Posted on 04/07/2008 2:25:19 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
THE scientist who led the team that cracked the human genome is to publish a book explaining why he now believes in the existence of God and is convinced that miracles are real.
Francis Collins, the director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute, claims there is a rational basis for a creator and that scientific discoveries bring man “closer to God”.
His book, The Language of God, to be published in September, will reopen the age-old debate about the relationship between science and faith. “One of the great tragedies of our time is this impression that has been created that science and religion have to be at war,” said Collins, 56.
“I don’t see that as necessary at all and I think it is deeply disappointing that the shrill voices that occupy the extremes of this spectrum have dominated the stage for the past 20 years.”
For Collins, unravelling the human genome did not create a conflict in his mind. Instead, it allowed him to “glimpse at the workings of God”.
“When you make a breakthrough it is a moment of scientific exhilaration because you have been on this search and seem to have found it,” he said. “But it is also a moment where I at least feel closeness to the creator in the sense of having now perceived something that no human knew before but God knew all along.
“When you have for the first time in front of you this 3.1 billion-letter instruction book that conveys all kinds of information and all kinds of mystery about humankind, you can’t survey that going through page after page without a sense of awe. I can’t help but look at those pages and have a vague sense that this is giving me a glimpse of God’s mind.”
Collins joins a line of scientists whose research deepened their belief in God. Isaac Newton, whose discovery of the laws of gravity reshaped our understanding of the universe, said: “This most beautiful system could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.”
Although Einstein revolutionised our thinking about time, gravity and the conversion of matter to energy, he believed the universe had a creator. “I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details,” he said. However Galileo was famously questioned by the inquisition and put on trial in 1633 for the “heresy” of claiming that the earth moved around the sun.
Among Collins’s most controversial beliefs is that of “theistic evolution”, which claims natural selection is the tool that God chose to create man. In his version of the theory, he argues that man will not evolve further.
“I see God’s hand at work through the mechanism of evolution. If God chose to create human beings in his image and decided that the mechanism of evolution was an elegant way to accomplish that goal, who are we to say that is not the way,” he says.
“Scientifically, the forces of evolution by natural selection have been profoundly affected for humankind by the changes in culture and environment and the expansion of the human species to 6 billion members. So what you see is pretty much what you get.”
Collins was an atheist until the age of 27, when as a young doctor he was impressed by the strength that faith gave to some of his most critical patients.
“They had terrible diseases from which they were probably not going to escape, and yet instead of railing at God they seemed to lean on their faith as a source of great comfort and reassurance,” he said. “That was interesting, puzzling and unsettling.”
He decided to visit a Methodist minister and was given a copy of C S Lewis’s Mere Christianity, which argues that God is a rational possibility. The book transformed his life. “It was an argument I was not prepared to hear,” he said. “I was very happy with the idea that God didn’t exist, and had no interest in me. And yet at the same time, I could not turn away.”
His epiphany came when he went hiking through the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. He said: “It was a beautiful afternoon and suddenly the remarkable beauty of creation around me was so overwhelming, I felt, ‘I cannot resist this another moment’.”
Collins believes that science cannot be used to refute the existence of God because it is confined to the “natural” world. In this light he believes miracles are a real possibility. “If one is willing to accept the existence of God or some supernatural force outside nature then it is not a logical problem to admit that, occasionally, a supernatural force might stage an invasion,” he says.
You said "DESIGNED"... so who/what the "DESIGNER" is seems very relevant.
“Among Collins’s most controversial beliefs is that of “theistic evolution”, which claims natural selection is the tool that God chose to create man. In his version of the theory, he argues that man will not evolve further.”
As soon as I read this paragraph and before I went on with the article, I knew he had read CS Lewis. Yes, this is in Mere Christianity but there’s a lovely presentation of it in the third of his science fiction trilogy, Perelandra. The Queen of that planet explains to Ransom why there were sentient beings other than human on Mars but not on Perelandra (Venus). It was because Perelandra received the gift of life after Our Dear Lord was on earth and after His coming that gift could only be given to humans.
The biggest indicator of an intelligence behind life is the
INFORMATION
that is encoded in the DNA of every living thing.
Don’t EVEN try to argue that it just happened at random. Random or self organized chemicals wouldn’t contain the information that DNA does.
It’s the “million monkeys with a million typewriters” argument.
No, they will NOT eventually produce the entire works of William Shakespeare.
But it is still breaking down the wall of the
“no intelligence allowed” crowd.
To cast my pearls before someone that will appreciate them :).
Read “Privileged Planet” and “Case for a Creator”.
You’ll love ‘em.
opps, its the second book.
In the origins of the Universe, scientists have postulated the amount of energy, and what existed at that instantaneous moment - a huge quantity of photons - ie, “let there be light”.
I think you may have a blind spot.
You may have a problem with the concept of a “prime mover”. Creating a theoretical construct of alien genetic engineers does not get around the concept of a “prime mover”, it just pushes it further away so that you do not have to deal with it on a personel level.
I believe that the designed by aliens is a straw man.
> Who designed the aliens is irrelevant to the original
> point.
It *IS* the original point.
Evidence of design is evidence of a designer.
Your hypothetical aliens would serve to present even more evidence of design and a transcendent Designer.
I submit that there is a lot more evidence for a Transcendent Designer than there is for aliens.
>>I submit that there is a lot more evidence for a Transcendent Designer than there is for aliens.<<
Anything that has a beginning has a cause, external and transcendent to itself.
The universe has a beginning.
Therefore, it has a creator that transcends the universe.
Who says that's the point? Your point may have been designed by aliens, whereas the point of the article may have been designed by God. Apples to oranges.
L-Ron Hubbard.
It certainly would. Whoever designed the aliens capable of designing us would have to be far greater than the aliens to create such incredible creatures that have the intelligence and ability to design us.
:))
“It’s a nice day to start again.” - Billy Idol
If DNA is the ‘language of God’ then his words are made up of amino acids.
Didn’t Frank Herbert write about a fictional society that worshiped DNA as the ‘Language of God’? Seems this guy needs to give credit where credit is due.
I agree. I'm a practicing Christian; but I believe God reveals Himself in His creation as well as the Bible. That is uncomfortable because some portions of the early new Testament are incompatible with what God has apparently revealed in his creation.
It would be comfortable to interpret the Bible literally. But I don't find that option available for much of Genesis. Our ancestors have been around for longer than 6,000 years. There was no worldwide flood and all living creatures do not descend from two of each type on the Ark. Where did the people Adam and Eve met after they were thrown out of Eden come from?
So I have to accept that The Pentateuch is mostly oral history committed to writing perhaps thousands of years after the oral history started and that some of the stuff was revelation tied to what stone age folks were able to understand. Some inaccuracies crept in over the centuries. So the story of Eden is, I believe, a true metaphor. That is, God created man to have one kind of relationship with him. We sinned and fell. The consequence was death. It probably didn't happen in precisely the way described in Genesis.
This, by the way is in stark contrast to the New Testament, which is either eyewitness testimony or "as-told-to" type testimony. The apologetics case for the Resurrection is overwhelming. As Jesus referred back to the sin of Adam and to old testament scripture, we must give them meaning that is consistent with what we know from God's revelation of Himself thru His creation. The simple literal interpretation does not always work to achieve that.
On the other hand, it doesn't make a lot of difference in my faith how that comes out. The FACT of the resurrection is the core of Christianity; and that stands without a serious challeged despite two centuries of attacks by humanists. Everything else is detail.
For many reasons, this article moved me deeply. Thank you for posting.
I recently watched a program on Stephen Hawking and the controversial quantum physic theories on whether or not matter is lost in the universe. I could not believe how many confirmations of the account of creation, and the character of the Creator, were obvious to any open-minded person in that debate.
The more I read science, the more I see God.
I also recommend “Mere Christianity.” Any person who wants to continue to become educated would do well to think through the points of that book.
So what criteria do you use to determine which things are inaccuracies or not?
Either it's all true, or you just might as well toss the whole thing out because you can never be sure what's correct or not.
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