Is the Idea of Human Rights Ineliminably Religious?

The name of the state where I was born and raised-Kentucky-derives from a Native American word meaning "the dark and bloody ground." Were there an Indian word for "the dark and bloody time," it would aptly name this century, a century as unrelentingly dark and bloody as any in human history. In the midst of all the terrible inhumanity of the twentieth century, however, there is a hopeful story: the emergence in international law of the idea of human rights.