Finally finished The Language of God by Francis Collins. As blogged before, I stalled early and often while reading the book. I sat down with it the other day and finished it off.
I'm glad I read it, although I'm not sure why bc it was not as interesting and/or satisfying as I'd hoped. Perhaps I'm glad I read it bc I really was quite curious what such a well known and highly placed scientist has to say about religion. I wondered if his scientist-believer status would give him some kind of particular insight into the intersection, if there is any, of science and religion. Unfortunately, I didn't see any particularly deep thoughts about this intersection, although I certainly may have misunderstood or missed them. He came across as yer average guy, which certainly isn't a bad thing. I guess I expected more depth from the guy who heads the Human Genome Research Institute.
The book is clearly written and uses little jargon to explain scientific ideas. Collins writes amiably and seems like a reasonable fellow. On a related note, I recently read God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, which had a very different tone to it. I often wonder what tone one should take when discussing religion in the public sphere (or other divisive issues). It seems like some consider an individual's religious belief to be, so to speak, sacred in that it's beyond reproach from others. E.g., I'm crazy bc I don't believe in gravity, but don't you dare say I'm crazy bc I believe in angels (or miracles or burning bushes or partings of seas...).
Why is there this attitude? And I'm certainly not immune from it. When reading Hitchens's book, I cringed at some of the language he uses to describe believers. Is there really something wrong with referring to believers as 'yokels', especially if that's how you really view them? They might consider it insulting, but if you think their beliefs really are crazy and that religion as a whole is a dangerous development, why mince words? OTOH, you might mince words bc your targets would be insulted and some of us don't care to insult/offend others. OTOH, you might not mince words if you think that religion is seriously bad news and the sooner it's extinguished the better and if some feelings are hurt in the process, so be it. That's something I wonder about now and again: How should people disagree?
Anyway, back to the book, which had a few cringe-worthy moments of its own. Collins whips over, under and through objections to the religious viewpoint. Granted, it would be difficult to cover them all in sufficient detail in one book aimed at the general public, but it does contribute to the overall feeling of dissatisfaction with the book.
Science is not the only way of knowing. The spiritual worldview provides another way of finding truth. Scientists who deny this would be well advised to consider the limits of their own tools, as nicely represented in a parable told by the astronomer Arthur Eddington. He described a man who set about to study deep-sea life using a net that had a mesh size of three inches. After catching many wild and wonderful creatures from the depths, the man concluded that there are no deep-sea fish that are smaller than three inches in length! If we are using the scientific net to catch our particular version of truth, we should not be surprised that it does not catch the evidence of spirit.
This kind of thinking makes me nervous, for a few reasons:
- I recognize the point he's trying to make, but it's not a good parable to use to make this point. Maybe Deep-Sea Man is generally going about things the right way, he just needs a better instrument i.e., a better mesh. Or maybe he could use another, yet still scientific, approach and doesn't need to go outside the scientific realm to get at the truth about the creatures of the deep. Isn't this just what science does, i.e., continually develop new and improved methods, tools, theories, etc.?
- I find the phrase 'our particular version of truth' a tad unsettling. What exactly does this mean? I'm not going to say that it's entirely impossible to have conflicting truths about one thing, but how many versions of the truth are there? If we're not looking for our particular version of the truth, for whose version are we looking? I'll guess he means God's truth, but how would we know if we found God's truth? Mightn't we still find our particular version of the truth and think that it's God's truth? Not to mention that positing God's truth assumes we've already made that leap of faith to believe in God (and Collins acknowledges that belief in God does require a leap in faith since it appears that, at least at the moment, no proof either for or against the existence of God is forthcoming).
- Elsewhere in the book, Collins criticizes Intelligent Designers for using a 'God of the gaps' approach, e.g., invoking God to explain some phenomenon which science has not yet successfully explained. When science does finally succeed, it discredits ID for erroneously and unncessarily positing divine influence. Maybe this whole business of positing an omni-being creator and accessories (e.g., angels, souls, spirits, miracles, etc.) is done to fill some psychological gap or desire in humans. Collins suggests that IDers may have confused the unknown with the unknowable and the unsolved with the unsolvable. Where are these divides between unknown/unknowable and unsolved/unsolvable? Certain things certainly seem unknowable and unsolvable, but perhaps these divides will shift as science progresses. Why assume we cannot ever know these certain things, e.g., what was before the Big Bang?
I'm getting a little snoozy right now, but there is one thing about God that Collins mentions, sort of in passing, that others have mentioned and that I find a little peculiar. Basically, it's the idea that God created humans for relationship purposes. Collins uses the term ' fellowship'. I'll have to refresh my memory wrt what others have said. But it's always struck me a bit odd that an omni-being like the Christian God would have needs or desires for pretty much anything, but certainly fellowship, companionship, relationship, or the like. If the idea is that God wants to share his bounty with other creatures, that's one thing, but there definitely is this other idea of God creating humans for relationship purposes. That will have to wait for another day.
Comments