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There are few more significant words in American culture than “all men are created equal” and few more obviously nonsense: no one is exactly equal to anyone else! We have different bodies, different capabilities, different minds, different everything. If equal means identical, then no one is equal.

What then does the word mean? At least, to the writers? It meant not equal in nature, but equal in status, that status deriving from our status as children (or creations) of the same creator-parent. Two children of the same parents may in their nature differ greatly, one good looking and smart, the other plain and dull, but their status is equal or identical because they are children of the same parents. Siblings are equal because they are siblings. All well and good, and in the Declaration we are equal—in status—because we have a common parent: God.  

But what if, as some believe, there is no God, no creator-parent? Then all are not created equal, and those who reject the idea of a common creator or God cannot and should not make the claim that all men are created equal. A true and honest atheist can only say we may be equal in some way, who knows? But not because of some mythical parent, rather because everyone says so. The voice of the majority, not the voice of God, declares that all are equal.

But any theist—no matter how wild and vague his notion of the parent—can hold we are equal in status because we have the same divine parent. We ought not ever forget that. The physically and mentally limited person, the genius, the wicked criminal, the arrogant tyrant, me, you: we are all equal in the eyes of our parent, and we, if we accept the teachings of Jesus, must therefore wish them happiness, that is, to love all men, for we are all siblings and neighbors. *

 *There are teachings that hold that all living things are siblings and neighbors!