On the Origin of Unalienable Rights

Why rights did not evolve,
and why all people can
embrace American values

It is Independence Day in America, a joyous holiday of feasting, parades and fireworks. Here at crev.info, we invite all readers from around the world to celebrate an oft-stated line from the Declaration of Independence that was published on July 4, 1776:

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.

These natural rights belong to all people, not just to Americans. The Founding Fathers of the fledgling nation decided to embed these lines at the start of their new intelligently designed government. While that government became identified with America, the truths they wrote of were taken to be self-evident to “all men” around the world. It is the duty of governments, they continued, to protect those rights. Notice that additional rights are assumed: “among these” are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Ponder that phrase “all men are created equal.” Recognizing that the phrase in English (as in many other languages) is inclusive of male and female though stated in masculine form, it really means all human beings, all members of Homo sapiens, as distinct from animals. It means all people around the world. It was written for human beings, not animals. Humans are the only creatures capable of understanding the concept of truths, rights, or liberties. It doesn’t say all men are equal; it says we are created equal—equally due our unalienable rights.

Pleasures Are Not Rights

Pack train in the Sierras

Animals act with instinctive behaviors for their self-preservation but do not consider those as rights. They don’t “consider” anything. They pursue pleasure and avoid pain, but live for the moment, not for “the well-lived life” (eudaimonia) as a personal goal for the future, which is what the founders meant by the pursuit of happiness. A horse may race out into the pasture when the gate is opened, but has no understanding of liberty as a natural right. Its human owner smiles at watching the horse’s pleasure at having the saddle removed, frolicking and feeding with unbridled mouth. It is humans who understand the good in liberating a whale from a fishing net from which it became entangled, or freeing a bird caught in a fence, so that these creatures can live as they were created to live.

Rationality Precedes Rights

Humans were created to think. Yes, we are endowed with bodies with similar physical needs that animals have. But as John Wise wrote a few days ago, humans are the only rationally conscious animals. Among living things on earth, humans are exceptional, and that fact is another self-evident truth presupposed in the Declaration of Independence. The capacity for thought is a truth prior to Jefferson’s list, a necessary precondition before any truths could be elucidated. Man (in the inclusive gender sense) is the only physical being on earth granted the capacity for rational thought. People were endowed by their Creator with language and reason, capacities that are categorically “other” than those of all non-human physical creatures on earth, magnificent as their instinctive behaviors may be.

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Darwinism Undermines Rights

Yet it is these self-evident truths that are denied by evolutionists. To those in the Darwinian camp, we are “mere” animals, creatures with merely more of the same biological stuff seen in animals. They have brains, but we have bigger brains. They have limbs, but we have more flexible ones. They have voices, but we have more complex vocalizations. Our behaviors are just “more of the same” stuff that happened long ago in an unguided path that ended up with upright-walking, naked apes. Such thinking is deadly to any concept of natural rights. The social groups that evolved among members of the genus Homo are under no obligation to protect “rights” of the vulnerable from abuse. Indeed, rights do not even exist in Darwinism. Only privileges that were naturally selected for the “fittest” exist at a given time. Someone suffering in a Darwinian world cannot seek justice in a complaint that his or her rights are being violated.

In Evolution News today, Dr Stephen Meyer wrote of Thomas Jefferson’s embrace of intelligent design, and of the Darwinians’ denial of it. He further argued that Darwinism undermines the intrinsic dignity of humans. It is a good article as far as it goes, but I would back up a step prior to Meyer’s arguments. I think it necessary to point out that thinking itself constitutes a precondition for arguing anything.

Self-Evident Thought

An evolutionist reading Meyer’s article and disagreeing with it could be oblivious to the fact that he is thinking about it. Consider the words of C. S. Lewis from his book Miracles:

The Naturalists have been engaged in thinking about Nature. They have not attended to the fact that they were thinking. The moment one attends to this it is obvious that one’s own thinking cannot be merely a natural event, and that therefore something other than Nature exists. The Supernatural is not remote and abstruse: it is a matter of daily and hourly experience, as intimate as breathing.

He further said,

A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be demolished. It would have destroyed its own credentials. It would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound—a proof that there are no such things as proofs.

It is the self-refuting nature of Darwinism that needs to be recognized by those holding to any form of undirected evolution. They can’t even get out of the starting block to argue for their view. By thinking about it, they affirm creation! To “think” Darwinly is to collapse all conversation into vocalizations for sex or fitness. Argument in Darwin’s world cannot be justified as a pursuit of something that is true. The origin of unalienable rights begins in Genesis.

Rights and Responsibilities

One of our jobs here is to help the Darwinist realize that by thinking, writing, or speaking as if what they believe is true, they are agreeing with us: that they were endowed by their Creator with the capacity for thought. That must be affirmed by the scientist before analyzing a fossil, dating a rock, or categorizing a new species. None of those pursuits make any sense apart from a Genesis understanding of man as created in the image of God. Thinking presupposes the supernatural. No man can write a declaration of independence from God.

Another job of ours is to encourage the God-fearing members of Homo sapiens to be strong and very courageous in their witness to those deluded into thinking that thinking evolved. A proper foundation for thinking can keep the Christian’s feet on solid ground when facing attacks on the Bible and creation.

Enjoying Natural Rights

Standing on a solid foundation has another benefit. It results in the ability to enjoy our Creator and see nature with reverence and awe. Why? Because along with being endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights, we were also endowed with marvelous senses for taking in the wonders that surround us.

Happy Fourth of July to Americans and to all created people around the world! And if you live in a dictatorship, work and pray to remind your government that its duty is to protect your Creator-endowed, self-evident rights and to ensure equal justice for all under righteous laws modeled after the attributes of God whose image we bear.