Natural Rights Derived from Free-will

“Unalienable rights come from God, not government.”

That statement is right — but incomplete.

The deeper question is why rights exist at all.

Here’s a way to see it from first principles.

1. What a human being is

A human being is not just a body, and not just a mind.

A human being has:

• a body (physical life and action)
• a mind (reason, judgment, understanding)
• and a will (the capacity to choose)

The will is the part of us that decides.

Without the will:

• responsibility collapses
• morality collapses
• accountability collapses

Rights exist because the will is real and morally primary.

2. Why rights must be negative

If a person has a will, then they must be free to choose — even wrongly.

That means no other person or institution may:

• force belief
• compel conscience
• override peaceful action
• or seize the fruits of one’s labor without cause

These are not entitlements to be given.
They are boundaries against interference.

That is what negative rights are:

protections around the space where a human being must be free to decide.

3. Why God does not violate these rights

God Himself does not coerce the human will.

From Eden onward, Scripture assumes this:

• God commands, but does not force
• warns, but does not override
• judges after choice, not before it

Even salvation is offered, not imposed.

A coerced will would destroy moral responsibility.
So God does not impair free will — He honors it.

4. Why God’s law demands these rights be defended

Biblical law does not eliminate choice.
It protects the conditions under which moral choice remains possible.

That’s why the law:

• prohibits theft (protects agency over labor)
• prohibits murder (protects the actor)
• prohibits false witness (protects moral judgment)
• prohibits coercion, kidnapping, and unjust measures

These laws restrain one person from destroying another person’s capacity to choose.

5. Economic action presupposes free will

Every economic action begins with a choice.

To buy, sell, trade, save, or invest is to:

• choose between alternatives
• assign relative value
• accept tradeoffs

Value does not exist in objects.
Value exists in the will of the chooser.

Prices emerge when free individuals act on their judgments.
Price signals are nothing more than compressed expressions of human choice.

Without free-will actors:

• prices stop reflecting real preferences
• information disappears
• coordination breaks down

Economic calculation collapses.

What replaces it is not “planning,” but bureaucratic imitation:

• guesses instead of prices
• quotas instead of signals
• authority instead of consent

This is why economies without protected free will drift into chronic misallocation.
They lose the information that only voluntary choice can generate.

6. Why government cannot grant rights

Government can regulate behavior.
It can punish violations.
It can manage force.

But it cannot create moral agency.

If government “grants” a right, it can revoke it.
That makes it a permission, not a right.

Unalienable rights exist before government because:

• the will exists before government
• responsibility exists before government
• value judgments exist before government

Government’s role is recognition and defense — not authorship.

7. The failure mode we’re living in

When societies stop treating individuals as moral agents:

• evil becomes “systemic”
• guilt becomes abstract
• no one is responsible
• institutions drift without accountability

That is how you get harm without villains.

Rights disappear the moment we forget why they existed.

Bottom line

Unalienable rights come from God because free will comes from God.

They are not mystical.
They are not political.
They are not granted.

They are the moral and economic boundaries required for:

• responsibility
• justice
• meaningful choice
• and real human cooperation

Remove them — and morality, markets, and institutions all decay together.