — have devised new moral arguments that target specific features of morality, and then try to move from those features of morality to God’s existence. For example, Bobby Conway has a moral argument from the experience of moral guilt, which I briefly had the chance to debate him on; Dustin Crummett, Philip Swenson, and Brian Cutter, have all argued — persuasively in my view — that our a priori knowledge of moral truths makes most sense on theism, since an omniscient God could sync up our minds to the moral law (though for criticism, see this recent post from Silas Abrahamsen); Tyler McNabb argues that theism gives the best solution to the problem of political authority — the problem of justifying the State’s right to coerce us and our correlative duty to obey its edicts; Jonathan Ashbach — in an essay I haven’t read yet — argues that theism best accounts for the phenomenology of our moral experience; here on Substack, I’ve developed not one but two moral arguments for theism: one from rights-based libertarianism, the other from threshold deontology; the list goes on and on.

The argument from human rights falls into this latter category. It targets specific features of the moral landscape — human rights, human dignity, human equality, etc. — and tries to show that they point to theism.

This essay is exploratory: I haven’t thought about this argument very much. In fact, I haven’t even read up on it yet. Once your eyes have moved down past the goat in sunglasses, however, I will have read up on the argument, and will be able to give you my take on it.

I. Wolterstorff’s Argument

Nicholas Wolterstorff is one of the coolest Christian philosophers alive. Like most of my philosopher favourites, Wolterstorff is a massive generalist: his books cover liturgy, art, Justice, the voice of God, liberal democracy, political authority, work songs, education, John Locke, Thomas Reid, the relationship between faith and reason, religious epistemology, and other issues in the philosophy of religion. He is very based on Palestine, and his philosophical memoir, In This World of Wonders, is one of my favourite books of all time. (His earlier, more famous memoir, Lament for a Son, is meant to be completely devastating; I haven’t read it yet, because I assume it’s only really for parents.)

In a provocative book chapter, “Why Naturalism Cannot Account For Human Rights”, Wolterstorff sets out a theistic theory of human rights. This theory, he suggests, does better than its secular rivals.

According to good St. Nick, an adequate account of human rights will have to clear two hurdles. First, it will have to accommodate the intuition that human beings have human rights, even when they’re cognitively enfeebled. It will have to explain why, for instance, a “person in a permanent coma has a right not to be mutilated for the pleasure of the mutilator, why even she has a dignity that makes that impermissible.” Further, for Wolterstorff, it will need to accommodate our “intuitive sense that every human being has dignity just by virtue of being human.”

Second, it will have to comport with the “common assumption […] that not all human rights are shared with animals”, even if animals have some of the same rights we have. (For example, Wolterstorff judges “that all human beings have a right to a degree and extent of medical and nursing care aimed at preserving life that no animal has a right to”.)

Trouble is, it’s very hard to draw up a plausible account of human rights that both respects and illuminates these intuitions. To see why, consider the following secular theories of human rights, and why they leave Wolterstorff feeling cold:

Theory #1: The Capacity Theory: according to some philosophers, human rights are grounded in some capacity or capacities which humans have and lower animals don’t — e.g., rational agency, the capacity to act from duty, the capacity to apprehend the good, or whatever.

Wolterstorff’s Webuttal: first, Wolterstorff says, some animals — porpoises, chimpanzees, etc. — appear to have rational agency in the relevant respects, so this capacity isn’t unique to humans. Second, more pressingly, “some human beings do not have the capacity for rational agency to any degree: newborn infants, for example, and those sunk deep into dementia. The capacity for rational agency is not ineradicable.” There are ways of complicating the capacity theory to surmount this second objection, but Wolterstorff judges them to be too janky and unilluminating.

Theory #2: The Personhood Theory: “To be a person”, Wolterstorff says, “is also to be a center of trust and mistrust, of hope and despair, of love and hate; a center of emotions, of feelings, of beliefs, of intentions, of sensory perceptions, of plans, of private reveries” — it’s to think self-reflexive thoughts like “I love Going Awol”, and “I’m going to read this post to my children”. Maybe “functioning as a person or holding the promise of so functioning or having once so functioned” is the property that grounds our natural rights.

Wolterstorff’s Webuttal: the earlier problem applies. “Sad to say, some human beings never function as persons, so they do not have this property. It’s possible to be a human being and lack the property.”

Theory #3: The Human Nature Theory: Human nature (when mature and fully functional) exemplifies personhood, rational agency, the ability to act from duty, and all kinds of valuable things. Maybe just having this nature is what gives us our human rights.

Wolterstorff’s Webuttal, Which is Well Worth Quoting at Wength:

The example that my neighbor to the east owns is well formed in all respects and I admire it enormously. The example that my neighbor to the west owns was in a wreck and was towed into his garage; the mechanics and body repair shops all tell him that to repair it would require such extensive replacement of parts that it’s best to scrap it. Would I advise my neighbor to the west to reject this advice and instead to treasure his automobile as something of great worth? Would I tell him that even though it’s a wreck, nonetheless it is truly admirable on account of its design plan and that he should keep it under a dust cover and every now and then lift the cover to admire it? I would not. I would advise him to sell it for scrap. It has no worth other than its worth as scrap metal, plastic, leather, and glass. The point of the analogy is obvious: noticing that even the most impaired human beings possess human nature, and reflecting on the nobility of that nature, does not illuminate our intuition that these human beings have the dignity that grounds human rights.

It’s all very well tearing down other people’s theories. What does Wolterstorff propose in their place?

Here is the basic idea: suppose a Good King — a supremely honourable ruler — decides to bestow his friendship on you. That friendship would thereby bestow honour on you. All of your friends would be jealous.

Of course, if the KKK tried to befriend you and started singing your praises, that wouldn’t bestow honour on you. Should you write a résumé, the Klan’s endorsement would be omitted from your list of ‘Honours’.

Now, Wolterstorff writes “[S]uppose that one is chosen by God as someone with whom God desires to be a friend”:

This is to be honored by God. And to be honored by God is to have worth bestowed on one. Add now that every human being has the honor of being chosen by God as someone with whom God desires to be friends and that this desire endures. Then every human being has the ineradicable and equal worth that being so honored bestows on one.

Basically: you are a human, and God wants to be friends will all humans — this is what makes you exceptional, and bestows you with special dignity, a dignity that comes with extra rights.

You’ll likely ask: ‘Couldn’t God just desire to be friends with wombats, or lizards, or slugs?’

Noppedy nope, says Wolterstorff. God is rational, so he’d only desire friendship from those who can possibly reciprocate it. Since (Wolterstorff claims) wombats, lizards, geckos and whatnot don’t have what it takes — by their very natures — to be friends with God, God couldn’t rationally desire friendship with them, since he understands their natures perfectly.

You might push back: ‘But didn’t you, Mr. Wolterstorff, just rule out other theories of rights on the basis that some humans don’t have the capacity for reason, apprehending goodness, personhood, etc. — the very things that make humans so well suited for friendships? What gives?’

Reply: God can restore the capacity for friendship to any human, at least once they’ve passed on to the afterlife — so humans at least have the potential for a capacity to be friends with God. However, for some reason, God cannot do this with crocodiles.

II. Wessling’s Wuthless Wejoinder

In “A dilemma for Wolterstorff’s theistic grounding of human dignity and rights”, Jordan Wessling hits Wolterstorff with a version of the age-old Euthyphro dilemma: either God necessarily bestows his friendship on all humans, or he doesn’t (i.e., God bestows his friendship on all humans, but only does so contingently.)

If God bestows his friendship on all humans necessarily, that means he had to, by the necessity of his own nature. To make sense of why this would be, we’re going to have to say something about humans that explains why God necessarily bestows his friendship on all of us, but not on the lower animals. Presumably, Wolterstorff could say that the potential of all human beings (now or in the afterlife) to be capable of friendship with God, and that this potential is so meritorious that it necessitates the bestowal of divine friendship.

But in that case, God’s friendship seems superfluous: the potential for friendship with God that merits — nay, necessitates — God’s love seems like it should be enough, by itself, to explain human dignity. God’s bestowal of friendship doesn’t seem to do any explaining. (Wessling considers other responses Wolterstorff might give, but argues, convincingly, that all of them fall prey to the same underlying problem: God’s bestowal of friendship seems to be explanatorily superfluous if he necessarily has to bestow it on us in virtue of some fact about our natures.)

If, on the other hand, God bestows his friendship on all human beings contingently, that seems to make human rights too contingent. If God only bestows his love on all humans contingently, there are possible worlds, e.g., where God chooses not to bestow his friendship on new born babies or humans with Alzheimer’s disease. Yet defenders of human exceptionalism will probably have the intuition that, even in these worlds, such humans would retain their intrinsic human dignity.

I think this captures the key structural flaw in Wolterstorff’s theory.

Not convinced? Here are two more objections.

III. Wollen’s Wrangling Wefutation

I don’t know if anyone has said this yet, but it seems suspiciously arbitrary that God — in the afterlife — could only give humans the capacity to be friends with him. Why couldn’t God — an omnipotent being — put the soul of a great ape into a slightly more advanced brain, or morph its current brain over time until it was like one of the humanoid monkey-creatures from Rise of the Planet of the Apes?

Take a particular ape and call her Chunky. Maybe Wolterstorff’s thought is that qua ape, Chunky couldn’t be capable of friendship with God — if she gained that capacity, she’d no longer be an ape.

Er, maybe? But even if Chunky became something else — an ape*, or an ape 2.0 — she’d still be the same creature: as a result, it seems like God would have reason to bestow his friendship on her, Chunky, giving her the full gamut of human rights, given that she could one day be given the capacity of becoming friends with her maker.

Excluding Chunky seems senseless, and mean.

IV. Wedmond’s Wuinous Wiposte

In “Against Wolterstorff’s Theistic Attempt To Ground Human Rights”, David Redmond gives us one last forceful critique: namely, that there doesn’t seem to be a good argument for the claim that honouring (or bestowing friendship, or love) thereby bestows worth on its object (a claim Wolterstorff needs, since he thinks God’s friendship bestows worth on all humans.)

One argument Wolterstorff has given for this claim is that if the King decided to be friends with you, and a jealous hater replied “Big deal!”, she would have wronged you in a way she couldn’t have wronged you had the King not offered his friendship. The best explanation for this, Wolterstorff claims, is that the King has bestowed a new worth on you, which was disrespected when your hater said “Big deal!”.

Redmond gives two replies to this argument, both of which I take to be decisive.

First, it seems like the hater would’ve wronged you by saying “Big deal!” even if you only false believed that the King had bestowed his friendship on you. Moreover, it seems, the hater would’ve wronged you to just the same degree. If that’s right, whether the King actually offered his friendship had nothing to do with why you were wronged and to what degree.

Second, imagine you got a flashy new car and your hater exclaimed “Big deal!”. Seemingly, she wrongs you in that case too. But of course, the car didn’t bestow its friendship on you, or bestow extra worth on you in some other way. Seemingly, the reason your hater wronged you by saying “Big deal!” is that she showed disrespect for you by disrespecting a new good you’ve acquired in your life. But if that explains why your hater wronged you by saying “Big deal!” in the car case, surely it explains why she wronged you in the case of the King and his friendship.

V. Conclusion

There is another argument from human rights out there — the one explained in this video:

I had some correspondence with Dr. Ballard about his argument a while ago, and I think it’s pretty clever. If you want to read a deep dive on that, be sure to subscribe for part 2!

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