For a newspaper fighting for its survival, The Boston Globe has picked a peculiar time to run an absurdly-reasoned supporting intelligent design.
Penned by the Discovery Institute鈥檚 , the essay makes the ridiculous assertion that Thomas Jefferson 鈥� author of the Declaration of Independence and the third US president 鈥� espoused intelligent design.
Meyer sees supports for this claim in an 1823 letter Jefferson wrote to the second US president John Adams: 鈥淚t is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion.鈥�
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Fair enough. Though he may not have been a Christian in the strictest sense, Jefferson was deeply spiritual, and he invoked a creator in arguing for universal human rights 鈥� 鈥渓ife, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.鈥�
But Jefferson was also a dogged supporter of the separation of church and state. Meyer brushes this aspect of his biography aside: 鈥淏y invoking Jefferson鈥檚 principle of separation, many critics of intelligent design assume that this visionary Founding Father would agree with them.鈥�
Public schools didn鈥檛 exist in their current form in America during Jefferson鈥檚 time, but Meyer never pauses to consider whether Jefferson would have supported the teaching of ID 鈥� a religious philosophy 鈥� in government-funded schools. He wouldn鈥檛 have.
Meyer鈥檚 argument eventually devolves into ID gobbeldy-gook:
鈥淥f course, many people assume that Jefferson鈥檚 views, having been written before Darwin鈥檚 Origin of Species are now scientifically obsolete. But Jefferson has been vindicated by modern scientific discoveries that Darwin could not have anticipated.鈥�
Vindicated how? By the discovery of DNA, of course.
Meyer cannot accept that the genetic code evolved naturally. Never mind the fact that the building blocks of DNA and its cousin molecule RNA existed on early Earth and even in space. 杏吧原创s are also making increasing progress in understanding how these chemicals might have stitched themselves together and how they began replicating and evolving.
Instead Meyer pulls out the same lazy, wrongheaded argument that intelligent design supporters have been pushing since the philosophy was adapted from creationism 鈥� if something looks designed, it must have been:
鈥淒NA functions like a software program. We know that software comes from programmers. Information 鈥� whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in a radio signal 鈥� always arises from an intelligent source. So the discovery of digital code in DNA provides a strong scientific reason for concluding that the information in DNA also had an intelligent source.鈥�
Newspaper opinion pages are wise to challenge their readers and present a diversity of opinions. But the Globe鈥榮 decision to publish Meyer鈥檚 piece shows a serious lapse in editorial judgment.
Not only does it get evolutionary science wrong 鈥� not a wise move in science-savvy Boston 鈥� but it also misrepresents the religious beliefs of one of America鈥檚 greatest thinkers to peddle a thoroughly debunked explanation of the natural world.
