Zeal For Truth

Part 3 of 4 - Faith in Science, Faith in God

Part 1 of this review may be found here and part 2 here.

The third main section of the book gets to the nitty-gritty of the current controversies that we hear so much about when Christians (or atheists) get together to talk about evolution and faith in a personal God.

Chapter 6 starts as an introduction and retells the story of Galileo who suffered under the church for daring to accept the Copernican idea of a heliocentric solar system. Collins’s point is that even though Ecclesiastes 1:5 actually says “The sun rises and the sun sets, and then hurries back to where it rises” that doesn’t mean we have to throw out either the Bible or science because it was discovered that the earth actually goes around the sun. Of course, his next point is that he thinks many Christians are doing just that when it comes to evolution.

Chapters 7-10 were the most interesting to me. They are a discourse on four different responses to the way people think about the theory of evolution and faith in God, with a chapter dedicated to each:

Chapter 7–Option 1: Atheism and Agnosticism (When Science Trumps Faith) Collins is not all that sympathetic with today’s aggressive atheists. He never speaks unkindly, but he comes down pretty hard on the likes of Richard Dawkins whom he thinks gives evolution a bad name. He points out that one of Dawkins’s favorite ploys when ragging on Christians is to set up a straw man which he then attacks with such relish that one wonders if there isn’t a personal, rather than scientific, agenda hidden in his attacks. After all, pure science would know better than to speak about a topic–the existence of God–that it cannot prove or disprove with its own methods. Collins points out that evolution has become the current touchstone of atheism after its own evolution starting with materialism in the Enlightenment, then rebellion against governmental-religious authority in the 18th century, to Sigmund Freud’s thinking that the idea of God is just wishful thinking. Collins does not put evolution in the same bucket with atheism though many Christians do.

Collins is somewhat more sympathetic to agnostics, granting that at least agnosticism is entirely compatible with evolution as a scientific theory. However, he thinks that many agnostics are that simply because they have been too lazy to make a full consideration of the evidence for and against a belief in God.

Chapter 8–Option 2: Creationism (When Faith Trumps Science) I will have to admit that this chapter may have been the most meaningful to me in some ways because I am one of many evangelical believers who was taught as a young child that if you don’t believe in a literal reading of Genesis 1 and 2, then you’re going to hell. Collins speaks to Creationists–specifically, Young Earth Creationists–with kindness and compassion and yet says their position is entirely untenable from a scientific point of view. He gets right to the crux of the matter when he says that Creationists first and foremost are serious about their faith and about the Bible, and that they are concerned that accepting non-literal interpretations of Bible would be the top of the slippery slope into disbelief. One very interesting point he makes is that the ultra literal interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2 has arisen in the last 100 years largely as a reaction to Darwinian evolution.

I consider myself to be a strong evangelical believer, and I have a scientific mind too (though I am not a trained scientists, just an armchair one). Therefore I found this quote rather striking, seeing myself to some degree (from page 177):

Young people brought up in homes and churches that insist on Creationism sooner or later encounter the overwhelming scientific evidence in favor of an ancient universe and the relatedness of all living things through the process of evolution and natural selection. What a terrible and unnecessary choice they then face! To adhere to the faith of their childhood, they are required to reject a broad and rigorous body of scientific data, effectively committing intellectual suicide. Presented with no other alternative than Creationism, is it any wonder many of these young people turn away from faith, concluding that they simply cannot believe in a God who would ask them to reject what science has so compellingly taught us about the natural world?

Chapter 9–Option 3: Intelligent Design (When Science Needs Divine Help) Collins points out that the Intelligent Design movement (ID) is only 15 years old and its emergence coincided with a series of judicial defeats to the teaching of creationism in US schools. Even so, Collins says that from his viewpoint as an evangelical believer and a biologist, the movement deserves a good look. Collins reviews the main ideas of ID, and talks quite a bit about Michael Behe’s work.

He ends up rejecting ID for reasons both scientific and theological. His scientific objects are that without a time machine, the idea that irreducible complexity was brought on by an intelligent creator is unverifiable. He then gives a few technical examples where irreducible complexity has actually later been proven to be reducible. Theologically, he rejects ID because it is a God of the gaps idea, where God is asked to step in in places where science has thus far failed. He also thinks that ID portrays God as a clumsy creator, having to intervene at times to fix up the work he started in the past but didn’t quite get right.

In summary, Collins says that “The warm embrace of ID by believers, particularly by evangelical Christians, is completely understandable, given the way in which Darwin’s theory has been portrayed by some outspoken evolutionists as demanding atheism.” Yet he rejects it.

Chapter 10–BioLogos (Science and Faith in Harmony) It was some years after becoming a believer that Collins came to the point where the shrill voices of the points of view of the previous three chapters persuaded him to grapple with the controversies himself. This time came when he was in the thick of studying genomes and observing how interrelated all living things were at a molecular level:

I found this elegant evidence of the relatedness of all living things an occasion of awe, and came to see this as the master plan of the same Almighty who caused the universe to come into being and its physical parameters just precisely right to allow the creation of stars, planets, heavy elements, and life itself.

His position is called theistic evolution, but he wants to call it BioLogos instead. (There may be problems with the term ‘theistic evolution’ but I doubt his new name will catch on.) He gives a list of six things that generally define a theistic evolutionist starting with an ex-nihilo creation and ending with humans who have a spiritual and moral nature.

He readily agrees that theistic evolution cannot prove that God is real–saying no logical argument can do that–but he finds this position the most satisfying way to be both a scientist and a believer in the Christian God. Again he takes up the matter of reading Genesis 1 and 2 as some kind of figurative language instead of as “an elementary textbook of astronomy, geology, biology and anthropology.” And while he does posit a non-literal reading of certain passages of scripture, he doesn’t go along with “liberal theology that eviscerates the real truths of faith.” He ends the chapter with “The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshiped in the cathedral or in the laboratory.”

Chapter 11 ends this section and is again more autobiographical. Collins relates stories of God’s work in his life and gives a more detailed personal testimony of his journey out of atheism into a personal faith in the Christian God who forgives sins.

Next week, the last part of this review which will cover his appendix on bioethics.