A Scientist Turns To God: Review Of Francis Collins’ ‘The Language Of God’

Francis Collins, the geneticist who is justly celebrated for having discovered the genetic mutations for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis and Huntington's disease and for heading the Human Genome Project, is also devoutly religious.

In his book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (2007), he lays out his arguments for why any rational person would believe in God. His arguments are for the most part not Christian arguments; they are scientific arguments which any believer should be profoundly aware of.

Consider this. Any self-respecting scientist would scoff at the concept of a miracle. But science itself has found a miracle at the origins of the universe - the singularity which is called the Big Bang. The conventional position is that the laws of physics collapse as we approach close to the Big Bang.

Collins writes: "The Big Bang cries out for a divine explanation. It forces the conclusion that nature had a defined beginning. I cannot see how nature could have created itself. Only a supernatural force that is outside of space and time could have done that."

Now that there are models of how the universe expanded after the Big Bang, scientists have found a puzzling observation. There are several physical constants in the physical model of the universe. Collins says there are 15 physical constants whose values current theory is unable to predict. Examples are the speed of light, the strength of the weak and strong nuclear forces and the force of gravity. These constants have been so incredibly finetuned that any small change could cause the universe not to exist. For instance, if the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in 100 thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed into itself. Conversely, if the rate of expansion had been grater by even one part in a million, stars and planets could not have been able to form. Collins writes: "The existence of a universe as we know it rests upon a knife edge of improbability."

To explain this, Collins presents the Anthropic Principle: the idea that our universe is uniquely tuned to give rise to intelligent beings that can speculate about existence. Of course, scientists like Stephen Hawking have responded by invoking the "multiverse" hypothesis by which we are living in one of infinitely many universes. But that hypothesis is not very satisfying. As Hawking himself admitted, "I think there are clearly religious implications."

Another reason Collins provides for believing in a God is "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics". We are able to comprehend the universe through simple and beautiful universal mathematical equations. Maybe as Galileo said, "Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe."

Collins goes even further. He says that God may have revealed to us the Word through the genetic code which is universal. The sequence of 'A's, 'T's, 'G's and 'C's may be God's design for the living world that He has deemed fit to share with us for us to explore.

All this brings us to Deism or Einstein's God. Einstein did not believe in a personal God but had bountiful admiration for the structure and harmony in the cosmos. Even Richard Dawkins, the quintessential atheist, agrees with the conception of an Einsteinian God (see his book The God Delusion).

Collins, on the other hand, is a theist. He believes in a personal God who cares for human beings. Why is this so? Collins, influenced by the writings of the Oxford scholar C S Lewis, says that there is a Moral Law which is inscribed in each of us which helps us discriminate between Right and Wrong. The specifics of what is Right or Wrong may differ from culture to culture but the Moral Law is universal. We break the Moral Law often but we are not ignorant of it.

The Moral Law, along with spontaneous display of altruism ("agape" love as Lewis called it) among individuals of our species from time to time have convinced Collins that there is a personal God who speaks to us through our thoughts and faculty of judgement.

Collins also spends a lot of time talking about Darwinian evolution. Now that science has proven the Darwinian theory beyond doubt, he says that it should be embraced as God's grand design for life. He cautions against trying to bring God into the gaps in knowledge which science has failed to bridge. Such attempts may tend to fail as science progresses. He discusses the limitations of Creationism and Intelligent Design and suggests that one should not interpret the Bible too strictly.

While Collins surrendered to Jesus Christ and became a Christian, he says he does not mean to evangelise or proselytise. He writes wisely: "Each person must carry out his or her own search for spiritual truth. If God is real, He will assist. Far too much has been said by Christians about the exclusive club they inhabit. Tolerance is a virtue; intolerance is a vice. I find it deeply disturbing when believers in one faith tradition dismiss the spiritual experiences of others. Regrettably, Christians seem particularly prone to do this. Personally, I have found much to learn from and admire in other spiritual traditions...."

Reading this book made me confront my own doubts and fears. It made me realise how much I needed the conception of a personal Almighty to make sense of the world at large. I realise it is only rational and even superior (after my own puerile dabbling in atheism and agnosticism as a student) to be a theist.

In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom published a famous paper entitled "Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?" (see the link http://www.simulation-argument.com for links to the paper and subsequent discussions) in which he showed using probabilistic arguments that one could conclude that we are living in a simulation created by future generations of humans. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, admitted in an interview that he felt that indeed we are in a simulated reality.

I would like to conclude by saying that it is far more comforting to believe our universe was created by an almighty God than to believe that we are the simulated products of future human civilisations.