Quoting another blogger's view that without God there can no be human rights at all, Andrew Sullivan asks why we can't just adopt it as an alternative view that human rights are 'the contingent achievement of a contingent civilization, i.e. the West'. In answer to Andrew's question, I'd argue that this isn't a good alternative. The fact that human rights are a contingent product of our - or any - civilization doesn't suffice to show why they are a good basis on which to make decisions about what may or may not be done to other people, to show why those rights are ethically compelling. The view that one needs God to provide this sort of justificatory support presumably derives its moral content from that divine source: from injunctions flowing from God's will or some such. But for those who forego this source of justification, some of us because we don't believe in it, something needs to be offered other than the merely contingent emergence of a particular moral outlook. For that could equally be invoked to the benefit, say, of the moral outlook according to which women were/are not (because contingently regarded as not) the moral equals of men.
There is an alternative to the will of God for grounding, justifying, human rights. This lies in the nature of human beings, and the needs, interests and capacities they all have by virtue precisely of being human beings and sharing a common nature.