Reviews, Interviews, News, Commentaries, Excerpts, My Top 5 Books, Wilson's Bookmarks, Book AwardsCreation or Evolution? Yes!
Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, reconciles his Christian faith with scientific theory, including evolution, in The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press, 2006). Stan Guthrie, CT's senior associate editor, interviewed Collins.
How does evolution fit with your Christian faith?
[Evolution] may seem to us like a slow, inefficient, and even random process, but to God—who's not limited by space or time—it all came together in the blink of an eye. And for us who have been given the gift of intelligence and the ability to appreciate the wonders of the natural world that he created, to have now learned about this evolutionary creative process is a source of awe and wonder. I find these discoveries are completely compatible with everything I know about God through the Scriptures.
If evolution is true, don't atheists have a point?
No. To simply rule out of order any questions that go beyond the natural world is a circular argument. This leaves out profoundly important spiritual questions, such as why we are here, if there is a God, and what happens after we die. Those are questions that science is not really designed to answer. You have to look in another place, using another kind of approach. And for me that's faith.
Why did you write this book?
I encounter many young people who have been raised in homes where faith was practiced and who have encountered the evidence from science about the age of the earth and about evolution and who are in crisis. They are led to believe by what they are hearing from atheistic scientists on the one hand and fundamentalist believers on the other that they have to make a choice. This is a terrible thing to ask of a young person.
Some of ...
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Mike Adams
I saw this good question in another comment: "CT should run a retraction and apologize for running an article like this...what if you just gave someone an excuse to walk away from the faith?!" Of course Francis Collins never intended to cause any Christian to not believe in God. He is convinced evolution is a true fact, and he's trying to convince Christians it's not necessary to choose between scientific evidence and God. But what if someone, who all his life believed that God made humans in an instant a few thousand years ago, now realizes that maybe Francis Collins is right about evolution. Now instead of humans being created instantly and separately from other animals, humans are the result of 4 Billion years of evolution and are related to all other animals. Couldn't that shake someone's faith? If evolution is correct, was God necessary for all the life we see today? And if God is not necessary for something as complicated as life, why would He be necessary for anything else?
Felix
What about Adam & Eve? When did they happen?
Anthony
There will never be a time on this side of eternity where readers of the Bible bridge every gap between the world as we know it to be and the Divine mysteries. He or she who learns to be content in both worlds may well avoid some major pitfalls in this life. I do think it wise to drink at the well of sound science and also at the well of sound theology. Does not this require humility as well as itellectual integrity?