I finally got around to finishing Francis Collins’ book, The Language of God. And to be honest, I was left feeling a little disappointed. Collins is obviously a great scientist. He was the head of the Human Genome Project and he has made advances in understanding the causes of diseases such as cystic fibrosis and Huntington’s disease. The subtitle of the book is A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Ultimately, I found the arguments Collins gives to be unconvincing. He presents a couple arguments from the work of C.S. Lewis.
One argument that is given is the argument from moral law. It is argued that there could be no social or evolutionary explanation for this and therefore there had to be a God that gave us morality. Collins claims that ”the concept of right and wrong appears to be universal among members of the human species.” But this simply isn’t supported by current research:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5733638.ece
Besides this, Collins is guilty of the “God of the gaps” fallacy. Collins does not think that there is a satisfactory social or evolutionary explanation for morality, therefore there must be a supernatural explanation. This is funny since Collins himself argues against the God of the gaps reasoning when dealing with creationism:
A word of caution is needed when inserting specific divine action by God in this or any other area where scientific understanding is currently lacking. From solar eclipses in olden times to the movement of the planets in the Middle Ages, to the origins of life today, this “God of the gaps” approach has all too often done a disservice to religion (and by implication, to God, if that’s possible). Faith that places God in the gaps of current understanding about the natural world may be headed for crisis if advances in science subsequently fill those gaps. Faced with incomplete understanding of the natural world, believers should be cautious about invoking the divine in areas of current mystery, lest they build an unnecessary theological argument that is doomed to later destruction.
Another argument that Collins gives for the existence of God is that people have a deep desire or longing for God and whenever people desire something, there always exists something to fulfill that desire. For example, if one is hungry, then there is food to satisfy that hunger. But why should this hold true for all of our desires? Collins doesn’t say and I find this completely unconvincing. Surely we could have wants and needs for things which could never be satisfied.
Collins also provides us with the fine-tuning argument. The idea here is that the physical constants in our universe just happen to be such that if any one of them were even slightly different, life would not exist. It seems as if these fundamental constants were “fine-tuned” to bring about life. I find argument to be quite interesting and we should discuss this further in due course. But even if this argument does work, this would only give us a deistic God, a God that set the universe in motion and then left it to function on its own. But Collins wants more than this. He wants a personal God that is involved in peoples lives, the God of the bible.
So what is Collins case for a Christian God? He give us Lewis’ Trilemma, the Lord, liar, or lunatic argument. He quotes Lewis:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Now first of all, some will say that Jesus never actually claimed to be God. Whatever, let’s assume Jesus made these claims. But to say that Jesus, therefore, had to be either Lord, liar, or lunatic is to make a false dichotomy. If Jesus was not God, then he was saying something that was false. So either he knew that it was false, in which case, he was a liar. Or he didn’t know that it was false, in which case, he would have been a lunatic. The problem is that these options are extremes. People make mistakes. People exaggerate. Either of these options would perfectly reasonable to accept. It is also perfectly reasonable to accept some teachings while rejecting others.
Collins then goes on to argue that evolution and theology can exist harmoniously together. This was the main reason why I bought this book. I wanted to see how he thought this was possible.
These are his premises:
- The universe came into being out of nothingness, approximately 14 billion years ago
- Despite massive improbabilities, the properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life
- While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, once life arose, the process of evolution and natural selection permitted the development of biological diversity and complexity over very long periods of time
- Once evolution got under way no special supernatural intervention was required
- Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes
- But humans are also unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanation and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the Moral Law (the knowledge of right and wrong) and the search for God that characterizes all human cultures throughout history.
I object to his last premise, but other than that, it is simply the idea that evolution is true and that evolution is the method that God used to create the world. There are a couple issues coming from the theistic side that I would have liked him to have addressed. First, if evolution is true, how does the doctrine of original sin come in to play. And second, where does the soul come from. Only humans are supposed to have souls, right? Well what happened? Did God come in and insert the soul somewhere along the line between the Australopithecus and Homo? He doesn't say.
My responses to your last post:
“You still didn't address my accusing you of setting up the subject so only your view can be considered”
Sorry?
“Please don't cite Wikipedia and be completely serious about it.”
All I did was give you a definition and I thought that was a pretty fair definition of the term.
“How many times do we hear in the news, "Scientists say..." or "Science has found..." and it's meant to be authoritative???”
Science is a method of finding things out. And so yes, in this sense, it is authoritative. Not only that, it is the best that we could do. Science is a very honest discipline. When scientific claims are put forth, they peer reviewed and tested repeatedly. As Collins notes in his book, scientists are secret anarchists by trying to show that theories and ideas are wrong. If you could debunk an established scientific theory, then you will definitely become famous. Surely, individual scientists are human and can make errors and misinterpret or falsify data. But results of this sort get weeded out fairly quickly and don’t last long. And don’t forget that there are competing ideas among scientists as well.
I like using the example of Fermat’s last theorem. This is a very famous and deceptively simple math problem that remained unsolved until 1995 when Andrew Wiles came up with a proof. People have been trying to solve this problem since 1637 when Fermat first commented in a margin of a book that he had a proof but couldn’t write it out because the margin in the book was too small.
The problem states that there is no solution to the equation an + bn = cn for integers a,b,c,n where n is greater than 2.
This seems like a simple problem, right? Far from it. I am pretty sure that if I spent the rest of my life trying to figure it out, I would still not understand the proof. And yet, I believe that this theorem is correct. A proof has been written out by Wiles and then reviewed by other mathematicians.
“Your "Open-Minded" video totally rules out the supernatural as an option--that's not too open-minded by definition.”
Well sort of but not really. Sure it is possible that there are supernatural explanations but to actually accept the supernatural position is to close the book on all other possibilities. And this position is precisely what he said is not open-minded. Remember Carl Sagan’s story of the invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire? Do you believe in the existence of that dragon? Surely you don’t. It is possible that this dragon exists but there is no possible way to test or confirm its existence. Are you closed-minded because you reject this belief?
Some supernatural beliefs are testable. Do Auras exist? Well if you claim to see them, prove it! Here is Randi testing an aura reader.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39PM03iVbqE&feature=related
Now this just shows that this particular aura reader was unable to read the auras in this particular instance. Perhaps he could get it right next time. Perhaps someone else is able to read auras. I don’t believe in auras. I hope you don’t believe in auras. Would it be closed-minded to call out the next aura reader that comes along? No. Not all claims hold the same weight.
Now I have a challenge for you. I just read Francis Collins’ The Language of God. I want you to try reading one of these books and then let me know what you think.
Michael Martin - The Case against Christianity
John Loftus - Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity
