Book Review: Francis Collins's The Language of God

Here's a nice review I did of Francis Collins's book, The Language of God for Faith Today. I've offered some critical comments as well, in a longer review, principally because I think Collins dropped the ball on dealing with the claims of evolutionary psychology and the issues in modern genetics. But if what you want is a book for a teenager or young adult that shows that a prominent scientist can be a Christian, Collins' book is a good choice. The kid isn't going to know about stuff like that, not for years anyway.

Come to think of it, while I'm here, here's the review I did of Collins's book for ChristianWeek, which doesn't post my work online:

Is the language of God really in our genome?

by Denyse O'Leary

James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix pattern of our DNA, was the first head of the Human Genome Project. He was a man with little time for religion. Indeed, in 2003, he and his fellow helix discoverer Francis Crick took the opportunity of the 50th anniversary celebration of their historic discovery to attack religion. Watson recalled for the media that he stopped attending Mass at the onset of World War II, because "I came to the conclusion that the church was just a bunch of fascists that supported Franco." He also noted, "Every time you understand something, religion becomes less likely." (Telegraph, March 22, 2003)

Watson quit his post in 1992 and was succeeded by Francis Collins. In terms of religious faith, Collins has traced the opposite path. He has now written The Language of God (Free Press, 2006), explaining how he, an agnostic life scientist, came to believe in God.

Collins' parents were hippie freethinkers on a hardscrabble farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Life was fun and creativity flourished but, he recalls, "faith was not an important part of my childhood."A comfortable agnostic in university, he found little reason to question his disinterest in questions of faith until he entered medicine. There he had to confront not mere ideas about life, death, and suffering, but their reality on a daily basis.

As a 26-year-old medical student, he recalls, "I witnessed numerous cases of individuals whose faith provided them with a strong reassurance of ultimate peace, be it in this world or the next, despite terrible suffering that in most instances they had done nothing to bring on themselves." Then, an old woman asked him point blank what he believed and he did not know. But he determined to find out.

Unsurprisingly, Cliff's Notes on world religions did not help Collins much; they amounted to no more than a lot of information about what other people believed without the living examples that he had already seen for himself. So he confronted a local Methodist minister, who suggested C.S. Lewis'Mere Christianity. From Lewis, Collins first grasped the significance of the Moral Law: that instinctive sense we all have of right and wrong. This Moral Law, he decided, comes from God. It cannot be accounted for by the assertion that altruism helps the fittest to survive. (Indeed, it would be far easier to demonstrate the opposite.)

Collins' highly readable account of his conversion left me uneasy at times. The premise that a scientist can, after all, be a man of faith suffers from a key limitation: It implies that being a scientist gives one special insight into the experiences that are relevant to faith. But does it?

The apostle Paul certainly did not think so. He wrote, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." (Rom 1:20, NIV)

Without excuse? Yes. Even if we flunked Grade 10 science, we are without excuse if we do not see God's greatness in his creation. Ignoring "the glory of the immortal God," Paul goes on to warn, pagan hearts glorify natural impulses at best (Venus, Mars) or brute forces at worst (crocodile gods, beetle gods) (See vv. 21 23.)

Of course, science can be a way of worshipping the true God. Collins' comment on the completion of the Human Genome Project contrasts starkly with Watson's anniversary remarks: "For me, as a believer, the uncovering of the human genome sequence held additional significance. This book was written in the DNA language by which God spoke life into being. I felt an overwhelming sense of awe in surveying this most significant of all biological texts."

Okay, but Watson reads the same genome as Collins, and yet he does not believe. There is a way to understand this: Collins did not start his journey of faith as a result of anything he learned in the human genome, but because of what he learned from Christians facing death. He vowed to find the source of their spiritual power. And he who seeks finds. That said, Collins' book is lucidly and entertainingly written, and highly recommended for the science buff on your Christmas list.

Journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain (Harper: March, 2007).

How pro-Darwin Catholic biochemist Ken Miller lost favour - and you can too!

Bill Dembski noted that the inimitable PZ Myers has attacked Ken Miller, anti-ID Catholic poster boy, for thinking there is any evidence for theism.

I agree that PZ is having another junior moment, but it is nonetheless instructive.

National Center for Science Education's Eugenie Scott, who knows more about retailing crude Darwinism to middle American shopaholics than anyone, has insisted, “One clergyman with a backward collar is worth two biologists at a school board meeting any day!” (Yes, she really told Science and Theology News that in April, 2002. I would be curious to know if she would say the same thing in the same terms today.)

When I first started writing By Design or by Chance?"my recent book on why there is an intelligent design controversy in North America today, I found constitutional lawyer Phillip Johnson’s comments on theistic evolution (the point of view Miller espouses) illuminating. Johnson is the godfather of the ID guys, but don’t let that deter you. He wrote that it is culturally okay to say

As a Christian, I believe by faith that God is responsible for evolution.

but

It is emphatically not acceptable to say, "As a scientist, I see evidence that organisms were designed by a preexisting intelligence, and therefore other objective observers should also infer the existence of a designer."

because

The former statement is within the bounds of methodological naturalism, and most scientific naturalists will interpret it to mean nothing more than 'It gives me comfort to believe in God, and so I will.' The latter statement brings the designer into the territory of objective reality, and that is what methodological naturalism forbids.

Miller, alas, seems to have drawn some conclusions from believing in God that do not amount simply to joining a mob against ID - hence genuine Darwinists attack him.

But what intrigued me most about Johnson's analysis was his thoughts on the hatred directed against ID biochemist Michael Behe [break here]

Behe wrote, in Darwin's Black Box ,

For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that physicists say it is. I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it. Although Darwin’s mechanism—natural selection working on variation—might explain many things, however, I do not believe it explains molecular life.

That would seem to make him a theistic evolutionist. But as Johnson notes at the beginning of the passage quoted above, that is not what "theistic evolution" currently means:

The defining characteristic of theistic evolution, however, is that it accepts methodological naturalism and confines the theistic element to the subjective area of “religious belief.”

In other words, theistic evolution today means believing things for which there is no evidence. Behe's sin is that he thinks he has evidence. He is not supposed to have evidence; he is only supposed to reassure pious old ladies that no matter what is happening in the world of science, everything is just fine, just fine, just fine.

It would also help if he would wear fake hair and a slick preacher suit instead of having the fashion sense of a research biochemist. But First Things first.

As I like to say, no wonder there is an intelligent design controversy.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

O’Leary’s comments on Francis Beckwith, a Dembski associate, being denied tenure at Baylor.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

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