There is a comfortable myth that the modern secularist tells himself about history. It goes like this: Once upon a time, we were primitive and religious. Then, "old philosophers" began to think. Over time, we "developed" concepts like liberty, equality, and human rights, just as we developed the steam engine and the iPhone. We grew out of God and into Justice.

This is a fairytale. It is a history written by men who have forgotten where their own ideas came from.

If we look at the actual history of the West, we find that "Human Rights" are not the result of a slow, inevitable evolution of secular reason. They are the specific, hard-won fruits of a theological vision.

The Silence of the Philosophers

The critic claims that rights started with the philosophers. But let us look at the giants of antiquity. Plato and Aristotle were brilliant men, yet both defended slavery. For them, human dignity was not universal. It was reserved for the Greek male, the citizen, the philosopher. The barbarian, the slave, and the weak were legally and morally inferior.

The Stoics came closer. They spoke of a universal brotherhood of reason. But their philosophy was one of resignation. They taught that the slave should be internally free, but they had no political fire to break his chains.

In the pre-Christian world, rights were a function of power and status. There was no concept that a naked, abandoned child had a "right" to life against the will of the father or the State.

The Biblical Revolution

The critic argues that "the Bible does not say humans have any rights." This is a superficial reading of the text.

It is true that the Bible speaks primarily of Duties rather than Rights. But this is a distinction without a difference in practice. When God commands, "Thou shalt not murder," He is establishing the Right to Life of the neighbor. When the prophets thunder against those who oppress the widow and the orphan, they are declaring that the weak possess a standing before God that the strong must respect.

The Bible introduced a concept that was alien to the pagan world: the Imago Dei -- the Image of God. Genesis declares that every human being, male and female, is made in the image of the Creator.

This is the metaphysical anchor of all human rights. It means that human value is not assigned by the State, nor earned by utility, nor determined by class. It is inherent. It is a gift. This idea is the only reason we believe that a person with a disability has the same rights as a billionaire. Nature does not teach us that. Economics does not teach us that. Only theology teaches us that.

The Fragility of "Development"

The critic suggests that rights are simply a concept that "developed over time." This sounds harmless, but it is a terrifying proposition.

If rights are merely human inventions -- ideas that we "developed" -- then they are not unalienable. They are merely the current fashion. And fashions change.

We saw this in the 20th century. The eugenics movement, which was led by the "progressive" scientists and philosophers of the day, decided that the rights of the "unfit" should be revoked for the good of the species. They "developed" a new concept: that only the healthy had a right to reproduce. Because they had severed the branch of rights from the tree of the Imago Dei, they had no defense against this new logic.

The Safety of the Divine

We defend the divine origin of rights not because we want a theocracy, but because we want to protect the human person from the "developers" of the future.

If rights come from God, they are safe. The State cannot touch them. The majority cannot vote them away.

But if rights come from "old philosophers" or "social development," then they are weak. They are subject to the whims of the powerful. The secularist who denies God is like a man who inherits a fortune and then burns the deed, claiming he doesn't need the piece of paper to be rich. He may feel rich for a moment, but when the thieves come, he will find he has no claim to his own treasure.