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To: WildHorseCrash
"You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the universe." - John Adams

The Source and existence of our rights are an unbreakably linked...You can't separate the two.

Certainly, John Adams, Sam Adams, John Hancock, John Morton, Robert Treat Paine, Benjamin Rush, Roger Sherman, Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon and other signers thought so.

Can you name a founder that did not attribute the existence of our rights to God (with primary source documentation)?

689 posted on 04/28/2006 12:09:48 PM PDT by pby
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To: pby
The Source and existence of our rights are an unbreakably linked...You can't separate the two.

Nonsense. Facts are things that are true regardless of whether you believe in them or not. Since there is no objective evidence of the existence of any deity, the only thing supporting the concept that these rights exist is the same regardless of your beliefs about God, namely human belief. Some believe that there is a God who gives you these rights and others believe that these rights are part of human nature. Either way they are formed of nothing more than human belief.

Certainly, John Adams, Sam Adams, John Hancock, John Morton, Robert Treat Paine, Benjamin Rush, Roger Sherman, Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon and other signers thought so.

As men of their time, it wouldn't surprise me that they did. (And as public men of their time, I'd expect them to express belief regardless of how they felt if, in fact, they felt differently.) Nevertheless, their revolution was not aimed at vindicating their rights as Christians, but the rights as Englishmen. They may have believed in a deity from whom these rights sprang, but they fought to secure those rights, regardless of where they came from.

Can you name a founder that did not attribute the existence of our rights to God (with primary source documentation)?

That's irrelevant. I'm not saying that they didn't believe in God, let's assume for the sake of argument there wasn't any. I'm saying they were fighting to obtain their rights. Look at any of their written works and notice that the passages devoted to rights, liberty and government overwhelm those dealing with God or religion. It's not even close. Why? Because their concern was, again, with the fact of their liberties, not what they believed was their source.

Their invocation of God was incidental to their quest for liberty. One would have to be a daft fool to believe that if the Founders were convinced of the non-existence of God that they would happily be slaves or would have ceased seeking liberty. Their rhetoric would have changed, sure, but their goal, their quest, would have been identical.

Which is all of the track of my main point, which is that anyone who says you have to be a Christian to be a conservative is not only wrong, but also an enemy of conservatism and, ultimate, this great nation of ours.

719 posted on 04/28/2006 12:50:28 PM PDT by WildHorseCrash
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