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An Ambitious Fiction: We Hold These Truths …
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.
More beautiful words were never written. But if the gentlemen who penned our Declaration of Independence intended that “We” to refer to the nascent America as a whole, rather than to themselves only, then it’s largely fiction.
I am agnostic and lacking in faith but, paradoxically, the only portion of that glorious sentence above that rings true to me is the “Creator” part. Because I do believe that, throughout human history, men have believed the reality of a creator to be self-evident. I think evolution has wired us that way, to seek an explanation for our existence and our purpose and, if necessary, to invent one.
But is man’s equality self-evident? Does anything about human history teach us that something in nature or nature’s God suggests to men that every other man is in any essential sense his equal? I don’t think so. I believe we are created equal, but I don’t believe that is self-evident.
I’m not talking here about the superficial inequalities of physiology and circumstance but rather of the equality the founders meant: equality of value and worth and, yes, of rights as a fellow human being. These are the aspects of equality that make our rights intrinsic and fundamental to, and inseverable from, each of us: that makes them, in a word, unalienable. That is the equality that has, for most of our history, been far from self-evident — that in fact is still not embraced by much of the world’s population.
This post was inspired by Stina’s post “Where Rights Originate,” which asks a deep, important, and ultimately unresolvable question. She inspired an interesting discussion, and you should go read it.
My purpose here is much more modest and practical. I want to make the simple point that, wherever rights come from, and regardless of what we believe about where rights come from, nothing that we cherish about our rights or our equality is really self-evident. Rather, it must be taught, and it must be taught early: The torch of freedom has to be passed on to each child long before he or she becomes an adult.
If we are going to restore our nation, we will have to reclaim our children. Home school, private schools, and church schools offer an alternative to public schools and their increasingly sinister and tyrannical administrations. But confronting the public schools is essential, which brings us back to the need to assert our right to free speech and free assembly.
The current efforts of the Brandon administration to silence parents, to caricature them as terrorists for challenging the authority of school boards, suggests that the public education establishment understands how unpopular its policies are and how vulnerable those policies are to pushback from outraged parents.
Push back. Keep pushing back. And make sure that your children are learning those truths that, unfortunately, aren’t really self-evident: that we’re all created equal, and that our rights are integral and essential — despite whatever they may be learning in school.
Published in Culture
That’s ridiculous. It’s a statement of axioms and a statement of fact.
Well, if you had to pick one, yes, it wouldn’t be inerrancy.
It’s probably about 5th on the list, after Gospel, Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement.
What conflicting biblical source documents are you referring to?
I bolded your words that declare the self-evident nature of these truths.
They were speaking to the world. I think they intended the words to bring the colonist together and at the same time make it plain to the world why these events needed to happen.
I think you are correct in that these things need to be taught, but even when they are taught, the words are all meaningless unless you believe them to be true. The light bulb has to pop on at some point for the child, the foreigner, or the new citizen. The Aha! The moment of truth occurs with the moment of belief. Once the light of understanding has flooded the mind, these truths will be obvious; they will be self-evident. Not unlike so many other somewhat important truths.
We are behind and there are many adults that need to believe these words too.
Love this post, HR.
Interesting fact that goes to your point. TJ’s first draft went like this: We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness;…
The way I learned it, Franklin thought this first draft sounded too religious and suggested “self-evident.” Looking back, I think “sacred and undeniable” is more true to the spirit of that age.
The context if the document, the reason it was written, supports that, too, I think. The purpose was to explain their actions to the world, and the British. To that end, the document goes on to list the grievances against the king, which are mostly complaints about the structure of the government, impositions on their ability and right to rule themselves, and very little about any particular policy.
So, the “self evident” truths part helps explain their perspective on those structural concerns. It’s also there to anticipate a possible objection to the listing of grievances, which would be, “Well, suck it up. He’s the King and he has the divine right to rule and your job is to be a loyal subject. If you don’t like it, just do like the rest of us and try to dethrone him and install somebody from your clan instead. If you win, that will be a sign that you have the divine right.”
Henry, it’s only self-evident if you accept God as creator. Trying to understand it absent that lense is folly. History proves the opposite, that men who reject a transcendent moral law giver will (and eventually must) reject the concept of moral law. There’s no reason to accept equality, or honesty, or any other virtue otherwise – there would be no such thing as evil.
We’re seeing that play out. History has recorded it absolutely.
Yeah, maybe it actually is self-evident once you’ve learned the right lense. The dictionary says self-evident means “evident in itself without proof or demonstration; axiomatic.” That doesn’t mean it can’t be taught. There are probably a lot of things about Russian grammar, particle physics, and other fields of study that are self-evident but still unknown to people who don’t have the training to understand them properly.
1+1= 2
Don’t ask me to prove it.
My stance is fully supported by observing behavior. So again, we have to disagree. Sort of. You are agreeing with me that it may be that other homo sapiens are treated more as demons than humans. I did say different than animals. But not human.
Couldn’t the “We” be interpreted as those who wrote the Declaration, with the foundational understanding they developed through their own study and experience of History, Literature, Art, and Music?
I think this idea supports your thesis…that their willingness to read and study, debate and argue, wrestle and learn formed the foundation of their brilliant thesis, and this great American Experiment:
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.
Isn’t funny that the land that enshrined regal divorce and was ruled by the Church of England was subsequently “divorced” by the American Colonies?
King George is lucky the rabble rousers didn’t chop off his head. Probably George Washington’s good influence. 😉
At the time it was written, I think there was some truth to Bryan’s point about tribes and some people viewing other people as less than fully equal–women, children, and slaves were not considered fully equal. I don’t think true equality existed anywhere in the world.
This is why our Civil War was so important to Europeans, why James McPherson contends that the Brits held back the rest of Europe from taking advantage of the situation, why the Brits respected us and especially Lincoln.
Lincoln inherited a huge problem–an inconsistency–that had been folded into the formation of our country.
That said, Jefferson and Adams wrote out the most important ideal that has ever been framed in human history. I agree with Henry, and GW often made this point as well, that desire for freedom is inside every human being. We were hardwired for it.
That does not lead to anarchy because in a democracy, people vote to agree to follow a certain set of written laws that govern everyone equally. It means that there is one set of laws that govern both the king and me.
I look at the wonderful prosperity in our country, and I can’t help thinking of what my parents used to say to us kids. If you do the right thing, no matter how hard it is at the time, even if you can’t see it for a long time, things will work out for the best. We did the really hard thing in going to war over slavery. But we really had to do it. Adams and Jefferson demanded it.
There are thousands of ancient fragments of scripture, and thousands of minor divergences in the texts. Most are trivial: as you know, Biblical source integrity is extraordinary compared to any contemporaneous material.
There are two accounts of Judas’ death. In Matthew, he hangs himself; in Acts, he falls headlong and his body bursts, spilling his intestines upon the ground. In either case he’s dead, though whether by his own hands is hard to say.
On Saul’s road to Damascus, when God speaks to him, Acts 9 says that Saul’s traveling companions heard the voice but saw no one. When Saul recounts the incident in Acts 22, he claims that his companions heard nothing.
Second Kings 8 tells us that Ahaziah’s rein over Judah began in the 12th year of Joram, when he was 22 years old. Second Kings 9 reports that it was the 11th year, not the 12th, in which Ahaziah’s rein began. And Second Chronicles reports that he was not 22 years old, but 42 years old, when he began his rein.
Of course, these and other inconsistencies are gradually weeded out as different translations are performed.
And then there is everyone’s favorite, the Comma Johanneum, the hotly debated text of 1 John 5:7 that appears in no early manuscripts but in the marginalia of a few later manuscripts. My own view is that Erasmus likely included the verse after being pressured to do so by the Catholic Church and being provided the (convenient) codex 61, which itself was a 16th century document that differed from its own source material by, at least, its inclusion of 1 John 5:7.
I have always been impressed by the wealth of fragmentary evidence for scripture, and the consistency of much of it. But the history of the current canonical Bible is full of events that do not inspire faith in its inerrancy.
But in there lifetimes they didn’t do much to end it.
As far as humans telling stories go. That’s pretty much how it works. No one tells a story accurately.
Unclear answer.
Differences between ancient copies of the same text is one thing to talk about.
Differences between two different texts is a different thing.
Which one are you talking about? Are you talking about both? Do you understand that these are different topics?
I agree that human equality is not self-evident. It is the logical consequence of having been created in the image of God. There are no unequal images of God. I would go on to say, contra Henry, that there can be no other basis for saying that we are equal. It is self-evident that evolution does not make us equal. It makes us very unequal. Evolution does not give us a human soul, only a body that has become self-conscious and self-aware.
I’m just pointing out that there are lots of fragments of text, lots of versions of the Bible, conflicting interpretations of translations, and even differences about what constitutes “canon” in Christianity. There is no sense in which I would consider the Bible “inerrant,” except in some weird metaphysical sense that implies that, regardless of the translation or the textual fragments used to create it, God’s message is none the less communicated without confusion or error.
But before we go down a definitional rabbit hole: Do you think the Bible is inerrant and, if so, what do you mean, specifically, by “Bible” and “inerrant?”
Brian, if we are equal because we are made in the image of God, then it would seem to follow that evolution could not have made us unequal in any meaningful way. And just as a believer can claim that, despite any number of mundane inequalities readily apparent, every individual remains equal in an essential way, so to can an unbeliever make that claim. But, lacking faith, he has to make that claim based on his own valuation of humanity, rather than based on religious doctrine. And one must be taught either that personal valuation and religious doctrine, or one will be unlikely to come to believe that all men are equal.
“One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious—because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe—some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cake than others—some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of men.
“But there is one way in this country which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve.
Our courts have their faults, as does any human constitution, but in this country our courts are the great levellers, and in our courts all men are created equal.
I don’t think it’s new, per se. I think it’s the evolution of thought on the subject, that had been developing over hundreds of years.
Buddha thought slavery was wrong. However, Buddha lacked the Scottish enlightenment to produce enough wealth to end slavery.
The idea of equality of which you speak arose in a civilization with a Jewish/Christian history, and in no other. The great classical philosophers like Plato and Aristotle did not believe in this type of equality. It’s not present in Islam or Asian culture (as far as I know). If anything, the inequality of men is what has been self-evident across time and place. Slavery, for instance, has been universally practiced and taken as a natural part of the moral order.
The author of the Declaration calls natural rights “self-evident” because they are self-evident to them, and should be to anyone who accepts the Creator as they do – for instance, George III. They don’t think they are self-evident to everyone, for instance the “merciless Indian Savages” referred to later in the Declaration.
So what happens when a nation abandons the Christian understanding of the Creator that was “self-evident” at its founding? Well, nature will take over and men will find themselves falling back to a natural view of equality – or, rather, inequality. This is one reason our nation is degenerating into tribalism.
Mark, I may be missing something. You’re the philosopher.
As I understand formal logic, a statement of an axiom is only a statement of fact if you accept the axiom. The axiom, by definition, is not proven by reason. An axiom is an underlying assumption from which one can then reason. Am I incorrect about this?
This takes the discussion to my fundamental critique of the Enlightenment, which I think is an issue about which we disagree. In my view, the Enlightenment is, essentially, a misguided effort to apply scientific reasoning to matters of theology, philosophy, and morality. The scientific method cannot prove the truth of anything — a point on which we agree, as I recall, as you gave me a good grade in Karl Popper for making this observation previously. The scientific method can demonstrate falsehood, if done properly, which is useful.
It seems to me that application of scientific reasoning to questions of morality is even more perilous, as we lack any basis for proper comparison. We can reason from a scientific hypothesis, and then compare our conclusions to the real world. To reason from moral axioms in this way, we would require access to the morally perfect world for purposes of comparison, and we do not have observational access to that perfect world, if it exists.
At least, this is the way that I see it. I may be incorrect, but I have yet to see a convincing argument to the contrary.
It is self evident that God gave us rights, and that is right there in the Declaration.
If one does not believe in God, then you do not believe in God-Given rights. Rights can thereafter only flow from Man.
So, yeah, if you don’t believe in God, why would anyone worry themselves over the wording here? Also, you should be damn thankful, damn thankful, that the faithful did and do believe in God, because a world without the teachings of Christ would be an even harder, meaner world.
To play devil’s advocate in favor of Hank’s position: just because I say it is self-evident, doesn’t mean it is. It might be evident to me, but if it isn’t nearly universally evident (never mind accepted) then it isn’t self-evident. Just because someone wrote in down on a piece of paper doesn’t make it true. Right?
Metaphysical, yes, but so is the existence of your shoes, and neither is especially weird.
Well, you have at least 5 distinct topics, and I guess you’re really into all 5 of them.
The Bible is the Tanakh and the New Testament.
I think the Bible is inerrant, meaning what Augustine, Aquinas, Vatican II, and the Chicago Statement mean. What William Bell taught me at DBU. What I explain in my two published articles on the subject.
The Bible is the Word of G-d, and the original meaning is without error.
You really are into rabbit holes, but you probably don’t know it.
Inerrancy presumes the same commonsense approach to texts that virtually everyone takes with nearly every ancient text. We can say things about the original meaning of an ancient text, and all inerrancy is is a saying about the meaning of an ancient text.
The critics of inerrancy tend to selectively forget that we can say things about the meaning of an ancient text.
Tell me: When I go on YouTube and read a line from Seneca or Epicurus or Confucius or Aristotle and then talk about it, do you think it’s ok for me to talk about it?
Or am I prevented from making a claim about the original meaning of that text because we don’t have the original papyrus or sheepskin, because there are different translations, because there are differences in interpretation, and so on?
Isn’t it a way of saying this is our starting point, we’re not interested in questioning it further?
Yes, you are incorrect. Largely.
An axiom is like other facts: It’s a fact whether you accept it or not.
But it is known independently of other facts, and is itself used to know other facts.
That does not prevent it, however, from being supported by some evidence.
I know that “2 plus 2 is 4.” It’s self-evident. Understanding the meaning of the terms is enough for me to know that it is true. But if clever mathematicians can also prove it, good for them.
Ok, we disagree on a lot. Science does give us some knowledge.
And the Enlightenment had to establish science no less than theology. But I think you’re darn close: The Enlightenment was an effort to establish all knowledge on a solid foundation, preferably on the same foundation.
And it was largely a failure in this.