Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth, for the Colson Center. I'm John Stone Street. In light of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, much ink is being spilled over the document's significance. For example, John West, vice president of the Discovery Institute, is suggesting in his new book, which is titled Endowed by Our Creator, the Bible, Science, and the Battle for America's Soul, that one way we should understand the Declaration is through the lens of science. West argues that the founding fathers largely believed in a coherence between the teachings of the Bible and the discoveries of science, with science affirming an intelligent design of the created order.
The language of the Declaration, of course, clearly exhibits this. In declaring that all men are created equal, the founders were articulating a view of humanity, that they were created by God and endowed by him with certain rights. John Adams, who assisted in drafting the Declaration of Independence, once explained what he thought it meant to be equal: quote, We are all of the same species, made by the same God, possessed of minds and bodies. Bodies alike in essence. As West explained, the leading founders understood science as recognizing and affirming the truths of the Bible, not challenging or controverting them.
Operating from a worldview that was undergirded by the truths of Christianity, the founders understood that because humans were created equal, They were distinct from animals. Humans, unlike animals, were created by God with natural rights, with reason and the ability to speak. And yet, unlike God, humans are fallible and prone to selfishness. As James Madison famously put it in the Federalist Papers, if men were angels, no government would be necessary. This truth about the human condition also cuts against the validity of slavery.
When the Declaration's principal author Thomas Jefferson wrote on this point, he emphasized science. Quote, the general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God. Of course, slaveholders and apologists for slavery also appealed to science at times to justify their evil. Just weeks after the election of Abraham Lincoln and the formation of the Confederacy, the vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stevens, made one of the most Astonishing speeches in American history. He acknowledged that the American founders viewed slavery as evil and believed that it would eventually pass away.
But he then explained that the Confederacy was founded on exactly the opposite idea, that there was a difference between the races, and that the Confederates were the first and most advanced nation in the history of the world because they acknowledged that supposed scientific truth. His remarks became known as the cornerstone speech. In it, he borrowed biblical language about the stone that others rejected, but he replaced Jesus, the true cornerstone, with scientific racism. Fortunately for America and for the world, Abraham Lincoln exhibited more clear-headed statesmanship during the Civil War. He articulated that America's founders did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying the equality proclaimed by the Declaration, but instead, and I quote, they meant simply to declare the right so that the enforcement of it might follow.
As fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all and revered by all, constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and therefore constantly spreading and deepening its influence, augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere. End quote. In his book, West shows that science has corroborated this truth of the American founding, what we've called on Breakpoint, the idea of human exceptionalism. Humans as a class possess certain unique capabilities like speech and language and moral reflection, and that makes us distinct and exceptional from other created animals.
But even more than that, with or without those capacities, we were created in God's image. And as the Declaration says, endowed with that exceptionalism by our Creator. Today, 250 years after the Declaration, we have to navigate challenges like the unquestionable power and potential of science, what West has called Scientocracy, and the rise of AI. Thankfully, we have the Declaration to celebrate and its central claim that our rights come from God who made us in his image. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint.
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