Peter

Peter, appeal to authority is a very cheap tactic. You nowhere show how in principle the concept of individual rights derives from the Bible. You yourself stated that you think this concept is based on "the image of god," and when asked to explain what this term means, you blanked out.

It is clear you are desperate here by posting all these quotes here. I could provide just as many quotes pointing to the opposite position, but would you accept those? Of course not, since you simply want there to be a god, and you want to claim credit to this god for things which your religion in fact did not make possible. Some personality making a quote does not prove anything. If anything, it may indeed prove that the individual you are quoting was simply just as misguided as you are on the issues in question.

And what Peter ignores most of all is that, while the rights and freedoms of individuals are vital to a nation's progress, these alone are not sufficient. They are the necessary condition of a nation's wealth, but not the cause. What's important is what people do with those rights and freedoms. The cause of America's wealth is precisely what Peter's religion condemns most vehemently: Man's selfishness. It is the profit motive which has lead to America's unprecedented wealth and success as a nation of free individuals, and this virtue can in no way be justified on the basis of Christianity, which endorses the ethics of self-sacrifice, not self-interest, self-promotion, and self-pleasure.