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| Book cover for "The Language of God" |
I recently read The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins (published in 2006) and surprisingly, I really liked it! This is a really good book! It gives Collins's perspective, as a scientist and Christian, and it's just very reasonable. It doesn't come across as "let's fight those atheists" or fearful of science. It's about his own reasons for leaving behind atheism and converting to Christianity, and it's about how evolution is just true and Christians should accept that, and creationism and intelligent design just ain't it, and how science and faith are compatible.
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Francis Collins
Collins was the director of the Human Genome Project. This was a team that sequenced the entire human genome, billions of DNA base pairs, which is pretty amazing. (The title, "The Language of God" refers to the idea that the DNA base pairs are the "language" that God used to create life.)
I've seen Christians make a big deal about how Collins is a Christian. The argument goes, see, Francis Collins is a Christian, and he's a famous scientist! So, our beliefs *are* legit and compatible with science! The assumption is that Collins holds all the same beliefs that the Christians who claim him as a symbol do. Turns out, this assumption is very wrong! All throughout this book, Collins comes across as thoughtful and reasonable, rather than holding on to dogmatic beliefs that we can't question and we just have to keep saying louder.
Case in point: evolution. A big chunk of this book is about how evolution is true and Christians should accept that. Collins discusses creationism, and talks about why it's wrong. He discusses intelligent design, and why it's wrong. And then he talks about theistic evolution, which is the position he holds.
I was totally surprised. I really had no idea what this book was about; I had no idea that Collins accepts evolution and I had no idea that he was openly advocating for Christians to accept evolution. Really, no idea. All those times that I've heard Christians say "look, Francis Collins" as if that proves that their beliefs are reasonable- wow, I really had no idea that he was out here telling Christians to accept evolution. In the Christian subculture I grew up in, we all knew that of course Christians do not believe in evolution.
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Creationism, intelligent design, theistic evolution
When it comes to DNA, Collins knows what's what, and this book talks about how you can compare the DNA of different animals, and you can see where they have identical sections, and where there's a section that has been changed by a mutation, and how this is all consistent with evolution's understanding of where different species of animals branched off from each other. This was really fascinating to read, and wow yes it is very good evidence for evolution.
Organisms have some sections of DNA that aren't used for anything (perhaps they had some function in some ancient ancestor)- and you can see identical strings of DNA in different organisms, yes, this same DNA that doesn't do anything, because that's what would happen if their common ancestor had it. How would you explain that if the animals were created separately by God? God gave multiple species of animals identical DNA subsections that don't do anything? Why???
And about those sections of DNA that don't do anything. I was struck by this quote from pages 187-188:
Core ID [intelligent design] theory, as outlined by [Philip] Johnson, also suffers by providing no mechanism by which the postulated supernatural interventions would give rise to complexity. In one attempt to address this, [Michael] Behe has suggested that primitive organisms might have been "preloaded" with all of the genes that would ultimately be necessary for the development of the complex multi-component molecular machines that he considers irreducibly complex. Behe proposes that these sleeping genes were then awakened at an appropriate time hundreds of millions of years later, when they were needed. Setting aside the fact that no primitive organism can be found today that contains this cache of genetic information for future use, our knowledge of the mutational rate of genes that are not being utilized makes it highly improbable that such a storehouse of information would have survived long enough to be of any use.
!!! This "preloaded DNA" is SUCH A THING in young-earth creationism. (Also a thing in intelligent design- this is from the section of the book where Collins is talking about why intelligent design is not right.) The way the creationists tell it, God created a small number of "kinds" of animals, rather than creating each species. If it was each species, there would be way too many of them to fit on Noah's ark. No, it must have been that God created 1 "kind" of feline, which later evolved into all the cats and lions and tigers, etc. And God created 1 kind of bat, that evolved into all the species of bats. And so on. This puts the YECs [young-earth creationists] in an awkward position, because isn't their whole thing about how evolution can't possibly be true because no way all those different species could evolve all those different traits, even if you had millions of years? And now they're telling us that all the lions and tigers and every species of cat came from a common ancestor which walked off Noah's ark 4000 years ago??? Yes, 4000 years, really.
But wait! The creationists will tell you that, while it's not possible that different species could have evolved just from random mutations (even if you had millions of years), it totally is possible that different species could evolve from information-rich DNA that God "preloaded" into the first animals that They created. Yeah, God created animals with a ton of DNA that didn't yet do anything, but would be activated by their descendants somewhere way down the line.
But Collins says, you know what happens to DNA that's not currently doing anything? It accumulates mutations. Because, if there's a mutation in that section of the DNA, well natural selection isn't going to get rid of it.
The reason I'm so struck by this is I don't think I've ever heard anyone bring up this point before. Creationists love to claim that God made the "kinds" of animals with extra information in their DNA so then they could diversify into different species. But it just doesn't work- if you have all this unused DNA, it's not going to just stay there intact and be passed down through the generations. It's going to accumulate mutations that make it useless. I don't know why I never realized this before.
Anyway. I love how this book is just like, evolution is just true. Look at this quote from page 99:
No serious biologist today doubts the theory of evolution to explain the marvelous complexity and diversity of life.
And from page 174:
For anyone familiar with the scientific evidence, it is almost incomprehensible that the YEC view has achieved such wide support, especially in a country like the United States that claims to be so intellectually advanced and technologically sophisticated.
And the book also has no patience for intelligent design. It calls it a "scientific dead end" because it doesn't make predictions. It talks about how biological phenomena believed to be "irreducibly complex" actually aren't. It calls ID a "God of the gaps" theory.
The part about "God of the gaps" is really interesting to me. I guess the argument I've always seen from Christians is "there *is* a God, and atheists are *wrong* because it's not possible for science to explain [some phenomenon], and hey stop accusing us of 'God of the gaps', this isn't 'God of the gaps' because God *actually did* this, and it *actually isn't* possible for science to explain it." Sort of drawing a line and defending it, and fearful that advances in science could totally invalidate our faith- and at the same time, picking fights with atheists, saying that atheists are so obviously wrong because all of their ideas to explain [whatever phenomenon] don't work.
"The Language of God" doesn't do any of that at all. Collins is totally fine with whatever science says, whatever evolution says. This book doesn't have the fearful/fighting tone of an apologetics book. The point that Collins is making is, there are some questions that science can't answer, because science only studies the natural world. Science can't tell you about morality, the meaning of life, if God exists, etc. But whatever science says about evolution or whatever, yeah, sure, we accept it. That's not the hill we are gonna die on.
Another criticism of intelligent design, from pages 193-194:
Furthermore, 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.
!!! Wow, I've never heard it put this way before. It's almost completely opposite from how proponents of intelligent design talk. Collins is saying that a Creator who could set up the universe such that complex life could arise through evolution, without the Creator needing to intervene at all, is greater than a Creator who has to keep intervening to add branches to the tree of life.
Almost like saying, a God who does miracles is not as great as a God who never needs to do miracles because They set up the universe to just naturally work the way They wanted it to.
Intelligent design advocates are always saying that animals/ bacterial flagellum/ etc are so complex, so amazingly complex, and that complexity points to a creator who personally designed them that way. And no way the mindless, random process of evolution/ natural selection could have made those complex features. But here in this book, we have this idea: doesn't it make the creator look even more amazing, to set up the universe such that all these complex biological features can arise through something as simple as natural selection?
(See also, this article from Joel Duff: Niagara Falls and the Limits of the Design Inference)
Or, we can put it this way: We don't expect to find evidence of God's supernatural intervention in the natural world, because They set it up so it's not necessary to intervene that much. Maybe to atheist readers this comes across as "if we find evidence of God's intervention, that's evidence that God exists, and if we don't find evidence of God's intervention, that's also evidence that God exists" but please don't take it that way; that's not what it's saying. It's not about evidence that God exists. The point of this is to tell Christians why it doesn't make theological sense to believe in intelligent design.
Here's something I've thought about miracles: Miracles must be rare, or else we would be able to collect enough data to then scientifically study them. Miracles are supposedly defined as being "against the laws of nature" but the "laws of nature" aren't some knowable thing written down in some cosmic instruction book that scientists are reading- all we know about the "laws of nature" is what we've figured out based on scientific observations and experiments. If God does any miracles at all (whatever that even means), They must do them rarely enough that it's not possible to collect data and discover an overall scientific pattern.
What if the way that God does "miracles" is so seamlessly woven into the natural workings of the world; what if God set up the universe intending that it can be scientifically studied, working in an orderly way defined by natural laws that humans can discover, rather than requiring haphazard miraculous intervention; what if the whole ID strategy- where we need to find extremely complex things and then shoot down all scientific explanations for how they could have come about- is totally misguided, a defense of a creator who's not very good at their job?
So anyway. The position that Collins holds is theistic evolution. I have a lot to say about that, so I'll write a follow-up post. Stay tuned for that.
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Moral law
In this book, Collins says that one of the things which was most convincing to him, on the question of whether God exists, is "moral law." Humans have a sense of right and wrong. Something in us knows that it's right to help others and not just look out for ourselves. Where does this sense of right and wrong come from? Does it come from God?
So, yes, I think so, yes. Personally, this is something that is very convincing to me. There *is* right and wrong, in some sense that transcends the natural world. Intuitively, I feel that God exists because, like, I'm very aware of having a conscience, and where did that come from if there's no God?
BUT ALSO, I know atheists have other explanations for this. The general idea is that there are benefits to altruistic behavior, from a natural selection perspective. For one thing, if you help your family members/ your offspring, they share your same genes, so this helps to propagate your genes. A family of people with genes which make them help their family members will thus be more likely to survive and reproduce. And for another thing, you can look at it from a sort of "iterated prisoner's dilemma" perspective, ie, if you're going to interact with the same people many times, it's in your best interest to cooperate with them. If it's known that you're cheating other people, your social group with ostracize you, and that won't go well for you.
So there are evolutionary benefits to helping others- specifically, people who share your genes, and people you're going to interact with again in the future. And maybe humans then developed psychological thought patterns that would cause them to behave in this way. Developing morality, and the idea that it's good to help people in general, even (especially?) people who can't pay you back. Our moral intuition is not an exact match for the categories of social interactions where there's a natural-selection advantage to helping people rather than screwing them over. But it's close enough, so it makes sense that humans' concept of morality came about because it *does* help us survive and propagate our genes.
I feel like this explanation is fine. If you're already an atheist for other reasons, the question of "but where did morality come from" is not really a problem. In "The Language of God," Collins mentions some of these naturalistic explanations, and argues against them, but I feel like he dismisses them too fast.
So basically, I have an intuitive feeling that my sense of right and wrong comes from God, and this feels to me like a very strong reason to believe in God. But I speculate that atheists have an intuitive feeling that God doesn't exist, and that it's silly to say that "God did this." Since it's impossible to know one way or the other if a god exists, whatever conclusion you come to will depend a lot on your "intuitive feelings" about what seems to make sense.
So anyway. Moral law. I personally feel like this is really good evidence of God existing. But there are natural explanations for where morality came from, so like, you don't *have* to believe in God just because of this.
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Questions that science can or can't answer
So, as I said, the overall tone of this book is just accepting that the scientific consensus is right, and not being afraid of that. I like this, and I don't think I've seen this perspective explained like this before. I'm sure there are lots of Christians who just accept evolution, and it's not a big deal, but they don't talk about it, so I hadn't seen a whole overarching explanation for what such a perspective would look like. (I mean, *I'm* a Christian and I accept evolution- more on this in the follow-up post, I guess.)
But there are questions science can't answer, because science is just about studying the natural world. It can't answer questions about what we *should* do, or the meaning of life, or whether there is a spiritual world. The book mentions famous atheists (like Dawkins) who claim that because of science, there's no need for God, and Collins says this isn't right, because there are these areas which science doesn't touch at all.
In my experience with evangelicalism, we were very much *not* okay with this idea that religion and science can just be separate things, asking separate questions about the world, and therefore not in conflict. No, we believed that whatever the bible said was true, and the bible very much does say things about the natural world. And that's why we had to argue against evolution, among other things.
The book kind of touches on this a little bit, about how the creation stories in the bible should be read as allegorical rather than literal. Yeah since I'm already fine with that (ie I don't believe the creation stories in the bible are true stories), that's fine, I didn't really want to read a detailed explanation for why Christians are allowed to believe the creation stories are not literally true. So I liked how it was briefly mentioned but not too much detail, because that wasn't the point of the book. But I know that a lot of Christians wouldn't be okay with this.
Like, I just want to be very clear, this idea that religion and science are not in conflict because they are for separate purposes, so we can just accept whatever science says and we don't need to fight it, maybe it comes across like a nice convenient answer- but oh my, from an evangelical perspective, it is very much not. From an evangelical perspective, them's fightin' words.
And I'm not sure I totally buy it... I *do* think we should accept what science says and not be afraid of it, but also I think if the spiritual world is real, there should be implications in the physical world. Like, more implications than just teaching us about morality.
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From theism to Christianity
There's also a section in the book where Collins talks about how he ended up converting to Christianity. Initially he just believed there's a God, and converting to Christianity was a separate step after that. The book briefly talks about the biblical accounts of Jesus' life being reliable, but it doesn't go into too much detail. I liked that- I liked how the book was about his own personal reasons for being a Christian, but it wasn't like "we're gonna convince all the readers." That wasn't what the book was about. The part where it wanted to convince the readers was the part about how evolution is obviously true.
But anyway I liked this part, from page 225:
[C. S.] Lewis was right. I had to make a choice. A full year had passed since I decided to believe in some sort of God, and now I was being called to account. On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains during my first trip west of the Mississippi, the majesty and beauty of God's creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ.
I know that feeling, just being overwhelmed and the only response that makes sense is to worship Jesus. This probably sounds really cheesy to my readers who are not Christians. But yeah I read that part of the book and I'm like, wow, I love this, this is exactly what it's like.
The book also says it's not trying to get readers to convert to Christianity, because this has to be your own personal journey. From page 227:
Through my own search, Christianity has provided for me that special ring of eternal truth. But you must conduct your own search.
Love that. Collins is an expert in DNA, and one can see in the DNA of different organisms that they must have come from a common ancestor. And he has thought deeply about how to understand this scientific reality from a Christian perspective. He knows what he's talking about there. The parts of the book which speak most strongly are the parts about evolution being true, and creationism and intelligent design being embarrassing ideas that Christians should get away from. The book touches on a bunch of other topics, like the problem of evil, etc. But my take on it was, he's thought about all these things, and he's giving his opinion on them, but he isn't taking the "obviously I'm right and atheists are all wrong" stance that apologetics books usually take.
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Atheism
But okay, there is a chapter about why atheism doesn't make sense as an answer to the question about whether faith is compatible with science. And there's this on page 231:
It is hoped that the arguments presented within this book... will convince you that of all the possible worldviews, atheism is the least rational.
??? I don't like this; I don't think atheism can be dismissed so easily like this. I think there are a lot of good reasons to be an atheist.
Also, "the least rational"??? I guess when I think about the vastness of the universe, the idea that there's nothing else out there, there's no spiritual world above all this- it feels absurd to me. Yeah, intuitively, the idea that there's no God out there, that it's just rocks floating in the cold expanse of space, to me it doesn't seem right. (Looking forward to atheists in my comment section taking issue with me characterizing atheism as "it's just rocks floating in the cold expanse of space.")
But then compare that to religion. Okay, so I feel like there must be some kind of spiritual world, so naturalistic atheism isn't right. But what are the odds that any of the religions got it right? What are the odds that any of the religions have come anywhere close to getting it right? How can we, as humans on one specific rock floating through space, think we can make any correct claims about what god(s) exist? (Looking forward to religious people in my comment section taking issue with me characterizing religion as "humans on one specific rock floating through space, thinking we can make claims about what gods exist.")
So probably all of us are wrong. So how can we say which of these wrong ideas is "the least rational"? I would hope that people's beliefs (or lack thereof) at least lead them to "love your neighbor as yourself." That's what actually matters.
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Cloning and bioethics
There's a lengthy appendix at the end of the book, where Collins discusses some bioethics issues. He talks about stems cells- embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells, stem cells from somatic cell nuclear transfer (ie, the cloning process that was used to create Dolly the sheep), and the ethical questions raised by all of it.
He mentions religious people who believe "life begins at conception" and therefore strongly oppose anything to do with embryonic stem cells. But, the book digs deeper. What about IVF? IVF also leads to embryos being destroyed- are people consistently opposing embryonic stem cell research and also IVF, or are they making some kind of exception that says IVF is okay? Also, what about identical twins? At the moment of conception, there is 1 embryo, that later divides into 2, which become identical twins. How does this fit into the "life begins at conception" view? Seems it has to be more complicated than "life begins at conception." The book mentions some have argued that life begins when the embryo develops the "primitive streak" (which later becomes the spinal cord). There's not really an obvious point, from a scientific perspective, for where in the process of conception/fetal development "life begins."
And also, we know that it is possible to clone animals by taking a cell nucleus from some other cell in the adult animal and inserting it into an egg cell that has had the nucleus removed. If we do this with human cells, should we say this is "alive" and "sacred" the same way that an embryo formed from an egg and sperm is? That doesn't make sense, since no one thinks some random cell in your body has sacred worth like a human life, or that an egg cell does either. Well then is it at the point where it gets implanted in a uterus that it becomes "sacred"?
Note that this cloning process- where you do the somatic cell nuclear transfer and then implant it into a uterus to try to get an actual cloned animal- has a high rate of miscarriage, infant death, and long-term health problems. The book says that all the experts agree it would NOT be ethical to do this (uterus implantation of the resulting cell) with humans. But probably would be good to do the part where you can get stem cells from it for medical treatments.
I really liked this section because it wasn't just "as Christians we are required to believe 'life begins at conception' and that's that." It asks thoughtful questions like, what does that really mean, and does that make sense, and what about this or that situation, etc. It's about actually thinking it through, rather than taking sides in a culture war.
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Is this an apologetics book?
So when I found this in my pile of unread books, I was like "is this another apologetics book? Why did I buy this?" But then I read it and I actually really liked it!? So, here's a question: Is this an apologetics book?
Well, the main point of this book is that science and faith are compatible. And a big focus is on evolution, and how Christians *should* accept evolution, and not believe in other explanations like creationism or intelligent design. To some extent it does touch on a bunch of other apologetics questions, but in my opinion the intention was not to go into enough detail to change people's minds, but just to kind of give his opinion on them. To show these are questions that thoughtful Christians think about.
Is this book going to convince any atheists to believe in God? LOL. No. I mean, okay, I think one of the target audiences for this book is people who kind of want to be interested in spiritual things, but they've been told that religion is just for people who are gullible and reject science- so the point of the book is to tell them that faith and science can be compatible. Yeah, I think the book can be effective for that audience. But for readers who are atheists and are content with being atheists, this book isn't really saying anything that's going to have any effect on them. And it doesn't seem like it's trying to. It's not like the typical apologetics book, which is all about "wow the atheists are so wrong, here are their arguments, let's shoot them all down, wow they got nothing, wow so embarrassing for them." (See, this is why I don't like apologetics as a genre, because it's all about being dishonest and misrepresenting what atheists say.)
But this book was about, science and religion are compatible. It wasn't like, "I'm right and everyone else is wrong"; it was about how you can be a Christian and accept science. To me, it didn't come across like "you have to be a Christian"- just that you can.
I guess YMMV on this- maybe some readers read this book with the assumption that it's an apologetics book and it's about "I'm right and everyone else is wrong" and they're able to read the whole thing through that lens. But I felt like it was very different from an apologetics book, and it wasn't what I expected.
The title and subtitle, though- "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief." It sounds like it's going to be about convincing us to believe in God. I wonder if it was given this title, which doesn't really match the content of the book, so it could be marketed to people who are interested in apologetics books.
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Conclusion
This book is a reasonable and thoughtful perspective on being a Christian and scientist. It wasn't like, we have to hold to all the culture war points, we're right and those atheists are wrong.
I was so surprised about how a big chunk of this book argues in support of evolution. Collins doesn't seem to have any patience for creationism or intelligent design- I don't think I've heard a perspective like that before. Especially the strong stance he takes against intelligent design- I really did not expect that.
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Related
Just reading an apologetics book and asking "why are we doing this?"
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