With due respect to our UK colleagues, appropriate for a day celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, the author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, wrote elsewhere:
“I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition.
and the words of the Declaration would probably cause Richard Dawkins to have a fit:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
….
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights….
[posted by scordova helping out the News desk for a week.]