A Creator exist, or dosen't. If there is no Creator, Jefferson's appeal to the "Supreme Judge of the world" in the Declaration of Independence is pure nonsense and so are your RIGHTS! Without a Creator, your highest appeal is to the State, where might takes rights.
Are you sure enough to stake your own life on that assumption? There is a website available to explore your assumption: “Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League Homepage.”{1} About a decade ago, “Abortion isn't life, liberty or happiness”{2} was published in the News & Record (Greensboro, NC). The atheist author, James M. Wallace, mentioned the Declaration of Independence, "unalienable rights", "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” being the antithesis of abortion. Wallace, a consistent atheist, avoided mention of any Supreme Being. But he does seem to believe there is a higher power than government. If pressed, he may agree that government is under a Constitution that should be understood in view of the Declaration.
Additionally, some atheists function within a conceptual framework described as the “ethic of reciprocity.” “Do onto others as you would wish them do onto you.” Matthew 7:12 places great emphasis on this command: “this is the Law and the Prophets.” Luke 6:31 reiterates this command. Justice implies that all under the jurisdiction of a particular law must be treated equally; therefore, injustice is the “legal fiction” of a “double standard.” {3}
Romans 2:14,15: “For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.” These verses clearly demonstrate that atheists can function within a society governed by natural law. {4} But Romans 1:18 clearly reveals that people are capable of suppressing truth about good and evil.
The Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. has some quotes inscribed on panels. The following quote is from Panel Three:{5}
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever…."
Mr. Jefferson was correct. Most Christians no longer believe that these liberties are the gift of God. I had a very brief discussion with a conservative Christian professor of philosophy who asserted that man has no God given rights. Several Christians chimed in agreement with the good professor. I opened his Bible; and showed them all where God refuted their vain philosophy. Their only rebuttal was prolonged silence.
There is one entity that most Christians believe in. That body disdains God and the Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court supplanted every person of the Holy Trinity in too many Christian minds. The next four years will prove that Mr. Jefferson was correct about God’s justice not sleeping forever.
{1}http://www.godlessprolifers.org/home.html A nontheistic and nonreligious opposition to the life-denying horror of abortion. I'm James Matthew (Matt) Wallace, aka The Compleat Heretic. I'm both a Secular Humanist atheist and a pro-life advocate. All too often, I fear that I'm the only nonreligious person who opposes the genocide of abortion used as a birth control substitute.
{2} http://www.godlessprolifers.org/library/wallace2.html
{3} http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1150&context=uvalwps I conclude that a more robust interpretation of the Rule is one which is advanced by some natural law philosophers and which offers a philosophical justification for the proposition that doing to others as one would have done to oneself is necessarily a case of doing good towards others. The article ends with some reflections on the implications this version of Golden Rule reasoning for legal policy-making, and in particular for the abortion debate. Luke 6: 32-5: ‘If you love only those who love you…. If you do good only to those who do good to you…. And if you lend only where you expect to be repaid, what credit is that to you? Even sinners’ do these things. ‘[Y]ou must love your enemies and do good; and lend without expecting any return’. Samuel Clarke’s Rule of Equity: ‘[w]hatever I judge reasonable or unreasonable, that another should do for me, that by the same judgment I declare reasonable or unreasonable, that I in the like case should do for him’. Clarke’s formulation is important not only because it makes explicit something that we have observed is implicit in the Golden Rule – that we are to treat others as we would have them treat us in similar instances (instances which, though they may differ on their facts, demand from the agent a similar attitude or disposition) – but also because it suggests that the Rule requires us to do to others the good that we would have them do to us (and to avoid doing to them the harm that we would have them avoid doing to us). That this is what Clarke understands reasonableness to mean is absolutely clear: ‘that which is good is fit and reasonable, and that which is evil is unreasonable to be done’.102 The Nazi who desires that all Jews be exterminated might just discover that he is a Jew. By universalizing his moral judgement in this instance, he reveals his extreme fanaticism: as Hare puts it, ‘nobody but a madman would hold’ that, on this discovery, they too should be sent to the gas chambers. Yet, Hare concedes such fanatics may well exist, and ‘golden-rule arguments seem powerless’against them….Most people – leave aside the genuine fanatic – are prevented from accepting certain moral judgements because those judgements entail logical consequences which they cannot accept. Unless we are prepared to disregard anyone’s desires, even our own, we are compelled to give weight to the desires of our neighbours. I have argued already that following the Golden Rule is distinguishable from good samaritanism. A separate question is whether the Golden Rule compels good samaritanism when a potential recipient is in need. Academic lawyers sometimes express dismay over the absence from the common law of a general duty to rescue.212 In civilian systems, such a duty is often set down in the national penal code. But the common law limits the duty to special relationships (parents to children, police officers to the public, and so on). It is difficult to say why this should be the case. =========Golden Rule is itself proof of that there are universally valid natural laws because it is by following the Rule that we grasp that justice requires: 1) respect for fellow citizens and their property; 2) ‘treatment of equals equally and unequals unequally’;258 and 3) ‘[a] shared language’ which, ‘combined with the gift of imagination [Vorstellungsgabe]’, enables us ‘to put ourselves in another’s place.’259 The problem with this argument is that, as we know from the ground covered already in this study, ‘treat others as you would have them treat you’ does not – certainly absent serious philosophical elaboration – serve as a principle for distinguishing between morally right and wrong action. Whereas post-Kantian defenders of the Golden Rule have generally tried to show that there is no necessary connection between our following the Rule and our particular tastes and preferences, Augustine was of the view that there is a connection but that we must distinguish the will, i.e., the open-ended (never fully realized) pursuit of the good,263 from cupidity, i.e., inordinate and unreasonable desire. A former colleague of Dworkin’s is very clearly committed to the premiss. If one accepts that abortion is deliberately killing the unborn, John Finnis argues, and that deliberate killing is wrong, then abortion is a denial of the unborn’s right to the equal protection of the laws against homicide.305 The unborn are others, and since the Golden Rule requires that we treat others as we would have them treat us, the unborn should have the same right not to be intentionally and unjustly killed as the rest of us.
{4} http://www.universalmoralcode.com/code.html The Universal Moral Code was created by Kent M. Keith in 2003 while writing a book about morality and ethics. Dr. Keith believes that there is remarkable agreement around the world regarding basic moral principles. The Universal Moral Code is a list of these basic principles regarding how we should live and how we should treat each other. Following these principles can provide each of us with the meaning that comes from living our values and doing what's right.