The Profound Ignorance in Respect to Our Founding Continues

I am involved in an interesting debate at Dispatches about inalienable rights. It started with this statement by Ed Brayton:

"Then by all means, please name one thing in the Bill of Rights that has an analog in the Bible. Just one. Good luck."

Here is the relevant part of my response:

"The biblical concept of imago dei and man being the workmanship of God was the foundation for Western thought on inalienable rights all the way up to the founding. This goes back to canon law but it most pronounced in Aquinas. He took this biblical concept and added it to the wisdom of the ages seen in Aristotle and produced Christian thought in regards to political theory.

It is this concept of inalienable rights thats taken to its logical conclusion in the bill of rights. So, are the bill of rights found in the Bible? No. Did Christian theologians use the Bible and the wisdom of the ages to come up with a rational for inalienable rights that is unique to Judeo-Christian thought? Yes."

Here is one "insightful" comment that is disappointing to see from a group that prides itself on reasoned responses based on superior knowledge:

"The idea that Christianity has ever stood for inalienable rights would be comedy gold, indeed, if it didn't smell so much like bullshit"

I do not produce this comment to mock Dispatches. Besides a small minority of obnoxious hacks, it is mostly intelligent and informed people that comment at the blog. In fact, much of what I know on this subject is from study that was spurred by the back and forth I had there with the Ed Brayton. With that said, the comment above points out the utter ignorance of otherwise intelligent people when it comes to our founding. The biggest catalyst to this ignorance is people that want to comment on history that has been influenced by Christian thought and the Bible but are so anti-religious they refuse to learn about either.

This results in a radical secularist myth that causes severe blow back like the absurd changes to the Texas standards for Social Studies. The Culture Wars go on and the truth loses out...