Sunday Quote: Thomas Jefferson on Design

“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….So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed thro’ all the time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe.”

– Thomas Jefferson
(letter from Jefferson to John Adams on April 11, 1823)
Full quote found in an excerpt entitled “The Pious Infidel.”