…and this is a 
The ubiquitous Francis Collins
Category: Creationism • Godlessness • Science
Posted on: August 7, 2006 10:52 AM, by PZ Myers
Collins has another published interview in Salon. It's sad, actually—in every new interview, he says pretty much the same thing, but he digs himself in a little deeper. I ordered his book the other day, and now I'm beginning to regret it; it's beginning to sound like trite Christian apologetics with no depth, no self-reflection, no insight…just compound anecdotes intended to rationalize a conclusion he has arrived at with no evidence. It's distressingly anti-scientific.
For instance, we get an expansion of his hiking anecdote:
You also write about a seminal experience you had a little later, when you were hiking in the Cascade Mountains in Washington.
Nobody gets argued all the way into becoming a believer on the sheer basis of logic and reason. That requires a leap of faith. And that leap of faith seemed very scary to me. After I had struggled with this for a couple of years, I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains on a beautiful fall afternoon. I turned the corner and saw in front of me this frozen waterfall, a couple of hundred feet high. Actually, a waterfall that had three parts to it -- also the symbolic three in one. At that moment, I felt my resistance leave me. And it was a great sense of relief. The next morning, in the dewy grass in the shadow of the Cascades, I fell on my knees and accepted this truth -- that God is God, that Christ is his son and that I am giving my life to that belief.
When it was just a story about being awe-struck by nature, I could sympathize. I can share that feeling, and I can appreciate that the world around us is impressive and inspiring. But now we discover that Collins is impressed that it is a "three part" waterfall, and he's suddenly driven to embrace the Trinity. You have got to be kidding me. If it had been a two part waterfall, would he have converted to Zoroastrianism?
This is unconvincing apologetics that will only be persuasive to those who have already accepted the silly dogma of a triune god. This is the patent goofiness of an irrational believer. But hey, that's OK, he can believe whatever he wants, and I get to call it ridiculous…what I find even more damning, though, is his hypocrisy and inconsistency. Early in the interview, he makes a statement that should have haunted all of his later comments.
A lot of scientists say religious faith is irrational. Your fellow biologist Richard Dawkins calls it "the great cop-out." How do you respond to these critics of religion?
Certainly this has been one of the more troubling developments in the last several decades. I think that commits an enormous act of hubris, to say -- because we're now so wise about evolution and how life forms are related to each other -- that we have no more need of God. Science investigates the natural world. If God has any meaning at all, God is outside of the natural world. It is a complete misuse of the tools of science to apply them to this discussion.
Note that he's saying two things clearly here: God is outside the natural world, and that you can't apply science to the issue. Watch how he subsequently destroys his own position.
Remember, it is a misuse of the tools of science to apply them to the question of the existence of gods.
The subtitle of your book refers to "evidence for belief." What do you find to be the most compelling evidence that there is, in fact, a Supreme Being?
First of all, we have this very solid conclusion that the universe had an origin, the Big Bang. Fifteen billion years ago, the universe began with an unimaginably bright flash of energy from an infinitesimally small point. That implies that before that, there was nothing. I can't imagine how nature, in this case the universe, could have created itself. And the very fact that the universe had a beginning implies that someone was able to begin it. And it seems to me that had to be outside of nature. And that sounds like God.
A second argument: When you look from the perspective of a scientist at the universe, it looks as if it knew we were coming. There are 15 constants -- the gravitational constant, various constants about the strong and weak nuclear force, etc. -- that have precise values. If any one of those constants was off by even one part in a million, or in some cases, by one part in a million million, the universe could not have actually come to the point where we see it. Matter would not have been able to coalesce, there would have been no galaxy, stars, planets or people. That's a phenomenally surprising observation. It seems almost impossible that we're here. And that does make you wonder -- gosh, who was setting those constants anyway? Scientists have not been able to figure that out.
…
You are talking about a God who intervenes in the world -- the presence of a personal God.
Right. I haven't quite finished my list of evidences. I started with the deist ones --which are the Big Bang and the Anthropic Principle -- very strong arguments, by the way. But that doesn't get you to a personal God. The argument that gets me is the one I read in those first few pages of "Mere Christianity," which is the existence of the Moral Law, something good and holy, that in our hearts has somehow written that same law about what is good and what is evil and what we should do. That doesn't sound like a God that wandered off once the universe got started and is now doing something else. That sounds like a God who really cares about us and wishes somehow to have a relationship with us.
Apparently, it is wrong to use the tools of science to argue against gods, but Francis Collins has some kind of divine dispensation to misuse science to argue for gods. The Big Bang and Anthropic Principle are not strong arguments for a deity at all, and certainly not the detailed dogma Collins accepts—for that, he has to resort to the pratings of a most unconvincing theologian. This is weak. Good for the interviewer for at least noticing that the subtitle of Collins' book directly contradicts his assertion that you can't use science in this argument.
The other excuse he used is that god is outside the natural world. Look how quickly he abandons that pretense:
But how can you as a scientist accept some of these ideas in the Bible that cut so directly against the laws of nature?
I have no trouble at all. Again, the big decision is, do you believe in God? If you believe in God, and if God is more than nature, then there's no reason that God could not stage an invasion into the natural world, which -- to our limited perspective -- would appear to be a miracle.
And yet, this does seem to be a case where religion and science are in fundamental conflict. Everything we know from science says this is not possible. The Virgin Birth is not possible. The resurrection of a dead person -- no matter how special -- is not possible. It's never happened in the history of the world, as far as we know.
Again, that would be the perspective if one had decided upfront that the only worldview that can be brought to bear on any circumstance is the scientific one. In that situation, all miracles have to be impossible. If, on the other hand, you're willing to accept the spiritual worldview, then in certain rare circumstances -- I don't think they should be common -- the miraculous could have a non-zero probability.
I say that if God can 'invade' the natural world, then he is not outside that world at all, and the nature and causes and effects of that invasion certainly are subject to scientific scrutiny. I'll go further and plainly state that his instances of a supernatural intervention are without exception unconvincing, vague, subjective, rooted in the corrupted garbling of history, and more reasonably explained by entirely natural causes…and that scientists should not be so gullible as to so easily accept such feeble nonsense as evidence for a myth. His claim that "god is outside the natural world" was simply a dodge to evade the rigor expected of scientific claims.
Collins the theist is no scientist. When he puts on the silly hat of a Christian, he also abandons the mindset of an honest scientist.
One more thing I have to mention, because it is so absurd. Guess who we can blame for Intelligent Design?
Why do you say those arguments have been started by scientists? Because some of these scientists -- like Dawkins -- have said the theory of evolution leads to atheism?
That's been a very scary statement coming back towards the religious community, where people have felt they can't just leave that hanging in the air. There has to be a response. If you look at the history of the intelligent design movement, which is now only 15 or 16 years old, you will see that it was a direct response to claims coming from people like Dawkins. They could not leave this claim unchallenged -- that evolution alone can explain all of life's complexity. It sounded like a godless outcome.
If only those godless atheists and agnostics and secular humanists would shut up, and allow the Christians to profess that god guided all of evolution, that there is no chance, that we are created by Jesus, Intelligent Design would disappear.
It's true. It would be because we'd all be creationists.
Now Norbizness gets into the act. Collins is toast.
So does Amanda.
Comments
No offense PZ, but I saw that last night, and then started counting...5...4...3...2...
=)
Posted by: BlueIndependent | August 7, 2006 11:08 AM
There's also this contradiction. First he says,
But then when asked "Is this to say that God set in motion the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs so that human beings could eventually evolve?" he replies:
Which, of course, contradicts the idea that God knew even the details of the conversation two mammals, humans even, would be having billions of years after God began the universe.
Posted by: Byron | August 7, 2006 11:10 AM
Posted by: quork | August 7, 2006 11:15 AM
Collins has committed blasphemy!
Posted by: quork | August 7, 2006 11:18 AM
Not a thing. It's all us damned atheists pushing people into creationism.
Posted by: PZ Myers![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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August 7, 2006 11:18 AM
He seems (as usual) to misunderstand both probabilistic reasoning - P(A|A) = 1 (duh) and the big bang. As usual.
Incidentally, I just finished reading a slightly more sophisticated work from many years ago that alas also comes to similar conclusions. Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge. He makes all kinds of useful remarks (for instance, the central thesis of much of the book is the tacit nature of a lot of knowledge, a very important point), and we can debate his stuff about what he considers objectivity. But when it comes to biology and the place of humans in the natural world ... yikes. He seems to somehow think that mind-body dualism evolved somehow. Moreover, he claims, quite openly, that humans are clearly the summit of creation, and their existence (due to their ability to be teleological) itself demonstrates a telos in the world. Depressing, from someone who is otherwise quite a responsible and clever thinker. (I guess he's an example of a scientist on holiday, to use Bunge's phrase.)
Posted by: Keith Douglas | August 7, 2006 11:20 AM
If Polanyi was on holiday, Collins must be on a year-long Himalayan trek...
P.S. Other than the cringe-making dualism I also have long admired Personal Knowledge. Glad to see it's still read.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | August 7, 2006 11:23 AM
Dear Mr. Collins:
Umm, "God" is inside your head; therefore, "he" is not outside the natural world. In fact, you made him up! Gee, there he is when you go to church (oh so comforting to think about), then he's gone when you think about what you are going to have for dinner, then he's back again when you go hiking in the Cascades. Gee, he can go everywhere!
The "miraculous could have a non-zero probability." Oooooh, very clever. Impressive. Did you make that up yourself?
Congratulations. You sound just like every other wing nut on the planet. Stop. Embarrassing. Yourself.
Posted by: George | August 7, 2006 11:25 AM
The resurrection of a dead person -- no matter how special -- is not possible
I beg your pardon? It's not just possible, it's relatively routine. I've done it myself. All it requires is that the person not have been dead for very long (and not be brain dead yet), have died of one of a few specific problems, the right equipment, and very good luck. Reviving someone after they've been dead three days, now...that's impossible so far as I know...with current technology.
Posted by: Dianne | August 7, 2006 11:36 AM
"This is unconvincing apologetics that will only be persuasive to those who have already accepted the silly dogma of a triune god. "
Well according to everybody's favourite cosmological IDist, David Heddle, all apologetics will only be persuasive to those who have already accepted the silly dogma of a triune god. Which makes me wonder why they bother at all.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | August 7, 2006 11:43 AM
Fifteen billion years ago, the universe began with an unimaginably bright flash of energy from an infinitesimally small point.
If I understand correctly (and I may not...I'm not a physicist), this is also wrong. The universe was infinitely dense before the Big Bang, but not, necessarily, compacted down to a single point because it is also infinitely large and infinity/infinity=anything. And why does he assume that the energy released was in the visible spectrum (ie a "bright flash")?
Posted by: Dianne | August 7, 2006 11:44 AM
When using the scientific "worldview," miracles are not and have never been ruled "impossible" up front. They are simply provisionally dismissed as unlikely because that is where the evidence happened to lead. It could have gone in the opposite direction. The scientific worldview is one which tries to be as cautious, objective, tentative -- and honest -- as possible.
However, it seems to me that if you're willing to accept the spiritual worldview, then rules are out and anything goes. I find it interesting that Collins here points out that he "doesn't think" that miracles should be "common." Given an enchanted world of unexpected magic, whether miracles are rare or as plentiful as blackberries is now strictly a matter of taste. Draw the line where you will.
I hate the "heads we win, tails doesn't count" science-religion approach of modern apologetics. Science can't say anything about God one way or another -- unless it's in the way of being support, of course.
Posted by: Sastra![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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August 7, 2006 11:56 AM
Actually, if I remember my long-ago undergrad education about the Big Bang correctly, we don't know what it was originally like. The equations of relativity cease to be useful once the curvature of space-time increases beyond a certain point (i.e. once the universe is smaller than a certain size), so we cannot say what happened before a certain point after the Big Bang (I think it's something like before 10^-30 second, but don't quote me). I think this is one of the big driving forces behind research into quantum gravity.
Now, someone who actually knows something about this subject should come along and tell me exactly how wrong I am...
Posted by: Shygetz | August 7, 2006 11:59 AM
And why does he assume that the energy released was in the visible spectrum (ie a "bright flash")?
Must be because of "Let there be light"...
Posted by: windy | August 7, 2006 12:05 PM
Posted by: quork | August 7, 2006 12:10 PM
Collins writes that when he experienced his epiphany "it was a great sense of relief." The Christian conversion experience in a nutshell: If it feels good, believe it.
Posted by: David Mazel | August 7, 2006 12:13 PM
Posted by: Silmarillion | August 7, 2006 12:14 PM
BTW, E.O. Wilson has said recently that he is going to advocate for a comeback of some form of group selection.
Posted by: quork | August 7, 2006 12:18 PM
The resurrection of a dead person -- no matter how special -- is not possible
I beg your pardon? It's not just possible, it's relatively routine.
If death is defined as the "irreversible cessation of function," resurrection is indeed impossible. All of the ACLS protocols in the world won't bring the truly dead back -- because if they are revived, they weren't dead in the first place.
Posted by: Chuck | August 7, 2006 12:22 PM
Oh yeah--note that Collins goes hiking among beautiful mountains on an autumn day, and accepts the love of the Christian God. Surely such a good and glorious scene could only have been created by a good and glorious God!
But what if had he had chanced to kneel down by the side of the trail and observed a female praying mantis clamly chewing the head off her male mate while while the poor thing continued to copulate with her? And what if instead of going home and reading his Bible he had gone home and read some of the horrific passages from Carl Zimmer's Parasite Rex? Would he have then assigned a somewhat different meaning to the creation?
Posted by: David Mazel | August 7, 2006 12:23 PM
As soon as I saw the Salon interview, I figured a Pharyngula post would follow shortly. Collins is entitled to his beliefs, but I have to file his justifications under "Even smart people believe some of the darnedest things." (along with somebody like Kary Mullis, say). I'm familiar enough with all of Collins's reasons for believing that I doubt anything he could tell me would suddenly give me a new insight.
First off, _Mere Christianity_. I eventually got around to reading it some years back. I am not prepared to rebut it, but the outlook was familiar to me from having read some of Lewis's other work when I was fairly religious. (Actually, when I think of C.S. Lewis, what comes to mind first is a scene in a Philip K. Dick novel where one character is exasperated by another's tendency to begin statements with 'C.S. Lewis would say...'. And in some ways, I have to say that PKD inspires me to greater spiritual fervor than Lewis ever could; Lewis is just so frickin' bourgeois; it's easy to think you know all the answers when you're an Oxford don).
Second, that revelation while hiking. If I had a dime for every spiritual moment in my life... well, I wouldn't be rich, but I could probably get a nice bottle of cabernet. One I remember quite vividly was in Switzerland sitting through a Catholic mass in German, a language I do not know, drifting off into a revery and suddenly bolting to alertness at the consecration, when the priest said "Das ist mein Leib." It was really as if I'd experienced a repetition of the pentecost and somehow been awakened for the holiest moment of the mass. But... OK... let's look at the evidence. I had studied a little German, and been exposed to the word "Leib" meaning "body." the phrase "Das ist mein" is close enough to English that I could guess what he was saying. I also knew the basic pattern of the Catholic mass by heart and it is the same in every language. But it *felt* like God's presence at the time. That doesn't make it real.
Third, Collins bases his belief on people just being much better morally than evolution would lead him to expect. It sort of reminds me of that song, Simon Smith and his Dancing Bear: "it's just amazing how fair people can be." I wish! People are sort of altruistic and definitely empathetic. You see somebody drowning and you want to save them. But you can't swim... so most likely you don't try, and that's probably a good decision. You feel terrible for the rest of your life, but you also have to go on living and devote a lot of effort to solacing yourself that after all, you did not know how to swim. That's about the extent of human empathy. Or worse: people can react like the onlookers in the Kitty Genevieve case. Maybe they want to help, who knows? But they could have easily called the cops and they didn't.
Human cooperation is entirely consistent with people adapting tendencies for individual success. People are most successful when they build on the social network of other humans; thus, pure selfishness is a maladaptive tendency. Even criminals do better in gangs than as loners. I would also ask how much morality is even innate, and how much is entirely a product of social conditioning. People believe plenty of maladaptive things just because they were told them during their formative years. Nature and nurture are both very powerful forces in shaping human behavior, and there is no reason to assume all human behavior is explained by evolution.
Finally... even if you buy all of Collins's arguments, how exactly does that lead you to Christianity rather than some other religion? I am sympathetic to the tendencies that make people want to believe in religion. Even as a believing Catholic schoolboy I never had any problem reconciling evolution with religion. I agree with Collins that if there was a God and he had a plan, then evolution would be a perfectly reasonable way to implement it. But what makes me doubt my religious belief is that so many otherwise smart and sensible people around the world have believed very different things. Except for some shared notions of virtue, they cannot all be right. I reject the chauvinist conclusion that my religion is right. It could be, but then I guess I would just be very lucky to have been born into it. The most likely conclusion seems to me to be that most of it is wrong.
Posted by: PaulC | August 7, 2006 12:26 PM
Collins said Evolutionists now universally agree -- I think Dawkins and Wilson and Dennett would all agree -- that evolution does not operate on the species. It operates on the individual. If that's the case, then it does seem that in any given circumstance, the individual's evolutionary drive should be to preserve their ability to reproduce at all costs.
I find it mind-boggling that the person heading the human genome initiative should be so ignorant of elementary biology. Evolution does not act on the species, but it dsoes not act on the inidividual either. it acts ont he gene. Perhaps instead of libelling Dawkins, he might go out and read The Selfish Gene instead.
Posted by: Gerard Harbison | August 7, 2006 12:30 PM
Let me try that again.
Collins said
I find it mind-boggling that the person heading the human genome initiative should be so ignorant of elementary biology and modern population genetics. Evolution does not act on the species, but it does not act on the individual either. It acts on the gene. Perhaps instead of libelling Dawkins, he might read The Selfish Gene instead?
Another case on an M.D. who got propelled into research while missing out on important parts of a normal scientific training?
Posted by: Gerard Harbison | August 7, 2006 12:35 PM
One of the things that should be asked of every scientist who supports religion: is the bible inerrant? If they say no the fundamentalists will run from them. If they say yes, then scientists will run from them. Have any scientists attempted to claim that their discipline can co-exist with an inerrant biblical viewpoint?
Posted by: Ken | August 7, 2006 12:38 PM
First I just need to say, "C.S.Lewis was a spaz..."
I've met a lot of scientists like this. They can be quite rational in a lab, but when they get out into the real world, they somehow think they are owed some-type of irrational bounty, where you now must allow them to speculate as they wish. It borders on the Ol' Fashion, "Call to Authority."
I had this one teacher who was a big fan of James Randi, and, at the same time, was a Born Again Christian. Now, if she had been one of deep faith, where she said she listened to her heart, (or whatever other organ of interest she cared to listen to), and decided, despite the evidence to the contrary, that Christ was indeed Lord, I'd been fine with that, but she basically claimed it was silly for a person not to accept Christ as Lord as if "How could anyone do anything else?"
Again, if one asked her about why she believed as she did, she'd come out with nothing resembling evidence, but again, just personal anecdotes. How she could follow the logical methodology of James Randi on the one hand, be a scientist (a published one mind you) and think, "Personal anecdotes = hard evidence?", I will never know.
I just like to think about an ex-girlfriend of mine whose sister, was a Born Again Christian, called Psychic Hotlines on a regular basis for advice, believed aliens had abducted her and taken her unborn baby, as well as believed in ghosts. This woman saw me reading a book on evolutionary biology one day and asked, "How can you believe in that stuff?" In short, when people have the desire to believe, or not to believe, evidence means nothing...
Posted by: Lago | August 7, 2006 12:44 PM
Oh, and also, I'd just like to add myself to the list of people horrified to see a man in Collin's position who has spouted:
[quote] Evolutionists now universally agree -- I think Dawkins and Wilson and Dennett would all agree -- that evolution does not operate on the species. It operates on the individual. If that's the case, then it does seem that in any given circumstance, the individual's evolutionary drive should be to preserve their ability to reproduce at all costs. [/quote]
The Horror...The Horror!
Wait, [i]let me rewrite that..[/i]
The dipsh*t...The dipsh&t!
Posted by: Lago | August 7, 2006 12:52 PM
Ken, I would make a distinction between biblical literalism and biblical inerrancy, although I think its also clear that Collins advocates neither view.
It's clear to me that a science who tries to take the bible literally is going to have trouble working outside of a highly circumscribed sandbox--but even somebody like that could contribute to science, for instance, if they stuck to designing lab equipment (I'm thinking of somebody like Forest Mims).
The notion of biblical inerrancy is (at least in my understanding as a former Catholic) that the Bible is the word of God, not the work of human authors, and says exactly what God intended for it to say (amazingly, despite the different source texts and translations). That makes it significant and sacred, but does not require it to be a historical document or a science textbook. Human teachers use allegory, so why shouldn't God? I was raised to think of the Bible this way, and I don't see why it is considered such a copout position, both among atheists and fundamentalists. I mean, there is very little written by even the best human author that was intended to be taken literally in its entirety. Metaphor is part of language.
I would say that it's not such a big deal for a scientist to believe in biblical inerrancy as above. I think the main problem for a scientist is not what to believe but how to make sure that you don't let your non-scientific beliefs slip into your scientific output.
Posted by: PaulC | August 7, 2006 12:56 PM
But it's worse that that. Collins' argument for religion is based at least partly on false concepts about an area of science that directly impacts his own research area. How can he possibly, as a geneticist, believe that the primary unit of selection is the individual? How can he assert that evolution cannot account for altruism? Is he entirely ignorant of the last 40 years of research in population genetics?
Moreover, if evolution does not account for altruism, how does he reconcile that with his 'BioLogos' idea that God set the whole shebang moving and then stood back? Altruism either arose by natural, which means evolutionary means, or it was placed in humans supernaturally. One or the other.
Posted by: Gerard Harbison | August 7, 2006 12:58 PM
That's been a very scary statement coming back towards the religious community, where people have felt they can't just leave that hanging in the air. There has to be a response. If you look at the history of the intelligent design movement, which is now only 15 or 16 years old, you will see that it was a direct response to claims coming from people like Dawkins. They could not leave this claim unchallenged -- that evolution alone can explain all of life's complexity. It sounded like a godless outcome.
Oh, no! A godless outcome?!?!? Someone call Focus on the Family so can fix this horrible problem. Can we get a gay bigot millionaire to donate a bunch of cash to start a "think tank" so we can spew propaganda in response? And we'll need some attorneys, too.
Posted by: Harmless Fundie | August 7, 2006 12:59 PM
Busy scientists rarely know much about areas of science outside their professional purview. Collins's ignorance of population genetics is not very surprising. I believe he's also an M.D., and if there's any area of professional training that unfits one more than medicine does to think in population terms it would be difficult to name it. What I can fault him for is not having the sense to shut up about things he knows nothing about; many scientists are more sensible about that. But then, those are the usually the ones who don't have ideological axes to grind.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | August 7, 2006 1:03 PM
I recently bought the book God? by William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. It's a debate between a Christian and an atheist, with each side allowed to respond to the other's points. Craig raises some of the same arguments as Collins, which struck me as some of the best arguments a theist can make; but Sinnott-Armstrong takes him apart in detail. It's a pretty good read.
Posted by: NickM | August 7, 2006 1:07 PM
It's a hoot.
Posted by: quork | August 7, 2006 1:12 PM
PZ, Collins was on Talk of the Nation Science Friday last week.
And FYI If I saw a large three part frozen waterfall I wouldn't be falling to me knees to accept some fable, I'd be strapping on my crampons and grabbing my ice axes.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | August 7, 2006 1:16 PM
All of the ACLS protocols in the world won't bring the truly dead back -- because if they are revived, they weren't dead in the first place.
True, and one of the reasons that "death" is now defined as "brain death" not cessation of heartbeat, breathing, etc. But the only way you can tell whether ACLS will work or not is to try it so the statement that you can't bring a truly dead person back with ACLS and you know that they're truly dead because ACLS doesn't work is unsatisfying. You can certainly get some clinically apparently dead people back.
Posted by: Dianne | August 7, 2006 1:31 PM
You guys might be interested to know that the documentary "30 Days" on the FX channel this week features an atheist living with a committed (ahem) Christian family for a month. The show was created by Morgan Spurlock who wrote "Supersize Me".
Posted by: Andrew Mogendorff | August 7, 2006 1:34 PM
Maybe some scientists here would like post a comment at this DEMENTED FUCKWITS blog:
http://www.worldmagblog.com/blog/archives/025847.html
Chuck Colson writes, "The headline was positively gleeful. On the website of the left-wing group DefCon this week, we read: 'Science Wins the Day in Kansas.' In fact, just the opposite happened. Science lost in Kansas to zealots who want to keep kids in the dark about the scientific controversy over evolution. In last week's school board primary election in Kansas, two conservatives who support teaching the evidence both for and against evolution lost to candidates who oppose such teaching. These losses mean Kansas will now have an anti-science majority: members who want to slam the door on free academic inquiry."
Posted by: roger | August 7, 2006 1:35 PM
Well, Collins to me illustrates several things:
1) That the false equivalence reductionism=science truly turns well-educated scientists onto ID.
2) That sequencing the human genome is useful data for everyone, but truly, it does not require a scientific motivation, not even clear ideas about what science is. It is quite plainly a merely technical achievement, which at Collin's position meant basically lots of talking on the phone (money & politics)
3) Did Collins say that about ID being a response to Dawkins claims? Well, yeah! Dawkins, by peddling of an absurdly reductionist and ultradarwinian view of evolution, and unnecesarily entagling evolution with the whole darn "God" issue, has fed ID, youbetcha.
Posted by: Alexander Vargas | August 7, 2006 1:41 PM
I didn't bother to read it. Much I respect Collins, someone talking about the specifics of their religious views with the assumption that it'll be meaningful to the reader/listener is about as enlightening or entertaining as someone insisting that you hear about this really cool dream they had.
Posted by: Molly, NYC | August 7, 2006 1:44 PM
Do feel free to explain what you mean by 'an absurdly reductionist and ultradarwinian view of evolution'.
Posted by: Gerard Harbison | August 7, 2006 1:51 PM
For fans of cognitive dissonance, read Mere Christianity along with another golden oldie -- Bertrand Russel's Why I Am Not a Christian.
Posted by: natural cynic | August 7, 2006 1:53 PM
After reading the interview I was struck by his ignorance almost as much as his incoherence. For example, in discussing embryonic stem cell research and the disposition of embryos frozen in fertility clinics, he claims: "Is it more ethical to leave them in those freezers forever or throw them away? Or is it more ethical to come up with some sort of use for those embryos that could help people? I think that's not been widely discussed." I don't see how anyone with even a passing interest in this issue could not have noticed that this is one of the most discussed aspects of the issue--especially by proponents of embryonic stem cell research. This observation suggests to me that his sources (if he has them) of information on this issue all oppose such research.
One inconsistency in Collins's interview that has been overlooked so far is that he rejects the God-the-gaps argument used by Creationists and IDers but then uses a God-in-the-gaps argument to explain the existence of altruism. He presents Lewis's moral law argument, claiming that evolution cannot explain our knowledge of moral right and wrong, and, hence, God must exist to have implanted this knowledge into us. Altruism requiring a theistic explanation is a textbook case of the God-in-the-gaps argument. (And in this case it is a fallacious appeal to ignorance as well.)
I'm not quite sure that it's fair to say that he uses scientific evidence for his view but forbids scientific evidence when it is used against his view. He may have in mind some concept of nonscientific evidence. Moral philosophers, for example, cannot use exclusively scientific evidence for their conclusions (given Hume's famous "is-ought" gap), but they still manage to reason about morality. If he does have some other conception of evidence, however, he needs to explain what it is, what its standards of use are and why anyone should accept it.
Posted by: arithmoquine | August 7, 2006 1:55 PM
Just a few quibbles. 'Apologetics' proper typically does not invoke personal experience, but attempts to defend belief by appeal to reason. So, I wouldn't characterize Collins' waterfall anecdote as apologetics per se; I'm sure all of us would agree that it certainly is not a scientific observation.
Similarly, referencing data about the natural world (such as the 'Big Bang') and using them as arguments for God's existence is definitely apologetics, not science. It is not the tools of science that are being used here, but the product of science.
Therefore I don't see the inconsistency or hypocrisy that some of you folk do. Rather, I see a certain inconsistency in regarding all claims from believers as scientifically hopeless, then complaining when they use data from the natural world to support their claims. We're not entitled to that complaint. Believers are not obligated to restrict themselves to arguments from experience simply because science attempts (properly, I think) to excludes such views. If the claim itself is scientifically hopeless, then the source of data they enlist to support the claim should be irrelevant.
A more defensible critique of Collins' position, it seems to me, would focus on these points, some of which have been made here:
1) The demonstration of the singular origin and anthropic character of the universe seems to be robust, but these conclusions are consistent with any number of belief systems, including those without any sort of deity;
2) That the above is necessary, but not sufficient for the notion of a personal God;
3) To move to the personal God, Collins uses arguments about the moral sense that betray a lack of familiarity with evolutionary theory--there really are very good naturalistic research programs to account for consciousness, altruism, morality, etc.;
4) With the moral sense aroused and evolution invoked, the problem of theodicy is as acute for Collins as for any believer, including myself;
5) To identify the alleged personal God with the person of Jesus, Collins uses an argument from C.S. Lewis (the so-called 'trichotomy') that is fallacious: it does not follow that the Christ MUST be either liar, lunatic or Lord, as other possibilities exist;
5) Ultimately, Collins' appeals to arguments from personal experience which have no standing in science.
Those seem to be sound counter-arguments to me; posturing about what sort of arguments the 'other side' is allowed to use, or whether they are being hypocritical implies a level of agreement about the nature of science that doesn't exist in the popular culture as far as I can see, and these kinds of arguments are easily side-stepped.
It's unfortunate that this book is being misrepresented as constituting something like scientific evidence for Christianity, when it's nothing of the kind, but a cogent discussion of his book should focus on why his arguments aren't compelling in general, than on whether or not he is speaking as a scientist, or no. Let's not make the mistake of trying Dr. Collins as an apostate to our understanding of scientific method, as if science were just another belief system. Let's evaluate his claims as such, and leave it at that.
A few more comments:
PaulC, regarding the discussion of 'literalism' vs. 'inerrancy', most of the fundamentalists have an 'out' clause wherein they add "in the original manuscripts" to the claim that the Bible has no factual errors. Since no original manuscripts are known to exist, and since demonstrating conclusively that any given scroll/tablet is THE original text is problematic, this approaches non-testability.
I might add that there are other positions out there that honor the text, but which do not feel obliged to idolize it.
Gerard Harbison, regarding the unit of selection: I accept that evolutionary theory in principle accounts for the general existence of altruism, and that ignorance of same is a strong argument against Collins' invocation of the moral sense. I do NOT think, however, that this argument turns on whether the unit of selection is the population, the individual or the gene. I also think it is sensible to be agnostic about the relative importance of this or that level of selection as a general principle; even Richard Dawkins rather famously 'rediscovered the organism' and the possibility of pluralism as to the unit of selection can not yet be discounted.
Cheers...Scott
Posted by: Scott Hatfield | August 7, 2006 2:01 PM
Collins, as do most people who "find faith," uses a classic "conversion narrative." These narratives are often used by the converted to demonstrate the "power" of the conversion moment (note that is must be reduced to a moment). In discussion with many people who have converted this narrative form is almost always found. As with dream narratives, conversion narratives are re-analzyed events that conform to a specific narrative schema. They circulate because they give evidence to certain underlying assumptions that many Christians have (namely the momentaneous nature of conversion and that each is unique/individual [of course that they are a stock storylines is outside of the question]). But of course, like the telling of dreams, it is post factum evidence and has been re-analyzed to fit a particular narrative structure. This is not evidence of "God(s)," it is evidence of the power of narrative structures to frame our understandings of the world.
Posted by: Rosewater | August 7, 2006 2:04 PM
I was raised to think of the Bible this way, and I don't see why it is considered such a copout position, both among atheists and fundamentalists. I mean, there is very little written by even the best human author that was intended to be taken literally in its entirety.
The problem is that, once you start accepting that some bits are metaphor, there's no dividing line that's clear enough to stop it being used as a catch-all for daft errors. Jericho destroyed centuries before the Israelites got there? God was just using it as a parable to explore the value of faith in Him. Two contradictory genealogies for Jesus? Well, y'see, God was just trying to make the point...
Posted by: Corkscrew | August 7, 2006 2:12 PM
Vargas:
Dawkins, by peddling of an absurdly reductionist and ultradarwinian view of evolution, and unnecesarily entagling evolution with the whole darn "God" issue, has fed ID, youbetcha.
Who do you think has been more helpful to the ID movement, Richard "Religion is Stupid" Dawkins or George "Jesus is My Favorite Philosopher" Bush?
There is "feeding ID" and then there is "feeding ID." When a scientist like Dawkins says that he finds religion worthless at best and explains why, he is only "feeding ID" to the extent that ID is a religious movement which will use ANY statement of non-Christian opinion as "evidence" that the gay materialists are comin' to ruin the country.
As for Dawkins' "absurdly reductionist and ultradarwinian view of evolution," that is a scientific question and, since the ID movement religion-driven, wholly anti-scientific and devoid of scientific content, the idea that Dawkin's scientific views "feed ID" any more than someone else's scientific ideas is pure bullcrap.
So Vargas, what was your point?
Posted by: Great White Wonder | August 7, 2006 2:33 PM
Even if Collins's description of the Big Bang were accurate, his conclusion is nonsense. No, it doesn't imply that there was "nothing" before the Big Bang. An infintesimally small point containing all the matter in the universe is, by definition, something.
The logical conclusion is, of course, a "God of the Gaps" argument. "We don't know what happened before the Big Bang, therefore GODDIDIT."
Posted by: Dan | August 7, 2006 2:44 PM
Corkscrew: I would identify your problem as the text itself not standing up no matter how you try to read it, rather than some intrinsic problem with assuming that it is allegorical.
For instance, no matter what you think of the historical accuracy of the Bible, it is hard to get around the fact that parts of it advocate wiping out the original inhabitants of the land you want to take. You can say "Well, in that case it was OK because God told them to" but then how are you supposed to know for sure? For that matter, you have the Old Testament telling you that pigs and lobsters are "abominations." It's obviously a huge thing, and then this is just sort of conveniently brushed aside in New Testament epistles to non-Jews, and now we're allowed to eat pork and lobster. This can be read as some kind of deep moral fable, but it all seems a bit incoherent and driven more by circumstances than a coherent set of principles.
Now, by contrast, you could take Adam Smith's famous example of the pin factory.
I've always assumed that Smith's description of the pin factory is very accurate, but even if he had got some details wrong, he would have made the same point about division of labor. Nobody is going to observe that Smith missed some crucial economy of scale driving pin manufacture and use this point to debunk the whole of _Wealth of Nations_.
Later economists often speak of fictional goods such as "widgets" or grossly simplified economies (Krugman's hot dog and bun economy in one popularization). They also make valid points. They also get some things wrong. If an omniscient God wrote a divine work of economics, then it wouldn't get anything wrong (except intentionally). But that doesn't mean it would have no simplifications and no metaphorical language. It would have to be a readable text at an appropriate level of abstraction. The effort of getting every detail precisely right or adding a footnote to every simplification or potentially ambiguous phrase would likely make it inaccessible to most readers.
I submit that nobody considers it a copout when discussing human authors to say "This was merely an illustrative example." Often a confused reader who started out taking it literally will say "Oh, now it makes sense. When I reread it, this is obvious."
So I don't think it is a copout to read the Bible this way. However, reading something as metaphorical does not mean that everything is magically justified. In fact, the Bible is so apparently contradictory that numerous commentaries have been written to massage the principles into more palatable forms for various audiences at different historical periods. But the chief failing here is not the tendency to allow for some metaphorical but the fact that the text itself fails.
If anything, an allegorical interpretation is more likely to leave some wiggle room. I have no idea how you can start with assumptions of literal truth and get very far.
Posted by: PaulC | August 7, 2006 2:45 PM
Isn't it obvious? When you say crap like "genes created us, body and mind" or "we are but lumbering robots controlled by genes" and then label that crap the "evolutionary science" that "leads to atheism" you are setting it up pretty nicely for people to get confused into a role for god ins cience. If Bush wants to say that Jesus is his favorite philosopher, there is no bad mix there. He is not implying by that that science is crap. It is Dawkins, who wrongly uses evolution to say all religion is crap, that plunges evolution into the silly G debate that is truly none of its business
Posted by: Alexander Vargas | August 7, 2006 2:59 PM
Vargas, I strongly urge you to take a break from this blog. In fact, you should take a vacation in the Washington Cascades. Take a hike. Look at some waterfalls.
Posted by: PZ Myers![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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August 7, 2006 3:01 PM
It reads like highfalutin' apologetics ("My God is bigger than that.") with a special condemning of athiests. "I think many of the current battles between atheists and fundamentalists have really been started by the scientific community. This is an enormous tragedy of our present time, that we've given the stage to the extremists." As often said that calling the atheist position religious or extremist is like calling bald a hair color or an intense hair color.
But I'm especially disappointed that a PhD in physics plays as fast and loose with his physics. He uses all the usual cosmological and teleological arguments, but he also invokes the anthropic principle in a meaningless manner. In his case he doesn't claim more than the weak principle, but that doesn't imply any teleology. That there are life makes the fact that the laws and parameters of nature permits life really unsurprising.
His description of bigbang is a little off. It happened 13.7 billion years ago, and the assumption of a singularity can't be verified without a theory of quantum gravity.
But where he really screws up is when he both allow for physics and teleology:
"Are you saying that God set the natural laws in motion so that somehow, billions of years later, humans would evolve? There was intent, there was purpose to humans evolving, and God made it so?
"That is part of my faith -- to believe that God did have an interest in the appearance, somewhere in the universe, of creatures with intelligence, with free will, with the Moral Law, with the desire to seek Him.""
This combination gives a very peculiar idea of nature. Quantum mechanics has a fundamental randomness that even gods can't fully control within the bounds of formal theory. It has to have no hidden variables to remain a local theory compatible with causality through lorentz invariance. The only way to resolve that contradiction between hidden mechanisms and locality is to have the unneccessary assumption of a supernatural being simultaneously run the whole show. The Cosmic Cheater strikes again! But what was Collins saying about some Mighty Moral Law?
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | August 7, 2006 3:03 PM
I mean, there is very little written by even the best human author that was intended to be taken literally in its entirety.
That is true, but irrelevant. Who speaks to their subordinates, little children, etc. in a manner that can be misunderstood? Think of the translations (because 'He' obviously didn't). It's bloody murder.
Is six days really six earth days, or something else? Who cares? We still don't know the significance of six over five or eight, and we know a lot more about physics. Not only is using metaphores a bad idea, but also the subject choices are bizarre.
Posted by: Koray | August 7, 2006 3:10 PM
It gets old fast don't it.
Getting told we're evil Dawkins lovers.
Posted by: Steve_C | August 7, 2006 3:12 PM
Posted by: somnilista, FCD | August 7, 2006 3:23 PM
Isn't it obvious? When you say crap like "genes created us, body and mind" or "we are but lumbering robots controlled by genes" and then label that crap the "evolutionary science" that "leads to atheism" you are setting it up pretty nicely for people to get confused into a role for god ins cience.
Hmm. So the failure to set aside a role for deities in the natural history of the earth leads "people" to "get confused into a role for god in science."
Perhaps, Vargas, it's you and your "people" who are confused to begin with and maybe, for personal reasons, you prefer to stay that way. That would appear to be Collins' "problem" as well.
Posted by: Great White Wonder | August 7, 2006 3:32 PM
Dianne:
"The universe was infinitely dense before the Big Bang, but not, necessarily, compacted down to a single point because it is also infinitely large and infinity/infinity=anything."
If I understand correctly (and I may not...I'm not a cosmologist), without quantum gravity we can't go to or beyond the planck scale, so talk about singularities are speculation at this point, albeit motivated speculation. The most parsimonous and universal assumption is an infinitely large universe and I believe that is consistent with the current Lambda-CDM model.
The meaning of infinity differs between formal theories, for example on the real line you have two infinities that you tend to, +/- infinity, while you can topologically map a plane to a sphere and have a specific "point of infinity" for that model. So infinity/infinity isn't welldefined, OTOH that doesn't mean that it is anything within the theory.
Alexander:
Usually you don't and can't back up your claims. In this case you also "forget" to mention in claim 2) that huge endeavours such as WMAP or LHC have political dimensions that means some main positions "does not require a scientific motivation, not even clear ideas about what science is".
Dan:
I'm not sure ideas such as Hawkings no-boundary proposal all have an initial singularity or prespace. Perhaps they employ a generalised quantum transition from literally nothing.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | August 7, 2006 3:33 PM
Collins
The argument that gets me is the one I read in those first few pages of "Mere Christianity," which is the existence of the Moral Law, something good and holy, that in our hearts has somehow written that same law about what is good and what is evil and what we should do. That doesn't sound like a God that wandered off once the universe got started and is now doing something else. That sounds like a God who really cares about us and wishes somehow to have a relationship with us.
Huh. Sounds to me like a British dude on some headtrip about how wonderful his personal brand of religion is.
Maybe we should arrange for Collins to meet with Tom Cruise and compare notes. A real "meeting of the minds," a la Steve Allen's old TV show.
Posted by: Great White Wonder | August 7, 2006 3:37 PM
Koray: I agree with you that the Bible is problematic on a whole range of grounds.
What I disagree with is the tendency of at least some atheists to side with fundamentalists on the view that a respectful non-literal reading of the Bible is a copout. I think, for instance, that Genesis has never borne out a literal reading because there are clearly two contradictory creation stories. It has little to do with any modern scientific developments. Traditionally, it has been read for its moral teachings, not for insights into animal husbandry or methods of weather prediction--topics of interest even to its ancient readers on which it touches but gives essentially no useful information. True, people might have insisted "It's all true." but I'm pretty sure it's a modern tendency to go around backfitting scientific observations to the Bible the way creationists do.
For example, Homer's Odyssey doesn't bear out a literal reading either even though it has been thought of at various times and by various peoples as a historical account and as a morally edifying tale. I'm of the view that it is neither, but it would be a terrible blow to our heritage to lose all trace of this great epic.
If I say that about the Odyssey, people accept it. If I say it about the Bible, people get mad at me: fundies for comparing the Bible to Greek mythology; some atheists for suggesting that the Bible has any kind of redeeming value. I think this is sort of silly. It's clear to me that the main point of the Bible is to capture the values of a people and a faith, not to tell you how nature works. Admittedly, some of it is intended to be a record of other information such as genealogies. It's a hodge-podge of things, although science and mathematics are largely missing and what is there is almost entirely wrong. I don't think it is a copout to eschew a literal interpretation, because this is in many ways the least plausible reading.