&gt; Of course, the same argument apply to the axiom that the rights don&#x27;t exist<p>Rights aren&#x27;t material things, they don&#x27;t exist in any external sense in any case. A &quot;right&quot; (in the moral, rather than legal, sense), inalienable or otherwise, is a just a statement of someone&#x27;s moral preference. Clearly, these moral preferences exist in people, and, equally clearly, they differ between people.<p>&gt; However, there is a lot of weight to the argument that there is a common list of universally reprehensible wrongs (murder, rape, etc.).<p>No, there&#x27;s not. Well, I mean, sure, its tautologically true (and unsurprisingly widely accepted) that murder, in the sense of <i>wrongful</i> killing, is wrong.<p>OTOH, when you try to look for some common universal definition of <i>when killing is wrongful</i>, there&#x27;s a lot less agreement. (The same is true of the other examples you&#x27;ve named, in the parent on great-grandparent posts.)<p>So, you&#x27;ve got some vague agreement that there are common <i>names</i> from wrongs, but the actual definitions of the wrongs with those names is different. That doesn&#x27;t really support all that much of a common idea of wrongs implying a common idea of rights.<p>&gt; I&#x27;m not sure why people are so eager to disprove the existence of rights, to be honest.<p>I&#x27;m not so interested in disproving the existence of rights as in getting people to understand that invoking the idea of &quot;inalienable rights&quot; doesn&#x27;t really, outside of providing a rhetorical flourish, accomplish anything. <i>Because</i> the existence, and even moreso the definition, of those rights is <i>not</i> universally shared, what the invocation invariably amounts to is a circular argument where the supposedly inalienable right in question is defined in precisely the way needed to support the position the person is arguing for.<p>Which is perfectly convincing if you already agreed with the conclusion, but entirely unconvincing, if you did not.<p>&quot;Why should we do (or refrain from doing) X? Because Y is an inalienable right and includes within its scope a mandate to do (or refrain from doing) X.&quot; Is just not a meaningful argument.<p>Unless the discussion is among people who have already agreed to the definition of Y being used.