Ignore This Post

There have been too many words written about science versus religion, and I don't know what makes me think I'm adding anything but noise. Call the following a self-indulgence.

---

There's a good interview on Salon with the head of the Human Genome Project, Dr. Francis Collins.

Collins has earned both a degree in medicine and a Ph.D. in physics. (But I nobly resist the temptation to call him Dr. Doctor.) He is also an evangelical Christian, and has been one, most of his adult life.

It's probably unfair to review just the interview, but if Collins sees nothing wrong with going out and pimping his new book before sending me my advance copy, here goes.

The interviewer, Steve Paulson, begins with a nice line, describing Collins standing at the side of then-President Bill Clinton, who was announcing the decoding of the human genome:

It turns out that Collins worked with the president's speechwriter to help craft Clinton's religious spin on this scientific breakthrough. "Today," Clinton said, "we are learning the language in which God created life."

Throughout the interview, Collins had plenty of level-headed things to say. It's obvious that he hasn't gone completely fundamentalist:

It's a very interesting argument, but I fear there's a flaw. The intelligent design argument presumes that these complicated, multi-component systems -- the most widely described one is the bacterial flagellum, a little outboard motor that allows bacteria to zip around in a liquid solution -- that you couldn't get there unless you could simultaneously evolve about 30 different proteins. And until you had all 30 together, you would gain no advantage. The problem is it makes an assumption that's turning out to be wrong. All of those multi-component machines, including the flagellum, do not come forth out of nothingness. They come forth very gradually by the recruitment of one component that does one fairly modest thing. And then another component that was doing something else gets recruited in and causes a slightly different kind of function. And over the course of long periods of time, one can in fact come up with very plausible models to develop these molecular machines solely through the process of evolution as Darwin envisaged it. So intelligent design is already showing serious cracks. It is not subject to actual scientific testing.

And (my scare quotes added):

The shelves of many evangelicals are full of books that point out the flaws in evolution, discuss it only as a "theory," and almost imply that there's a conspiracy here to avoid the fact that evolution is actually flawed. All of those books, unfortunately, are based upon conclusions that no reasonable biologist would now accept. Evolution is about as solid a theory as one will ever see.

I'm happy to be reading all this. Are we on the brink of hearing from someone important who has found a balance between personal beliefs and science? It gets even better when Collins is asked further about whether scientific investigation and theorizing threaten religion:

My God is bigger than that. He's not threatened by our puny minds trying to understand how the universe works.

Ah. The exact stance I challenge all fundies to take. I ask them: If your beliefs are so strong, then what are you so afraid of?

I find no problem with Collins saying this, either:

[F]or a scientist to say, "I know for sure there is no God," seems to commit a very serious logical fallacy.

I agree, because it's well-nigh impossible to prove the negative. But nothing that I've ever heard, from Collins or anybody else, proves the positive. I've long held that it doesn't matter whether or not there is a God when doing science -- the name of the game in science is to see how much we can explain without resorting to supernatural explanations. Playing the game by the rules doesn't mean that God can't be part of another body of thought, any more than deciding whether to lay down a sacrifice bunt requires that one consider the existence of a field goal kicker.

Collins rankles me a little bit here:

Frankly, I think many of the current battles between atheists and fundamentalists have really been started by the scientific community.

Ah, c'mon. Scientists aren't perfect, and maybe science can never hope to supply all of the answers, but organized religion has been burning people at the stake for millenia, just for daring to suggest something outside of current doctrine. Science, despite its fits and starts and the unintended consequences of applying some of its discoveries, has shown us the way out of the Stone Age and the Dark Ages. Scientists today who argue strenuously against fundamentalist religious beliefs, and the attempts to impose them by fiat, are doing little more than defending ground already won at the cost of way too much blood.

Another area of disagreement: I don't buy Collins's belief that there is no basis for the new idea that altruism might have evolved from evolutionary pressures. I think it's an interesting idea, and I think it's consistent with the (somewhat hyperbolic and possibly tongue in cheek) view of animals being mere vessels for the continuation of genes. Besides, it's not just humans who do things for the good of the herd. Ever surprise a mama bear? Or a mama cat? Or a mama bird? And why are male cardinals bright red? No, not those cardinals.

Collins invokes the old saw about the universe appearing to be optimally designed for creatures just like us. This is the so-called Anthropic Principle, which mentions fifteen or so fundamental physical constants and then says, if even one of them were different by (some really small number), none of us would be here!

Every time I hear this argument, it sounds weaker. It is just as easy for me to believe, first, that an evolution toward intelligence is bound to occur in any sufficiently complex and dynamic system; second, that humans in particular happened along because this universe is what it is; and third, that four or fifteen billion years of random changes could easily shape a creature capable of saying, "Gosh! Look how well this all works out!" God may well have created all that we see, but the mere existence of the universe doesn't prove anything more than the fact that the universe exists. Or that the Devil is playing a big trick on me, of course.

In fact, Collins undercut his own belief that God designed the universe for humans with an earlier statement, in which he declines to aver that God threw an asteroid at Earth to wipe out the dinosaurs and make room for the mammals:

Need they [any intelligent creatures] have looked exactly like us? Does "in His image" mean that God looks like us and has toenails and a belly button? Or is "in His image" an indication of the spirit, the Moral Law, the sense of who we are, the consciousness? In which case perhaps it didn't matter so much whether that ended up occurring in mammals or some other life form.

I like this. I'm happy whenever someone wants to talk about the sense that we should, every one of us, strive to be better, and I'm glad that Collins doesn't suffer from speciesism. I have no idea where our apparently innate sense of righteousness comes from, but I believe in it. If attributing it to a higher power and a higher calling works for some people, fine. Of course, when evangelists in general start talking morals, I tend to grab my wallet, watch my back, and vote against the Republicans. Whose Moral Law, Dr. Collins?

Collins also invokes the Big Bang theory as further "proof" of the existence of God. This is what I thought, too, when I first heard of the Big Bang. Later I thought, okay, maybe let's just take this as a good place to draw a line -- physicists currently decline even to entertain questions about what happened "before," so here's a good place to say, "believe what you want." But when he says, "I can't imagine how nature, in this case the universe, could have created itself," I say, well, I can't imagine God. So what's that prove?

Collins also bugs me when he is asked about whether he believes in miracles:

[T]here'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.

Easily dismissed, long ago, by Arthur C. Clarke:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

In other words, I could as easily say that we just don't understand everything. Yet. And any real scientist would be the first to admit that.

Overall, I'm a little troubled by his tone when he speaks of religion, because it sounds to me as though he thinks that his personal beliefs are as rock-solid as the combined output of a planetful of scientists working over the past several hundred years.

But in the end, I'm mostly happy that someone who is distinguished and scientifically credible has found a way to embrace both science and religion. I don't share his religious beliefs by any stretch, but if they get him through his dark nights, fine. I'd like to see the irrational zealots that dominate the world adopt most of his attitudes, and I'd bet that the few in-your-face scientists (quick: name three beside my hero, Richard Dawkins) would immediately back off if that happened.

I know I would.