Zeal For Truth

Part 2 of 4 - The great questions of human existence

Part 1 of this review may be found here.

Part 2 covers chapters 3-5. Chapter 3 talks about the origins of the universe. Collins covers a number of scientific principles of cosmology, but with language that, for the most part, even an ordinary old lady can understand (that’s me). He states that while at the beginning of the 20th century most scientists assumed a universe with no beginning and no end, now it is assumed that the universe indeed did have a beginning. Of course, the scientists don’t call it ex-nihilo creation, they call it The Big Bang and have calculations to say it happened about 14 billion years ago.* Collins makes the point that the Big Bang Theory cries out for a God explanation, especially when the scientists try to talk about what came before the Big Bang. Collins gives a very interesting quote from agnostic astrophysicist Robert Jastrow:

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

Chapter 4 is entitled Life on Earth, and it was, in my opinion, the least satisfying of the chapters. Collins firmly holds to the current scientific thinking that the universe was created (ex-nihilo) about 14 billion years ago and that the age of the earth is about 5 billion years. (These numbers come from dating rocks, moon rocks and meteorites using radioactive chemical dating methods which, of course, I don’t know very much about.) He then says that microbial life started on earth somewhere around 3.8 million years ago–microbes that could store information, self-replicate, and evolve.

Then he asks the obvious question: How did self-replicating organisms arise in the first place? Collins answers the question like this: “We don’t know. But we do know that it seems utterly improbably to have ‘just happened.’”

At this point all of us Christians are saying, “Well, God did it, of course.” This is the point in Collins’s discourse that seems a bit odd to me–he very much believes that God created life, but he is loath to give any hints as to how He did it. Also, at this point he takes a little swipe at the Intelligent Design people because he says their explanations are too much of the “God of the gaps” type–where Christians just say “God did it” in order to fill in any gap of understanding that they might have. (More about his take on ID in Chapter 9.) Chapter 4 also talks about fossils, Darwin, and then waxes eloquent about seeing God’s handiwork in DNA. (The rest of us non-microbiologists have to be satisfied to see it in flowers.)

Chapter 5 starts out autobiographical again as Collins tells about the early days of DNA sequencing and how thrilling it was for him to discover the faulty DNA sequence that causes cystic fibrosis. He then tells about scientists arguing whether trying to map the entire human genome was a good idea or not, and spending an afternoon in prayer asking God’s guidance as to whether he should accept the directorate of the entire Human Genome Project. As a side story he tells about the heated debates about whether the information about the human genome should be kept as open source or whether it should be patentable. The chapter ends with a detailed study about the interrelatedness of all living things, pointing out that the DNA between a human and a chimpanzee is 96% identical.

Next week: Faith in science, faith in God

*The topic of a literal vs. nonliteral reading of Genesis is discussed in a later chapter.