Rereading The Language of God (& signed book giveaway!)

Faith & Science Conversation
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After encountering this thread, I thought it was about time I read this book myself. And I now have a copy in front of me.

The book begins with Collins’ reflections on his childhood. While there is a few commonalities, the differences from myself were nevertheless considerable. With free love (no marriage or fidelity), peace marches, black panther headquarters, a commune and the familiar smell of marijuana, I was far more a child of the sixties than he was. It was also bit more leftist (father blacklisted as a communist) and with parents being two psychology majors going into teaching perhaps valuing education and intellectualism a bit more as well.

Also unlike Collins, I pretty thoroughly embraced science and existentialism from the get go. Though I do not consider that I was ever an atheist. My approach to the question of God was always a determination to figure out what this “God” stuff was all about. I suppose you could say that some of the ideas of Christianity were planted as seed rather early from reading the Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis around the age of 12. That got me reading the Bible to see what I could make of it, and I liked the Sermon on the Mount. I also responded at high school age to a televangelist by desperately asking Christ into my life at age 16, though I did not follow that up by seeking any guidance and so I don’t think I was anything like a Christian for another 13-20 years (long gradual process). In those years I went through a consideration of the various pseudo-Christian groups which approached me: Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, and Moonies.

Sterling scholar in science from my high school I went straight to the University of Utah physics program. Though I spent a considerable time in the math department particularly with Numerical Analysis and scientific computing. Around that time my sister attempted suicide and I think that helped more than anything to push me more solidly into the theist worldview with my equivalence between a faith in God and the existential faith that life was worth living. I was never going to swallow Christianity or anything for that matter as a whole package. My conversion to Christianity took so long because I had to consider each and every theological question separately. But I had my answer to what God was all about and it was just a matter of deciding what understanding of God best served this purpose of upholding a faith that life was worth living.

Well that is my reflections from reading the first chapter. I will post more as I continue reading.

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Interesting story. I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts. My childhood was quite a bit different, growing up on a farm in a conservative small town, seeing the sixties mainly on the TV, but bringing me to a similar place.

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I think the main thing you will find in my refections upon chapter 2 is that I approached and answered these question addressed rather differently than Collins did.

Isn’t the idea of God just Wish Fulfillment?
When I first encountered the philosophy of Pragmatism (the only 100% fully American philosophy) founded by Charles Sanders Pierce, I agreed completely. This should make perfect sense considering my thinking about God in my childhood reflections above. Not for me was any pretense at an objective consideration of whether God existed, but only in finding what role and benefit was there in a belief in God? What else is life about in the first place if not wish fulfillment? Trying to live your life as if your desires have no value seems totally absurd to me.

So while I was always an extremely intellectual person and also valued the objectivity of science a great deal, it never really ocurred to me to limit my thinking to objectivity alone. Our emotions and desires are as much a part of reality and life as anything else and it only seemed natural to me that I should incorporate such things into my understanding of reality. I guess this is part of what lead to my ultimate conclusion that there is an irreducibly subjective aspect to reality itself.

What about all the harm done in the name of religion?
From the reflections of my childhood, it should be clear that I was raised knowing rather well all the harm done and continuing to be done by religion in the world. But one of the things that struck me in reading the Bible was how much of it was about precisely that – all the harm done by religion in the world and warning after warning about the dangers and messed up thinking that could be found in it.

So I guess the main point is that all this harm done by religion is all in the old news category for me. And so the question that would always be a great deal more interesting to me is why then do so many people see so much value in religion? And after all, why should the failure of people to live up to their highest ideals mean that the ideals themselves are wrong? Wouldn’t it be even more hypocritical to judge religion by such standards and then turn around an make that a reason for discarding them?

Why would a loving God allow suffering in the world?
In high school AP english we read “The Stranger” by Albert Camus, and while my classmate (mostly mormon) could not relate to either the main character or the ideas of existentialism, I certainly did. I didn’t have have to struggle with the criticisms of religion as they did, and my main takeaway was how Meursault valued even the worst experiences of life.

I went on to read more of Camus: The Plague, The Myth of Sysyphus. The Plague was most focused on dialogue between a doctor and a priest over a child suffering agony while dying of the plague. So it was all about this question of how a loving God could allow such a thing. Of course I didn’t buy into the inane justifications and explainations of the priest any more than Camus did. But instead of leaping to the atheist response, perhaps conditioned by my reading of “The Stranger” it was more in the direction how such experiences could be of value despite how meaningless and abhorrent it might appear at first glance.

In the Myth of Sysyphus, I found the integrity to defy and condemn the frequent concepts of God found in religion that were unjust, unloving, arrogant, and even sadistic. This speaks more to the previous question about harm found in religion. It only reinforced my conclusion that one of the principle tasks of religion was to fight against bad religion.

But I found my ultimate answer to this question (about how a loving God could allow suffering in the world) in the theory of evolution. Evolution demonstrates that suffering is an essential part of life itself. Without suffering there would be no life at all. Life only exists as struggle against the threat of suffering and death. How ironical that we have atheists and theists leveling almost identical cricisms about these two theories of origin, each complaining how cruel and uncaring it is. It seems hilarious to me. As for evil rather than suffering the same answer applies except that it is the possibility of evil which is a necessity rather than evil itself. It is again part of the very nature of life itself (the very essence of which is free will) that we are confronted by this perverse choice to act against life itself.

How can a rational person believe in miracles?
My first instinctive reaction to this question is to ask: How can a human being who values life not believe in miracles? At first I thought Collins’ view might be at odds with my own because he talked about them as something which are (seemingly) inexplicable by the laws of nature in contrast to the “cheapening” of the word in modern parlance. But when he began to speak of probabilities, I began to have second thoughts – especially since he did insert the word “seemingly” above. It looked to me like the real question in his mind might simply be whether the improbable might ultimately have a supernatural (i.e. non-physical) cause. For me the simple fact that the laws of nature are not a causally closed (i.e. deterministic) system because of quantum physics means that having an ultimately divine cause doesn’t mean something has to be scientifically inexplicable.

Collins speaks of a healthy use of skepticism for claims of miracles. But this seems largely derived from the identification of miracles with the inexplicable. He thinks calling the blooming of a flower a miracle treads upon an understanding of plant biolgy. While for me this simply points the the highly subjective nature of miracles in the first place. I do not expect miracles to be inexplicable, unless you mean that science must ultimately resort to statistical anomalies in such an explanation. I don’t see either case as being a reason for excluding an ultimately divine cause or for not using the word “miracle.” Instead I would say this is the difference between real miracles and the magic in fantasy stories. For me the irrationality is not the idea that science cannot explain everything but the idea that God would break the laws of nature which He Himself created just to impress a bunch of ignorant savages who wouldn’t know the difference anyway.

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Through my career in medicine, I have come to the same conclusion, though only recently connected it to evolution. It does make the idea of a “New Heaven and new Earth” a bit hard to imagine, as suffering seems to be an integral part of our existence. Sort of goes to final episode of “The Good Place” where heaven was made bearable only by the ability to chose to kiss it goodbye.

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So you watched that series too, huh? If so, then our family wasn’t alone in that guilty pleasure. They did touch on a lot of deep issues in interesting ways.

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Collins begins chapter 3 with a remembrance of Immanuel Kant, who saw reasons for belief in God in both the starry heavens and the Moral Law. Neither of these are among the reason I have for belief in God – quite the opposite. Not only do I find the moral law coming from the very logic of life itself but I see order and “designoid” features of the universe arising quite spontaneously from mathematical/mechanistic processes. Since I mention my reasons for belief frequently in this commentary here is a link to them.

The Big Bang
Instead of being a challenge to the theistic worldview, the demonstrable fact that the measurable physical universe had a beginning is the clearest significant “I told you so” and cause for smugness on the part of theists. To be sure atheists can choose to believe that the universe didn’t begin there but since that goes beyond what is measurable they are on level ground with theist claims for a creator, resorting to the fact that it cannot be proven that the universe actually began at that point. But science is founded on testing hypotheses and in this case the test is in favor of the theist worldview, and it is the atheists who have to scramble for justifications and alternate interpretations of the data.

But I must say that what I remember from the end of the copy of “A Brief History of Time” (or maybe it was “A Briefer History of Time”) which I read, is Hawking’s triumphant declaration that because of quantum fluctuations we now no longer need God to explain the existence of the universe.

What came before the Big Bang?
The Big Bang does not beg the question of what came before because we have every reason to believe that time came into existence at the Big Bang along with everything else. One of the things that modern physics has made perfectly clear is that the old idea of absolute time as a singular measure applying to everything is simply wrong. So it is incorrect that we have to answer the question of what came before the Big Bang, any more than we have to answer that question with regards to God, whether to ask what came before God or before God created the universe. This doesn’t require a timeless God, but only one that uses time (in making a temporal sequence of thoughts and actions) as He sees fit rather than being under the dominion of any measure of time outside of Himself.

But even if the question of what came temporally before the beginning of the universe can be dispensed with, I suppose there is still the question of what came before it in the causal sense. But since this lies outside what we can measure, I cannot see how science could ever answer such a question. It may be that many people feel that the Big Bang or the universe cries out for divine explanation, but this is a subjective feeling and not one that I share. I believe in God for quite different reasons than this.

Formation of our Solar System and Planet Earth
Considering all that had to happen in order to bring the earth into existence (the formation of the elements in stellar explosions in additions to the 5 billion years of its formation), the 13.8 billion year age of the universe does not seem like such a very long time to me at all. For that reason, life might be somewhat more rare in the universe than we might otherwise have supposed. As a demonstration of how speculative Drake’s calculation is, there is one of those numbers that we how have an answer to. What fraction of stars have planets around them? Nearly all the stars in this region of space apparently have planets. There may be other regions of the universe where heavier elements are not so abundant so we cannot say this about all stars in the universe. Regions with a lot of old red dwarfs might be an example of a place where the stars have no planets. In any case, I certainly agree with Collins that the existence of life elsewhere has no bearing on the likelihood of the existence of a creator.

Anthropic Principle
Here Collins makes an argument that the most likely explanation is that the universe was designed by a creator to support the existence of intelligent life. But at a key part of the argument He observes that we really have no way to calculate any of these probabilities and that is quite correct. The unavoidable conclusion of this observation, however, is that this argument is ultimately as subjective as seeing the shape of rabbits in the clouds. To be sure I see the same rabbit – God designing the universe to support life looks like the most reasonable explanation to me. But I will never claim that this is anything but a subjective judgement on my part… so much so that I do not give this as one of my reasons for belief. I will at most simply defend the rationality of this explanation. It is a reasonable way to think, even if we cannot reasonably expect others to accept this explanation.

Quantum Mechanics and the Uncertainty Principle
And here we come to one of the reasons I do give for belief. Collins does not say very much on this subject except to point out the collapse of the Laplace demon deterministic naturalist worldview in which the mathematical laws of nature are a perfect explanation of everything. Perhaps it because I am a physicist that the cognitive dissonance which physicists experience because of this is so much more significant to me. And thus I have given this as one of my reasons for belief, also admittedly completely subjective. But the existence of a creator who wants to continue to interact with the universe, altering the course events, does make sense of what we have found in quantum physics to me.

Cosmology and the God Hypothesis
I must begin with an objection to the phrase “God hypothesis” because it makes it sound like this is a scientific hypothesis and it is not and never will be. It fails the most basic requirements for such a thing because there is no measurements we can make to test it. As marvelously honest and objective as the scientific method is, with all of its epistemological superiority, it has some definite limits. Ideas which are unfalsifiable by physical measurements must be rejected as hypotheses in a scientific inquiry. This is my principle objection to Richard Dawkins’ book, “The God Delusion.” And as a scientist he really should know better. If you treat it like a scientific hypothesis just to shoot it down with a lot of subjective reasons, then you not only indulge in pseudo-scientific rhetoric but you make yourself a hypocrite for excluding creationism from the science classroom.

So as long as we are clear that it is only an idea which we are putting forward for philosophical consideration, what are we to make of the argument Collins makes here? Well it seems rather odd to me because he argues like a determinist and a Deist. There is no need for God to predict the outcome of Earth’s development if He has a hand in that development – if as theists believe God interacts with His creation. But I suppose the main thrust of this conclusion to chapter 3 is that there is really isn’t much reason to think that Christianity is incompatible with science, which is certainly something I agree with completely.

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In chapter 4 Collins begins by saying the advances of science have cost us some traditional reasons for belief in God – that it was easier to ascribe it all to an act of God before this. But I disagree, because the only thing the discoveries of science can speak to is how God did things and not whether He did them. You can only say that the discoveries have cost us the belief in a magical God who accomplishes things by some kind of power of command. But while this worked as metaphor to the power of human rulers, it doesn’t actually make any sense when speaking of God. Who is God commanding to do all these things which He cannot do Himself? Who has the actual knowledge and understanding to accomplish these things He commands? Does He have a workshop filled with all-mighty technically knowledgeable and proficient elves? It almost sounds like the point is to glorify the skilled laborers over the fat useless monarch. Maybe that is the real reason Kepler and Galileo were so upsetting. They revealed to our subconscious just how ultimately useless the people in power really were by asking questions about what was hiding behind the curtain.

As for a geocentric universe, the only one being put in the center was not God but human beings or even the fiery depths of the Earth. God in the heavens has always been associated with the sun far far more than mother Earth. So truth be told, I think the real reason it upset people was a matter of power and authority in the hands of the magisterium. They wanted to be the ones people went to for answers even if all they could ever really say is that is all great big mystery. When the scientist started supplying some actual answers to questions, suddenly all the mystery mumbo jumbo started looking really lame.

Collins then turns to the argument from design, and I have been pretty loud in my condemnation of all such arguments. It is my claim that such arguments replace a faith in God with faith in dubious premises which tend to derail our understanding of God and reality. For example, in the proof explained, there is a huge glaring flaw. Watches are machines – wind up toys with no life, consciousness, or intelligence. The argument leads us into the distorted belief that there is no significant difference between living and non-living, between living organisms and machines, or between people and robots. Not too surprising is how well this serves the purposes of those in power who actually want people to be little more than wind-up Xtian soldiers.

Origins of Life on Earth
Scientific inquiry into the origins of life has advanced considerably since the old guard focus of Dawkins upon the self-replicating molecule. Metabolism first theories and prebiotic evolution now has the notion of a period of self-organizing chemical processes which produced such molecules. Thus instead of being the center of life itself these RNA and DNA molecules become more of a tool for storing gathered information. In fact, Collins makes the observation that these molecules don’t have any innate ability to replicate but require a rather complex support system to do so. The appeal to pangenesis only shows how unworkable had become the previous idea of self-replicating molecules being the origin of life.

The Fossil Record
Collins explains how this tells its own story of the development of life on the Earth with increasing detail. Thus the answers of the priests and scriptures incapable of dealing with more questions than the most basic ones didn’t looks so good by comparison. But not all of the priests have been so grasping of power and jealous of their assumed/imagined authority, and so there were many who welcomed this opportunity to give answers to more detailed questions about our origins.

Darwin’s Revolutionary Idea
I believe the first reaction by a priest to Darwin’s work was a very enthusiastic congratulations. So to the adjectives “immediate” and “intense” describing the controversy over “Origin of the Species,” we should also add “divided.”

DNA the Hereditary Material
Yes, this became the source of so much more information about evolution, it was almost like having a video camera in the past. Being able to understand and read this information has taken a great deal of time, but the picture has been becoming more and more clear. Collins compares it to a language without the complexities of multiple meanings and translations (no tower of Babel, he says).

Biological Truth and its Consequences
Obviously I am not one of the believers which Collins speaks of, never having seen any merit in this argument from design.

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Reading chapter 5, the first part is Collins’ story of his work on the human genome project. The conflict with the Celera owned by Venter, seeking to patent its findings and thus keep portions of the human genome from the public, was very interesting. As a note of interest. Celera was sequencing Venter’s genome while the public project was sequencing selections of a number of donors from an even larger pool of donors so that nobody would know who any of the portions of the genome actually came from.

Surprises from the First Reading of the Genome

  1. Only 1.5 percent of the genome is actually used to code for proteins. This amounts to 20,000 to 25,000 different protein coding genes. However this should not be taken to mean that the rest perform no function at all. A lot it doesn’t. But some of it, perhaps as much as another 6.7 percent must be use for controlling when the protein coding sequences are used.
  2. The number of protein coding sequences is not so different from other much simpler organisms which also use about 20,000 genes. Collins compares this to the fact that the average educated English speaker has a vocabulary of about 20,000 words. But those same words can be used in very different ways and thus the vocabulary is not the same as the what may be produced from those same words.
  3. We homo sapiens all have 99.9 percent identical DNA with each other. Most other species have 10 to 50 times the genetic diversity as this. This points to a genetic “bottleneck” of sorts in the human population of about 10,000 people who lived between 100,000 and 150,000 years ago. And this fits with the fossil record which has most of our ancestors coming out of Africa about that time – probably the largest surviving group from a change in climate to a period of glaciation.
  4. The similarities between species in the genes which code for proteins is fairly high. 99% of human coding DNA being the same as that for a mouse, and 35% the same as that for a roundworm. More of the differences between species are found in the parts between genes, only 40% being the same as a mouse and practically none the same for a roundworm.

Darwin and DNA
“We can now see that the variation he postulated is supported by naturally occurring mutations in DNA. These are estimated to occur at a rate of about one error every 100 million base pairs per generation. …we all have roughly sixty new mutations…” (I am guessing this is not counting other types of variation like crossover which mix up genes inherited) With 91.8% of our DNA unused, that averages to about 5 mutations in the parts which are actually used for anything and less than one (60x1.5% = 0.9) on average that alters the coding for one of the proteins. Thus either these are less likely to be in the coding sections or Collins is overstating how likely they are to be harmful. I suspect the first is the case. Collins then explains why evolution has become crucial in managing the treatment of diseases which can easily become immune to the drugs we treat them with.

Collins also goes into a detailed explanation of the similarities of genome between species which shows this can only be explained by common descent, in complete agreement with the rates at which mutations appear. To say that these are a product of divine design is equivalent to saying that God is mimicking evolution in order to deceive us, which is even more difficult to believe. He also does a comparison of the chromosomes and their sizes between humans and chimpanzees. The only difference appears to be that one of the human chromosomes looks like two of the chimpanzee chromosomes combined together. So not only are DNA sequences for human and chimpazee 96 percent identical but their rather arbitrary groupings into chromosomes are nearly the same, and the groupings of genes on those chromosomes are also the same. Furthermore the difference in the active genes can traced to slight alterations in the genetic sequence which makes a gene which is active in one species inactive in the other.

Collins then by way of example, tells the rather interesting story of gene FOXP2 found because of a family with severe speaking difficulties. This gene happens to be one of the unique alterations in humans from other animals including non-human primates, all of which have pretty much the same version. This seems to be one of the human adaptations which the enable the human jaw muscles capable of the more fine control needed in human speech. But Collins warns, jumping from such explanation of human capabilities by mutation to the conclusion that there is no God is unwarranted.

Evolution: Theory or a fact?
Here Collins explains as I have many times the fundamental difference of the meaning of this word “theory” in science. In science the word “theory” refers to fundamental principles and not that it is only speculation or conjecture. In the science we have a general division between experimental science and theoretical science and the difference is that the theoretical science works with the basic laws and equations by which things are explained in science while the experimental focuses on testing how these match up with measurements and observations.

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Enjoying the review and your thoughts. It has been awhile since my reading.

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Ditto to what Phil said above.

I’ll admit that I haven’t read everything above (busy week) - but of what I’ve read so far, it’s been a great trip down memory lane since it’s been a while since I had read Collins’ book. So the detailed review I’ve looked at so far has been helpful to see.

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In chapter 6, Collins starts by telling some stories of experiences which disturbed him in how sensitive so many Christians were to the facts of theoretical biology. At first he was enthusiastically welcomed as a scientist who supports Christianity only to have them turn away when he dared to state the facts about evolution. It was a truth many people were still unwilling to hear.

Reasons for lack of Public Acceptance of Darwin’s Theory
Collins blames this on the unexpected nature of Darwin’s conclusions, the inability to understand the long periods of time involved, and the perception that it argues against the role of a supernatural creator, or contradicts the word of sacred scripture.

I blame it on

  1. reactionism: reacting to social Darwinism and to atheist claims that science supports their worldview.
  2. intellectual laziness in response to the challenges and especially to the implication that any adjustments in their way of thinking might be required.
  3. Struggle of the religious maintain perceived power/authority to dictate answers to certain questions.

What does Genesis Really Say?
Collins underlines the fact that there are two accounts of creation in the first two chapters of Genesis and they do not agree on the details. This strongly suggests that taking such details rigidly and literally doesn’t make sense. Next Collins turns to St. Augustine who pointed out before science had its say in these matters, that it was very unlikely considering 2 Peter 2:8 and the many ways that the word "day is used in the Bible, that these days in Genesis chapter 1 are meant to refer to 24 hour periods.

The fact of the matter is that the Bible and Genesis doesn’t really support a creationism or a literal understanding of the text. Adjustments are required to make it fit the creationist point of view. Ignoring all the people Cain feared Genesis 4:14 and contradicting other parts of the Bible in the claim in the meaning of “sons of God” in Genesis 6 to claim angels can breed with women to make weird half breed monsters.

Lessons from Galileo
Next Collins tells the very sad story of the conflict with Galileo which did untold damage to the respectability of Christianity. Collins points out that today it is hard for us to even understand what the big deal was with the Copernican picture and how these clergy could have taken this as a threat to Christianity. The truth then as it is now that the real threat to Christianity are the foolish people who are equating Christianity with ideas opposed to the findings of science.

Chapter 7 Atheism and Agnosticism: when science trumps faith
I would change the subtitle to, “when atheists change science into rhetoric for their beliefs.” Science cannot trump faith because science is founded upon faith: faith in the scientific method and faith that the evidence will lead us to the truth (not a product of supernatural deception). And… even though Collins, myself, and many other scientists are religious people we do not find science contradicting our religious beliefs.

Collins begins this chapter with a summation of his experiences of the times over a decade earlier than myself. In 1968, I was only 7 years old. So what Collins describes was my childhood and my college years was dominated instead by birth of the computer era (as computers shrunk from something filling a room to something held in your hand), and the fall of the Soviet domination (iron curtain) of half the world (I was actually in Latvia when the tanks rolled into Riga after the disappearance of Gorbachev and by the time I left Latvia I was carrying a fragment of the statue of Lenin from the center of the city). Thus in some sense, the wave of atheism had already passed and I was left with the aftermath and the question of where to go from there.

I was confronted with a completely different set of questions and alternatives. There was no question in my mind, which would win in a conflict between science and religion. Science defines the limits of what is reasonable to believe. But science can only speak to what is measurable and repeatably observable. So the question for me is why I should limit my understanding of reality only to these things alone? To be sure, without determinations of this objective scientific methodology, there is likely to be some diversity of thought. So while I always felt obliged to make sure what I believed fit with the results of scientific inquiry, it did not seem the nature of life to limit our comprehension of the world only to that which was irrespective of our beliefs and desires. Too much of life depends on such things in a critical way. Love for example is not a matter for objective observation – it requires asking yourself what you want and then to believe, for what but belief can make it so? And no few times I saw the foolishness of people trying to deal with such things objectively.

Atheism
I cannot say anything about a universal search for God. That is certainly not my experience. What I can say instead, after watching my father eventually turn from atheism and Maoism to Taoism, is that without addressing the aspect of life which requires our subjective participation, quite opposite the objective observation of science, it is nearly inevitable that we will feel profoundly unsatisfied in life. I read the “Selfish Gene” and found its genetic reductionism to be absurd, and I hardly needed Dawkins’ other books to convince me of the accuracy of evolution or the darker side of religion. Frankly, I think Dawkins was simply taking advantage of this irrational reactionary rejection of evolution within Christianity as a means to push atheism – but that could only make it ultimately just as irrational and reactionary as well.

Agnosticism
My earliest confrontation with agnosticism was my father’s response to my question about God saying that he didn’t know – and my thinking was that I would find the answer to this question myself. I later found that he not only didn’t know but he didn’t care because he couldn’t see how the Deist sort of God, which is the only one he thought possible, had any importance for the living of our lives. Collins says most agnostics are not so aggressive and I would go much farther than this to say that most atheists are actually a rather humble sort – they simply don’t have an interest in the things of religion.

But I think my ultimate response to agnosticism is this division I have made between subjective and objective knowledge. It is the fact that we proceed with life on the basis of certain beliefs that make them knowledge and it is type of evidence we have for those beliefs and whether it is reasonable to expect others to agree with them that distinguishes between the two types. Accordingly, I am an agnostic with respect to objective knowledge of God and see no objective merit in any of the “proofs for God’s existence” – on this I would agree with Dawkins in the “God Delusion.” But I don’t stop there and frankly don’t believe that anybody else does either – not without an indulgence in self delusion. Perception of the world and making sense of the data just isn’t possible without making a few belief choices which depend on our own personal experiences, including what feels right and good. Thus I am a theist in spite of the failure of all those proofs for God’s existence. I choose to believe because that is the life I want to live and person I want to be.

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I tend to blame it on intellectual pride rather than laziness. That is, many are so caught up in their own construct, that they refuse to see it as flawed, and fear what would happen if they permit it to be shown to be built on a crumbling foundation. But, in any case, closely aligned with your thoughts.

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Chapter 8 Creationism: when faith trumps science
I would change the subtitle to, “when worshippers of the dark ages change Christianity into their personal prejudices.” Faith cannot trump science because science is founded upon faith. So what is really meant here is when the personal uninformed beliefs of a small portion of Christianity is made into the measure of all truth including both science and Christainity. Thus both the Bible and all the data God sends to us from the Earth and sky is ignored in favor of what this one group has decided to believe.

Young Earth Creationism
Some people lie a lot and other sincere naive people simply believe them.

Young Earth Creationism and modern science are incompatible
Both Young Earth and Flat Earth groups seem to have taken an ancient worldview founded upon a perception of the world limited to a radius of a few thousand miles or years and tried to fit everything they see into that rather small sphere. There does seem to be a human capacity for refusing to see beyond the end of their own nose, so to speak.

But Ultraliteral interpretations of Genesis are unneccessary
Collins recalls the reflections of Augustine to show that Christian understanding of the Bible has never been so narrow as the YEC have tried to make it. Not only is a great deal of the Bible clearly not literal, but the Bible doesn’t even treat the things in Genesis as completely literal either. To the concern about liberal interpretations we can also say that ultrametaphorical interpretations of Genesis are also unneccessary – they are not made necessary by anything in science. Black and white treatments of such questions are product of dishonest rhetoric.

God as the Great Deceiver
The great deceiver is the devil. Creationism is only one of the ways in which theological stubborness can end up making the God you teach sound more like the devil than like Jesus. Would it not be a terrible waste and tragedy for Christians to throw away their greatest religious advantage in a living example of what God is really like in the person of Christ?

A Plea for Reason
Science is not a threat to Christianity, only a challenge for us to learn and understand more about the universe. The biggest threat to Christianity are those who equate it with ideas opposed to science.

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Interesting. Roger Scruton thought that many of us seek religion as a way to resolve the unclear/unknown. If that is true, fear is also likely another reason we don’t want to change our opinion. If it’s based on faith, how can we with any certainty re orient ourselves to an entirely different direction?

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Chapter 9 Intelligent Design: when science needs divine help
I would change the subtitle to, “when theists change science into rheoric for their beliefs.”
This follows the medieval standard which declares theology to be the queen of the sciences, and thus when science is no more than philosophy concerning the natural world. But modern science is something quite different than this, founded on a methodology which tests hypotheses with written procedures giving the same result no matter what you may believe.

What is Intelligent Design Anyway?
Collins’ answer to that question is basically two words, “irreducible complexity.” It is the claim that science cannot explain everything in biology. If true it would be the quantum physics of biology and not something scientists would accept without the same kind of irrefutable proof. Furthermore the movement, Collins explains, goes way beyond this to claim that

  1. Evolution promotes atheistic worldview and must be resisted by believers in God.
  2. Evolution is fundamentally flawed because it cannot account for the complexity of nature.
  3. There must have been an intelligent designer to provide the necessary components.

The first is a profound insult to the majority of Christianity who has accepted evolution, or even worse to those like myself who have come to Christianity from a scientific worldview and would not accept Christianity without evolution. Collins says because this not motivated by a scientific desire to understand life but a religious mission, the idea that this is a scientfic theory is no more than pretense – in short pseudoscience. Thus it is far more like the abuse of science made by atheists such as Dawkins and Dennett.

Besides consisting largely of a rehash of William Paley’s argument from design, the second is a God of the gaps sort of argument which is doomed to constantly retreat as scientific discovery advances. Not only is the logic of the basic theory irrefutable but it has been demonstrated conclusively that evolutionary algorithms are quite capable of feats surpassing human intelligence and design capabilities.

For the third, Collins only points to the dishonest nature of hiding God behind such terminology, but I have a much more fundamental objection. I think it amounts to a denial of any difference between living things and machines. To be sure, now that we can study the mechanisms employed by living organisms to accomplish so many things the similarity to machines is obvious. There is really only one difference. Machines are a product of design and can only do what their designers made them to do. Living organisms are a product of growth, learning, choices, and such self-organizing processes. The most we can say is they do not do this in a vacuum but in an environment which may include parents and teachers, and that is the role God should have rather than as a maker of machines.

Scientific Objections to Intelligent Design
“Since scientists are actually attracted to disruptive ideas, always looking for an opportunity to overturn accepted theories of the day, it seems unlikely that they would reject the arguments of ID simply because they challenge Darwin.” YES! In this the religionists are completely projecting their own motivations and way of thinking. Science really doesn’t work that way right down to the econmic motivations of individual scientists. Since their careers are made or broken by their abitility to contribute something new (it is even required for a PHD), they are driven from the get go to find something wrong with current theories and the ONLY reason they might seem dogmatic about certain things is because they already personally tried and tried to break those things themselves and prove them wrong.

“A viable scientific theory predicts other findings and suggests approaches for further experimental verification.” ID not only fails in this regard but is directly opposed, telling people to stop looking because there is no answer but “Goddidit.” ID is not just pseudoscientific rhetoric but anti-science. It provides “no mechanism by which the postulated supernatural interventions would give rise to complexity.” Collins complains that the suggestion by Behe that primitive organisms are preloaded with God’s plan for future organisms doesn’t work because it is unlikely to survive mutation rates. But this objection is easily answered by preknowledge on the part of God. Collins’ probably overlooks this because this kind of thinking is just as useless to science as the rest of ID and I can only say this simply cements IDs fundamental character as theology rather than biology.

Collins then goes through a number of the examples given by the ID proponents of irreducible complexity and shows that they have been subsequently revealed to be not irreducible after all. Such is the ultimate doom of all god of the gaps type argumments. These examples include human blood-clotting cascade, the eye, and bacterial flagellum. In these cases more recent discoveries have undercut the claims of irreducible complexity.

Theological Objections to Intelligent Design
In addition to the failure of the “god of the gaps” approach, Collins observes that “ID protrays the Almighty as a clumsy Creator, having to intervene at regular intervals to fix the inadequacies” of previous efforts. This objection seems closely related to the philosophical problem of suffering and the problems of bad design are not just found in the the past but in the present. It leaves one with a picture of a God which is either bumbling or malign and all of that goes away with evolution and the recognition that rather than being a product of design life is a matter of growth and learning.

The Future of the ID Movement
The challenge of the founders of ID who set down the conditions by which ID would be disproven have already been met, and thus one need only quote those founders themselves to establish the demise of ID quite conclusively. What then Collins asks of the search for harmony between science and faith? If seeking this harmony in the submission of science to religion has failed, then how about the submission of religion to science instead? This is not as bad as it might seem because despite their claims Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris are the voice of atheism not science. Unlike religion, science is already under some very strict guidelines not only about what it can claim but even what it must, however reluctantly, accept.

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Chapter 10 Option 4: Biologos - Science and Faith in Harmony

Like Collins I sought the truth of science and religion/Bible in parallel, but while Collins couldn’t imagine a conflict, I simply would not consider anything in religion that was in conflict with science. BUT my field of study wasn’t quite the hotbed of conflict that Collins’ was. And indeed I found even more reason to believe in God and a spiritual side to existence in my studies of physics.

What is Theistic Evolution
Collins lists 6 premises for theistic evolution. I would leave out the comment on probabilities in 2 since probabilities which cannot be calcuated are empty rhetoric. Number 4 is like saying that Christians require no supernatural intervention (no miracles). It is a weird thing to say. God intervenes as He chooses according to what He wants to accomplish. I would say rather that no breaking of the laws of nature were required, and any divine interventions (just like the miracles in the lives of Christians) can be dismissed as coincidence or statistical anomalies by the skeptics. But this doesn’t mean God did not play a role in bringing about those events. God created the world and us in it for an interactive reltionship. I suppose with 4, Collins is just trying to rule out the approach of Intelligent Design, that science cannot explain things. I certainly agree with that intent. Finally, I disagree with the idea in number 6 that a moral law distinguishes us from the animals or points to a spiritual nature. I also cannot rule out the possibility that the search for God also has a sound scientific explanation also. But despite these small quibbles I don’t think this significantly alters the conclusion that we can have a “plausible intellectually satisfying and logically consistent synthesis” between science and theism.

Critiques of Theistic Evolution
Many ways of thinking is an inherent aspect of religion and theology because there is no way to test any particular synthesis or resolution between the findings of science and religion any more than we can resolve the other issues of religious thought. But diversity of thought is not a fatal flaw any more than is the diversity of the genome. On the contrary, it is necessary for survival.

Collins comes up with the name Biologos as an alternative to “theistic evolution,” and the point is the acceptance of both roots biology and the Word, which according to John 1 is God. So I would say there is a definite link to Christianity and the Bible in this term. I like that Collins seeks to remove the anthropomorphism many see in the Biblical concept of “image of God.” But I obviously do not agree with his choice of absolute foreknowledge over open theism, which he invokes to answer the discomfort with God leaving things to chance. But I see no need to make God into a control freak any more than we should seek to be a control freak ourselves, for these make notoriously bad parents.

What about Adam and Eve
Collins basically leaves this as an open question. He quotes to us comments that C. S. Lewis made on the topic to show how open he was to all kinds of metaphorical treatments of different aspects of the story. He argues that is unreasonable to rest our position regarding evolution on something plagued with so much uncertainty and diverse thought. I cannot say that I find this leaving it up in the air approach to work all that well for me. Instead I have a pretty well defined position on the question of Adam and Eve as historical people chosen and made human by communication with God. But I will say that it is more important that I can find a resolution to this question than what my particular resolution may be.

Science and Faith: The conclusion really matters
The triumphant declarations of materialists/naturalists/atheists only makes me laugh, because I have to wonder how many of them like Collins and C. S. Lewis might simply change their minds later in life as they come to understand that these questions and issues are not quite so simple after all. But turning our back on science will do more harm than good. That is for sure.

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Collins begins the eleventh and final chapter of this book with a story from Nigeria. I can totally relate. For us intellectual types, to feel an actual experience of love is the greatest miracle for us. Compared to this, parting the Red sea and walking on water seem little more than pale stage magician tricks – irrelevant distractions to which our heart and amazement have become somewhat inured.

Making Personal Sense of the Evidence
Instead of Collins’ “Moral Law” it is language (substance of the human mind) which makes us different than any animals we have encountered and the means not only by which we can have a relationship with God but an inheritance of ideas from God as well to make us His children. Of course my reasons for belief are a little bit different than those of Collins (link above in the comments on chapter 3).

What Kind of Faith?
Here Collins seeks to narrow down this account of His religious search to a particular religion. He rejects Deism because such a God doesn’t seem to care enough about us. Just as I did, he became increasingly aware of his own inability to do even what he believed to be the right thing. In this widening gap he experience between himself and God came a realization that in the person of Christ, he could not only see God more directly but experience a personal relationship with Him. Collins had a similar reaction to mine concerning the resurrection and the atonement, and these were some of the last things of which I could not make any sense of in Christianity. But as should be clear by now, despite our many similarities we still think somewhat differently and so we found our way through these difficulties differently. And perhaps again, the point is that it is more important that such a rational explanation is possible than what that particular solution may be.

Evidence Demanding a Verdict
Collins takes the classic approach as presented by C. S. Lewis that you have to choose between whether Jesus was God as He claimed or a deciever, and so, simply being a great teacher isn’t an option. Unfortunately that rhetoric finds no sympathy with me because history is full of great teachers who said things that were terribly incorrect. So what we are talking about here is the divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity, which is another of my last difficulties to overcome in becoming Christian. And in my case, what convinced me was Phillipians 2:5-8. It was not just that this convinced me that the Jesus of the Bible was God, but the priorities inherent in this act which won me over to the belief in a God who would do such a thing as discarding power and knowledge to become a helpless human infant and grow up as one of us – choosing love over power. That was a God who I could believe in.

Seek and Ye Shall find
Collins resonates with me a great deal in his quote of the words of John Polkinghorne, another scientist like us coming to Christianity from the scientific worldview. Accepting science as the source of objective knowledge still leaves us with a realization that there is more to life and more to know even if we must accept that it is subjective and thus that a diversity of thought is an inherent part of it. Science, however successful it may be, is still just one way of looking at the world through a filter of mathematical glasses and must not be confused with a sum total of reality itself.

An Exhortation to Believers
Here Collins asks for believers to have some empathy for us scientific types and argues (with a quote of Copernicus) that science can be a kind of worship of the creator who made what the scientist seeks to understand. Collins also quotes Proverbs 19:2 to warn against misinformed religious fervor.

An Exhortation to Scientists
Here Collins appeals to those in science not to judge religion by the faulty examples of human beings who err in religion as they err in so many other things. Collins makes a quick attempt to deal with a number of objections which frankly do not justice to those difficulties. Certainly the problem of evil and suffering is one which could be the subject of an entire book by itself. Collins does a better job at addressing concern with the idea that science is insufficient in answering questions. However as a physicist rather than biologist I find this one somewhat amusing since we physicists have already had to accept this from the discovery of quantum physics.

A Final Word
“Seekers, there are answers to these questions.” Again this underlines the important fact that answers are possible without suggesting that we will all find the same answers to every question. LOL So Collins calls for “a truce in the escalating war between science and spirit.” This book is ultimately the testimony of a prominent scientist that “science is not threatened by God; it is enhanced.” And I can certainly testify that Collins is far from alone in this experience.

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Just reviewed this post, and a great summary and review by Mitchell. I need to read through the book again.

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Read it. Was not impressed. Learned nothing about God or the Bible, but learned quite a bit about genetics and evolution. Mr. Francis is definitely no theologian. Good scientist though.
He creates more theological problems than a reader may have had before, yet he takes no responsibility to solve them. No theistic evolutionist takes responsibility for the theological problems they create with their views. They’ll tell you how God could have done something, but if you want to match it up with what the Bible says, good luck!

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None of them in all the world? Respectfully, Benjamin, this is a strawman and one that we’ve heard countless times on this forum. It can only be a strawman unless you can present survey data for every evolution-supporting Christian who’s ever lived. You should also note that some (many?) here take exception to the term theistic evolutionist since it is often misused by objectors to evolution and weaponised as a slur against those who purportedly buy into the ‘religion’ of evolution.

If you want to understand how mainstream science can be reconciled with the biblical witness you might like to read The Lost World of Genesis 1 and/or The Lost World of Adam and Eve by John Walton. Or Understanding Scientific Theories of Origins: Cosmology, Geology, and Biology in Christian Perspective by Robert C. Bishop, et al. Alternatively, you could browse the Common Questions section of the BioLogos website.

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