Since you asked...
If you knew your history as well as you know science, you'd know the United States is based on the Genevan principles of government. This country was founded on the Calvinist Presbyterian model of law, by Calvinists, for all. As in you and me.
I generally stay off these evo threads. The vitriol here makes the religion forum look almost quaint.
I am not a Biblical literalist. But I believe every word of the Bible as ordained by God for His glory and our joy.
Science serves God, like everything else serves God. Science just forgets that more often than it should.
Servetus
As far as Servetus goes, Calvin's opponents, the Libertine party, held the majority in Geneva at that time, and issued Servetus' death warrant, which had originally been demanded by the Pope for Servetus' subversion by his denial of the Trinity, an offense punishable by death throughout Europe.
More from Boettner's book, "Calvinism in America" --
"This striking similarity between the principles set forth in the Form of Government of the Presbyterian Church and those set forth in the Constitution of the United States has caused much comment. "When the fathers of our Republic sat down to frame a system of representative and popular government," says Dr. E. W. Smith, "their task was not so difficult as some have imagined. They had a model to work by."
"If the average American citizen were asked, who was the founder of America, the true author of our great Republic, he might be puzzled to answer. We can imagine his amazement at hearing the answer given to this question by the famous German historian, Ranke, one of the profoundest scholars of modern times. Says Ranke, 'John Calvin was the virtual founder of America.'"
D'Aubigne, whose history of the Reformation is a classic, writes: "Calvin was the founder of the greatest of republics. The Pilgrims who left their country in the reign of James I, and landing on the barren soil of New England, founded populous and mighty colonies, were his sons, his direct and legitimate sons; and that American nation which we have seen growing so rapidly boasts as its father the humble Reformer on the shore of Lake Leman."
Dr. E. W. Smith says, "These revolutionary principles of republican liberty and self-government, taught and embodied in the system of Calvin, were brought to America, and in this new land where they have borne so mighty a harvest were planted, by whose hands? — the hands of the Calvinists. The vital relation of Calvin and Calvinism to the founding of the free institutions of America, however strange in some ears the statement of Ranke may have sounded, is recognized and affirmed by historians of all lands and creeds."
All this has been thoroughly understood and candidly acknowledged by such penetrating and philosophic historians as Bancroft, who far though he was from being Calvinistic in his own personal convictions, simply calls Calvin "the father of America," and adds: "He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty."
When we remember that two-thirds of the population at the time of the Revolution had been trained in the school of Calvin, and when we remember how unitedly and enthusiastically the Calvinists labored for the cause of independence, we readily see how true are the above testimonies..."
And as extra credit, keeping in mind the vast majority of signers of the Declaration of Independence were Calvinists, along with over two-thirds of all Americans at the time of the Revolution...
Thus I repeat...
"Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ." -- John Calvin
We are what we presuppose. If we are led by God alone, we presuppose His hand everywhere and have no recourse but to follow it.
If we presuppose we are autonomous specks of lint in the arid drier vent of the cosmos, that is what we become.
And if we think He's left us on our own to make that distinction for ourselves, we are little better off than the latter.
That's your model for American government, and that's why you folks worry me.
I hope nothing in my posting to you on Calvin came across as 'vitriol;' if it did, I sincerely apologise, that was not my intention.
You have raised many points via these links, some new to me, some I'd like to challenge when time permits. The sources you provided, I will note, do strike me as short on objectivity and tending to the panegyric. That Calvinism was part of the intellectual heritage of the American colonists is certainly not disputed, but I would argue that still more contemporary ideals of the Enlightment were of greater moment. But our views here are likely to differ over matters of degree than kind, I suspect
I did note in my posting that I did not doubt Calvin was probably motivated by noble intentions; but did not elaborate my view that this can only be part of our assessment. It can be argued, though not by me, that Marx also had 'noble intentions' (the amelioration of poverty among the people displaced by the Industrial Revolution), but the most appalling tyrannical regimes and brutal, institutionalised forms of human degradation and misery arose from Marxist doctrines.
But it is folly to argue from 'intentions,' which we cannot properly know. Even if we grant some desirable features of the Genevan model--it nonetheless remains a powerful instance of the perils of theocracy and the evils which they can inflict.
And Calvin really cannot be held blameless in the murder (no other word will do) of Servetus, which he deemed necessary on politcal as much as religious grounds