Among the questions discussed by Alan Dershowitz in his book,
America Declares Independence (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: New Jersey, Canada), 2003, (which he “lovingly dedicated to my dear departed friends and colleagues Stephen J. Gould and Robert Nozick, with whom I taught together for so many years and on whose intellectual influences I will always be dependent”) was that of: “Where do rights come from?” “Do we have ‘unalienable rights’?” “Do rights to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happness’ have any meaning? “How could slaveowners claim to believe that ‘all men are created equal’? “Is the God of the Declaration the God of the Bible?” “Does the Declaration establish a Christian State?” And “Are there ‘Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God’?”
His book has been described as: “challenging, upsetting, and controversial.” I am stilll reading and rereading it! And from the way it is formatted, my website whose “welcome” comments include “Comprehensive World History” and “Contemporary Issues” -
despite its focus on “the people of African descent” heritage in “World History” better extended and entitled: “Human Biological and Cultural History”: HistoryAfricanAfricanAmericanEgyptia...groups.msn.com - it is still open to: Politics & Government, Philosophy & Religion, Society & Rights, Current Events & The Media, and Science and Technology,
and the comments of Volconvo members are welcomed, as I have indicated to the Volconvo manager - who after becoming familiar with my website, issued an invitation to me to join Volconvo and its members in discussing the aforementioned issues. The other book which may be relevant to the “God,” “Religion,” and “Rights” issues is: Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman’s The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts written by a Jewish archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein, “director of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University; director of the university’s excavations at Tel Megiddo, and author of The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement and Living on the Fringe, among other books, field reports, and scholarly articles.” The co-author, Neil Asher Silberman, “is director of historical interpretation for the Ename Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation in Belgium; contributing editor to Archaeology magazine, and the author of The Hidden Scrolls: Christianity, Judaism, and the War for the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Message and the Kingdom, and Digging for God and Country, among other books.” [lc5827 -
lclloyd@sbcglobal.net ]