Laying aside my immense disdain and complete laughter at atheism as a simple minded view of everything, examining Jefferson proves by his writings, are coming from nothing more than a typical, common human being of average intelligence. Why, do we ascribe to such ordinary query, such greatness? In this: “your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven,” wipes away every law of justice and moral value ever proven to be as much a natural law as gravity. Any mature mind rejects the folly of “we’re on our own,” because healthy minds see where it leads men and women. We give far too much importance to Jefferson and his band of merry traitors and insurrectionists. 0 x 0 = atheism, nothing more and nothing less. By reason and rational thought, anyone with a healthy brain rejects a universe “created” by accident and by chaos becoming physics. Jefferson used his common intellect to discern truth by the end of his life. There is nothing great in maturity. Why fear “intelligent design” be taught in schools? Humanism should not be the only power influencing students.

I’m not sure why this should be suprising. If anything, this underscores the criticism from modern biologists that there’s nothing particularly insightful or groundbreaking about so-called “intelligent design” … it is a very, very old idea. And while I agree that Jefferson probably wasn’t a classical Deist, the deist concept that God could be inferred through the apparent design in nature was common currency in the 18th Century.
Likewise, I also don’t understand why Waldman seems to frame this as some sort of political point against “liberals”.. . Just because liberals might admire Jefferson for some of his ideas and thought, that doesn’t mean they need to agree with him on other things – Newton believed in alchemy, but that doesn’t mean we should throw out the Principia Mathematica.
Lastly, description of Jefferson as a just “common human being of average intelligence” is laughable.

The above quote sounds like Jefferson was restating the teleological argument for the existence of God. This is a common line of thinking, but it is a philosophical argument, not a scientific one. In order for it to become science there must be some experiment which could falsify the hypothesis.
He’s also conflating two different subjects: the apparent design of the universe, and the apparent design of life. The theory of evolution moved the apparent design of life into the realm of science by explaining how species designed themselves. The apparent design of the universe is an open question which seems like it will remain in the realm of philosophy and religion.
The Intelligent Design movement also seems to conflate these issues. They’ll argue against evolution using the irreducible complexity argument (which is a scientific argument). However, when they find their examples refuted they’ll retreat to teleological argument about the universe as a whole. These are two separate discussions and should be kept separate.
I also read the Ben Stein link. Fundamentally any scientist who argues against established theories had better have good evidence and an explanation why everyone else was wrong. Einstein did it with gravity by explaining why Newton was wrong and used the orbit of Mercury as evidence. Success yields a Nobel prize while failure ends your career. It’s a risk reward thing and Ben Stein should understand this because he understands finance.

Jefferson thought about the typical “why are we here” stuff. Wow, how reaching a thought that is. His view on the Gospel is no more enlightening than a first-year college student’s brain washing at the hands of a Dewey-ite. His desire to fight a war against a soveriegn country, no different than that of Osama Bin Laden. In fact, “when in the course of human events,” can justify just about any war or violence. War is just about as common a choice for human beings as what to eat. Jefferson was a more a humanist than anything else. Another typical state of human being. And what America has become shows it.

Well here we go again…….evolution, creationism, or intelligent design! Evolution….if we came from apes why are their still apes? If we were created, then by what means? Intelligent design…..who? I can only still sum up my personal consensus of this whole topic…..FAITH, FAITH AND MORE FAITH! If it is true we lost nothing…if it is not true we still lost nothing….simple isn’t it? Does anyone really think that they are going to come up with the answer? God will never let that happen without him beating everyone to the punch……

It’s nice to read an article outside of free thought and atheism sites which acknowledge that TJ wasn’t a bible thumping fundie, but to compare his ideas to ID? Really? The same guy who said “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter”? Who called the Apostle Paul “the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus”? Who said “Question with boldness even the existence of a God…” (the beginning of the quote that the author finishes in the article).
For “Another day”; I’m not sure if you are a fundie troll or what, but “Jefferson and his band of merry traitors and insurrectionists” is far beyond the pale. If you are an American then I am ashamed. As much as fundie revisionists try to warp what the Founding Fathers were all about, at least they pretend to respect them. Regardless, the reason ID can’t be taught in schools is the same reason “creation science” (uh, oxymoron, anyone?) can’t be taught in schools (thank you merry traitors and insurrectionists!). If you think ID isn’t just “creationism in a cheap tuxedo”, then google “cdesign proponentsists” and you will find out exactly how closely they are related.
So, what would TJ have thought if he could have read “On the Origin of Species”? He would have kicked himself, repeatedly, for not having made the connection on his own. And then, since the existence of complexity was the one thing which the Enlightenment Thinkers couldn’t come up with a secular explanation for and so defaulted most of them to deism, he would have probably burned his bible.

I think “intelligent design” as it’s understood today would likely be the common understanding by the great majority of 18th century Americans.
The question really is would Jefferson turn his back on today’s evolutionary evidence – either the fossil record or DNA – as a more likely design option. Since Jefferson could bridge the chasm of both a personal and impersonal God, and because of his investigative nature, my feelings are that he would have sided with the scientific mainstream on the subject were he alive today.
However, I think the article frames the idea pretty well for our 21st century minds. I think we have a tendency to pigeon-hole and compartmentalize religious beliefs and science. I think within the 18th century western world, belief systems were far more dynamic and had less trouble moving in and out of defined lines.

TJ’s views have nothing to do with the controversial elements of ID. He’s just saying theres some level of continuing intervention of Providence, without describing Providence as outside science. ID takes it much further and says that Providence necessarily acts outside science, to the extent necessary to validate scripture.
Also, TJ’s “desire to fight a war against a soveriegn country” is quite different than “that of Osama Bin Laden.” The colonies rejected the idea that men are born subject to the soverign king. It’s much closer to Lincoln’s war than Bush’s.

I came back to see how the discussion was going and realized I misquoted the article in my first comment. The TJ quote I was thinking of is “Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.” Not the quote TJ gave his nephew, but a similar theme.
I’d also like to clarify the point of my first post. What I was getting at is that it is inconceivable to me that the man who said all the things I quoted, who cut every mention of miracles from the bible (up to and including the virgin birth), would have maintained his ID-like viewpoint in light of the science available in “Origin of Species” and ESPECIALLY in light of the science available today. Come on; Jefferson and all his Enlightenment counterparts ridiculed the idea of miracles. What is creation? The ultimate miracle! Whether you are talking about young earth wackiness or the very slightly more sophisticated ID version, creationism is the pinnacle of magical thinking.
I would have thought this conclusion of what Jefferson would think given access to modern scientific knowledge would be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. After having that illusion shattered here I did a quick google and found myself to be woefully wrong. I guess the moral is never, never, ever underestimate the power of magical thinking.

Math sides with the universe as intelligent design. Jefferson, I believe, would side with the “fact” that 0 x 0 = evolutionary theory in reality. (Just keep going backwards “in” time.) And, as we actually can mathematically prove that there are “things” all around us, seen and unseen (by what they are doing or actually represent), it stands to reason, that a science that purports that the universe is truly an accident that somehow came from another accident that came from nothing and is now something, is what should be utterly rejected on and by facts. That monkeys and men share common biology and “design” is to be expected if they are “living” in the same environment. DNA does not point to chaos as its beginning. Intelligent Design is the only option for the universe we are left with, once nonsense and faith in accidents is jettisoned for, and by, reason and intellect. Science has always ONLY discovered truths that were always present in the reality of the universe, it has never created anything. Intelligent Design is a fact based statement through and through. “Do the math.”

Jim, ol’ buddy, your bashing ways are showing. Progressive troll are ye? Looks like it from my perspective. But, Jimmy, I tend to rational thought. Sooo, guys like Jefferson (to me), are no more than terrorists that won the war. His views on Jesus are typical of a guilt-ridden person doing whatever it takes to make accountability go away. The guy raped his slaves, are we to think he was going to love Jesus and judgment day? I’ve been to college and know this line of enlightenment/humanism thought and treatise well. I was born an American of British descent. That means that many of “my people” were slaughtered in Jefferson’s Sechad. Oh, “Sechad” is the equivalent to Jihad (holy War), without the God ordination for the violence. Just common men doing what common men do. It’s an age-old story. Read up on what John Locke thought of atheism. Truly enlightening persepctive for today’s world.

AnotherDay, you claim that Jefferson was guild ridden because he raped his slaves? Slavery is instituted in Leviticus 25:44-46. Paul, in his epistles, told slaves to be obedient and, he claimed, ‘this is a good doctrine’. Slavery is 100% okay by the Bible and Qur’an, which also specifically endorses the rape of slaves. Deuteronomy 21 contains instructions to murder entire tribes of people and rape their women.
You speak of ‘making accountability go away’ – that’s exactly what the bible and qur’an do. If Jefferson wanted to work out his guilt, all he had to do was open the Bible and see that it was okay to rape his slaves. Hey, if the Bible allows it, or if Muhammad did it, then it’s okay – that’s the convenient logic of religious people.
The difference between religious and non religious slave owners is that the religious ones had an unquestionable ideological infrastructure from which they exerted their oppression.

To say that Thomas Jefferson believed in intelligent design is true and completely misleading. Jefferson and Madison together explored the French naturalist Buffon’s theories of how the Earth was originally created through an accidental collision between a comet and the sun, sending a mass of stellar material into orbit around our central star. They considered his proposal that life might have originated, without any divine assistance, as this orbiting flotsam gradually cooled–making molten rocks to solidify, water vapor to condense, oceans to form, and eventually living organisms to arise from the effects of heat acting on chemicals deep within the ocean’s aqueous womb. Jefferson and Madison together also offered proposals for how this hypothesis might be tested, experimentally. Madison, for example, suggested that because the Earth is ovoid rather than perfectly spherical, a difference in the planet’s surface heat ought to be discernible, if careful measurements were taken from equator to pole. Such experimental data might confirm or invalidate the existence of a hot center, radiating energy outward.
The point is that both Jefferson and Madison looked to experiment, research, and the collection of data to support theories of the earth’s formation and the origins of life. They didn’t look to the Bible or theological tracts. Science, at its root, is simply a method of systematically questioning nature. Both Jefferson and Madison subscribed to this method, rather than looking to church authority or tradition to answer fundamental questions of how the world originated and how life arose.
My newly published book, “Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Faith of America’s Founding Fathers,” recently released in hardcover from BlueBridge, gives more information on this fascinating historical episode. Gary Kowalski

Evolution? Where is the Proof?

Your Name
April 19, 2009 4:34 AM
Evolution? Where is the Proof?
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Here: http://www.talkorigins.org

Who cares whether Jefferson, a slave owner, and an adulterer believed in ID or not.
ID is plain BS, and if it were true, the likes of you would not be invoking Appeal to Authority.
Einstein was a great physicist. That does not mean that I am about to consider his opinions on music as sacred

your posts are very good quality. It can be seen from so many people who comment on this post. hopefully you can provide the best in the next posting. thank you

@ Simpleton

You are absolutely right about the appeal to authority. He is an authority in some subjects, but not in the area of expertise we’re discussing. I’ll reiterate your point

“Who cares?”