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ISBN: 0743286391

"The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief" by Francis Collins

Excepts from powells.com about the author and his book:

Publisher Comments:
Dr. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, is one of the world's leading scientists. He works at the cutting edge of the study of DNA, the code of life. Yet he is also a man of unshakable faith in God and scripture. He believes that God cares about us and can intervene in human affairs — on rare occasions, even miraculously. Collins has personally discovered some of the scientific evidence for the common descent of all living creatures, even though he repudiates the materialist, atheistic worldview argued by many prominent Darwinists.

In short, Dr. Collins provides a satisfying solution for the dilemma that haunts everyone who believes in God and respects science. Faith in God and faith in science can be harmonious — combined into one worldview. The God that he believes in is a God who can listen to prayers and cares about our souls. The biological science he has advanced is compatible with such a God. For Collins, science does not conflict with the Bible, science enhances it.

About the author
Francis S. Collins is one of the country's leading geneticists and the longtime head of the Human Genome Project. Prior to coming to Washington, he helped to discover the genetic misspellings that cause cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, and Huntington's disease.

INTRODUCTION BY DR. SCHULLER: I have never been more honored to have a guest in this pulpit than Dr. Francis Collins, unquestionably one of the greatest scientists alive in our world today. I think we first met when we were elected into the American Academy of Achievement. And he has been my guest here before and at that time he was commissioned to lead one of the greatest projects in human history, and that was to list all of the genes in our human system. And he said at the time, if I put them all on paper it would be a book starting at the floor and going up to the ceiling. He succeeded and for years one of the great scientists. He was raised in a home that was not a believing family. They did not believe in God. He majored, I believe, in undergraduate work in chemistry, went on to Yale to earn his PhD. in chemistry, then he went into medical school and while he was in medical school he became a believer in God where he had been an atheist all the years before.

And if you want to really challenge or understand atheism versus belief just remember, believe in the man who believed in atheism and then became a believer. I’ve never read a book like the book that’s coming out now. This book is called “The Language of God: a Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief,” by Francis Collins.

SCHULLER: Well it’s such a great book because it’s so intelligent. God gave you a great brain and you used it and He fed thoughts into it and here you are. And you finished the project in naming the genes; right?

COLLINS: That book you talked about that would stretch from the floor up actually through this beautiful facility is now all been laid out, all about 3.1 billion letters of our own instruction book.

SCHULLER: Phenomenal.

COLLINS: And it is a phenomenal transition from not knowing that information for all of human history to now we have it and the promise for that, for transforming the practice of medicine, giving us insights into the causes and cures of disease is unlike anything we’ve ever had before.

SCHULLER: Changing the history of health care.

COLLINS: We need to do that don’t we. I mean we are seriously in a circumstance where we have to, we have to figure out how to change our mindset from treating far advance disease when we don’t quite know what to do anyway to preventing disease and if this ability to read our own instruction book and use that information for medical benefit is unlike anything we could ever have before.

SCHULLER: In the book you talk about the big bang.

COLLINS: I do.

SCHULLER: You believe in it?

COLLINS: I think the evidence is very strong for a single flash of light and energy that started the whole universe.

SCHULLER: Fraction of a second everything appeared?

COLLINS: Yes, out of nothingness, so you know as a naturalist, people have trouble with that. As a believer that was God, I can’t imagine nature created itself.

SCHULLER: And what’s the big crunch, I never heard of that until I read it in this book.

COLLINS: Well there are debates about the expanding universe, which physicists tell us is the case; everything is sort of receding from everything else out there in space. Will it go on receding forever, or will it at some point, slow down, stop and start coming back together? I don’t think we have to worry a lot about it; it’s a bit far off in the future. None of us will be here to watch that happen although I hope we will be watching from another address.

SCHULLER: You believe in eternal life?

COLLINS: I do.

SCHULLER: Why?

COLLINS: Because I believe in God the Creator and I believe His word. That was not always so.

SCHULLER: You believe in the Bible?

COLLINS: I absolutely believe in the Bible. If the genome is the most wonderful biological book of life, the Bible deserves reference even more as the spiritual book of life and I find no incompatibility between those two world views: the spiritual and the scientific. In fact, I think they’re entirely in harmony and it breaks my heart when you hear from shrill perspectives on either end of the current debate that if you’re a scientist you can’t be a believer or if you’re a believer, you can’t trust in science. I am both of those things. I find that enormously satisfying. I find that doing science is also a way of worshipping God Almighty.

SCHULLER: How did you come to such a strong faith out of atheism? I mean, by the time you came out you had already gone through undergraduate work, right?

COLLINS: Yes.

SCHULLER: And probably your PhD work?

COLLINS: Yes.

SCHULLER: And now you’re in medical school?

COLLINS: Yes.

SCHULLER: And you become a believer, how did that happen?

COLLINS: What happened there? Well my atheism was a convenient one and I think that’s often the case, particularly for young people. It was easier for me not to have to answer to anyone but myself. I kind of like that concept. It was a willful blindness to considering any of the arguments in favor of faith and I didn’t have a foundation to convince me otherwise. So I became an atheist, I was pretty obnoxious about it at that point. You wouldn’t have enjoyed having lunch with me at that point because I would’ve been determined to show you how belief was really just a lot of superstition.

But then I went to medical school and I watched people in very real situations who were suffering from very real diseases, not of their own making and I saw what a rock of strength many of them had in their faith and that puzzled me. And when one of my patients, a wonderful woman, I was taking care of one afternoon in North Carolina turned to me and said, what do you believe? I realized I didn’t quite have an answer. And I realized I’m a scientist you know, I’m supposed to make conclusions after considering the evidence. I’ve never looked at the evidence. I better get out there and learn more about faith so I can be sure I don’t believe it. Well watch out if you ever encounter that particular plan, it has a way and it did for me, of changing things utterly because as I set about to try to disprove faith I became award that the logic of the matter was much more consistent with the existence of God than with Him not being real. And then I read the pages of the Bible, I learned about the historical figure of Jesus Christ and after a couple of years of running as fast as I could from the hound of heaven, I got caught and I gave my life to Jesus Christ and I’ve been there ever since.

SCHULLER: When you got there, when you got there was there a moment when you prayed a personal prayer?

COLLINS: Yes.

SCHULLER: Can you tell us? Or is it too private?

COLLINS: No I’m happy to tell you. I was on a trip to the northwest. I had never been there before. I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains. I rounded a curve and in front of me was this incredible scene of a frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, the beauty of that moment and as I had been struggling so intensely particularly in the preceding few days about whether to make this decision or not, overwhelmed me. I felt God really was challenging me, speaking to me saying, you really shouldn’t put this off any longer. I put it off about another 18 hours. The next morning I fell on my knees in the dewy grass of Washington State and I gave my life to Christ.

SCHULLER: I cannot think of another person who intellectually and emotionally I admire or respect more than you. It’s because of your honesty; you just didn’t come out, read a book and said pray this prayer or answer these questions. It’s an honest, authentic evolution with integrity and intelligence, it’s fantastic. Is there life on other planets?

COLLINS: We don’t know and we may some day have some data to support yes or no answers. Right now we don’t have any but I can say this, if God and His wisdom in addition to creating life on this planet, had also a plan for life in other places that wouldn’t shake my faith one bit.

SCHULLER: I like that answer, that’s where I am. You know Martin Luther said if I was God the world treated me the way the world’s treated God, I’d have kicked the whole thing to pieces and started over again. But anyway.

COLLINS: Thank goodness God is more loving than we can ever imagine.

SCHULLER: Has it changed your emotional structure since you became a believer?

COLLINS: Absolutely.

SCHULLER: Cause that’s where I’m into.

COLLINS: Yes as an atheist I was harsh, I think, in my opinions about many things. I was frankly selfish, looking my own way trying to figure out what would make my desires get met. God fills your spirit, fills your heart and you have the ability to step beyond that. God gave all of us this moral law, this knowledge of good and evil, but as a believer you get the chance to be more acutely aware and to feel a less stronger compulsion, but in the process this isn’t a burden, this is a joy. God’s not in the business of incarceration, He’s in the business of release.

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