Jefferson’s support for intelligent design

Boston Globe ^ | July 15, 2009 | Stephen C. Meyer , Ph.D.

[GodGunsGuts]

IN THE battle over how to teach evolution in public schools, Thomas Jefferson’s demand for a “separation between church and state’’ has been cited countless times. Many argue that the controversial alternative to Darwinian evolution, intelligent design, is an exclusively religious idea and therefore cannot be discussed under the Constitution. By invoking Jefferson’s principle of separation, many critics of intelligent design assume that this visionary Founding Father would agree with them.

But would he? For too long, an aspect of Jefferson’s visionary thought has been ignored, hidden away as too uncomfortable for public discussion - his support for intelligent design.

In 1823, when materialist evolutionary ideas had long been circulating, Jefferson wrote to John Adams and insisted that the scientific evidence of design in nature was clear:...

[GodGunsGuts]

Ping!

[blowfish]

Thanks for the daily laugh. I like how the author attempts to wrap ID in the flag to somehow justify it.

[WackySam]

If Jefferson were alive today, I’d bet he’d have equal disdain for the extremists on both sides of the argument.

[GunRunner]

Yes, Jefferson was a deist. Thanks for the update.

Also in the news, water is wet and the sky is blue.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Texas Federalist]

Yes, Jefferson was a deist. Thanks for the update.

By the end of his life, he was basically a Unitarian. He even wrote a treatise on the life and teachings of Jesus.

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

What’s sad is that to be an evolutionists, you basically have to believe that inanimate objects and non-sentient animals are capable of performing magic tricks.

[Lyantana]

If Jefferson were alive today, he would be in jail pending his trial for the execution of several TRAITORS in Washington

[GunRunner]

What’s sad is that to be an evolutionists, you basically have to believe that inanimate objects and non-sentient animals are capable of performing magic tricks.

I'm sure the more emotionally soothing answer from our creationist friends is "Poof! God did it". Now that's a magic trick.

[Ira_Louvin]

Thomas Jefferson ~ April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826

The Origin of Species published November 24, 1859

The fact that Thomas Jefferson died 33 years prior to the origination of the Evolutionary theory proves this entire article to be disingenuous, but then the Discovery Institute has never let a frivolous thing like facts get in the way.

Doesn’t the 9th commandment say something about spreading falsehoods?

[GodGunsGuts]

Not just a deist, but a desist who weighed the evidence and came to the same basic conclusion as modern IDers.

[GodGunsGuts]

Do you have something against historical accuracy? Typical leftist.

[demshateGod]

He would be despised by the liberals at US campuses. Yeah, those same guys who are teaching people to believe in evolution. They’re the ones who many Freepers believe instead of the Bible, which is the basis for all the freedoms they hold dear.

[demshateGod]

You don’t really think Darwin created evolution do you?

[Ohioan]

I think that the author has bought the falsehood that Jefferson was somehow irreligious. That is simply not true. Jefferson was non-denominational, but certainly believed in basic Christian theological tenets. In fact, this is not only obvious from his many acknowledgments of the work of the Creator in his best known formal documents, it is even clearer in the one most relevant to the falsehood--his authorship of the act establishing religious freedom in Virginia--one of his three proudest accomplishments.

The act not only makes repeated references to the Creator, it justifies establishing religious liberty in Virginia on the fact that God is the author of human free will.

[GunRunner]

A deist believes that a non-interventionist supreme being created the universe. I'm amused this is such a surprise to you.

Everyone else knew what deism was hundreds of years ago.

Although Jefferson never had the pleasure of studying the mechanics of evolution, so, who cares?

[Boxen]

“The Bible, ... the basis for all the freedoms they hold dear.”

I see this brought up by creationists all the time. And it’s nothing more than an appeal to consequences.

[Alter Kaker]

Oh yes, Thomas Jefferson, who died 34 years before Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of the Species” was so brilliant that he refuted each and every point made by Charles Darwin decades before Darwin had made them.

[count-your-change]

Jefferson and the other founders of the this country did believe in an intelligent designer, a Creator and to point that out isn't wrapping anything in any flag.

Unfortunately, intelligent design has become chiefly, or much, associated with the Discovery Institute’s version, Intelligent Design, whereas many of us, for want of a better term, do believe in an intelligent designer quite apart from the Discovery Institute’s ideas on the subject.

And it was the belief in a Creator, an intelligent, active one, that caused the founders to proclaim that certain rights accrued to “all men” not from fiat grants of legislation or generosity of the King but from this Creator and thus were not subject to repeal by man and required no more justification, being truths “self evident”.

But here, you, appropriately self named ‘blowfish’, come to mock something you apparently don't understand well enough to discuss.

You can laugh, we all can laugh, but why would you think it was with you and not at you?