If you don't Adhere to the Ref: In the Declaration of Independence that GOD?

Question

or Creator same thing! States all MEN were created equal, Jew, Gentile, Black White Brown etc...

Then Why should all men be created equal? now it's man that can rule on equality and morality?
Martin Luther King knew that Racism was wrong because of his biblical beliefs-I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal in GOD's eyes.
If GOD was not involved in equality- Why should ALL MEN BE CREATED EQUAL?

Answer 1

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

The founding fathers knew where our rights come, not from the mob, or from government, but from God.

Madison himself stated several times that the Book of Issiah is where he got the idea for seperated enumerated power, and the continental congress was led in prayer and closed in prayer.Several of the colonies constitutions even required a christian faith to be a member of government.

The fact is that the religious and secular war was being fought at our founding, and is still fought now. What has changed is that the secularists are winning now, whereas in the past the theists did.

The United States may not be "officially" Christian, but our culture has ALWAYS been Christian, and we don't want to see our culture destroyed.

Answer 2

Actually a lame question .
You do not have to believe in a passage from the Bible stating that all all men are created equal any more than you have to believe in the story of Noah to go boating . The recognition that all people are created equal is in reference to the prviding of CIVIL Rights . All man are NOT created the same . Some are darker , some are faster , some are smarter , and so on . But we all deserve equal civil rights ( until we commit a civil crime ) , and equal oppotunity to the pursuit of happiness whether we are Christian, Jewish , Atheist , or anything else . The Equality of Man is qiute different from men ruling on issues of morality , which is what your lame question seems to be trying to compare .

For tincre ... A good answer , BUT not all people have equality under the law . It depends on the state and locale . There is a bill going to congress this week that will give the protection of equal rights to gays and lesbians on a national basis such as with the NJ and NYC laws that currently exist . Unfortunately they couldn't get enough support for the part that gives protection to transgendered people .Especially pre and non-op transexuals . It will take awhile for the rest of the country to advance to the ideals that NYC and NJ and other more developed areas put forth .

Answer 3

You're absolutely right I think. For nonreligious people there are very few if any moral certainties. We have to construct our own moral systems, which is not without pitfalls. But then again, the Bible has been used to defend all sorts of anti-democratic principles as well. It used to be obvious to many people that black people deserved to be slaves because they were descendants from Ham. Equality has not always been the guiding principle of christianity and in many ways it still isn't.

But yeah, it is my belief that the declaration of independence does not in fact declare self-evident timeless values but is a bold and meaningful statement with far-reaching consequences. It is meaningful precisely because it is not self-evident and does not conform to tradition. Yes it is Deist and it could hardly be conceived otherwise. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man goes a step further by stating to be written under auspices of "the supreme being". And yet, miraculously, we can accept it by just eliminating those words and start at the first article:

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.

Easy does it. We may also choose to adopt a fascist constitution. However, if we have any moral fiber in our body we won't. Yes, that is scary. But that is the freedom that each and every one of us has, to decide what's right and what's wrong. Oh and indeed I'm not American, but this discussion is way too interesting to pass by.

Answer 4

Thomas Jefferson was a Deist. Deists believed many things about God that would sound strange to modern Christians, and Christians are wrong (perhaps deliberately, perhaps innocently) to interpret Jefferson's use of 'Creator' (and a little earlier in the document, 'nature and nature's god') to mean their own idea of God.

Deists didn't believe the Bible was holy, it was just literature to them. They didn't believe it was God's 'revelation' to believers. In fact they didn't believe in theology at all, or church doctrine. They believed that all you could know about God was what you could learn by studying his creation, the earth. In other words, they trusted science more than theology or doctrine.

So if you want to know about man, you look at him and see the evidence. It is -self evident- that man yearns to be free, to have liberty and property and happiness, to do as he pleases so long as he doesn't step on the rights of others. This is equally true about all men, in other words, men are created equal in this respect. This is not a statement about God, but about Man, and the way he was -created-.

And this observation led to the idea that men have the right to form their own governments to fill their needs, and that when governments no longer meet the peoples' needs, the people have a right (and a -duty-) to dissolve their government and form a new one. This was in direct opposition to an idea that was very popular in those days that the king was picked by God and ruled by God's will, so to oppose the king was to oppose God.

Yes, it is a great inconsistency that Jefferson owned slaves, as did a great number of southern intellectuals who considered taxation without representation as 'slavery'.

BTW read sometime what Martin Luther said about Jews! 8^O

Answer 5

We all have the same rights of equality under the laws of the United states, at this time 2007.

This was not always the case, slavery, segregation of ethnic groupings- some of which happens on its own even now.

The ideal is the issue, not whether some believe in the creation and others the creator.

But those who oppose the very idea of God can be seen as much by their vehement rejection of others beliefs.
As can the ignorance of the believer make him look the fool.

Answer 6

Well you adhere to the belief that there is this Creator which made all men equal, yet all men were not equal in the constitution--slaves are specifically mentioned in that document. Therefore your Creator or the vision of Him back then believed that all men were not created equal. It took men of courage and honor--and their own personal belief that slavery was wrong to free black people from where their Declaration Creator had left them. It's man that defines morality--not some mythic creature.

Answer 7

The United States is not, nor was it ever meant to be, a Christian nation. Religious history revisionists have tried to change that, but, the truth is, religion was meant to be a personal choice of the person, and not anything mandated, or required by the government.

In plain words, the Christian nation of America is a lie, created by re-writing history into a fiction that will prop up the feeble beliefs of religious folk.

To pound it into the ground, it says "creator" which is a non-religious reference to Deity, and is a mark of Deism. Religion, Holy books, choice o Deity, is all left up to a persons individual choice. Why drag out this tired old argument? It holds about as much water as Pascals Wager, or is that going to be your next question?

Answer 8

In the eyes of God we are all created Equal.

Answer 9

God, with a capital G implies the god of the Bible. Creator implies something else, something that can be interpreted differently by everyone. There IS a difference.

Why should all men be equal? If you have to ask this question, I in turn question the morals that you have gained from your Great Book.

Answer 10

" We hold these truths to be self evident , that all men are created equal " . It doesn't say that the men were created by god .
And please remember , our early politicians were just ordinary people like any of us . They didn't have some sort of magic view of creation . Some , like Franklin were outright Atheistic .

Answer 11

Created equal for legal purposes