1. Great thread. He is absolutely right. The idea of “human rights” or even “natural rights” are not Christian and never have been. They are misguided attempt to replace Christian moral teaching with one based in “reason.” They completely reverse the logic of biblical morality.

2. “Thou shall not kill” is very different from a “right to life.” One places an obligation upon me not to harm you. The other places an obligation on you not to harm me. There is incommensurable world of difference between those two formulations of morality.
3. “Natural rights” is an anti-morality masquerading as a moral system. In a true morality, the obligation is always placed upon me, the moral actor, to be responsible for my own actions.
4. “Natural rights” on the other hand, removes my own moral responsibility and places it upon another person or another entity and dictates how they are expected to conduct themselves towards me. I am under no obligation to do anything, but you must respect my rights.
5. This is also why the number of natural and human right’s continually expands, because it is always easy to place an obligations upon others, to demand things of them.
6. This is also why the morality within liberal societies that use human and natural rights is bound to erode, because there is nothing that really restrains my behavior. The ultimate end is the right to absolute personal autonomy, free from all unchosen bonds or obligations.
7. The “right to choose” is in many ways the essence of liberalism. And this right will be applied in the broadest sense, whether it is your right to choose whether your unborn baby lives or dies, or the right to be left alone to choose to grill. It is the same moral logic.
8. This is why liberalism is a direct assault on Christianity, because Christian teaching places a moral obligation upon you. You shall have no other God’s before me…

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind…
9. …this is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.
10. This is very different than you saying that you have the right to your neighbor’s love.

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This is a pretty valiant attempt to defend the "Feminist Glaciology" article, which says conventional wisdom is wrong, and this is a solid piece of scholarship. I'll beg to differ, because I think Jeffery, here, is confusing scholarship with "saying things that seem right".


The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.


Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)


There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.


At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?
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