God versus Science
Listening to Science Friday show for Friday August 4th 2006 I can’t help but feel deeply troubled.
One of the guests is Owen Gingerich author of the forthcoming “God’s Universe” (Belknap, 2006).
The second guest is Francis Collins director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and author of the popular book The Language of God is one who really irked me with his statement on atheists.
When asked wether atheists have faith or not he answered:
“Well they certainly do. In fact they probably are required to have more faith than many people who believe in God because they have to have faith in their own intellect’s ability to know so much that they can exclude the possibility of God categorically which seems to be the greatest statement of faith or perhaps hubris and arrogance that one could imagine”
I’ll remind him that many atheists:
1) do not believe that the universe was created for them
2) do not believe they were made in the image of their creator
3) that they are so loved by their God that he sent their only begotten son to save us
1) If God was smart and made the universe for us he wouldn’t have needed to make it so big. 28 billion light years in diameter and that’s what we know exists. Why would it need to be so big when we’re only but a mere spec on the outskirts of the suburbs of the universe?
2) Atheists do not believe in a creator. They believe that the process of evolution makes us cousins to the chimpanzees and we are imperfect because the process of evolution is imperfect. We are but animals with nothing special except a consciousness that other animals weren’t as lucky as us to evolve.
3) Give me a break. We do not believe in a perfect creator that holds us accountable for our own imperfections either.
With all this said Collins admitted in the same interview that he admired the strength people got out of faith and that it is the thing that drove him to know more about it.
His reasoning for believing in God rests on a single tenet… that you cannot know everything in the universe. Humanity explained disease as being satan working his evil magic. Humanity explained thunder as being the anger of Zeus. Humanity explained diformities as sins of the parents. Humanity explained all kinds of things as divine or evil because they didn’t have a readily available explanation for whatever it was they didn’t understand.
Now that we explain disease and diformities I find it troubling that a prominent geneticist uses the very advancement of science and its track record to shape a view of the world where God isn’t required. Albeit I find it funny as well. In a dragon in a garage type of way.