Perhaps you missed [or want to ignore]
pax's response. It's still there...
Apparently noone recognizes a rhetorical question anymore.
The (I had hoped) obvious answer to the questions I asked (and, the first time, answered myself with "Absurd!") is "No".
But neither does pax's response satisfy me.
Your belief about a thing's origins do not affect the existence of that thing.
True as far as it goes, but rights as a concept is not equivalent to a genetic heritage like eye color. If you don't believe you have a right, you can't act upon it, even if it
really exists.
Let me try to lay this out carefully because there are two things going on here:
Hypothetical constuct:
A) I believe rights exist objectively -- that is, I believe they exist whether anyone believed in them or not.
B) I back up my belief by saying they are a gift from another thing I believe exists objectively, a God.
C) You do not believe in gods and you are not sure about rights.
D) You must reject my support for rights because you don't believe in gods.
E) In lack of any better support, you reject "rights" as a concept.
An atheist or animist might have chosen differently from E. She might have chosen access to "rights" by means of a human origin. But maybe that doesn't occur to her. She doesn't like it, but she can't justify "rights," therefore she rejects them. In so doing, she loses recourse to them. They are as unreal to her now as warp drive—conceivable, but not workable.
But there's a subtler thing going on from B forward... the idea of "objective existence" of any given theological idea. To say that rights
predicated on a theology exist whether anyone believes in them (and their accompanying theology) or not is tantamount to saying that that theology is objectively realer than any other. People are free to believe whatever they want, but only this one system is really,
really true. The inevitable corollary that all believers in other systems are unfortunately deluded. It's insulting in a well-meaning, unintentional sort of way. Since no theology is any more provable than any other, it terminally begs the question, keeping rights in a limbo of uncertainty.
Personally, I'm willing to entertain the possibility of objective reality of rights
predicated on the equality of all humans. Those rights
can exist whether people believe in them or not. We know objectively and can demonstrate that humans exist. The only belief anyone needs to have to gain access to rights is one regarding human nature and interrelations (equality). No theology required. People can subsequently have any theological beliefs they want (including none) without endangering their (or anyone else's) access to rights.