Jefferson would stand up for science

In “Creator deserves place in schools” (The Daily Progress, June 22), the letter writer appears to quote strong advocacy by Thomas Jefferson of teaching public school students that the universe is the handwork of a divine Creator. 

In fact the words quoted from Edwin Gaustad’s “Sworn on the Altar of God” were not written by Jefferson, but by Gaustad himself, in a section where he is trying to convey Jefferson’s attitude toward religion in education.

So it’s only fair to quote a bit of what Gaustad writes on the very next page (164): 

“Jefferson did not fear to include religious ‘truths’ in his curriculum, just as long as these truths were rational, universal, and ‘neutral’. At the end of the twentieth century, a list of such truths would be difficult to formulate…It is much easier, therefore, to locate the essentials of Jefferson’s own religion than it is to discover a doctrinal consensus suitable for public education.”

Certainly Thomas Jefferson did not seek to banish God from the schools in his own day.

But given his lifelong respect for the natural sciences and mistrust of religious dogma, it is difficult indeed to believe that if he were alive now he would support the introduction of creationism masquerading as science into the teaching of biology, geology and physics in our public classrooms.

David Sewell
Albemarle County