.There is an Associated Press story that is being widely reported, including
here, about Judge John E. Jones, III and the commencement address he gave at his alma mater, Dickinson College. First of all, he discussed the Founding Fathers' attitude toward organized religion:
The founders believed that true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry. ...
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They possessed a great confidence in an individual's ability to understand the world and its most fundamental laws through the exercise of his or her reason.
This core set of beliefs led the founders, who constantly engaged and questioned things, to secure their idea of religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state.
While it is always tricky when speaking of an amorphous group like the "Founding Fathers" in collective terms, I think it is fair to say that the most famous of the people who are associated with the creation of the United States -- Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton -- most certainly were, as Jones says, products of the Enlightenment who looked to reason rather than authority, either institutional or scriptural, to support a belief in the divine.
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Also interesting is this from the article:
Jones credited his liberal arts education at Dickinson, more than his law school years, for preparing him for what he calls his "Dover moment."
"It was my liberal arts education ... that provided me with the best ability to handle the rather monumental task of deciding the Dover case," he said.
Uh, oh! Now he's done it. It's that
liberal education that made him become an activist judge! No good Republican needs to
listen to him* anymore!
_____________
* Via PZ Myers at
Pharyngula.
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Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 5:46 PM
