Though not all of America's Founding Fathers were Bible-believing Christians, the United States was nevertheless founded on biblical principles. These Fathers declared that our rights come from God, the Sovereign Creator. For example, the Declaration of Independence reads:
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.
The U.S. Founding Fathers recognized that our rights come from God and that government should exist to protect our rights. However, if there is no God basis, then our rights can only come from the generosity of the state and its leaders. If the state gives us our rights, then the state can take them away.
Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781, wrote: "God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God."
In addition, if there is no God, then men are not "created," and they are not necessarily "equal": Charles Darwin declared that man evolved and was not created and that some are more evolved than others. The state in essence can become the new god. Darwin wrote:
"The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world... The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."
Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, 1871.(Excerpts)