Dr. Francis Collins is known for many things; chief among these is his leadership of the international Human Genome Project, and his unprecedentedly lengthy term as director of the National Institutes of Health. As a researcher, he’s contributed new insights to the field about cystic fibrosis, diabetes, and progeria. Of course, he’s also known for his work with soprano Reneé Fleming on the Sound Health program, bringing together the Kennedy Center and NIH scientists for artists and scientists to work together in new ways and develop new understandings of how music and health relate.
Collins is also a devout Christian — he would later describe the sequencing of the human genome as “both a stunning scientific achievement and an occasion of worship.”
It is this marriage of science and faith, and his own faith journey, that he’ll speak to when he opens the Week Six Interfaith Lecture Series theme of “The Arts: Expressions from the Soul” at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy.
Collins is author of, among other books, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief and Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith, as well as co-author of The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions. His forthcoming The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith and Trust, will be published this September.
In the introduction to The Language of God, Collins described a scene in the White House, with President Bill Clinton giving a speech on the human genome project. “Today,” Clinton said, “we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift.”
Was Collins, a rigorously trained scientist, taken aback? No, he wrote. He wanted to dispel the notion that a scientist couldn’t also be a believer in a transcendent God.
“Belief in God can be an entirely rational choice, and (the) principles of faith are, in fact, complementary with the principles of science,” Collins wrote.
Some may think that “this potential synthesis of the scientific and spiritual” is like forcing together two poles of a magnet, but “despite that impression … many Americans seem interested in incorporating the validity of both of these worldviews into their daily lives.”
In 2007, when The Language of God was published, polls showed that 93% of Americans professed “some form of belief in God; yet most of them also drive cars, use electricity, and pay attention to weather reports, apparently assuming that the science undergirding these phenomena is generally trustworthy,” Collins wrote. And more scientists express spiritual belief than most might realize.
But potential harmony is at risk of being drowned out by fundamentalists decrying science as untrustworthy, he wrote, and from people like Richard Dawkins, who once stated that “faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. … Faith, being belief that isn’t based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion.”
Collins set out to argue that there is no conflict in being a scientist and a person who believes in God; those perspectives not only can co-exist within one person, but can co-exist broadly in a way that “enriches and enlightens the human experience.”
“Science’s doman is to explore nature,” he wrote. “God’s domain is in the spiritual world, a realm not possible to explore with the tools and language of science. It must be examined with the heart, the mind, and the soul — and the mind must find a way to embrace both realms.”
