Difference between revisions of "Statement 10 + Footnotes"
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<span style="color:grey"><small>''Try to imagine how a judge, reviewing a prolife law with these Findings of Facts, would be able to dodge this evidence - in fact, see if you can find ANYONE who can ''refute'' these facts - as opposed to not ''caring'' about facts - that is, not caring about reality:''</small></span> | <span style="color:grey"><small>''Try to imagine how a judge, reviewing a prolife law with these Findings of Facts, would be able to dodge this evidence - in fact, see if you can find ANYONE who can ''refute'' these facts - as opposed to not ''caring'' about facts - that is, not caring about reality:''</small></span> | ||
| − | ====<span style="color:blue">Statement of Fact #10 of 12: | + | ====<span style="color:blue">Statement of Fact #10 of 12:==== |
<span style="color:blue"> Finding #10: Tyranny over any class of humans by any other is prohibited by the Constitution, and by the Declaration which gives the purpose of the Constitution, and which rests its own authority on the revelation of God | <span style="color:blue"> Finding #10: Tyranny over any class of humans by any other is prohibited by the Constitution, and by the Declaration which gives the purpose of the Constitution, and which rests its own authority on the revelation of God | ||
<ref>'''More about “the Declaration lays out the purpose of the Constitution, and rests its own authority on the revelation of God”''' | <ref>'''More about “the Declaration lays out the purpose of the Constitution, and rests its own authority on the revelation of God”''' | ||
| − | + | <br> The Revelation of God upon which the Declaration of Independence rests its authority: “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.” | |
| + | <br> The purpose of government and its courts which our Constitution was designed to serve: “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. ...whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” | ||
</ref> | </ref> | ||
<span style="color:blue">in the Bible. | <span style="color:blue">in the Bible. | ||
| − | <ref> | + | <ref>'''More about “the Declaration...rests its own authority on the revelation of God ''in the Bible”''''' |
| + | <br> “Nature’s God”, the phrase in the Declaration of Independence of 1776, was a clear, unambiguous reference to God as revealed by the Bible. The first clue is that “God” is singular, while every nonChristian major religion except Islam worships “gods”. And there were no Moslems among the Declaration’s signers. | ||
| + | <br> “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which '''the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God''' entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” | ||
| + | <br> Bill Fortenberry, a Birmingham Christian “philosopher and historian” whose work “has been cited in several legal journals”, writes “Nearly all of the modern historians who have written about this phrase have accused Jefferson and the other signers of the Declaration of abandoning the God of the Bible and erecting a more deistic god of nature in His place.” The attempt to tie the definition of the phrase to Jefferson’s personal ambiguous faith statements is a study in irrelevance, since if the Declaration’s signers understood the phrase to differ from their own theology, they wouldn’t have signed it. | ||
| + | <br> Here Fortenberry explains how we can be sure Jefferson’s personal understanding of the phrase was, indeed, the Bible, the Word of God: | ||
| + | <blockquote> | ||
| + | <br> Thomas Jefferson was a student of Lord Bolingbroke. He first began studying Bolingbroke’s writings at the age of fourteen, and he read them again at the age of twenty-three as he was preparing for a career as a lawyer. Jefferson’s Literary Commonplace Book contains more quotations from Bolingbroke than from any other author, and I do not know of a single historian who has not given Bolingbroke the credit for Jefferson’s famous phrase regarding “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” What these scholars keep hidden is the fact that Lord Bolingbroke provided a very specific definition for this phrase. | ||
| + | <br> In a renowned letter to Alexander Pope, Lord Bolingbroke wrote the following words which were to become the basis for Jefferson’s opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: | ||
| + | <br> “You will find that it is the modest, not the presumptuous enquirer, who makes a real, and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows nature, and nature’s God; that is, he follows God in his works, and in his word.” | ||
| + | <br> Here we find a definition from the very individual that all scholars recognize as the source of Jefferson’s phrase. According to Lord Bolingbroke, the law of nature’s God is the Law which is found in God’s Word. This was the definition which was intended by Jefferson, and this was the manner in which his words were understood by our forefathers. The law of nature’s God upon which our nation was founded is nothing less than the Bible itself. (http://www.increasinglearning.com/blog/law-of-natures-god)</blockquote> | ||
| + | |||
| + | <br> “Jefferson’s phrase ‘the laws of nature and of nature’s God,’ was clearly defined by Blackstone’s Commentaries as meaning the unwritten law of God in creation and the revealed law of God in the Bible” (according to Jerry Newcombe, http://doubtingthomasbook.com/the-laws-of-nature-and-of-natures-god/) | ||
| + | <br> “Louisiana State University professor Ellis Sandoz writes that Jefferson’s language ‘. . .harmonizes with the Christian religious and Whig political consensus that prevailed in the country at the time; . . . (and with) traditional Christian natural law and rights going back to Aquinas…’ Similar language was used by the Protestant John Calvin, John Locke and others. See Sandoz, A Government of Laws, pp. 190-191.” (Newcombe) | ||
| + | <br> Even the phrase “the laws of nature” was not understood then as now, as physical forces in our material universe, but “Jefferson defined the law of nature in 1793 as: ‘the moral Law to which man has been subjected by his creator,’ Opinion on the Treaties with France, 28 April 1793.” (Newcombe) | ||
| + | <br> Other Declaration signers were Christians, not activists of other faiths, who when writing “God” meant “as revealed in the Bible”: “Other references to God such as ‘endowed by their Creator’ and ‘the Supreme Judge’ and ‘the protection of divine providence’ were added during the collaborative process by others in Congress before the final document was adopted.” (Newcombe) | ||
| + | <br> History professor David Voelker says Jefferson didn’t believe the Bible is a revelation of God. Professor of Humanities and History, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, http://davidjvoelker.com/ he concludes, without offering supporting Jefferson quotes: “Although he supported the moral teachings of Jesus, Jefferson believed in a creator similar to the God of deism. In the tradition of deism, Jefferson based his God on reason and rejected revealed religion.” http://historytools.davidjvoelker.com/docs/Natures-God.html | ||
| + | <br> But Newcombe offers a Jefferson quote inconsistent with Deism’s idea that God doesn’t get involved in current events: “To Richard Henry Lee, Jefferson reported on the military front: ‘Our camps recruit slowly, amazing slowly. God knows in what it will end. The finger of providence has as yet saved us by retarding the arrival of Ld. Howe’s recruits.’ ” | ||
| + | <br> Concerning the “Deism” label, Voelker wrote: “Deism was not actually a formal religion, but rather was a label used loosely to describe certain religious views. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word deist was used negatively during Jefferson's lifetime. The label was often applied to freethinkers like Jefferson as a slander rather than as a precise description.” | ||
| + | <br> Newcombe is a joint author of a book of the latest compilation of Jefferson’s letters and other writings, which challenge the narrative that Jefferson didn’t take the Bible seriously. The book’s synopsis, at | ||
| + | http://doubtingthomasbook.com/marks-blog: “Drawing from about 1100 religious letters and papers of Thomas Jefferson (of which over 100 in recent months have been printed for the first time ever – some in this volume itself), this book identifies over 200 religious leaders or groups that Thomas Jefferson either worshiped with, aided financially or corresponded with. While not denying the unorthodox writings of Jefferson late in life, the context of the vast majority of his religious correspondence and actions, and the unique religious culture of Central Virginia, show a much more nuanced picture that challenges both secular and religious scholars to reassess Jefferson’s modern image.” (Contact form: http://doubtingthomasbook.com/praise-for-doubting-thomas) | ||
| + | <br> “Jefferson’s Bible” is his condensation of the Four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) for distribution among Native Americans to inspire good behavior. It omits Jesus’ miracles, which is cited by many as evidence that Jefferson didn’t believe in miracles. | ||
| + | <br> ''But even if such a “hands off” God were Jefferson’s concept of “nature’s God”, and even if the other Declaration signers accepted such a notion, that would be irrelevant to the Signers’ reliance on the Bible as an inspired guide to good behavior, and to understanding the Unalienable Rights with which “all men” are “endowed” by our “Creator”.'' | ||
| + | '''General Biblical inspiration of American Freedom.''' | ||
| + | <br> In 1954, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren: “I believe the entire Bill of Rights came into being because of the knowledge our forefathers had of the Bible and their belief in it: freedom of belief, of expression, of assembly, of petition, the dignity of the individual, the sanctity of the home, equal justice under law, and the reservation of powers to the people.” Earl Warren, quoted in Jim Nelson Black, ''When Nations Die: Ten Warning Signs of a Culture in Crisis'' (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1994) p. 253. | ||
| + | <u>The Foundation for Moral Law and Lutherans for Life</u> point out in their joint amicus in Dobbs v. Jackson: | ||
| + | <blockquote><br> Much of our Western legal tradition has been shaped by the Bible. On October 4, 1982, Congress passed Public Law 97-280, declaring 1983 the “Year of the Bible,” and the President signed the bill into law. The opening clause of the bill is: “Whereas Biblical teachings inspired concepts of civil government that are contained in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States; . . .” | ||
| + | <br> Joshua Berman, Senior Editor at Bar-Ilan University, in his 2008 book ''Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought'', contends that the Pentateuch [first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy] is the world’s first model of a society in which politics and economics embrace egalitarian [equal rights for all] ideals. Berman states flatly: '''If there was one truth the ancients''' [who rejected the religion of the Bible] '''held to be self-evident it was that all men were ''not'' created equal'''. If we maintain today that, in fact, they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, then it is because '''we have inherited as part of our cultural heritage notions of equality that were deeply entrenched in the ancient passages of the Pentateuch.''' | ||
| + | <br> <small>(Footnote: Joshua Berman, Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought (Oxford 2008) 175, See also John Marshall Gest, The Influence of Biblical Texts Upon English Law, an address delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma xi Societies of the University of Pennsylvania June 14, 1910, https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu quoting Sir Francis Bacon: “The law of England is not taken out of Amadis de Gaul, nor the Book of Palmerin, but out of the Scripture, of the laws of the Romans and the Grecians.”</small></blockquote> | ||
</ref> | </ref> | ||
Revision as of 05:33, 22 November 2023
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Statement of Facts #10 from:
Reversing_Landmark_Abomination_Cases
Saving Babies from judges & voters
Saving Souls from ‘Scrupulous Neutrality’ about Religion
by proving in courts of law and in the Court of Public Opinion that:
The right to live of a baby and of a judge are equal The Bible & reality-challenged religions are NOT equal
A strategy of Life that relies on the Author of Life
for pro-life, pro-Bible Lawmakers, Leaders, Lawyers, and Laymen
by Dave Leach R-IA Bible Lover-musician-grandpa (talk) November 21, 2023 (UTC)
Try to imagine how a judge, reviewing a prolife law with these Findings of Facts, would be able to dodge this evidence - in fact, see if you can find ANYONE who can refute these facts - as opposed to not caring about facts - that is, not caring about reality:
Statement of Fact #10 of 12:
Finding #10: Tyranny over any class of humans by any other is prohibited by the Constitution, and by the Declaration which gives the purpose of the Constitution, and which rests its own authority on the revelation of God [1]
in the Bible. [2]
Yikes! How can we cite the “B” word in court without judges screaming “Establishment of Religion!” and terrorists demanding equal “free exercise” of their religious duty, which includes beheading everyone in the courtroom? Surely almost every Christian wants God to be uncensored in forums where Americans decide whether to pattern our laws after the principles of Heaven or of Hell, but believing it to be impossible, will scream at anyone suggesting it! So DON’T READ any more of this Statement unless you are sitting down under your strapped Class “a” seat belt, and you have throat lozenges handy for when you are done screaming. (Actually these principles which founded Freedom, no matter how legally irrefutable their presentation, can’t be imagined prevailing in modern courts before SCOTUS’ history of perverting the Constitution is exposed. That is the goal of Statement #11.)
Roe v Wade was not out of line to consult “those trained in... theology” who study souls, as well as doctors who study bodies, to clarify who to count as human with an unalienable right to life.3 [3] America’s Freedom springs from “all men are created equal” and “equal protection of the laws” for all humans even if their looks, language, wealth, strength, ancestry, power, or faith are different.4 [4] These rights have proven such a blessing to the world that their source, the Bible, deserves the fair hearing owed any witness whose reliability has been confirmed, when it promises still greater blessings if we will equally protect humans whose physical size is different.5 [5]
Its testimony is not “cumulative”, but “probative”.6
[6]
It is not to be feared as dispositive or compulsory: American freedom balances human understanding of how best to apply Biblical principles to government against the willingness of voting majorities to follow those principles. Even that is a Biblical principle legitimized in 1 Samuel 8.7
[7]
The history of slavery, prohibition, and abortion illustrate the “willingness” factor. The probative value of the testimony of God is proved by the fact that without it, slavery would never have ended, and the prolife movement would never have begun. Which makes it probative to observe that not only the 14th Amendment, but also the revelation of God, requires this state, as it does every state, to outlaw all trampling of fundamental rights of any class of people, including abortion of babies.8 [8] Where the two authorities say the same thing, the Bible, for all its alleged ambiguity, is better understood and more trusted than the Constitution which has indeed proven “a thing of wax” in the nimble fingers of even the most scrupulous judges.9 [9]
Without God – without belief in a more objective standard of right and wrong than the “value” that voters place on “different” people through evolving community standards, it is impossible to understand fundamental rights.10 [10]
Courts have demonstrated this impossibility by so often confusing abominations for rights, decimating those whom Jesus said “forbid them not to come unto Me”, denying that He created them, murdering 17% of them, sodomizing 20% of the survivors, and censoring 100% of His teachings in schools.11 [11]
That destruction of the 14th Amendment (1868) began when “Substantive Due Process”, pioneered in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), was applied in United States v. Cruikshank 92 U. S. 542 (1876) to acquit a white Democrat mililtia of murdering “as many as 165” black Republicans and burning down the courthouse they were defending.12 [12]
Uncensoring God does not “establish religion”. It does not compel belief, action or endorsement. It simply allows judges and voters to make informed decisions. It is part of fact-finding. It is part of reasoning. Part of embracing reality. Part of examining “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”. Judges must stop punishing people for telling the truth just because the truth favors God.13 [13]
Uncensoring the Bible does not require equal weight for claims of religions that deny equal rights for all.14 [14]
For example, some claim “souls” don’t enter babies until long after fertilization, or even long after birth.15 [15] Their claims do not “cancel” the mountain of consensus of court-recognized fact finders that souls are present from the beginning. Our Constitution and laws reject their unequal rights, and are appropriately wary of their rationales for their unequal rights. The credibility of every witness is not equal. Credibility is earned.
There can be “free exercise” of religions hostile to “equal protection of the laws” only to the extent their “exercise” does not threaten the rights of others or violate the laws enacted to protect them – laws ultimately decided by voting majorities, hopefully well informed through the uncensoring of reality.16 [16] 39/520 words
Mini-Lexicon of legal terms: Cumulative: testimony so redundant that it wastes the court’s time Dispositive: testimony so strong that it settles the issue with no more Probative: probative facts establish, or contribute to, proof. Probative value is the degree of relevance of evidence.
The footnotes below are enriched by amicus briefs filed in Dobbs v. Jackson by: Foundation for Moral Law and Lutherans for Life <> Jewish Prolife Foundation <> LONANG Institute <> U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Other Religious Organizations <> Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence
INDEX to all 12 Statements of Facts
Statement_1_+_Footnotes Courtrecognized, court-tested Finders of Facts unanimously establish that unborn babies are fully human
Statement_2_+_Footnotes Courts Accept the Fact-Finding Authority of Legislatures, Juries, Experts for the same good reasons their findings persuade the public.
Statement_3_+_Footnotes The FACT that Babies are Fully Human was never denied or ruled irrelevant by SCOTUS.
Statement_4_+_Footnotes Heartbeats & Brain Waves are Legally Recognized Evidence of Life.
Statement_5_+_Footnotes Legislatures should regulate abortion, as Dobbs held, just as legislatures regulate the prosecution of all other murders.
Statement_6_+_Footnotes The full humanity of a tiny physical body is hard for many to grasp. But what distinguishes us from animals isn’t physical, and has no known pre-conscious stage.
Statement_7_+_Footnotes Congress has Already Enacted a Personhood Law as Strong as a “Life Amendment”. The 14th Amendment already authorizes Congress to require all states to outlaw abortion.
Statement_8_+_Footnotes Roe, Dobbs, and the 14th Amendment agree: All Humans are “Persons”.
Statement_9_+_Footnotes When pregnancies develop into medical emergencies requiring separation of mother and child to save the mother, the child has an equal fundamental right to life and medical care.
Statement_10_+_Footnotes Tyranny over any class of humans by any other is prohibited by the Constitution, by the Declaration which gives the purpose of the Constitution, and which rests its own authority on the revelation of God in the Bible.
Statement_11_+_Footnotes The 14th Amendment gives courts no authority to invent rights not specified in the Constitution, like the right to murder, and gives legislatures no authority to legalize violations of Constitutional Rights.
Statement_12_+_Footnotes Judicial Interference with Constitutional Obligations is Impeachable.
==
FOOTNOTES
- ↑ More about “the Declaration lays out the purpose of the Constitution, and rests its own authority on the revelation of God”
The Revelation of God upon which the Declaration of Independence rests its authority: “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 purpose of government and its courts which our Constitution was designed to serve: “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. ...whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” - ↑ More about “the Declaration...rests its own authority on the revelation of God in the Bible”
“Nature’s God”, the phrase in the Declaration of Independence of 1776, was a clear, unambiguous reference to God as revealed by the Bible. The first clue is that “God” is singular, while every nonChristian major religion except Islam worships “gods”. And there were no Moslems among the Declaration’s signers.
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
Bill Fortenberry, a Birmingham Christian “philosopher and historian” whose work “has been cited in several legal journals”, writes “Nearly all of the modern historians who have written about this phrase have accused Jefferson and the other signers of the Declaration of abandoning the God of the Bible and erecting a more deistic god of nature in His place.” The attempt to tie the definition of the phrase to Jefferson’s personal ambiguous faith statements is a study in irrelevance, since if the Declaration’s signers understood the phrase to differ from their own theology, they wouldn’t have signed it.
Here Fortenberry explains how we can be sure Jefferson’s personal understanding of the phrase was, indeed, the Bible, the Word of God:
Thomas Jefferson was a student of Lord Bolingbroke. He first began studying Bolingbroke’s writings at the age of fourteen, and he read them again at the age of twenty-three as he was preparing for a career as a lawyer. Jefferson’s Literary Commonplace Book contains more quotations from Bolingbroke than from any other author, and I do not know of a single historian who has not given Bolingbroke the credit for Jefferson’s famous phrase regarding “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” What these scholars keep hidden is the fact that Lord Bolingbroke provided a very specific definition for this phrase.
In a renowned letter to Alexander Pope, Lord Bolingbroke wrote the following words which were to become the basis for Jefferson’s opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:
“You will find that it is the modest, not the presumptuous enquirer, who makes a real, and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows nature, and nature’s God; that is, he follows God in his works, and in his word.”
Here we find a definition from the very individual that all scholars recognize as the source of Jefferson’s phrase. According to Lord Bolingbroke, the law of nature’s God is the Law which is found in God’s Word. This was the definition which was intended by Jefferson, and this was the manner in which his words were understood by our forefathers. The law of nature’s God upon which our nation was founded is nothing less than the Bible itself. (http://www.increasinglearning.com/blog/law-of-natures-god)
“Jefferson’s phrase ‘the laws of nature and of nature’s God,’ was clearly defined by Blackstone’s Commentaries as meaning the unwritten law of God in creation and the revealed law of God in the Bible” (according to Jerry Newcombe, http://doubtingthomasbook.com/the-laws-of-nature-and-of-natures-god/)
“Louisiana State University professor Ellis Sandoz writes that Jefferson’s language ‘. . .harmonizes with the Christian religious and Whig political consensus that prevailed in the country at the time; . . . (and with) traditional Christian natural law and rights going back to Aquinas…’ Similar language was used by the Protestant John Calvin, John Locke and others. See Sandoz, A Government of Laws, pp. 190-191.” (Newcombe)
Even the phrase “the laws of nature” was not understood then as now, as physical forces in our material universe, but “Jefferson defined the law of nature in 1793 as: ‘the moral Law to which man has been subjected by his creator,’ Opinion on the Treaties with France, 28 April 1793.” (Newcombe)
Other Declaration signers were Christians, not activists of other faiths, who when writing “God” meant “as revealed in the Bible”: “Other references to God such as ‘endowed by their Creator’ and ‘the Supreme Judge’ and ‘the protection of divine providence’ were added during the collaborative process by others in Congress before the final document was adopted.” (Newcombe)
History professor David Voelker says Jefferson didn’t believe the Bible is a revelation of God. Professor of Humanities and History, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, http://davidjvoelker.com/ he concludes, without offering supporting Jefferson quotes: “Although he supported the moral teachings of Jesus, Jefferson believed in a creator similar to the God of deism. In the tradition of deism, Jefferson based his God on reason and rejected revealed religion.” http://historytools.davidjvoelker.com/docs/Natures-God.html
But Newcombe offers a Jefferson quote inconsistent with Deism’s idea that God doesn’t get involved in current events: “To Richard Henry Lee, Jefferson reported on the military front: ‘Our camps recruit slowly, amazing slowly. God knows in what it will end. The finger of providence has as yet saved us by retarding the arrival of Ld. Howe’s recruits.’ ”
Concerning the “Deism” label, Voelker wrote: “Deism was not actually a formal religion, but rather was a label used loosely to describe certain religious views. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word deist was used negatively during Jefferson's lifetime. The label was often applied to freethinkers like Jefferson as a slander rather than as a precise description.”
Newcombe is a joint author of a book of the latest compilation of Jefferson’s letters and other writings, which challenge the narrative that Jefferson didn’t take the Bible seriously. The book’s synopsis, at http://doubtingthomasbook.com/marks-blog: “Drawing from about 1100 religious letters and papers of Thomas Jefferson (of which over 100 in recent months have been printed for the first time ever – some in this volume itself), this book identifies over 200 religious leaders or groups that Thomas Jefferson either worshiped with, aided financially or corresponded with. While not denying the unorthodox writings of Jefferson late in life, the context of the vast majority of his religious correspondence and actions, and the unique religious culture of Central Virginia, show a much more nuanced picture that challenges both secular and religious scholars to reassess Jefferson’s modern image.” (Contact form: http://doubtingthomasbook.com/praise-for-doubting-thomas)
“Jefferson’s Bible” is his condensation of the Four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) for distribution among Native Americans to inspire good behavior. It omits Jesus’ miracles, which is cited by many as evidence that Jefferson didn’t believe in miracles.
But even if such a “hands off” God were Jefferson’s concept of “nature’s God”, and even if the other Declaration signers accepted such a notion, that would be irrelevant to the Signers’ reliance on the Bible as an inspired guide to good behavior, and to understanding the Unalienable Rights with which “all men” are “endowed” by our “Creator”. General Biblical inspiration of American Freedom.
In 1954, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren: “I believe the entire Bill of Rights came into being because of the knowledge our forefathers had of the Bible and their belief in it: freedom of belief, of expression, of assembly, of petition, the dignity of the individual, the sanctity of the home, equal justice under law, and the reservation of powers to the people.” Earl Warren, quoted in Jim Nelson Black, When Nations Die: Ten Warning Signs of a Culture in Crisis (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1994) p. 253. The Foundation for Moral Law and Lutherans for Life point out in their joint amicus in Dobbs v. Jackson:
Much of our Western legal tradition has been shaped by the Bible. On October 4, 1982, Congress passed Public Law 97-280, declaring 1983 the “Year of the Bible,” and the President signed the bill into law. The opening clause of the bill is: “Whereas Biblical teachings inspired concepts of civil government that are contained in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States; . . .”
Joshua Berman, Senior Editor at Bar-Ilan University, in his 2008 book Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought, contends that the Pentateuch [first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy] is the world’s first model of a society in which politics and economics embrace egalitarian [equal rights for all] ideals. Berman states flatly: If there was one truth the ancients [who rejected the religion of the Bible] held to be self-evident it was that all men were not created equal. If we maintain today that, in fact, they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, then it is because we have inherited as part of our cultural heritage notions of equality that were deeply entrenched in the ancient passages of the Pentateuch.
(Footnote: Joshua Berman, Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought (Oxford 2008) 175, See also John Marshall Gest, The Influence of Biblical Texts Upon English Law, an address delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma xi Societies of the University of Pennsylvania June 14, 1910, https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu quoting Sir Francis Bacon: “The law of England is not taken out of Amadis de Gaul, nor the Book of Palmerin, but out of the Scripture, of the laws of the Romans and the Grecians.” - ↑
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