If you deny any form of transcendence, which is the case in the positivist, technocratic culture of the West, then this is the inevitable conclusion.

It’s either this, or basing ones moral code on old wives tales.

I am very much in favor of human rights. They are among the last, public vestiges of the “old wives tales” you denigrate, and could be problematized at any time. This could come from the political left, the political right, or some as-yet unrevealed historical force. Without recourse to the kind of transcendent, essential reality that positivism negates, we will have a very hard time defending them as anything other than a mutable, socially contingent prejudice.

That’s an interesting argument, given that the Catholic Church was - and largely still is - opposed to Human Rights, and fought fiercely against them. Remind me, when was the last time the Catholic pope argued against woman voting rights; it was ~1950, right?