Constitutional rights God given? A pseudo-treatise-

Constitutional rights God given? A pseudo-treatise-

I heard on Glenn Beck the other day, and I’ve heard it from other conservatives in the past, that “the Constitution of the U.S. is Divinely Inspired, and that the rights it contains are God Given”.

Well that brings up a lot of questions.

Which god inspired it? Based on the source(s) of the statement I would hazard to guess that it was the Christian god. If so, why are these rights not found in the Bible? Why the gap from the time of Jesus till 1787 for those rights to be codified? Also, the Constitution only mentions a god in the form of a date, “in the year of our lord...”, which was custom at the time. If the Christian god was so important, why wasn't it mentioned more often?

Now, for the sake of argument, let's say it was the Christian god that inspired the Constitution. This brings up the question of “To whom does it apply”? Did the Christian god intend for these rights to apply only to Citizens (a), or to all people (human rights, if you will)(b)?

(a) If they apply to Citizens only, why was the Christian god so narrow in scope? Does this mean that American Citizens are inherently better than everyone else on earth because we were chosen by the Christian god to be granted these rights?

(b)If these rights are universal, then why do other countries not have them? Why do we say the people in Gitmo, or refugees/illegals, not have them?

Both (a) and (b) are the problem with saying the rights Americans enjoy are “God Given”.

Another issue that comes up when you say the Constitution is “God Inspired” is you place it on par with the Bible, the Inspired Word of God. This brings up the question of why the Constitution is not inerrant like the Bible. The Constitution has had to be amended several times, once to remove an amendment no less, so that means its incomplete at the minimum. Can you imagine someone saying the same thing about the Bible, that it needs to be amended or is incomplete? If the inspired Bible, written 2,000 years ago, is still accurate, then why is the inspired Constitution, written a little over 200 years ago, not?

Let's not forget that a great majority of the Constitution is actually based on the Ancient Roman system of law. This would imply that the majority of the Constitution is actually pagan in nature, since the Ancient Romans were certainly not Christian. “Concepts that originated in the Roman constitution live on...to this day. Examples include checks and balances, the separation of powers, vetoes, filibusters, quorum requirements, term limits, impeachments, the powers of the purse, and regularly scheduled elections.” wiki- Roman Constitution.

Based on the above questions and reason, the Rights of the Constitution are not “God Given”, but given by, and agreed to, by the Framers. They may have sought help from the Christian god, but this in no way means that the Christian god inspired their solutions to the problems they faced, as the Framers took more from pagan Rome than the Christian Bible. It is much easier to assume that the Rights of the Constitution is of Man, for the Citizens of the U.S. only, rather than expand them to all of humanity.

The Constitution itself is just a piece of parchment with ink on it. It doesn't not guarantee your rights anymore than reading the Bible will guarantee your soul be saved.

What the Constitution does do is protect rights assumed to exist prior either to the writing of the Constitution, and follows invariably the concept of the Natural Law. Natural Law has been the driving force behind the expansion of rights since the American revolution.

But even before then, and long before St. Thomas Aquinas first wrote about Natural Law, you have Roman and Greek philosophers discussing how natures laws should apply to the person, and how inherent rights of our humanity express themselves as we go about our lives.

Among these rights are the Right to express oneself, the Right to your own spiritual path, Right to Self Defense, and the Right to that which we own and have acquired honestly. It is based on how the human functions and affects his/her world naturally, and what a person requires to survive and thrive in this world.

The Constitution does not grant rights. It protects them from being violated as it assumes those rights inherent in the people by virtue of their humanity(i.e. "God Given" rights).

a reply to: stormson
Actually, it was "inspired" by Greek, European, and Iroquois governments. God had nothing to do with it. Especially when one takes into consideration, the Christian god's penchant for "ruling with a rod of iron". There's nothing democratic about Abraham's god.

You think you are being insightful, but you are being pedantic. None of what you said addresses the central issue. For the record I personally don't believe there is a "God" that can inspire anything, but that doesn't matter either. It's really not all that complicated. The issue is, "Who says these are rights?" If you admit that mere men just made up this stuff, no matter how much it was "based" on the history of civilization as we know it, then you have an instant argument. Anybody can make up rights, and who says the rights YOU make up are any better than the rights ANOTHER group of people make up? You may think you are enlightened where I may think you are stupid.

So we say that "God did it" because "God" transcends human thought. It's bigger than being human. Just look at the phrasing here:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among those are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Look at what they are saying.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident.": The issue is not up for argument.
"[we] are endowed by our Creator": We did not do this as humans; God did.
"with certain inalienable rights": You can't take these rights away from us.

Could YOU craft anything as elegant as that? Neither could I. Now look at the context. You're viewing this from a 21st century perspective thinking you're a sophisticated intellectual, but that's not when or why this was written. This was written in the context of an intellectual climate that centered around the "Divine Right of Kings." It was a direct contradiction to that idea that "God gave the Kings the power" to do what they wanted and asserted, "No, God didn't give the Kings the power; God gave the people the power."

It was a radical idea. It said, "To hell with the King; we want to rule ourselves, and you have no right to stop us because God is on our side; not yours." And this radical idea was written in the language and tenor of the times--which were religious times because, back then, atheism and 'rationalism' did not have the free reign they do today.

Your supercilious criticism here isn't really very clever. It's naive.

a reply to: stormson

The itemized rights that are listed in the Constitution are written in a way that stops our government from taking them away.

Honestly, where they come from is irrelevant, because whether it be a god or considered rights one would have if they were born to nature without an overseer controlling them, the point is that we have them.

And personally, I don't think that we have enough of these natural, "god-given" rights enumerated in the constitution.