“Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? …. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
From “The Madman”, Friedrich Nietzsche in “The Gay Science” #125
I have been trying to build the case that if we cease believing in a moral law-giver our beliefs and actions will be pragmatic and practical where individuals will not believe in nothing but rather they will believe in anything. Our values and beliefs therefore, will ultimately reside on Wall Street, gazing into the pool of Narcissus, rather than in Wisdom, bathing in the ocean of Grace . So humans may have value if it informs our pride and pads our pocketbook and just as easily lose that value if we deem the cost too great or our chests too flat.
To rightfully establish a moral right requires a moral Maker but moral rights cannot be separated from moral obligations and this is where the modernist tension lies. Former Yale Law Professor Arthur Leff brilliantly illustrates this tension between moral rights and moral obligations.