Atheists becoming less unpopular?

[Jehanne]

1. If they don't recognize it that's there problem

2. Christianity has no true basis for human rights. And magic sky  man says so is not a basis. Nor is but his nature a justification . Secular philosophers can and have made just as good a case as your apologist armchair thinkers.

3. First the declaration is speaking of a deistic god you know the opposite of the Christian god. Second most of the founding fathers were against putting this line in but were pressured into it. Third the declaration isn't a legal document so it doesn't mean shit. The constitution  is the law of the land and it is absolutely secular.

4. The scientific fact of evolution describes the diversification of life . ID is creationism with a paint job that solves shit by saying "then a miracle happened "oh pardon "then the unknown intelligence did something "

Responses to:

1. True. We agree.
2. If there is a secular basis for human dignity and rights, I would like very much to hear it. You could be right. I just haven't seen one.
3. A couple of the Founding Fathers, such as Jefferson and Franklin, were deists, that is true. The overwhelming majority were not. They included mostly Anglicans, Congregationalists, Reformed, Presbyterians, and Quakers. Jefferson penned the DoI, but that was on behalf of all the rest. The DoI is not, as you say, a legally binding document. It is however a founding document, in the sense that it identifies the foundational principles for which the revolutionaries fought and for which they strived to establish in the new republic.
4. I do not doubt that evolution reflects the will of divine Providence. I do not believe random mutation and natural selection exhaust all the necessary and sufficient mechanisms for speciation. A growing number of prominent biologists recognize this problem. Some, but not all, advocate ID, among them those who are promoting an extended evolution model. Nevertheless, however life developed is irrelevant theologically (IMHO). My point was the Khem was applying the same logic used by ID advocates, not to advocate for ID myself.

I don't think that anyone claimed that the DoI is a legally binding document; at least I didn't. (Correction -- I misread your line, but yes, we agree on that. As for being a "founding document," it certainly became that, later on, but I think that it lost its influence for awhile; I once read that it got stuffed into a case and was largely forgotten about for awhile, at least until after the initial Constitution and Bill of Rights.)

As for "God" being the foundation of our legal rights, I would suggest that you read more of scholastic literature, such as Saint Thomas' Summa.  The idea of "liberty" and "pursuit of happiness" was completely foreign to the Medieval mindset; in fact, it is a truism that a noble lord was "the Law" on his land and could administer justice as he saw fit to, which included any mode of execution, however hideous, for any and all "offenses".