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Executive Times |
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2007 Book Reviews |
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The
Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S.
Collins |
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Rating: |
** |
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(Mildly Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Credentials The
credentials of Francis Collins led me to his book, The
Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Collins is a
pioneering geneticist who once led the Human Genome Project. He has spent his
life practicing the scientific method. He is also a fundamentalist Christian
who believes in God. Given the fundamentalist aversion to science, especially
when it comes to areas like evolution, it was the
fact that Collins has feet planted in both camps that makes this an
interesting book. On these pages, Collins tells his personal story of faith,
and explains science in terms that all readers can understand. Here’s an
excerpt, from the end of Chapter 6, “Genesis, Galileo and Darwin,” pp.
150-158: WHAT DOES GENESIS REALLY SAY? If you
have not recently read this Biblical account, find a Bible right now and read
Genesis 1:1 through Genesis 2:7. There is no substitute for looking at the
actual text if one is trying to understand its meaning. And if you are
concerned that the words in this text have been seriously compromised by
centuries of copying and recopying, do not worry very much about this—the
evidence in favor of the authenticity of the Hebrew is in fact quite strong. There is
no question that this is a powerful and poetic narrative recounting the
story of God’s creative actions. “In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth” implies that God always existed. This description is certainly
compatible with scientific knowledge of the Big Bang. The remainder of
Genesis 1 describes a series of creative acts, from “Let there be light”
on day one, to the waters and the sky on day two, to the appearance of land
and vegetation on day three, the sun, moon, and stars on day four, fish and
birds on day five, and finally on a very busy sixth day, the appearance of
land animals and male and female humans. Genesis 2
then begins with a description of God resting on the seventh day. After this
appears a second description of the creation of humans, this time explicitly
referring to Adam. The second creation description is not entirely compatible
with the first; in Genesis 1 vegetation appears three days before humans are
created, whereas in Genesis 2 it seems that God creates Adam from the dust
of the earth before any shrub or plant had yet appeared. In Genesis 2:7, it
is interesting to note, the Hebrew phrase that we translate “living being” is
applied to Adam in exactly the same way it was previously applied to fish,
birds, and land animals in Genesis 1:20 and 1:24. What are
we to make of these descriptions? Did the writer intend for this to be a
literal depiction of precise chronological steps, including days of
twenty-four-hour duration (though the sun was not created until day three,
leaving open the question of how long a day would have been before that)? If
a literal description was intended, why then are there two stories that do
not entirely mesh with each other? Is this a poetic and even allegorical
description, or a literal history? These
questions have been debated for centuries. Nonliteral
interpretations since In that
regard, the writings of The Hebrew
word used in Genesis I for day (yom) can be used both to describe a twenty-four-hour
day and to describe a more symbolic representation. There are multiple places
in the Bible where yom is utilized in a nonliteral
context, such as “the day of the Lord”—just as we might say “in my grandfather’s
day” without implying that Grandpa had lived only twenty-four hours. Ultimately,
Augustine writes: “What kind of days these were, it is extremely difficult,
or perhaps impossible for us to conceive.” He admits there are probably many
valid interpretations of the book of Genesis: “With these facts in mind, I
have worked out and presented the statements of the book of Genesis in a
variety of ways according to my ability; and, in interpreting words that
have been written obscurely for the purpose of stimulating our thought, I
have not brashly taken my stand on one side against a rival interpretation
which might possibly be better.”2 Diverse
interpretations continue to be promoted about the meaning of Genesis 1 and 2.
Some, particularly from the evangelical Christian church, insist upon a
completely literal interpretation, including twenty-four-hour days. Coupled
with subsequent genealogical information in the Old Testament, this leads to
Bishop Ussher’s famous conclusion that God created
heaven and earth in 4004 B.C. Other equally sincere believers do not accept
the requirement that the days of creation need be twenty-four hours in
length, though they otherwise accept the narrative as a literal and
sequential depiction of God’s creative acts. Still other believers see the
language of Genesis 1 and 2 as intended to instruct readers of Moses’ time
about God’s character, and not to attempt to teach scientific facts about
the specifics of creation that would have been utterly confusing at the time. Despite
twenty-five centuries of debate, it is fair to say that no human knows what
the meaning of Genesis 1 and 2 was precisely intended to be. We should
continue to explore that! But the idea that scientific revelations would
represent an enemy in that pursuit is ill conceived. If God created the
universe, and the laws that govern it, and if He endowed human beings with
intellectual abilities to discern its workings, would He want us to
disregard those abilities? Would He be diminished or threatened by what we
are discovering about His creation? LESSONS FROM GALILEO Watching
the current fireworks between certain branches of the church and certain
outspoken scientists, an observer with a sense of history might ask, “Haven’t
we been to this movie before?” Conflicts between interpretation of scripture
and scientific observations are not exactly new. In particular, the
conflicts that arose in the seventeenth century between the Christian Church
and the science of astronomy provide some instructive Context for the
evolutionary debates of today. Galileo Galilei was a brilliant scientist and mathematician, born
in Galileo
ultimately came to the conclusion that his observations could make sense
only if the earth revolved around the sun. That placed him in direct conflict
with the Catholic Church. While much
of the traditional lore about Galileo’s persecutions by the church is
overblown, there is no question that his conclusions were received with alarm
in many theological quarters. This was not entirely based on religious
arguments, however. In fact, his observations were accepted by many Jesuit
astronomers, but resented by rival academics, who urged the church to
intervene. The Dominican Father Caccini obliged. In
a sermon directly targeting Galileo, the friar insisted that “geometry is of
the devil” and that “mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all
heresies.”3 Another
Catholic priest claimed that Galileo’s conclusions were not only heretical
but atheistic. Other attacks included a claim that “his pretended discovery
vitiates the whole Christian plan of salvation” and that “it casts suspicion
on the doctrine of the incarnation.” While much of the criticism came from
the Catholic Church, it was not limited to that. John Calvin and Martin
Luther also objected. In
retrospect, modern observers must wonder why the church was so utterly
threatened by the idea of the earth revolving around the sun. To be sure,
certain verses from scripture seemed to support the church’s position, such
as Psalm 93:l— “The world is firmly established; it
cannot be moved”— and Psalm 104:5: “He set the earth on its foundation; it
can never be moved.” Also cited was Ecclesiastes 1:5: “The sun rises and the
sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.”
Today, few believers argue that the authors of these verses were intending to
teach science. Nonetheless, passionate claims were made to that effect,
implying that a heliocentric system would somehow undermine the Christian
faith. Despite
having upset the religious establishment, Galileo got by with a warning not
to teach or defend his views. Subsequently, a new pope, who was friendly to
Galileo, gave him vague permission to write a book about his opinions, so
long as it provided a balanced view. Galileo’s masterwork, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World
Systems, presented a fanciful dialogue between a geocentric and a
heliocentric enthusiast, moderated by a neutral but interested layman. The
narrative frame fooled nobody. Galileo’s preference for the heliocentric
point of view was obvious by the end of the book, and despite its approval by
Catholic censors, it caused an uproar. Galileo
was subsequently tried before the Roman Inquisition in 1633, and ultimately
forced to “abjure, curse, and detest” his own work. He remained under house
arrest for the remainder of his life, and his publications were banned. Only
in 1992— 359 years after the trial—was an apology issued by Pope John Paul
II: “Galileo sensed in his scientific research the presence of the Creator
who, stirring in the depths of his spirit, stimulated him, anticipating and
assisting his intuitions.”4 So in this
example, the scientific correctness of the heliocentric view ultimately won
out, despite strong theological objections. Today all faiths except perhaps
a few primitive ones seem completely at home with this conclusion. The claims
that heliocentricity contradicted the Bible are now seen to have been overstated,
and the insistence on a literal interpretation of those particular scripture
verses seems wholly unwarranted. Could this
same harmonious outcome be realized for the current conflict between faith
and the theory of evolution? On the positive side, the Galileo affair
demonstrates that a contentious chapter did eventually get resolved on the
basis of overwhelming scientific evidence. But along the way, considerable
damage was done—and more to faith than to science. In his commentary on
Genesis, Augustine provides an exhortation that might well have been heeded
by the seventeenth-century church: Usually,
even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the
other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and
even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the
sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of
animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as
being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a
disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian,
presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these
topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing
situation, in which people show a vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it
to scorn. The shame is not so
much that an ignorant individual is derided, but the people outside the
household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to
the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our
Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a
Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him
maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to
believe those books and matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the
hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages
are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learned from
experience in the light of reason?5 Unfortunately,
however, in many ways the controversy between evolution and faith is proving
to be much more difficult than an argument about whether the earth goes
around the sun. After all, the evolution controversy reaches into the very
heart of both faith and science. This is not about rocky heavenly bodies, but
about ourselves and our relation to a Creator. Perhaps
the centrality of those issues explains the fact that, despite the modern
rate of progress and dissemination of information, we still have not resolved
the public controversy about evolution, nearly 150 years after Galileo
remained a strong believer to the end. He continued to argue that scientific
exploration was not only an acceptable but a noble course of action for a
believer. In a famous remark that could be the motto today of all
scientist-believers, he said: “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same
God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to
forgo their use.”6 Keeping
that exhortation in mind, let us now explore the possible responses to the
contentious interaction between the theory of evolution and faith in God.
Each of us must come to some conclusion here, and choose one of the following
positions. When it comes to the meaning of life, fence sitting is an
inappropriate posture for both scientists and believers. Collins is no Steve Hopkins,
December 18, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the January 2007
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Language of God.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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