> One can defend natural rights from the perspective of being inherent in our existence as rational beings rather than Sky-King's (Sky-Kingses' for the polytheistic?) decree.
That’s just creating a religion, complete with supernatural assertions—things that are “inherent our existence” but can’t be established empirically—without copping to it.
Further, large numbers of people with at least some theistic leanings were/are nevertheless adherents to legal positivism, which explains how you can have Catholics or Lutherans that were okay with the Nuremberg Laws, for example.