Francis Collins is an eminent scientist who, as head of the Human Genome Project, led the monumental undertaking to sequence the entire human genome. Collins is also a Christian and he explains why he believes and how that relates to his life's work in the 2006 book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence For Belief.

Collins sets himself apart from most Christian apologists in a few ways. First, he doesn't see science as an opponent of religion; he insists that they answer different questions. Second, Collins agrees with the scientific consensus about evolution and he doesn't see it as a threat to religion. He spends a great deal of the book presenting the evidence for evolution and arguing in its favor. A third thing that makes Collins' apologetic different from the likes of Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel is that his case is not built on the Bible. He includes illustrative quotes and makes passing reference to the textual reliability of the Bible, but it's far from being central to his argument.

Collins dismisses a few other reasons for believing before getting to his evidence. The origin of life, long believed to be a question that science cannot answer, has been commonly claimed as evidence for God's existence. How did self-replicating life forms come into existence if God didn't breathe life into them? Science has made inroads toward solving this cosmic riddle, and Collins refuses to hinge his belief on a gap in our knowledge that may be closing.

He deals similarly with the claims of irreducible complexity by Michael Behe and other intelligent design spokesmen. Behe claims that certain structures and processes are so complex that they couldn't have evolved because if they were any less complex then they wouldn't provide any advantage to the organism. Nearly all scientists, including Collins, have seen the problems with Behe's idea. The examples that Behe gave have been debunked and there are no known irreducibly complex structures in biology.

After dealing with the origin of life and irreducible complexity, Collins turns to the more general reason for believing in God, called "God of the gaps." This phrase is used to describe a view of the relationship between science and religion. There are gaps in our scientific knowledge, like how life originated and how certain structures evolved. Believers often want to credit God for doing things that we don't yet understand. Humans have taken this approach for time out of mind. Before we understood rainbows, many cultures assumed they had a supernatural explanation. Those who take this view of God find that as scientific knowledge grows, God shrinks. For decades, thinking believers have discarded this view of God. Collins roundly rejects any evidence for God that is based solely on gaps in our knowledge.

So, scientifically, ID (Intelligent Design) fails to hold up, providing neither an opportunity for experimental validation nor a robust foundation for its primary claim of irreducible complexity. More than that, however, ID also fails in a way that should be more of a concern to the believer than to the hard-nosed scientist. ID is a "God of the gaps" theory, inserting a supposition of the need for supernatural intervention in places that its proponents claim science cannot explain. . . . Ultimately a "God of the gaps" religion runs a huge risk of simply discrediting faith. ID portrays the Almighty as a clumsy Creator, having to intervene at regular intervals to fix the inadequacies of His own initial plan for generating the complexity of life. For a believer who stands in awe of the almost unimaginable intelligence and creative genius of God, this is a very unsatisfactory image (Collins, 193).

So, after passing over the claims of creationists, intelligent design proponents, "God of the gaps" evidence in general and Biblical literalists, Collins presents his evidence for belief. It can be narrowed down to two reasons: 1) The universe had a beginning which seems to have been fine-tuned for life, and 2) humans all share a sense of morality.

Scientists have made reasonable explanations for what has happened in the history of the universe all the way back 13.7 billion years to mere microseconds after the big bang. But, it's true that science has been powerless to tell us anything about the universe before that. The singularity that must have existed before the explosion of the Big Bang defies all scientific laws. And as the universe expanded, conditions that would be friendly to life are a very unlikely outcome. This could be seen as evidence of a supernatural designer that brought the singularity into being and sent it out of the gate at the proper trajectory to ensure that life would be possible in a few billion years. Or it could be seen as another gap in what we know. Like other gaps, it's getting smaller all the time. And even if science never learns any more about the beginning of the universe, consider the implications of Collins' view. He says that God set up the conditions of the big bang almost 14 billion years ago, then didn't intervene until two or three thousand years ago, once humans had evolved fully and begun to found civilizations.

Collins second reason draws heavily from C.S. Lewis, who makes the universal human experience of morality his central reason for believing in God. Not only is this line of reasoning susceptible to the charge of finding God in another gap in our knowledge, but that gap has already all but vanished. Collins and Lewis are both correct when they claim that nearly all humans share an inborn sense of right and wrong. The next step in their reasoning is that if there's a moral law, then there must be a moral lawgiver. God is invoked as the absolute standard that our morality is measured against. I used to consider this a very convincing argument, but now I don't see how you get from the fact of shared morality to the conclusion of God's existence. It is one attempt to the question of where our sense of morals comes from, but is it the most probable?

The Darwinian evolution that Collins uses to to explain the complexity and diversity of organisms can also explain the behavior of humans and other organisms. As an example, take the maternal instinct. It's easy to see how any animal with a strong affection for its offspring would be more likely to pass its genes on. As much as I enjoy taking care of my daughter, I recognize that this paternal instinct is a product of evolution. That doesn't make my feelings any less significant to me. Morality could be seen in the same way. A group of evolving humans living a small group, as early humans did, would be more likely to survive than a neighboring group if they took care of each other. Kindness, generosity, forgiveness and bravery would all give a survival advantage. As humans spread around the world and diverged into different cultures, you would expect slight differences in this instinct to evolve but for the heart of the instinct to be shared by all humans. And this is exactly what we see. Does this make our shared morality any less real? I see no reason to abandon an instinct that has served us so well just because we've found out more about its origin.

Many people will find Collins' approach refreshing. Others will find it conciliatory or even blasphemous. For my part, I find it unconvincing.

More student writing gold:

"However due to my past academic experience has come back to hunt me."

"See I just lost my farther and he was and still is my road model."

Hi there! Long time no blog.. or internet. It was kind of refreshing to take a whole four days off.

So the weekend was great, but tiring, of course! By Thursday night I was burnt out from all the stuff I was doing during the week, so I took a big nap that evening, packed, and slept in on Friday. I got up around 10, was headed towards Carlsbad around 11, and checking in at my hotel at noonish. Luckily they let me check in early. I met up with Amy and her mom, cleared up a little misunderstanding about who was supposed to be working on flowers, and then we all headed out with Amy's aunts to Laurie the flower lady's home. Her home was completely awesome, with a great view of the ocean from her living room and deck. We spent the afternoon trimming flower stems and filling mason jars with bright yellow, pink, and orange daisies. Amy left early to get her nails down, so it was up to me to fight for her vision with a couple of the ladies who would have liked to arrange things a bit differently! That's okay, because the fight wasn't that hard. I just had to remind them that what I was asking for was what the BRIDE wanted, and they always backed down. More on that later.

In the evening I met up with the others from our office who were helping with the wedding, and we all headed over for the rehearsal. While the family rehearsed in the auditorium, we spent time in the banquet hall moving tables and chairs into position, setting up linens and decorative cloth on tables, and figuring out details for the next morning. We were rewarded for our work by a good dinner at Ryan's parents' (also awesome) house: lasagna, bread, salad, and strawberry shortcake. We had a fun time hanging out, although a couple ladies had a last-minute freak out about which tables to use at the head of the auditorium for flower arrangements, which sent my eye a-twitching for a bit, but I got over it. Back at the hotel, I ironed my dress for the next day and planned everything out in my head.

Saturday morning came all too quickly, and I was out the hotel door at 7:30, stopping by the grocery store for some last-minute supplies (including some super glue to re-attach the eagle at the top of the California flag, which had accidentally been knocked off when going under a door frame). I met up with Laurie (flowers) at her house to put together the bridal party bouquets and pack up the cars with all the wedding supplies. We successfully transported everything and were running around a lot all morning: setting up the front arrangements, rolling out the runner, setting out the mason jars, fixing ribbon to the floor to cover up an ugly red stripe, etc. When Laurie ran home to get a few more supplies, I snipped a bunch of daisies from the front arrangements (which they didn't want me to do) to affix to the runner and the family rows of chairs. We barely got it all together in time for the bridal party to arrive! Ruth and I went back to the hotel when we realized we had some extra time before the ceremony, so that was a nice breather moment. Back at the senior center, I was running around before the ceremony a lot, but thankfully we had a late start, and no crises occurred.

The ceremony was great, with equal parts sincerity and humor, just like the two people getting married. Our favorite parts were when Ryan asked for butter when trying to get Amy's ring on her finger, the couple's mistake in putting giant pieces of bread during communion (lots of chewing and laughter), and the great slide show at the end. Ric still doesn't know the couple very well, but after the ceremony and slide show, he turned to me and said, "I think I'm gonna like these two." That made me happy.

The reception started off rocky - we were running late, so the caterer decided not to start things up (no one told them to do that), so when the couple was ready for their food, they had to stand around waiting for it to get set up. Ric and I went over to the other room for tear down, and when I got back, a server came up to me all panicked telling me there were no bottle openers for the Martinelli's bottles. And she couldn't have mentioned this to anyone besides me? After borrowing Amy's uncle's knife with an opener, the toasts went off a bit late, but we made up for time by having cake ready pretty quickly after that. Add in some dancing, lots of laughs, lots of photos, and the garter/bouquet toss, and it was time for us to convert the hall back to its original state. Boy, we were busy! I think I left around 5:30 or 6pm, when everyone told me to leave because I'd done enough. I'm hoping the caterers finally cleared out, since they stayed long past when they were contracted to be there.

Anyway, I'm hoping all the little things that kept me and the other helpers running around weren't noticed by all of the guests, and hopefully they all had a great time! I know we did, even though we were pretty tired out.

Ric and I headed in to San Diego for dinner that night. The place we wanted to eat at had an hour and a half wait, so we ended up at a generic place that just happened to have pretty cool pizza. Sunday, we drove back home (too tired for our original plan of going to the zoo), reunited with Pip, took a good long walk (and saw a hilarious police chase - of a dog - which required four police cars and a lot of insane driving), and played MarioKart the rest of the night.

Monday, we slept in, shopped, and had a good meal at Ric's parents' house. It was a pretty relaxing day.

This week: catching up with life! We've got to do some packing, grocery shopping, and financial planning (yuck). Hopefully we'll have some fun in there too.

Pictures of the wedding (more preparation and reception than actual ceremony) are at Ruth's blog, and I'll try and get mine up soon.