What is the Source?

We hear a lot of talk of human rights,
But thoughtful souls may spend their days and nights
Asking godless minds What is the source,
Of all the many rights they would enforce?

For in a world which evolution chanced,
How did it come to be with rights enhanced?
Or Is it just the strong who make the call?
But that’s not rights, but evanescent law.

Why does a man or woman have a right?
What filled their soul with such transcendent light?
How in a cosmic roll of shaded dice
Can value be bequeathed? And at what price?

For if a man is mold and conscience grew,
How did genetic chance his soul endue
With rights to life or even the pursuit
Of happiness with all its vested fruit?

I’ve asked the question more than once or twice,
What is the root of virtue? What of vice?
If in this bubble secular we live,
Who can punish violations or forgive?

Since no answer comes to us from fate,
From Atheistic Europe or the States,
I think the wise should join with those who bowed
Before the God, who them, with rights endowed

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
- The Declaration of Independence