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.
If we would believe that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with those rights, then if man abandons his creator, does he still have those rights? Or can he deserve those rights, if he denies that creator? Our rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are only self-evident and unalienable if they have a source beyond man.
Here’s the thing, if man is the source of his own rights, then they are alienable by man. That was the problem with other evolutions that insisted that man had somewhat similar rights, the French and the Russian, for example. There was no external authority to appeal to for the justice of those rights. People can claim all sorts of rights, but if those rights are humanly endowed and not innate to our natures because we were created with them, then they are alienable, because they are trappings.
So we cannot expect to have rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness if there is no God, no creator. So that if we are evolved with animals from proteins-made-life in some Shazzam! of biology, then we deserve no more rights than animals have. Heck, even animals only deserve any respect if they are made by a creator who has endowed them with that which we find sympathetic. Created life has value, otherwise, they, the animals, are merely animated meat, as are we, and therefore deserving of the same consideration man or animal gives to meat.
We cannot truly celebrate those liberties of the Declaration of Independence without acknowledging the Creator who made us willful through those rights, so we are not animal. We consent to be governed, which is also a matter of being willful. That’s all in our nature and is part of nature’s law, so let’s thank God.
A little note about happiness: Happiness can be entailed in property, but it can be more than property, too. And God evidently does not always endow each human being with happiness, whatever form it takes. But he certainly allows man, probably requires man, to aim for happiness and a happy, which means a good, state of being. Without the effort of pursuit, we suffer from nature’s entropy; things fall apart.
