The Human Factor: A man of science face Darwin and the Deity(Book by Head of Human Genome Project)

Weekly Standard ^ | 08/06/2006 | David Klinghoffer

[SirLinksalot]

The Human Factor :A man of science face Darwin and the Deity.

by David Klinghoffer

The Language of God A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

by Francis S. Collins

Free Press, 304 pp., $26

-------------------------------------

Head of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins is among the country's foremost author ities on genetics, a staunch Darwinist, and a prominent critic of Intelligent Design. He's also an evangelical Christian who dramatically describes the moment he accepted Jesus as his personal savior. If that sounds like it might be a paradox, read on.

Collins was hiking in the Cascade Mountains of western Washington when, as he writes, he found that "the majesty and beauty of God's creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ."

Anyone who doubts that Darwinism may coherently be embraced alongside a faith in biblical religion will be intrigued and challenged by The Language of God. Besides offering a lovely, impassioned, and transparently sincere defense of his own Christian faith, Collins argues that one need not choose between Darwin and God. Indeed, he says, embracing both is the most profound and compelling way of penetrating "that mystery of mysteries," as Darwin called it, the puzzle of the origin of species.

He makes a strong and moving case for religious belief with the part of the book that is a memoir. Collins grew up an agnostic. After medical school, he treated a woman with crippling heart disease who relied on her faith for support. She asked him what he believed about God, and he was disturbed to find that he had no thoughtful reply. Another turning point came when, on a medical mission to Africa, he saved the life of a young farmer suffering from tuberculosis with a risky emergency surgery.

The man thanked Collins afterward and commented, "I get the sense you are wondering why you came here. I have an answer for you. You came here for one reason. You came here for me." The experience set Collins to thinking about the workings of Providence, God's oversight of our lives: "The tears of relief that blurred my vision as I digested his words stemmed from indescribable reassurance--reassurance that there in that strange place for just that one moment, I was in harmony with God's will, bonded together with this young man in a most unlikely but marvelous way."

His later, and historically significant, work on the Human Genome Project has mapped the genetic language, DNA, in which Collins believes God speaks His will for living creatures. Collins does a splendid job of clarifying for the layman what genetic information actually is. He explains how evidence for Darwin's understanding of the evolutionary mechanism may be observed in queer, vestigial features of the genetic code. However, if that mechanism was never at any point guided by a transcendent intelligence--as Darwin in The Origin of Species assumes it was not--this naturally raises the question of what need there was for a Deity as most believers understand Him. God has the right to command us because he created us.

Obviously in the background here, and the foreground too, is the Intelligent Design debate. Darwin and his followers advocate an unguided and purely material mechanism of natural selection operating on random genetic variation. Intelligent Design claims to find positive evidence that the mechanism was, indeed, guided--in short, that the software in the cell (DNA) did not write itself.

Collins's book rejects Intelligent Design as an "argument from personal incredulity." That argument, in his telling, would go this way: We don't understand exactly how the Darwinian mechanism could have produced certain aspects of biological information; therefore, a Designer must have done it. I believe Collins misrepresents Intelligent Design, and it appears that he hasn't followed the latest rounds in the scientific debate. But never mind. Let's assume he's right and ask: If Darwinism is the true resolution of the "mystery of mysteries," where does that leave God?

Something you'll often hear people say is, "Well, Darwinism doesn't mean God isn't the creator. Maybe evolution was programmed into the universe from the start. So He had no need to guide the process." The problem with such thinking is that it's directly contradicted by a major current in Darwinian evolutionary theory. In his book Wonderful Life (1989), the late Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould demonstrated what he called the "contingency" of life's history. Gould explained what an incredibly lucky break it was that Earth ever cast up intelligent life forms.

Wisely turning away from this doomed approach to showing God's hand here on Planet Darwin, Collins argues that we may discover evidence of His existence and love from looking to our own hearts, and to the heavens. In this he follows the lead of Immanuel Kant, who famously wrote, "Two things fill me with constantly increasing admiration and awe, the longer and more earnestly I reflect on them: the starry heavens without and the Moral Law within." The incredible fine-tuning of the universe's physical laws at the moment of the Big Bang, making existence possible against unimaginably high odds, must indicate that God had us in mind when He created the starry heavens. Collins quotes Stephen Hawking: "It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create us."

But doesn't this sound like an "argument from personal incredulity" of just the kind Collins would attribute to Intelligent Design? Here is Collins on the Big Bang: "I cannot see how nature could have created itself."

The same objection may be lodged against Collins's favorite demonstration of God's being and caring. This comes from the "Moral Law," the sense of right and wrong, of charity and altruism, which he believes to be inborn in the human heart. Where else could it come from, he asks, but from God? "In my view, DNA sequence alone . . . will never explain certain special human attributes, such as the knowledge of the Moral Law and the universal search for God." Darwin, among others, would disagree. In The Descent of Man he advanced an evolutionary explanation of altruism.

In his most satisfying defense of belief, Collins brings forward a clever way of reconciling an unguided evolutionary process with God as the Creator. He points out that God resides beyond the limits of time. Hence, what appears to us as evolution's unpredictable course was, from God's perspective, entirely predictable. It's a neat perspective--except, perhaps, if we ask whether an unguided process of "creation" is still "creation" even if its results were foreseen.

I am surprised that Collins didn't try another approach to harmonizing God and Darwin, an approach I find more promising. This one is brought forward by an Orthodox Jewish scholar who deserves to be more widely known outside Jewish circles. In his own new book, The Challenge of Creation: Judaism's Encounter with Science, Cosmology, and Evolution, Rabbi Natan Slifkin also summarily dismisses Intelligent Design. On the other hand, he offers a sumptuous variety of theological and philosophical approaches to reconciling Darwinian evolution with religious faith. Slifkin's perspective, while endorsing Darwinism, holds that what may appear random and unguided in life's history may not be at all.

His writing is too fascinatingly rich to summarize here, but a hint of this line of thinking may be found in a citation from the book of Proverbs: "[When] the lot is cast in the lap, its entire verdict has been decided by God." Or as a cryptic verse of a famous Sabbath hymn, "L'chah Dodi," suggests, in Slifkin's paraphrase:

The end of the deed is first in thought, which explains that the final result sheds light on the entire process. In this case, it clarifies that when a seemingly meaningless process results in a highly meaningful conclusion, one looks back and sees that the apparent meaninglessness was a mere disguise for the goal, which was actually envisaged at the start of the entire process. This turns Stephen Jay Gould's notion of contingency on its head. The unlikely course of evolutionary history with its ultimate product--us--actually becomes an argument for the emergence of humans having been intended all along. After all, the unlikely thing actually happened. But Slifkin's attempt at harmonizing would likely trouble Darwin, who assumed that the process not only seemed to be unguided but also was unguided.

Can we reconcile God and Darwin without changing the accustomed meaning of one or the other? I remain skeptical. Yet readers owe Francis Collins--and Rabbi Slifkin--a debt of gratitude for making us think more deeply about issues that often get swept away with trite, unexamined formulations designed to give us an excuse for not thinking. The theological and scientific paradoxes will not be resolved in a book review, nor perhaps in any book that has yet been written.

David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, is the author, most recently, of Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History.

[Elsie]

John 4:24
|4151| spirit |9999| {is} |3588| - |2316| God |2532| and |3588| those |4352| worshiping |0846| Him |1722| in |4151| spirit |2532| and |0225| truth |1163| need |4352| to worship.

The LITERAL translation of the Greek.

No 'a' found.

"Spirit is GOD"

syntax switch...

"GOD is Spirit."

[betty boop]

God does not make bluebirds, bluebirds do ... according to [God's] plan....

Mans DNA runs the computer(body), mans software is his spirit.. for whatever its worth both are needed the computer and the software... Amazing that this concept escapes the so-called super sophisticated computer people....

HI hosepipe! Call it willful blindness at work. And for why??? Don't bother to ask. For as a wise man once said, "certain motives are beyond the reach of argument."

IMHO, your essay/post is right on the money....

[Stultis]

Man this has to be the most logically inconsistent position Ive ever seen

At the very worst it's only the flip side of the inconsistency of Intelligent Design when examined theologically: i.e. only attributing as acts of design those that were apparently accomplished outside of the natural order. That's a bit like playing at a game of sport and only being credited with scores when you cheat.

[Elsie]

Not only Paul; but James and John, too!

 

 

NIV Romans 7:11
   For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.

 

NIV Romans 16:17-18
 17.  I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them.
 18.  For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people.

 

NIV 1 Corinthians 3:18
   Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise.

 

NIV 1 Corinthians 6:9-10
  9.  Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders
 10.  nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

 

NIV 2 Corinthians 11:3
   But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

 

NIV Galatians 6:3
   If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

 

NIV Galatians 6:7
   Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.

 

NIV Ephesians 5:6
   Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient.

 

NIV Colossians 2:4
   I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments.

 

NIV 2 Thessalonians 2:3
   Don't let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness  is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.

 

NIV 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10
  9.  The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders,
 10.  and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

 

NIV 1 Timothy 2:14
   And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

 

NIV 2 Timothy 3:12-13
 12.  In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,
 13.  while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

 

NIV Titus 1:10
   For there are many rebellious people, mere talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision group.

 

NIV Titus 3:3
   At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.

 

NIV James 1:16
   Don't be deceived, my dear brothers.

 

NIV James 1:22
   Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

 

NIV James 1:26
   If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless.

 

NIV 1 John 1:8
   If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

 

NIV 2 John 1:7
   Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.

 

 

NIV Revelation 13:11-14
 11.  Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon.
 12.  He exercised all the authority of the first beast on his behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed.
 13.  And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to earth in full view of men.
 14.  Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the earth. He ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived.

 

NIV Revelation 20:7-8
 7.  When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison
 8.  and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth--Gog and Magog--to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore.

 

NIV Revelation 20:10
   And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

[Elsie]

That's a bit like playing at a game of sport and only being credited with scores when you cheat.

Oh??

What were the 'rules' of, say, baseball, BEFORE the game was INVENTED?

[Elsie]

 

My best friend hass a PhD in theology from Duke and considered himself a theistic evolutionist. I spent a couple of years showing him exactly what the Darwinists are saying, and he now agrees their views are atheistic.

 

---

Indeed!

---

 

 

Most Christians 'believe' Evolution because they do NOT know what their Bible says. 

If, as they say, they 'believe' the words of Jesus and the New Testament writers,

they have to decide what the following verses mean:

 

Acts 17:26-27

 26.  From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.
 27.  God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.

 

 

Romans 5:12-21
 12.  Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned--
 13.  for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law.
 14.  Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.
 15.  But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!
 16.  Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.
 17.  For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
 18.  Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.
 19.  For just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
 20.  The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,
 21.  so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

 

 

If there were  no one man, that means SIN did NOT enter the World thru him.

 

If Adam was NOT the one man, that means SPIRITUAL DEATH did not come thru him.

 

If SIN did NOT enter the World thru the one man, that means Jesus does not save from SIN.

 

 

Are we to believe that the one man is symbolic?  Does that mean Jesus is symbolic as well?

 

 

The Theory of Evolution states that there WAS no one man, but a wide population that managed to inherit that last mutated gene that makes MEN different from APES.

 

 

 Acts 17:24-26

 24.  "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.
 25.  And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.
 26.  From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.

Was LUKE wrong about this?

---

 

 

1 Corinthians 11:8-9
 8.  For man did not come from woman, but woman from man;
 9.  neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.

 

1 Timothy 2:13

  For Adam was formed first, then Eve.  

 

---

 

 

Was Paul WRONG about these???

 

---

 

If so, is GOD so puny that He allows this 'inaccuracy' in His Word??

 

NIV Genesis 2:18
   The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."

[hosepipe]

[ God IS Spirit - not "a" spirit. Big difference. ]

What is Spirit or even "a" spirit..?..

[Mark Felton]

"Deal with it."

Impossible. Deal with that.

(BTW: My posts are qualified, by "I believe...", unlike yours.)

[Mark Felton]

"What is Spirit or even "a" spirit..?.."

Loosely, that which exists, and can interact with nature, but is not of material form.

[MonroeDNA]

I am glad that ID folks are very sincere in their beliefs.

I admire anyone who is that passionate.

I do wish they would go away, but that is not going to happen.


Bahbull thumpers, and ID folks (same thing) are here to stay.

RR was great, but he made a huge mistake embracing religeous nutjobs. Perhaps it was worth it at the time, but today, it is a huge handicap.

These nutjobs believe in noah's ark. They believe the red sea parted. They believe a virgin gave birth. They see Mary in a piece of toast. They believe the bible is infallable.

Taliban christians.

[Mark Felton]

"God created Adam and Eve through His Word"

oh, BTW, I agree with that and nothing in my posts negate it.

[hosepipe]

[ Loosely, that which exists, and can interact with nature, but is not of material form. ]

What kind of material?...

[TXnMA]

Christ said let NO man deceive you..... Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21.

...especially not some YEC cultist who gives credit only to h/h medeieval misinterpretation of Genesis -- and would have you ignore God's other record of His Creation: His created universe, itself.

The Word and Creation are both personal works of Almighty God; they cannot disagree with each other.

Be very wary of anyone who is compelled to discount or distort one to support some ego-driven interpretation of the other.

Only those who diligently study both -- and who acknowledge God's hand in both -- are likely to escape the temptation to either

1. try to diminish the God Who created and is omnipresent in the entire Universe into a body and timeframe relevant only to this n^th-rate planet

   or to

2. ignore the Scriptural account of creation and deny God's claim to his entire creation.

Either of the above dishonor the Creator.

And both of these kinds of "half-witnesses" are "deceivers" .. of themselves -- and will deceive you -- if you allow them to do your thinking for you.

[Stultis]

God does not make bluebirds, bluebirds do.. according to plan..

So you say. But that's not what the Bible says, not in the case of Man anyway. Even though we know that the body of a human develops in the womb according to a (more or less) deterministic DNA "program," the Bible asserts that God is personally, directly and intimately involved in this process. E.g. (among several similar passages):

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be (Psalm 139:13-16).

So here the Bible is attributing God's direct action and intimate involvement in what we know to be a "purely natural" and "programmed" process. If that's so then can't this same non-contradictory coincidence -- of God's action as Creator and "purely natural" causation -- apply in the origin of species as in the origin of individuals?

[hosepipe]

[ But that's not what the Bible says, not in the case of Man anyway. ]

Yur earthly father created your earthy body, your Spiritual Father created your spiritual body/essence. You have two fathers.. Man is not a bluebird..

[TXnMA]

What kind of material?...

For starters, see #30. Also, even though He equipped man with the brains and hands to make the tools to do so -- we haven't managed to figure out that "dark stuff" yet... LOL!!!

Or, I guess you could try "E/C²"... <CHUCKLE...>

[TXnMA]

What kind of material?...

For starters, see #30. Also, even though He equipped man with the brains and hands to make the tools to do so -- we haven't managed to figure out that "dark stuff" yet... LOL!!!

Or, I guess you could try "E/C²"... <CHUCKLE...>

[Stultis]

Yur earthly father created your earthy body, your Spiritual Father created your spiritual body/essence.

Again, not what the Bible (and God himself) says. God says that He, one and the same, created both.

[TXnMA]

Speaking of software, when I hit that first "Post" button, some computer , somewhere in Algore's "invention" -- somewhere between here and the Robinsons' -- responded with:

"The Proxy Server could not locate..."

So -- we get two for the price of one... '-)

[TXnMA]

"1. try to diminish the God Who created and is omnipresent in the entire Universe into a body and timeframe relevant only to this nth-rate planet

Semantic correction: there is only One.