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IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

More Than a Carpenter: Chapter 2

More Than a Carpenter Chapter 2
Josh McDowell begins this chapter stating Jesus’ claims to be God and not just a moral man therefore eliminating those skeptics, who would say that Jesus was nothing more than moral man. Then he quotes C. S. Lewis who wrote:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying that ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse” (McDowell 26). McDowell then quotes F. J. A. Hort, who said that Jesus’ statements would not mean anything by themselves because He was the primary subject of his statements. Then McDowell states that either Jesus’ claim to be God was either true or false. He then starts by asking “Was He a Liar?” (McDowell 27).
If Jesus was a liar, then he was also a hypocrite argues McDowell because Jesus was telling his disciples one thing, while he was doing another. However, McDowell writes that viewing Jesus as a liar does not fit with his teachings. Nor does it fit, when lives are changed for the good, such as thieves becoming honest. McDowell quotes Philip Schaff who says, “ ’How, in the name of logic, common sense, and experience, could an impostor—that is a deceitful, selfish, depraved man—have invented, and consistently maintained from the beginning to end, the purest and noblest character known in history with the most perfect air of truth and reality? How could he have conceived and successfully carried out a plan of unparalleled beneficence, moral magnitude, and sublimity, and sacrificed his own life for it, in the face of the strongest prejudices of his people and age?’ ” (McDowell 30) McDowell ends this section by stating that the way Jesus lived, and taught “could not have been a liar” and then moves into “Was He a Lunatic?” (McDowell 30).
If Jesus thought that He was God and mistaken in a monotheistic culture, he was a lunatic, but the abnormalities and imbalance that are seen in other lunatics were not present in Jesus. Then McDowell quotes several different people, but he also quotes, Psychiatrist J. T. Fisher who stated:
“If you were to take the sum total of all authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified of psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene and—if you were to combine them and refine them and cleave out the excessive verbiage—if you were to take the whole of the meat and one of the parsley, and if you were to have these unadulterated bits of scientific knowledge concisely expressed by the most capable of living poets, you would have an awkward and incomplete summation of the Sermon on the Mount. And it would suffer immeasurably through comparison” (McDowell 32). McDowell then ends in a quote by Philip Scaff that essentially says to think that Jesus was a lunatic is “Preposterous imagination” (McDowell 33). After this McDowell moves into “Was He Lord?” (McDowell 33).
If the first two questions are false, then McDowell argues that the other alternative is to that Jesus Christ was Lord. McDowell also states that it is not a question of which of the “three [Liar, Lunatic, or Lord] are possible?”, but it is a question of “Which one is more probable?” (McDowell 34). McDowell closes with a statement about the people who reject Jesus Christ as Lord because they do not want to face the moral implications of having to be responsible to someone who is higher in authority.

McDowell, Josh More Than a Carpenter. Wheaton Illinois: Living Books Tyndale House Publishers, Inc 1977.