Among the reasons to have confidence in our system of government, not least in this year of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, is that the Founding was based not on race, culture — or naked power — but on a creed. And not just any creed, but one grounded in the findings of science. John West, Vice President of Discovery Institute, explains why that is the case in his new book, Endowed by Our Creator: The Bible, Science, and the Battle for America’s Soul.
A War on the Founding
The battle he refers to in the subtitle is a longstanding war on the Founding and its principles. Fortunately, those principles are sturdy: not mere sentiments, but objective realities accessible to all. Writing in Salvo Magazine, Dr. West cites some of the authorities in philosophy, government, and science who have recognized this, going back to ancient pagans like the Roman statesman Cicero. From, “Intelligent Design at America’s Founding”:
More than two millennia ago, pagan thinkers such as Cicero already argued that nature supplies evidence of a Creator.
“Can any sane person believe that all this array of stars and this vast celestial adornment could have been created out of atoms rushing to and fro fortuitously and at random? Or could any other being devoid of intelligence and reason have created them? Not merely did their creation postulate intelligence, but … intelligence of a high order.”
The Bible taught the same: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1) and “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Romans 1:20).
Image credit: Discovery Institute Press.Great scientists like Isaac Newton and John Ray urged readers to recognize nature’s intelligent design. And this intellectual tradition influenced the Founders, including traditional Christians and others such as Jefferson and Franklin who were no less convinced of that design.
Benjamin Franklin created his own private liturgy for use in worshiping God. The section on the adoration of God had him affirming that nature testifies to its Creator:
“Thy Wisdom, thy Power, and thy GOODNESS are every where clearly seen; in the Air and in the Water, in the Heavens and on the Earth; Thou providest for the various winged Fowl, and the innumerable Inhabitants of the Water; Thou givest Cold and Heat, Rain and Sunshine in their Season, and to the Fruits of the Earth Increase.”
Franklin’s private liturgy included a section where he instructed himself to read selections from the writings of natural philosophers and theologians John Ray, Richard Blackmore, and Archbishop Fénelon.
Thomas Jefferson likewise believed that the discoveries of natural science provided a rational grounding for belief in God as Creator. Writing to John Adams in 1823, Jefferson declared, “I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition.”
The Sufficiency of Nature
Notice that Jefferson held this “without appeal to revelation.” That is, the study of nature alone was sufficient to produce “a conviction of design.” As West puts it in his book, science, reason, and religion “converge” on each other. This science points to a creator, who endowed human beings with rights that could not justly be taken away. As Jefferson wrote in the Declaration,
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.
The war on the Founding goes on in our time, from the political left and right, but it’s a reason to be hopeful about the outcome that the design in nature, the reality of it, is not a fond illusion but there to be discovered and recognized by anyone. It always testifies to the truth underlying our noble system. Read the rest at “Intelligent Design at America’s Founding.”