I thought this was an interesting argument for the contingency of rights.
Badland: The people of Badland are haunted by an evil deity named 'God', who shows every indication of being omniscient, omnipotent, and truthful, though he has a taste for human sacrifice. God installed a magical lottery machine in the town centre, and explained to the townsfolk that, once a month, the device will pick one of their names at random. They are expected to sacrifice this person to God, and if they do so then God will leave them alone till next month. However, if the chosen person remains alive after 24 hours, then the furious and spiteful God will wreak havoc and cause thirty random townsfolk to spontaneously combust.
One feature of the scenario is that a right to life is not, in the scenario, (I'm not sure how else to put it) metaphysically inherent. The imagined world, with the cruel deity, is one in which there are no natural (God given or otherwise natural) rights, since it is a world in which a/the deity does not honor/grant such a right. (If you're a Midianite and you read the OT you might think this is such a world, btw). So the example shows that "if there are no natural rights then rights are contingent," which is less than it purports to show--I think. Well, now that I think about it I'm a bit muddled about contingency and possible worlds in what I just said there. The point is, this scenario might show that there is a p-world in which there are no natural rights and in which the utilitarian best thing to do is to violate what we take in our world to be rights (where, the proponent of rights would protest, rights are natural). But that doesn't show that rights depend on utilitarian justification/conceptual foundation here in our world. Does it?
Crossposted: http://ifthenknots.typepad.com/...