I posted this in the comments of this article: Pastor Says State Law Threatens His Right to Teach the Bible in His Church

Here is a simple question for you. Why do human beings, who are nothing more than complex concatenations of matter, have any “rights”? Matter is matter after all. Just because it is more organized in human form than say, in the form of a nebula, the rings of Saturn, or a blob of snot, it is still just a temporary grouping of random particles. There is no ultimate reason or principle that makes such a bag of water, etc. as yourself deserving of any rights of any kind whatever, given that you are just an accident puked up out of the abyss of time and chance. So what if you evolved to think you have rights. That is just an irrational delusion, given that matter and energy is all there is.

If atheists are, in fact, what their theory of reality says they are, then they have no rights, period. On basis of atheism, the very idea of rights is irrational nonsense. Temporary random collections of particles and energy do not have rights, despite being momentarily sentient for an insignificant blip in cosmic time. That which ultimately reduces to the impersonal cannot have rights. Where there is only matter and energy, things just are what they are. That’s all. To have rights means that you deserve something, or that someone has moral obligations to you. But it is entirely irrational to posit that a rock, a black hole, or a fusion reaction, have rights. Just because the bits of matter that make up your pitiful existence are more organized, complex, and temporarily aware, in no way means that you are ontologically (in your being) different or superior to any other mass of matter and energy that was barfed up out of the abyss of impersonal being by chance. There are not, and in the nature of the case, cannot be any such thing as universal and unalienable human rights in the type of universe atheists purport to live in.

Neither social consensus nor evolution can be a rational ground for universal human rights. Evolution can only explain how natural selection caused humans to believe in morals and human rights. It cannot tell us whether or not such things actually exist. It is a fallacy of logic to move from a description of the psychology behind why one believes, to an affirmation that such belief is actually true.

Social consensus is all good and well, until two societies run into each other with radically different morals based on their social conventions.Take the History Channel series “Vikings”. In their moral system, pillaging, plundering, stealing, taking captives into slavery, killing, and rape are not only praiseworthy achievements, they are the basis for their society’s economy. Those are their traditions, morals, their social contract, if you will. Given their social setting and level of technology, it was a perfectly rational way to construct a society. Now, explain to me, on the basis of atheism why their behavior is evil. I assume that you consider it to be so. Not just violent, unkind, oppressive, or whatever, but why is it evil? Is it unjust for them to raid the monastery at Lindsfarne and put the monks to the sword, take the church’s artifacts, and sell any survivors as slaves? Why?

You see, rationally, one needs a standard of morality that transcends the social mores of competing societies, in order to condemn the Vikings as evil. When two societies with different sets of ethical norms clash, you cannot rationally decide who is right unless you have a point of reference that is higher than both of them. Otherwise, you are just applying your own finite, socially determined, culturally relative standard and arbitrarily (irrationally) assuming it to be morally superior to the other. Yet when you deny that your standards are right in any absolute sense, you are admitting that the other society’s values are as good as yours, even if they happen to be Germany in 1939.. This is not rational. This is not logical. In the end it just boils down to who has the ability to enforce their views.

Therefore, granting the atheistic view of the world, neither I, nor anyone else, has any moral obligation whatsoever to recognize your or anyone else’s so-called “rights” or to give a rat’s behind about what you may think or feel about it. Don’t like that? Tough beans. The universe doesn’t give a rip about you either.

Atheists have no alternative, in their irrational belief system, but to have the State create “rights” out of thin air. But this is purely arbitrary. What the State gives, the State can take away. What it comes down to is whoever has the biggest stick gets to enforce whatever “rights” they want. So atheists, please stop the blabbering about “rights”. Until you adopt a worldview that can actually account for unalienable rights, it is a waste of time to listen to any atheist babble about rights. Be honest. Face your irrationality like a grown-up.