[Sir Francis Dashwood]

I can't see that it's even any form of syllogism. It's simply a statement, and an incorrect one at that unless you very vaguely define "higher power."

The very concept of rights is also founded in religion.

Since the enlightened person is freed from any superstitions about some "God," they are free from having to worry about "rights." Only raw power counts and humans are just meat puppets for the powerful...

Morality is an esoteric ideal, no more real than those hobgoblins that seem to appear before us in a dream.

Returning to Plato's Euthyphro, Socrates advanced the argument that piety to the gods is impossible if the gods all want different things...

Morality is impossible, because all humans have different morals... Claims of morality is sophistry without some higher power defining what it is.

Morality and all of its associated ideals are rooted entirely in the presupposition some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior.

[antiRepublicrat]

Claims of morality is sophistry without some higher power defining what it is.

I posit to you that morals were invented by societies as they started banning those things that were found to detrimental to the society, and promoting things that were found to be beneficial. They later ascribed these rules to their god for enforcement.

And even if a higher power defines morality and rights, they are always subject to interpretation by humans, and therefore a completely fluid concepts. Whatever the book says, society will interpret it to their current mores, just as it conceived of those morals in the first place. For example, the Catholic Church used to freely endorse the death penalty based on scripture, but society has changed, so the Church no longer endorses it.

[antiRepublicrat]

And you still haven't shown how that is a bullet proof syllogism that works in truth tables. Or is that just some apologetics you read without verifying it for yourself?