In this article I talk about rights in terms of both normative ethics and meta ethics, not in the applied sense like that of a liberal democracy. The christian worldview is not even compatible with its modern concept of “rights”, as they are seen as ad hoc vehicles to pursue our desires, where as in virtue ethics we have moral duties to not offend God.
What are Rights? Where do they come from? And why do we need them? Well, if you click that article, you will be enlightened on why rights are supposedly just self declared preferences and how we can’t base their merits in terms of God since there is no “evidence”. So somehow, the classical liberal can appeal to an abstract moral system or the concept of truth itself, not have any direct evidence for either’s existence, and still have the nerve to claim their epistemology on ethics is free from presuppositonal faith.
Rights are a gift from God. They’re not self evident, because self evidence requires faith. If you lack the humility to admit that rights cannot be prescribed in terms of a normative ethical system (“just don’t be a dick man”), where rights are based in nebulous “axioms”, then such a system will slowly collapse. At best, normative ethics outlines what’s wrong, but not why it’s wrong. Throwing meta ethics out the window will land you in trouble.
For example, some deluded group of people are so lost (and I pray for them) that they believe software deserves rights, as if computer programs were human beings. Sometimes you just need to point and laugh. This is the type of complaining which vanishs with food shortages and comes from a moral framework with foundation made of clay. The people stuck in the normative, who do not question their own system, demonstrate they can’t even make coherent value judgements on very basic non-issues.