Enjoy your 4th of July holiday, as we will, and while you’re doing so don’t forget to recall the intelligent-design views of Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence that we celebrate. In a special ID the Future podcast, John West of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture rescues Jefferson from those who have tried to steal him, citing his Enlightenment views, as a presumed opponent of ID.
In fact, Jefferson argued for his belief in a pervasive “design” behind nature, “without appeal to revelation” — that is, from a scientific not a religious perspective. Yet Dr. West poses the following thought experiment:
If Thomas Jefferson were alive today and tried to present his views in a science classroom, the ACLU would undoubtedly sue to have him stopped, all in the name of defending a Jeffersonian separation of church and state.
Or as ENV’s David Klinghoffer asked recently, posing a different thought experiment, “Try to Imagine Our Country’s Founding if the Founders Had Not Been Advocates of Intelligent Design.”