Happy Press Release Day!
On July 4 we celebrate the July 4th, 1776 press release explaining an action taken July 2nd, 1776.
The Declaration of Independence was a a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776 so it's not literally merely a press release, but it was a public relations document to state the reasons, in punchy and memorable form, that Congress had voted on July 2 to declare our independence from Britain.
That was the official act. (And that's why John Adams thought independence day should be July 2nd.)
The Declaration of Independence is a great press release. Not knocking it... aside from "inalienable" rather than unalienable, which seems more correct to me, and the ever-to-be-misunderstood reference to our creator. That creator part is a lofty philosophical statement that we consider those human rights to be a priori... self-evident. And that they are intrinsic to humanity, not a man-made gift of government.
Before Darwin a person was rather a fool to not accept the idea of some unknown and presumably extra-natural creation mechanism because the evidence of "design" in the natural world is overwhelming and there was no sufficient alternate theory available. Our founding fathers were, however, in the main not what we today call "Bible-believing Christians." (The author of the declaration, for instance, did not believe the supernatural events in the Bible ever happened... and Christianity without the resurrection isn't much to get excited about.)
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