Are some theists afraid of atheists?

[Neo-Scholastic]

I honestly do not know how an atheist intellectual rationally grounds the notion of human rights etc. beyond cultural preference. Personally, I think it would be wonderful if that were indeed possible.

What's wrong with having empathy as the rational grounds for the notion of human rights from an atheistic perspective? It's perfectly logical and it requires no appeal to anything beyond what we experience directly in our own minds...

Empathy can serve as a useful guide. However, it is not a truly rational ground since it is based entirely on feelings and intuitions about the feelings of others. Maybe a logical demonstration will help clarify my position:

1. Human beings have innate emotional responses that include but are not limited to delight, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, compassion, contempt, envy, jealousy, etc.
   
2. Humans innately favor and seek to preserve the lives and well-being of themselves and their kin more than the lives and well-being of strangers and unrelated tribes.
   
3. Humans evolved to have innate emotional responses and prefer the benefit of their kin because they enhance fitness and confer reproductive advantages . Otherwise, those traits remain vestigial or have not yet been purged by natural selection.
   
4. The innate emotional responses and evolutionarily instilled preferences for fitness or reproductive advantage are instrumental goods.
   
5. The concept of human dignity means that every individual life is of absolute value in-and-of-itself, and not contingent on its instrumental value to any other individual or group.
   
6. Instrumental goods cannot ground absolute and non-contingent values.
   
7. None of the innate emotional responses or evolutionary preferences can ground human dignity.
   

In addition to the above:

1. Each of the innate emotional responses (that include but are not limited to delight, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, compassion, contempt, envy, jealousy, etc.) either enhance fitness, confer reproductive advantages, remain vestigial, or have not yet been purged by natural selection.
   
2. Determining which emotional response should serve as the ground for human dignity requires a means by which evaluate the value of each.
   
3. None of the emotional responses can be used as the means for evaluating emotional responses without engaging in circular reasoning.
   
4. Therefore, some standard other than innate emotional responses, like empathy, must serve as a rational foundation for human dignity.
   

Whether you believe in God or not, if you can take the leap that human morals derive from empathy, then whether written by man... as atheism contends... or by God... as theists contend... either way the commandments in the Bible represent the extent of one person (God included) or group's empathetic thinking, in the form of moral laws; ie those laws exist to reduce suffering in the world.

There are both good and bad approaches to grounding human rights regardless of whether those approaches are theistic or not. For some theistic positions you may be right and I would not advocate them. I would like to give you a better understanding of the approach I think is most promising, but what I have already said is all I have time for at the moment.