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.
“If DNA is the ‘language of God’ then his words are made up of amino acids.”
So where did amino acids come from FRiend?
Good question. I’d suggest reading his book to find out more about his reasoning and see if that answers your question.
The author of “Mere Christianity” started out with views that appear similar to yours. So that book also might be interesting to you as the author, C.S. Lewis, offers an answer to questions such as yours.
Amino acids can and do form spontaneously. It is however, only when they are put together in sequence (DNA codes for an amino acid sequence) and properly folded in the correct 3-D structure that they perform enzymatic or other functions.
It’s not just “intelligent” design, there is a moral component to the design of the universe, including the design of human beings.
So the creator of DNA exercised some sort of moral judgment in that creation, selecting one path over others as the way to create a design that had not only intelligent function, but which functioned morally as well.
Therefore, the creator perforce has a superior moral capacity to his creation. And, obviously, superior power.
What is your definition of a god, for starters?
Put together in sequence....
Do they ever go into sequence spontaneously?
What composes Amino Acids?
How are they sequentially put together and properly folded in a 3-D structure correctly?
Atheist freakout, denouncing him as “not a real scientist” and a “fraud” in...5...4...3...2...1...
As I understand it, quantum physics also states that at some point on the edge of a black hole, a person would be (using terms from the physical world) both dead and alive.
Or, as Hawking put it, information is not lost, but passes through certain black holes from this dimension to a parallel dimension.
IOW, when quantum physicists looked at the very smallest particle of information, and mathematically determined what happened to it on the edge of a black hole, they came up with a “reality” that is strikingly similar to what Christianity teaches occurs at what we call “death.”
I am not a scientist. But I’m trying to articulate a point that agrees with your observation that we tend to find evidence of God in the smallest things.
He explained that he saw no reason why God could not evolve his creation any way He liked, but it was still God’s doing.
I have no problem with that. When this Earth as we know it ends, upon the return of Christ, God may choose to do that-—I don’t know-—with a nuclear bomb or something. But he will do the choosing and do the doing.
I have no problem with that.
Thank you!
Or, as Francis Shaeffer argued, the parts of a Swiss watch in a shoebox will never organize themselves into a Swiss watch, no matter how much the box is shook, baked, etc.
“Rare Earth” is another thoughtful approach, though not explicitly theistic.
Carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur.
http://www.biochem.ucl.ac.uk/bsm/dbbrowser/c32/aastruct.html
How are they sequentially put together?
When a DNA open reading frame (a gene) is transcribed by RNA polymerase (a protein) into a messenger RNA (mRNA) it is taken to a ribosome where each three letter nucleic acid ‘codon’ is paired up with a transfer RNA (tRNA) that carries with it the appropriate amino acid that corresponds to that triplet code (the Universal Genetic Code). Thus a sequence of DNA is used as a template for mRNA that is then translated into an amino acid sequence.
Some of the more advanced proteins need other proteins to make sure they fold into the proper 3-D structure. Other proteins fold ‘naturally’; the gist being that there is nothing ‘magical’ about it, it is all electromagnetic interaction. A proper sequence of amino acids in the proper structure is capable of a specific enzymatic, signaling, or structural function.
For His own reasons, he chose to give us a very high degree of confidence in the Resurrection and not nearly so much in Genesis. I don't pretend to understand his reasons.
But He wouldn't have made a universe the way he did, leaving clear clues all over about its immensity and ancientness, if he intended us not to use our reason to discriminate between parts of the Bible that must be accepted as true, as is, and parts that must be accepted as true metaphor.
It makes the job a lot harder. But it doesn't relieve us of the responsibility of applying our God given reason to do the best we can.
In one chapter of Privileged Planet, they discuss a spectrum ranging from the “totally random” to the “completely designed” views of the universe.
There were some others on their scale, but these three ranked this way:
Rare Earth < Privileged Planet < Case for a Creator
PP made STRONG allusions to a Creator and a Purpose, but only specifically stated, strongly, that where we are, as well as the fine tuned rules of the universe, were too precise to be accidental.
And with a handwave and a "don't look behind that curtain", the word "proper" dismisses the complexity of the INFORMATION contained in the sequencing.
If you believe God created life (as I do) he didn't handicap himself such that it was an energetically unfavorable process. Much of the ‘basic building blocks’ were there (according to his plan) forming where he wanted them ‘on their own’ (inasmuch as anything in HIS creation is ‘on their own’; I just mean that it didn't take ‘magic’ or ‘divine intervention’ to get the molecules of life to form here on the Earth, just chemistry.).
If someone somewhere comes up with a rudimentary life form from unliving matter it would do nothing but enhance my amazement at the gloriousness of HIS creation. Some people would see no ‘need’ for God if this was the case, and think this finding was ‘anti-God’ or some such.
But just as stars forming out in the universe show that it didn't take “magic” for God to make our Sun (just gravity and nuclear fusion), it doesn't mean that God didn't make our Sun, just that he used gravity and nuclear fusion to do so.
If life is capable of forming spontaneously by the rules of this universe alone, then the means God used to make life was chemistry and physics; not that God didn't make life.
God made it all, God planned it all, God made the rules that made the formation of planets and stars inevitable, why not life? God did command the oceans to bring forth life in Genesis. What was this ‘command’ and how did the oceans ‘hear’ or ‘obey’?
I wanted to address this statement specifically because it is a huge stumbling block for a lot of Christians. I don't think this is correct at all. As I said in my previous post, the case for the Resurrection is overwhelming. Do we throw that out because the Jewish scholars in about 1000 BC who compiled the Pentateuch made some mistakes? Or because exaggerations crept into the oral history of the Jewish people over millenia?
Your argument is what the humanists want us to say. Then all they have to do is find one contradiction in the old testament (easy to do--have you noticed that there are two different creation stories in Genesis, that are somewhat contradictory on major points), repeat the contradiction over and over and destroy the faith of young people.
If you accept the the humanist premise that there is no basis for faith unless every word is provably true, you are setting up our young people for grim lives of athiesm and much worse after they die.
The resurrection is manifestly true. And that is all a Christian really needs.
Whatsa' matter, you don't believe in Ronald Reagan's "trust but verify" philosophy?;~)
So the “God” you envision is a little man pushing buttons and puling levers behind a curtain?
I don’t think there is a curtain to look behind, nor an understandable agency pulling the levers and pushing buttons to bamboozle the credulous.
In this case look forward to the face upon the Throne. It isn’t a Wizard pulling levers behind the scene, and this is not Oz, and the Emerald City isn’t just green tinted glasses.
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