All life has Unalienable Rights

"In going forward, the term "Happiness" is a metaphor for positive-feedback. " I reject that statement. Happiness is the feeling humans (and perhaps animals) get when they RECEIVE positive feedback, but it is not positive feedback in itself. As far as we know, insects, plants and bacteria can not feel happiness, or any other emotion for that matter. The following paragraph ("In the plant kingdom (. .. ) it would die") can be summarized to this: Without liberty and happiness (and life), plants would die. While I grant that plants required some basics resources to survive, I fail to see how that is relevant to the topic of this debate. Whether or not they need anything to survive is irrelevant to whether they have an unalienable right to it. Moreover, "taking away the sprout's freedom ("Liberty") to grow" is not the direct cause of it's death, taking away the sun is more likely to cause it's death. I would add that the concept of "liberty", when we are referring to plants, does not seem to be coherent; plants have no freedom because they are unable to choose (because they are not conscious beings). The paragraph about humans fails for the same reason: Whether or not we need anything in order to survive has no bearing on whether we have unalienable rights to these things. I would also argue that we do not actually NEED freedom or happiness to survive; slaves were neither free nor happy (for the most part) and yet some of them survived for quite some time (to be clear, I am absolutely against slavery). Given the fact that corporations are not living things, I will disregard this argument. "In the above examples, by their "Unalienable" nature, indicates these Rights cannot be taken away. " The above examples do not indicate that these rights can not be taken away, they actually acknowledge that they CAN be taken away and proceed to describe what would happen if they were. "Notably, it would be impossible to take away any one of the Rights while leaving the other two intact, as all of the Rights are dependent on one another. " Even if that were true, that would only mean that they are dependant on one another, not that they are unalienable. Now let's see if this statement is actually true:- "Without "Life," one cannot enjoy "Liberty" or "pursue Happiness. "" I agree. - "Without "Liberty," one cannot "pursue Happiness," and as this "pursuit" often overlaps with the "pursuit of" survival, one is unable to continue "Life. "" I strongly disagree that "pursuit of happiness" is related to "pursuit of survival", I would in fact argue that if you must "pursue" survival, you are not going to be very happy. Happiness is something we strive for when our survival is insured (check out Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs). - "Without the "pursuit of Happiness"/survival, one cannot continue "Life" or enjoy "Liberty. "" Since I disagree that pursuit of happiness is the equivalent of survival, I obviously disagree that this necessarily leads to death. In conclusion, these rights are not dependant on one another. "Therefore, these Rights are Unalienable for all life. Take anyone away, in an absolute context, there is death, for death has no Unalienable Rights, only life has them. " As I have said before, the consequences that would emerge from not having a certain right has no bearing on whether or not we actually have it. These consequences are the reason why society GRANTS those rights and promises to PROTECT them. I'm really having a hard time understanding what the Constructal Law dynamics has to do with this debate. Rights are never mentioned in the video and the whole theory is in no way related to the concept of rights. It basically points to the the way living organism usually behave, but then my opponent labels these as "rights", which they are not. "I hope my opponent could see the point I was trying to make regarding survival being a positive-feedback event" I obviously agree that survival is positive. But again, this is irrelevant. "The focus of this debate is the symmetry of an observable pattern persisting throughout life, call it Unalienable Rights (Jefferson)" This quote is illustrative of my opponent's mistake; he believes that rights are simply description of the behavior of life, but they are not:A right is defined as "an entitlement to something, whether to concepts like justice and due process, or to ownership of property or some interest in property, real or personal. " . http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com...One can not simply apply a label to something in order to claim that it exists; for example, I can not label my aunt a fairy in order to prove the existence of fairies. Yet my opponent is trying to label "living organism's behavior" as "unalienable rights" in order to claim that they do exist. ""Life is movement. Every living system performs better when the power that is required for maintaining its movement is minimized. Just as lightning bolts and river basins should generate treelike structures to reduce thermodynamic imperfection and increase flow access, animals should have evolved to cover a greater distance for less effort, which means per unit of useful energy derived from food. "" Once again, irrelevant. This debate is not about "how life behaves", it is about the existence of unalienable rights. "that is what science is all about. Observing patterns, trying to understand nature and our place in it. " I agree, but by their very nature, rights can not be observed and therefore can not be studied by science. I will my argument, since my opponent did not address it:An unalienable right is defined as "A right according to natural law, a right that cannot be taken away, denied or transferred" (. http://dictionary.reference.com......). The important part of this definition is "cannot be taken away, denied", because it contradicts reality: When someone is murdered, their right to life is taken away. When someone is imprisoned, their right to freedom (and happiness) is taken away. The fact that our rights CAN be taken away negates the notion that they are unalienable. Society grants these rights and promises to protect them precisely because they are alienable. I await my opponent's rebuttal.