Who grants rights?

Who grants you your rights?

This is one question that is an argument of the pious. It’s similar to questions like "who created life". The idea behind the question is that without God you don’t have rights, kind of like without God you have no morality.

Not true.

Let me submit this question for your consideration: is it possible that your rights still exist even without a deity or god?

Many cannot seem to fathom the idea, yet if you read through this blog, it is one I readily defend. I am an agnostic atheist, yet I believe everyone has certain rights. Several months ago, I submitted this idea for your consideration about what constitutes a right:

A right is inherent and inalienable, something for which no action is required of anyone else for you to retain, but much action is required of you for you to protect.

In this I mean that whatever you can assert with your own strength is a right. This includes freedom of speech, as I discussed the right to bear arms, and certainly does not include the false right of health care. And when individuals acting together in concert to defend their individual rights against a collective seeking to oppress all, great things can and do happen.

So again, I submit for consideration the idea that you still have rights even if God is a figment of your imagination.