Regarding your inalienable right to life, you are confusing the term. The right is inalienable except for God (obviously we all die).
I’m less sure of the following but: I think also that the collection of words is what is important “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” . . . this is freedom from an arbitrary government ruled by men with no limit on its power. Also, realize this grounding of rights in God was done in a political document and as a political act. We are not looking at Biblical theology here but the Founder’s explanation of their right of rebellion. The grounding of rights in God rings true but to raise the phrase to the level of scripture does not.
A right is something that should not be violated by other people. A clot blocking coronary arteries and causing cardiac arrest does not violate one's rights.
If a right can be given or taken away arbitrarily, it is not inalienable.
I’m less sure of the following but: I think also that the collection of words is what is important “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” . . . this is freedom from an arbitrary government ruled by men with no limit on its power.
If the rights are truly inalienable they apply whether one is a US citizen, a Brazilian, or stranded on an island with other victims of a plane crash. If you're dropped on Greenland with a dozen other people, simply being out of US jurisdiction does not make it ok to rape and murder each other.
Also, realize this grounding of rights in God was done in a political document and as a political act.
Does that mean you are devaluing the significance of our right not to be killed, enslaved, raped, imprisoned unfairly, or exiled?
God cannot be proven to exist, let alone subpoenaed to appear in court. For all practical intents and purposes, He is irrelevant to laws made by people for people.
I think also that the collection of words is what is important “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” . . . this is freedom from an arbitrary government ruled by men with no limit on its power.
Yes. The original listing of essential rights, was "life liberty and property," as laid out by John Locke, the most important philosophical influence on the Founders. Jefferson changed "property" to "the pursuit of happiness," because he thought the emphasis on property was too venial and came off as greedy.
The Declaration was a political and philosophical treatise. When the framers sat down to write real, binding law, specifically the 5th amendment, they went back to Locke's phrase: "life, liberty and property."
this is freedom from an arbitrary government ruled by men with no limit on its power. Also, realize this grounding of rights in God was done in a political document and as a political act.
Yes. That is why the references in both the Declaration and the Constitution are vague; "their creator." "Nature and nature's god." There are no citations to scripture or to Christian theology, The Founders consciously avoided those, because they were the trappings of European despotism. European monarchs claimed "divine right" to rule, so they were therefore chosen by God, above the law, not subject to question or dissent, and were not merely allowed but required to wield absolute power. "L'etat, c'est mpo!"
The Framers rejected that. They wanted to build a new government on a rational philosophical basis, without resorting to divine authority, The "inalienable rights" are part and parcel of the condition of being human. Those rights are "endowed by their creator," but for the instant case, if doesn't matter who or what that creator is. The key argument is that governments exist "to secure these rights," "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
The statement that "no one is above the law" has become a cliché in 231 years of US history. in 1776, it was a radical statement. Even in Britain, the most democratic monarchy in Europe, where George III was bound to the Magna Carta and subsequent documents and could not simply ignore the Parliament, he till held more sway than the American patriots and the Enlightenment philosophers they read and plagiarized found acceptable.
The grounding of rights in God rings true but to raise the phrase to the level of scripture does not.
The DoI is a political and philosophical document. The Constitution is a legal document. Neither is a work of theology. Philosophy and law usually don't take either side on the God question -- they seek a rational basis that stands on its own two feet regardless of whether God exists or not, God intervenes or not, or there is an immortal soul and an eternal afterlife.