In further attempt to garner a reputation as one of the Mises Community’s original thinkers, I submit the following. ![]()
To Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc.:
If you own yourself 100% (that is to say, exclusively), everyone else must own you 0%. That much is simple. To the extent that ownership represents the right to exclude control or possession, self-ownership necessarily entails that God (another moral agent), also, has no right to attempt to control your body without your permission. To claim otherwise is to imply that God does have the right to exclude you from the use of your of your own body as you see fit, which is not “self-ownership” at all if we are to add that God would not be acting unethically if he did such a thing.
And didn’t God homestead you ex nihilo? I doubt he would have relinquished his ownership of you, as to do such a thing would imply that if he did later want to do something to you against your will he would be powerless lest he commit an ethical breach (God committing a sin!), even if he wished to save you from yourself. Nor do I believe that he would have relinquished partial ownership, which would necessitate his getting your hopefully-similarly-wise opinion before acting on your body’s joint ownership. I doubt there is any input a man may give a God that would give him pause for reflection.
I am very close to claiming outright that Christianity (especially with respect to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo) and the alleged “self-evident” status of self-ownership must be mutually exclusive, rendering acts such as murder or theft unethical not because they violate another’s self-ownership (which doesn’t seem coherent if every individual is divinely homesteaded and subsequently treasured as one of the ‘God-owned’), but rather because they utterly fail to “love one’s neighbor as oneself,” and indeed run counter to that guiding principle. The fulcrum point, then, is love, which has nothing whatsoever to do with any notion of “ownership” or its claim of derivative rights.
To All:
If there’s even a possibility that a Creator God exists (and I doubt anyone here would be so bold as to assert that there definitely is not), then necessarily the possibility of non-self-ownership exists (as we’ll assume that the potential Creator God–or even multiple Creator Gods or Goddesses, for that matter–has homesteaded you and owns you as surely as you own the ants in your ant farm that, like you, cannot recognize the presence of their owner), casting a shadow of doubt on the alleged “self-evident” status of self-ownership.
To wit, saying that self-ownership is “self-evident” implies that the nonexistence of even the possibility of a Creator God (or Goddess, or what have you) is likewise “self-evident.” But as one cannot prove a negative, self-ownership aficionados reach a speed bump: self-ownership’s alleged “self-evident” status seems to come only with weighty metaphysical assumptions and their impossible burden of proof in tow. Consequently, “self-evident self-ownership” becomes a faith, perhaps even a foolish faith, as one implicitly believes that he has proven a negative.
The ants in the ant farm may believe that it is “self-evident” that they own themselves, having no conception whatever that an Agent greater than them (that would be you) has facilitated their existence. They can have no conception because they are not self-aware. But we are self-aware, and through our self-awareness we are able to recognize this possibility of a hierarchic structure of being that ascends beyond ourselves. “Self-evident” is foolishness when spoken of by the ants. Let’s not be the ants.