by Paul CopanJune 2nd, 2011 10 Comments (by Paul Copan) We’ve
been engaging the thinking of Richard Dawkins, and more recently
we’ve touched on the counterintuitive nature of (Dawkins’)
naturalism. I’ll be looking at the topic of naturalism’s
counterintuitive claims regarding morality, but first the
historical question of naturalism’s alleged link to human
rights. Dawkins, Human Rights, and Historical Connections When
Dawkins spoke Nova Southeastern relatively recently, he talked
about how Enlightenment secularism gave rise to human rights.
This is a common claim made be naturalists, but it is simply
false. As human rights scholar Max Stackhouse of Princeton
writes: “intellectual honesty demands recognition of the fact
that what passes as ‘secular,’ ‘Western’ principles of basic
human rights developed nowhere else than out of key strands of
the biblically-rooted religion.” These rights are rooted in the
biblical language of the “image of God”—and natural law (in the
Middle Ages) and natural rights (in the mod