I would offer a different perspective on this.
In the situation where you are in the wilderness, alone, and no one else is there to help… your rights do not exist. Only if the larger society realizes what has happened, do your rights exist. Again, within the context of society, which enforces them. But if no one ever realizes that you were murdered? Then I would offer that your rights did not exist, because the world is indistinguishable from a world where they didn’t exist.
That’s ultimately the crux of my position. Something which does not change the world in a material way, does not exist at all.
Rights that are defended exist, because they affect the world. Rights which are not defended do not, because they do not.
If the universe is the same both with and without object X, then X can only be nothing.
As I pointed out, I addressed this more directly later on. I agree with you here that ethereal rights have utility, in so far as we act upon the belief in them to defend them with force.
But it is that force which makes them real.
I understand what you are saying here, but I think you are missing the key element here that it hinges upon the belief in an ultimate authority figure.
Ultimately, any notion of rights is dependent upon a manifestation of lower level beliefs regarding what is right and what is wrong. For instance, we might believe that individuals have a right to control their own physical bodies, because it is wrong to deprive another conscious being of their liberty.
With the belief of God, His rules are absolute. Right and wrong, in the absolute sense, are defined entirely by Him. And then these form a foundation for your ethical and moral code, which then leads to you believing that people have various rights.
But again, when it comes down to those rights actually MATTERING, they still depend upon an enforcement mechanism.
Now, this does not necessarily imply that you must be punished with eternal hellfire or whatever, but it does mean that there must be SOME negative repercussion for violation of those rights.
In the absence of physical force on earth, you are left with the judgement of God. Again, this does not mean that he will cast your soul into a pit of torturous pain for all eternity. It may simply mean that he’s disappointed in you, like a parent to a child. It may simply mean that you feel remorse and guilt for disobeying him.
But SOMETHING must happen, to create negative feedback in some way for violation of those rights, otherwise those rights don’t exist. As I stated previously, if the world (in this case, including a higher plane of existence) is exactly the same whether you respect those rights or do not, then they must not exist, because they do not affect the world at all.
Eh, I think that it’s possible to establish such a framework. I figured I’d hold off on getting real deep into that just yet though, and maybe touch on it at a later time.