The idea that
natural rights are a false notion. All rights are
artificial and granted by a controlling entity such as government. Is life a natural right? Many lives have been taken over the years, both lawfully and unlawfully. How do we determine whether something is natural or artificial anyway? Man is a part of nature, so is anything created by man therefore natural?
Seriously, one argument against the notion of natural rights is the fact that men do not exist in vacuums. We require things to live. Do I have a right to pick an apple and eat it if someone else owns the tree? What if that is the only source of food and I will die without it? Perhaps the right to life is really the right to not have someone else take positive action to take my life. This creates some other problems, though. What defines positive action? If the tree was something everyone used, then someone decided to own it, have they taken positive action to take my life? I think this is one of the points of the property is theft crowd.