There must be a nest of theocrats over at the Boston Globe, ready to spring Christianist rule on us all. Someone call Andrew Sullivan! On today’s op-ed page they publish Stephen C. Meyer who argues that if you like the Declaration of Independence, you have intelligent design to thank. Thomas Jefferson, how could you? Oh! The horror, the horror. 

DNA functions like a software program. We know that software comes from programmers. Information — whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in a radio signal — 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.

Design is an inference from biological data, not a deduction from religious authority. [Thomas] Jefferson said just that, and based his political thinking on it. The evidence for what he presciently called “Nature’s God” is stronger than ever. Our nation’s existence, with its guarantee to protect each person’s “inalienable rights,” may be counted among the fruits of Jefferson’s belief in intelligent design.