In Francis Collins' book The Language of God, the director of the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute, argues that there is, apart from blind faith, a thoroughly rational basis to believe in a Creator God, to believe in miracles, and to trust that science itself is one of the ways to get “closer to God”.“One of the great tragedies of our time is this impression that has been created that science and religion have to be at war,” says Collins. “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.” Indeed, the process of exploring the complexity, the beauty and the splendid intricacies of the human genome was to “glimpse at the workings of God.” It helped solve Collins' doubts rather than enlarge them.
Collins illustrates his point. “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.”
This Times (U.K.) story from a couple of years ago tells of Collins' journey to Christianity.
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’.”
(Hat tip: Dan Tate)
