What Human Rights?

[Dystopia]

There's no universal right to remain silent no, but I still have that right.  There isn't anything making a universal right to remain silent an impossibility either...no more so than it is impossible for me to possess that right.  Again, like before, you just -might- get executed here in the states without a trial......but the existence of people or organizations willing to infringe upon your rights does not imply or demonstrate that they do not exist.  

Indeed, the existence of infringements doesn't make the right invalid - You have that right in the states, but is there a universal right to remain silent understood similarly between different cultures and tribes? In my country, you have the right to prosecute someone for telling secrets about you even if the facts are true, because it is a violation of privacy and private life - In some countries, you can only be prosecuted if the facts are made up or false. This is just an example of how it differs. My point is that HR are said to be universal and similar between every people, and that's not what happens. Moreover, it is said HR have always existed as inalienable, the only difference was that in the past governments never recognized them, but they still existed, they were there, just not in use - And after the French revolution we claimed the rights that have always existed - My opinion is that we simply created rights, but not that they existed before.

There isn't a universal conception of rights -at all-, but you accept that my right to remain silent exists even so..don;t you?  Why do you then decided that human rights don't or can't, on that same basis?  Whats the difference between my right to remain silent and human rights?

I accept that your right exists in America, that's a verifiable fact with empirical evidence supporting its existence. The difference here is that HR don't have evidence backing them up, none at all - There is no universally accepted conception of basic rights, you will not find it - You can find similarities specially between states with similar cultural and legal background. I didn't personally decide human rights can't or don't exist, I merely pointed out that objectively there isn't a universal notion of what constitutes fundamental rights, and even if there is a more accepted trend it is prone to change with time - Controlling reproduction is completely unacceptable and an infringement upon people's rights according to most HR proponents, but in 50 years with overpopulation we might change our ideas and start accepting it as a duty and a right itself (because other people, those who are alive have the right to live in a reasonably populated world). Most articles in the UDHR are not applied in practice.

Who argues that?  What would that (or your response in general) have to do with the impossibility of human rights in the absence of a god?

Because unless you possess knowledge on the existence of a higher being that can grants us eternally omnipresent and valuable rights and duties, there is no justification for the idea of Human Rights - There is a more accepted morality and legal definition of rights/duties for each historical era, but there isn't a universal one and you never know what will be a right or duty in the future. The right to housing, for example, was only recently seen as a basic right, 100 years ago it would be ridiculous to tell somebody you have a human right to housing. Something as basic as the right to live is not interpreted unanimously by nations - The States and Japan are both "civilized" and accept the death penalty as a worthy form of punishment, Europeans believe it violates the right to live - Some people think the right to live means you can't kill your own self, because you can't take away your own rights (inalienable can mean precisely that) and others think you can voluntarily give them up. Some folks think you can become a slave and lose all rights out of free will, others like me think you can't  just wave all your rights away infinitely and become an object.