As far as I can tell, you don't have to believe in God or a god in order to believe that human rights are a basic and inalienable part of being human.
Analogy: my house exists, whether or not I personally know (or even acknowledge the existence of) its architect or builder. It's
there. Its existence is self-evident.
"We hold these truths to be
self-evident..." While the Founders went on to cite "their Creator," they very carefully did not specify who or what that Creator might be, because
that wasn't the point. The point was that certain rights belong to all human beings equally, that the existence of those rights is self-evident, and that the purpose of government is to secure and protect those rights -- and that all those claims fall into the category of "self-evident truths."
Arguing epistemology can be fun, but in another sense it's kind of pointless. The people who truly do not see the
self-evident nature of human rights are also not going to accept any angelic pinhead-dancing you might offer as evidence for same.
It's the same as if I were to point out the window and comment, "The sky sure is cloudy right now." If the person sitting next to me chooses to dispute that statement, the very
self-evident nature of my claim is going to leave me a little stymied about what to say next. No matter what other evidence I pull out to
prove that the sky is cloudy, my strongest argument was the self-evident nature of my claim. If the person rejects the self-evident claim at the outset, I'm on less firm ground than he
as far as debating, despite the fact that my claim is simple, obvious, and true.
Boats was right about the value of being able to argue the RKBA on a lot of different levels. But so was Molon Labe in the post that started the thread: for some people, it just doesn't
matter what arguments you are able to present. If they cannot see the self-evident nature of human rights, all arguments to the contrary are going to be just so much wasted breath.
Oh, and BigG? I'd been waiting for over two weeks to casually drop that word into a conversation.
pax
The Heineken Uncertainty Principle:
You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.