| | I have no idea why Obama left out the phrase "by our Creator," but the author of the article makes some errors in his analysis. He says, "Only two plausible explanations spring to mind. One is that President Obama isn’t very familiar with the most famous passage in the document that founded this nation; that even when plainly reading from a teleprompter, he wasn’t able to quote it correctly. The other is that President Obama doesn’t subscribe to the Declaration’s rather central claim that our rights come from our “Creator” (also referred to in the Declaration as “Nature’s God” and “the Supreme Judge of the World”).
Well, he named three, not two possible reasons for the ommission:
1.) Obama isn't familiar with the text.
2.) He misread the teleprompter
3.) He disagrees with the missing phrase.
Sloppy reasoning... We don't know what was on the teleprompter, or in Obama's mind. And even corrected, they aren't the only possibile reasons for omitting the phrase.
4.) Obama could have omitted it as not central to the point he was leading up to.
This is a very touchy point with some of the deeply religious folks who believe that individual rights can only be explained as a gift to man from God and that if you don't have faith in God then the foundation of our constitutional government is at risk.
They make the false assumption that if the rights don't come from God, then they must come from government (which would be a danger, since what comes from government can be taken away by government). Another case of positing a false set of exclusive possibilities.
It is frustrating because there is no need for a conflict here between Atheists and this group of political Christians. They can have their belief that God created the universe which contains man, or God created man, but then accept that the individual rights are logically derived from man's nature which makes the source of man's existence immaterial to the issue of rights. But no, they have to have illogical dogma that has is faith-based, bad logic to connect it to individual rights, and thereby keep the focus on religion not political principle.
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