How Unraveling the Human Genome Makes God Plausible...Scientist

Once upon a time, I was an atheist. My argument against God's exitence, in retrospect, went something like this:

Science shows us how life came into being and approximately when. Therefore, there is no God.

Of course, my conclusion didn't follow from my premises and the entire argumment, of course, proved nothing.

So far as I can tell, this is the argument against God advanced by many who claim to be either atheists or agnostics.

Yet, history is filled with examples of brilliant scientists who also believed in the existence of God. Awed by the elegant admixture of complexity and simplicity that they saw in the world, thrilled by the "thoughts they thought after God," many scientists have looked at creation and come to echo the words of the Old Testament poet: "The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork." (Psalm 19:1) Many scientists today believe in God as well.

Add Francis Collins, the director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute, to their number. Notes Collins, who has a new book called The Language of God coming out in September, "“One of the great tragedies of our time is this impression that has been created that science and religion have to be at war."

In a Sunday Times of London interview, Collins explains that uncovering the human genome gave him a “glimpse at the workings of God."

“When you make a breakthrough it is a moment of scientific exhilaration because you have been on this search and seem to have found it,” he said. “But it is also a moment where I at least feel closeness to the creator in the sense of having now perceived something that no human knew before but God knew all along.

“When you have for the first time in front of you this 3.1 billion-letter instruction book that conveys all kinds of information and all kinds of mystery about humankind, you can’t survey that going through page after page without a sense of awe. I can’t help but look at those pages and have a vague sense that this is giving me a glimpse of God’s mind.”

Collins believes that evolution is simply a mechanism which the God revealed in the Bible used to create life, a belief shared by millions of Christians and recently advanced by the Vatican.

The Times article explains how Collins came to faith in God:

Collins was an atheist until the age of 27, when as a young doctor he was impressed by the strength that faith gave to some of his most critical patients.

“They had terrible diseases from which they were probably not going to escape, and yet instead of railing at God they seemed to lean on their faith as a source of great comfort and reassurance,” he said. “That was interesting, puzzling and unsettling.”

He decided to visit a Methodist minister and was given a copy of C S Lewis’s Mere Christianity, which argues that God is a rational possibility. The book transformed his life. “It was an argument I was not prepared to hear,” he said. “I was very happy with the idea that God didn’t exist, and had no interest in me. And yet at the same time, I could not turn away.”

His epiphany came when he went hiking through the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. He said: “It was a beautiful afternoon and suddenly the remarkable beauty of creation around me was so overwhelming, I felt, ‘I cannot resist this another moment’.”

And what about my old arguments against God?

Collins believes that science cannot be used to refute the existence of God because it is confined to the “natural” world. In this light he believes miracles are a real possibility. “If one is willing to accept the existence of God or some supernatural force outside nature then it is not a logical problem to admit that, occasionally, a supernatural force might stage an invasion,” he says.

The fact is that while science can open one to the probability that behind creation there is a Creator, one can only believe in this God by being open to His revelation of Himself. This is precisely what Christians believe happened when God invaded our world in the Person of Jesus Christ:

No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. (John 1:18)

[Thanks to Hugh Hewitt for linking to this piece.]

[See my series on Why I Believe Christianity is True:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six]

[Thanks to Mark Congdon for linking to this post.]