Intelligent Design Judge Gives Commencement Address

Yesterday in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones gave the commencement address at his alma mater, Dickinson College. Jones, who last year wrote the Kitzmiller opinion striking down the teaching of intelligent design, used the opportunity to discuss the religious views of America's founders as shaped by the Enlightenment. The Associated Press quotes portions of his talk:

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.... 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.