Peaceful Coexistence of Science and Faith: Interview with NIH Director Francis Collins

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Without the law there is no recognition of sin. It is when the law is introduced that sin manifests itself. The law was given to hold all mankind in sin until God's provision for redemption came. And that is in the bible.

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There's a lesson here from Matthew 7:6 that many of us (including me) would be well advised to apply. I was raised in a very rural area and often encountered a deposit left by livestock or a wild animal that attracted a lot of flies. I learned to give those piles a wide berth, but alas, now find myself taking note of equally offensive verbal piles. Several very good bloggers have left this site because of their monotonous and illogical carping. My advice to myself and to others here is to ignore them. When they have no audience but themselves, maybe they'll just go away.

I must say I am fascinated by this discussion and am impressed with the intelligent arguments I am hearing from both sides. Kudos to all involved! However, this discussion does illustrate a clear distinction between science and faith, as much as some of us would like to reconcile the two.
Science by definition is falsifiable (including the theory of evolution). Religion, on the other hand, is not falsifiable. This incongruity is most telling by the comments on this very blog post. Whereas a scientist must jettison his theory if the evidence disproves it, a believer will find ways to make the evidence conform to his belief. Neither method is right or wrong, given their own jurisdiction, but try to carry one method over into the other and, well, let's just say some fuses have been blown trying. :)
Which is a reason, I should disclose, that I do not hold young earth creationist philosophy to be a science because it seems to mold the evidence in favor of its conclusions, rather than the other way around. It's fascinating, and makes me marvel at mankind's inventiveness and what the mind is capable of, but I don't regard it as valid scientific inquiry. For this reason I also see the phrase "creation science" as a contradiction.
Nevertheless, I do believe God created the universe and used what we know (and what we don't!) of physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and genetics to do it.
The problem, I think, with YEC's is that they view Creation as a singular event that happened 6-10 thousand years ago in the antediluvian past, whereas I believe Creation is an ongoing process (it's happening now!) and to observe it is to watch the hand of God as He paints His canvas. It's like x-raying a Rembrandt to see what he painted over, or discovering a notebook of Shakespeare's, only in motion, in 3D Imax and full-surround sound! Science fascinates me because it reveals how God works and it seems such a shame to me that people would choose to ignore that. It also seems such a discredit to God's capabilities when people insist that He would be so uncreative as to just touch something -poof!- into existence (how boring!). The nature of evolution and of all science is complex, mysterious, and wonderful. I'm glad that through the discoveries of science, I can think of God working in complex and esoteric ways, not simplistic ways. Science's joys lie not only in the discoveries we have made and will continue to make, but also in the further mystery that every new discovery uncovers.
Great dialogue, folks, I have enjoyed! Thanks. :)

Yes, God is the creator of all things. Lucifer was created but was not in a fallen state when created.

So you tell me. Who was in the serpent tempting Eve? And what was his motivation to tempt Eve to disobey God?

And if serpents were able to communicate with humans at the beginning of creation, what reason would you give for them not communicating with humans now? What was that creature before God put him on his belly for what he did?

The way I see it, you must either choose to be a young earth creationist, and make claims that the two different stories in Gen 1:1 and 1:2 are due to our 'imposing a modern, linear thinking on a cyclical ancient eastern argument', and basically refuse to believe anything that scientists discover unless it personally affects you, or you must find a way to navigate the preponderance of evidence that all life emerged from a single common ancestor within your faith (as Dr. Collins and I have). There is no such thing as 'Creation Science'. If you really want to know how scientists refute Creation Science, you can not do better than to read 'Only a Theory' by Kenneth Miller. As a Christian, I actually appreciated the way that Miller makes it crystal clear just how heretical the Intelligent Design movement's claims were. For instance, they claim that the complex chemical cascade underpinning blood clotting is irreducably complex, since it cannot function properly if even one factor is missing. But, then you have to wonder why an 'intelligent' designer would have designed it so that there are so many people born with one or more factors missing who are forced to deal with this disability. All throughout the testimony in various trials in the US to get ID included into the public school curriculum, the charlatans that were behind the ID movement were forced to make statements to the effect that, just because ID proves intelligent design must be present, it doesnt necessarily prove that the design is perfect. How can a Christian have ever placed their faith in this!? Its a good thing that you can find plenty of examples, in other organisms, where blood clotting is functional despite the absence of some of these factors (the evidence against irreducable complexity and for the potential evolutionary pathway). It provides the irrefutable proof that there are people who will shamelessly manipulate Christians with unsound logic simply because they know that these honest Christians desperately want to believe something (anything) different than what science states (mainly as a way of funding their laboratories and salaries), and it gives us hope that there are still things that God would like us to learn from this wonderful universe that he has created that can help us live healthier lives.

"I find it interesting that the ORDER of creation is something scientists can find nothing to argue about"

Actually, they can find something in the order to refute--light was created before the sun.

That said, Hugh Ross offers scientific explanations for this in his many books. Also, I just purchased "The Genesis Enigma". I have yet to read it, but reading the introduction, it seems to be written by a scientist who had made a discovery involving the evolution of the eye and light sensitivity. Some Christians wrote him asking if he would look into that in relation to the Genesis account. He will be arguing that his discovery helps explain the apparent disparity between the order of creation between light and the sun.

The interesting thing to me about this author is that he claims no faith whatsoever (so far, he sounds like an agnostic), and has no stake in the creation story matching up with science. Yet, as he examined the evidence from evolution and other branches of evidence-based science, he's discovered this parallelism. And his overall thesis is that science, not creation science, sheds light on the creation story. So, he has no need to force scientific evidence to fit Genesis, as creationism does.

Significantly, this is someone who doesn't believe in God, and it presents an important argument that the Christian witness is more effective if we don't force people to choose between science and God. Here is someone who sees God's existence as possible BECAUSE of the evidence from science and how it fits with Genesis.

I have not read all the comments thus far; I will only share my own thoughts and beliefs. If I'm parroting someone else, I don't really know it!

I believe that evolution is part of God's creation, as Darwin orginally defined evolution as the origin of species, what some call micro-evolution. The Bible tells us that creation is "good" not "perfected." Evidence abounds that God's creation is an ever-changing and evolving environment.

But evolutionists want to walk backwards to the very beginning and claim that evolution proves how live began. I've had many discussions with evolutionists through the years, and as you walk backwards with them through the process, their side of the discussion becomes peppered with "maybe" and "possibly" and "give or take a few million years, anything can happen." I counter with "maybe God" and "possibly God" and "give or take a few million years, God can happen." When you take the "young earth" arguement out of the equation, evolutionists have very little grounds for denying the Creator God.

I don't subscribe to "young earth" beliefs. I can't wrap my mind around why would God create a young earth to look old. Is he trying to trick us? What examples from the Bible support a trickster God?

Besides, to argue that the creation stories are literal detracts from their deeper allegorical meanings about God's will for us and creation - laying the essential ground work for those themes that resonate throughout the OT and NT. I'm pretty certain that is the original intent of OT authors, not a literal, scientific account of creation. Although, I find it interesting that the ORDER of creation is something scientists can find nothing to argue about, and makes an important point. God did not create the heavens and the earth for man; He created man for the heavens and the earth.

What books on evolution by evolutionary biologists have you read? Have you read anything by Kenneth Miller, for example?

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I have always believed that faith and science can live together. As we learn more in the scientific arena, I believe that will be even more true than not.

An interesting conference addressing faith and science is schedule for March 12 and 13 at Westminster Theological Seminary.

"But more serious than the junk science of evolution, is the wrench theistic evolution throws into the story of the cross of Jesus."

That is a dangerous comment. Whenever we make the story of God and of Jesus contingent on our limited understanding of science and the universe around us we are defining God, creating Him to reflect our beliefs and understanding of the world. Instead, we should allow God to reveal Himself to us, through science, through nature, through worship and through life-long service. I don't know if evolution is right, or if the creationists are right, all I know that as long as the story for the beginning of the universe starts with "God created...." then the story is line with Biblical teachings.

Also, your logic for your argument about animal nature is flawed. The Jamesredden put it well in his comment about the logic of it. The question you are addressing here has been called Theodicy by theologians. The question is simply put "If God is all powerful and all good, then why is there evil?" And many branches of Christianity and theology have been created to answer this question: but still no one really knows. I fail to see how under a creationist belief system this question ceases to exist.

"There never has been a conflict between science and religion. The first great scientists were devout believers and creationists."

This statement is both true and untrue. You are correct that early science was dominated by people of faith, and not just people that assented intellectually to a Creator God. I don't need to cite specific instances for you to know that many of those people faced dire consequences from religious institutions if their beliefs contradicted the status quo. To present the actions of the Church regarding Galileo, Copernicus, ect as anything but persecution is historically false. When people talk of the conflict of science and religion, the division that began back then and took root throughout the modern and post-modern ideological shifts is usually what they are referring to. This is the product of reactionary responses by the Church first and thinkers and scientists second, but you are right in saying that there need not be any contradictions between true faith and science.

It is utterly false to assert that atheists "invented" the theory of evolution. Charles Darwin was no atheist. He would best be described as an agnostic, and that only toward the end of his life. He once thought of becoming a priest of the Church of England.

Darwin came up with the theory of evolution as a result of his meticulous observations of the natural world, not as an "invention" to deny God. To be sure, modern atheists take "evolution" as an article of faith in their godless religion (I use "godless" quite literally here), but that isn't because evolution is essentially atheistic. Science, including evolutionary science, cannot and does not include investigating the supernatural. One can make an excellent case that atheists, when they so use evolution as religious dogma, are misusing science. And at any rate, why should Christians agree with atheists on this point?

Further, some of the most notable early advocates and promoters of Darwin's theory were themselves evangelical Christians; among them was the notable Harvard botanist, Asa Gray. (How many editions of Gray's Manual of Botany been through?) An excellent book to read on this topic is Darwin's Forgotten Defenders, by David N. Livingstone

Darwin included a quote from Francis Bacon's Advancement of Learning in his preface to On the Origin of Species:
"To conclude, therefore, let no man out of a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain, that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proficience in both."

Would an atheist inventing a false scientific theory preface his work with this quote?

"Why do we feel the need to explain everything (in detail) that God has and will do AND make it a matter of our salvation?"

I know that this is a rhetorical question but I believe the answer lends a sense of the ironic to the discussion. The need for answers stems from the scientific/materialistic worldview rooted in the Enlightenment. Everything has an explanation, every problem has an explanation, everything can be reduced to cause and effect, hence the development of physical and social sciences along with increasing "systematic theologies". The irony, to me, is that the creationist/fundamentalist viewpoint is nothing more than the other side of the same coin with the modernists. They both attempt to compress and reduce the inexplicable into the thimble of human comprehension. "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law."
Doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God is better left to art than science.

As I posted on a previous thread:

I was a young earth creationist for a very long time, so I am very very familiar with creation science's claims and arguments, and the more I learned about geology, the more I realized how the science has been twisted to meet their goals.

In many cases, creationists have bordered on dishonesty in their presentation. I went to a presentation a few years ago, and it was full of half truths. He brought up questions about the time scale, for example, but he didn't give the full story about it. That is a half truth. Half truths are also known as lies, by the way. Fancy presentations fool a lot of people, especially those who don't know anything about science.

I also listened to about 10 CDs of Kent Hovind, Dr. Dino, at the request of my brother. His geologic arguments were refutable by any good freshman geology student. But they sound good, because most people aren't good freshman geology students. Again, he gives flashy presentations full of half truths that fool a lot of people and make a lot of money.

They also argue from the basis of "expertise". Hovind calls himself Dr. Hovind, giving the impression that he actually has true experience in these scientific fields. His doctorate is in Christian education from an un-acredited university and he has at the most a bachelor of some science, not sure which one. This hardly makes him an expert on anything, other than Christian education, and even though he says what his doctorate is in, most people don't understand that having a doctorate in one area doesn't make you an expert in everything.

The person whose presentation I attended a few years ago claimed to have a doctorate, as well, which was not true. Additionally, the last time I looked at the credentials of the contributors to "Answers in Genesis", not one of them had doctorates in sciences relevant to the age of the Earth or evolution.

In order to say this touches on salvation, you would have to believe that animals sin. Animals don't sin, they act according to animal nature. If they had the ability to choose between good and evil, they would have the ability to sin. What distinguishes us from animals is that we have consciousness and the ability to choose to live according to God's plan or to rebel against it. I see no reason that God could not have used evolution to create a people with a conscious. It is an insult to us because we like to think we are specially created, but as I argued before, it actually puts us in a right relationship of humility before Him. He is sovereign, and could have created us anyway He wanted.

The Bible is not a science book. We are using a scientific interpretation of it, and thus lose its mystery. Our literal mindset robs us of much of the mystery of the Bible and much of its beauty, and I"m not just speaking of Genesis.

After following the link you provided. Mr. Brown is hardly a good example of good, solid, scientific evidence to explain plate tectonics, etc. He is, in fact, an example of the typical creationist rhetoric I have encountered as described in my previous post. If you read an introductory geology book, it is pretty likely you also could refute every geological point he makes.

Here is a quick refutation of his hydroplate hypothesis by someone who isn't even a geologist, but who easily dismantles his hypothesis:

http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/hydro.html

It really is much more logical to understand God's creation story based on the evidence He actually gives us in His creation than it is to try to twist our understanding of His creation to match a literal interpretation of His creation account.

"The only way we could "sin" is if we reach a state of awareness where we wilfully damage relationships."

Damaging relationships isn't the only sin, but if you want we'll stick with it. And why do we willfully damage relationships? Because we are following our animal natures. Traditional Christianity called it a sin nature, but it's the same thing. As you wrote, a tiger doesn't sin when it kills and eats prey; neither does it sin when it kills another tiger who is competing with it for ownership of the females. Neither is it a sin when tigers mate with multiple females, then abandons them to live alone. Nor is it a sin when one tiger steals the food, female tigers or shelter that another tiger enjoyed. As animals, we would have acted the same way because God made us do it through the process of evolution. So why did God suddenly decide all of that was wrong for us?

And what does the Bible mean when it says that by one man sin entered the world and death that sin? According to theistic evolution God created us as sinners. There never was a time in our history that we were not sinners. We never had a state of innocence from which to fall. We merely went from one stage as animals in which our behavior was perfectly acceptable to another stage when the exact same behavior was no longer acceptable to God. And because God evolved us with an animal nature, he then had to fix his mistake by sending his son to die and give us a new nature?

What is amazing to me is that you see no authority at all in Collin's expertise. The man works in molecular biology and genetics, two fields that have evolution at their very foundations. Yet, for some reason, his testimony, from his expertise in these fields, is useless to you.

In contrast, Walt Brown doesn't have a PhD in biology or geology or genetics but in mechanical engineering. He has no expertise in the field of either biology or geology, but he is the one you count as an expert.

You don't seem to recognize that the fields in the sciences are highly specialized. Expertise in one field does not give one expertise in another. I know and understand things about biology, but I am hardly an expert. I have colleagues who are biologists who wouldn't be able to tell a granite from a rhyolite. Even within the disciplines there are specialized areas of expertise. A biologist friend of mine confessed she could identify very few plants because she specializes in snakes. For myself, I know some things about groundwater hydrology, for example, because I had a class in it, but it is not my area of expertise and I would be at a loss if I had to teach a class in it. I am hardly an expert in hydrology, even though it is an area in geology.

If we were to put evolution on the stand with two expert witnesses, most courts of law would recognize Dr. Collins testimony having far more weight than Dr. Brown's. It doesn't mean Dr. Brown doesn't or can't understand evolution, but most people would recognize that the person who has to understand it intimately for their life's work surely has far more expertise than someone who studies it as a hobby.

When you have a toothache, do you go to a podiatrist?

The question I think, many ask is- was evil created or is it preexistant and thus co-regent with God. What does this verse mean to you
"For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:" Do you believe the Bible?

An elementary understanding of geology is enough to easily deflate most creationist's geologic arguments. This tells me one of two things:

1. Creationists don't understand geology very well, and certainly not enough to use it to support their hypotheses.

or

2. Creationists are purposely twisting geology to use it as evidence to support their hypotheses.

Creationists are notorious for twisting science, mining quotes, and misrepresenting even the most elemental truths of science. How is that honest?

Dr. Brown's site is typical of creationist sources and a great example of what I described in my previous paragraph. It is not anywhere near legit.

What was the original sin? Was it not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

Interpreted with the help of Genesis, it means that God created everythng that is in the universe, but he did not create evil. As CS Lewis wrote, evil is not an entity. Like darkness which is nothing but the abscence of light, evil is the distortion of what is good. God created many things as good, such as sex, but mankind twists the good into something evil.

You really ought to consider trying to answer the question of the origin of evil. Europe is famously anti-religion, and I have read that a good reason for it was the two world wars. People couldn't believe that a good god would have allowed the massive death and destruction wrought by each. Apparently, no one could give them a good answer. Just saying there is no answer will not stop people asking and wondering about it. And when they do, they will be confronted with stark conclusions: 1) either God is evil, or 2) he is impotent to stop evil or 3) there is no God. Only traditional Christianity offers a fourth option.

God didn't create us as sinners. We know that because the Bible says he created everything good. Adam sinned because he used the free will God gave him for good to do evil.

Will you answer my question? What does Paul mean when he wrote that sin entered the world by one man and death by sin?