Human Rights: Divinely Grounded?

Yesterday, at religiousleftlaw.com, Michael Perry referred to a column by Anat Biletski here that argued against the idea that human rights have a divine foundation.  Bietski maintains that grounding human rights in divine authority drains the humanity from human rights. Thus, Abraham would have killed Isaac if angels had not intervened says Biletski (Should Abraham have tortured Isaac if God asked him to?). 

At some points Biletski seems to be disagreeing with Ronald Dworkin, but they are both working the same side of the street - except Dworkin is at pains to argue that grounding human rights outside the divine is not inconsistent with the Divine or even with Divine authority though the Divine cannot on Dworkin's account command violations of human rights. In a very interesting discussion (at least to me), Dworkin says that he is "taking sides in an ancient theological controversy. Is a god good because he obeys moral laws, or are certain moral laws moral laws only because god had commanded them?" Justice for Hedgehogs 341 (2011). Dworkin suggests that the "familiar idea that a god is the ultimate source of morality is confused: the old churchmen who said that his goodness reflects some independent moral law or truth had the better of the argument." Id. at 342. If one accepts Dworkin's account, what is one to say of the Abraham/Isaac story?

Beyond the divine grounding of human rights (or not), I wish that Dworkin had  convincing arguments for his conceptions of the ontology, epistemology, or structure of moral rights (all of which are detailed in his book). In the end, I do not believe that the grounding of human rights can be justified with knockout arguments, nor do I believe that there are knockout arguments for human rights across the many contested areas involved (in fairness, Dworkin does not think so either). People either need to accept forced arguments, follow deliberative intuitions, and/or be comfortable with ambiguity. 

 cross-posted at religiousleftlaw.com