A scientist's evidence for belief in God

AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac

With Francis Collins recently being named as the head of the National Institutes of Health, I thought it would be fun to give his book a quick review.  But first, some background on his NIH appointment.

One the one hand, Collins is a well respected geneticist, and most agree he is qualified for the position.

But he's also an outspoken Christian and has attempted to mix science with religion in the past.  Yesterday, Sam Harris wrote an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times expressing deep concern for Collins's evangelism.  Can someone so willing to abandon science for faith be a suitable choice for directing biomedical research in the U.S.?  Time will tell.

But for now, let's look at his book.

In 2007, Francis Collins wrote "The Language of God - A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief" where he attempts to demonstrate the reality of God.

Collins spends much of the book telling us about DNA and evolution.  His passion and enthusiasm for the science is evident, and he offers an easy-to-understand presentation of his genetic research.

He says that evolution is the means that God used to bring about his creation. But this is a bit like saying that gravity is the means that God uses to keep things attached to the Earth. It's an empty statement, and this is why:

Evolution is a natural process that would occur with or without God. And Collins himself describes evolution in a very naturalistic manner. All of the evidence points to a process indistinguishable from one that didn't have a God somewhere behind the scenes. Indeed, he criticizes Intelligent Design, the idea that God directly coded or tinkered with our DNA. He seems perfectly content with the idea that evolution did what it did entirely on it's own. So it's not a God of the gaps he's proposing.  It's an invisible and impotent God. Even if this God exists, it wouldn't matter.  At least, not in regards to explaining life.

But Collins tries to spin this way: Evolution and God are compatible with each other, the two ideas can co-exist.

And this is true, in the sense that it reduces God to a gardener who simply looks upon an open field and declares that it turned out the way he wanted it to. He planted no seeds, dug no ditches, spread no fertilizer, pulled no weeds. Collins could say that wind, insects, and rain were the means by which the gardener created the garden, but the end result is that this garden looks exactly like any other open field that had no gardener at all.  It's an additional claim about the field that only complicates it, and could easily be cut away.

Plenty of ideas can co-exist, especially when one of them is invisible. The question is, why bother presenting an idea when it could be cut away entirely and nothing about the world would change in any meaningful way?

To be fair, Collins never directly uses DNA as evidence for the existence of God. He spends a lot of time on it, and repeatedly calls it "the language of God," but his actual evidence isn't found in DNA or anything else that might be scientific.  His evidence, it turns out, is mostly lifted straight out of "Mere Christianity."

Evidence #1:  There was a beginning.

He discusses why modern science suggests that the universe had a starting point at the Big Bang.  Because there was a beginning, he says, we must infer that some other force or entity brought the universe into existence.

This may or may not be the case.  Collins himself explains that this is all very new science full of new discoveries and that there are many unanswered questions.  It could be that the universe has always existed in some form or another, and that the Big Bang only marks the beginning of its current state.

If the universe did get a push from somewhere "else" we still couldn't conclude that this push would have had to come from something intelligent. The beginning of the universe may have been no more intentional than a bubble popping, a quantum fluctuation.

If we grant that some kind of god was responsible, we've only pushed the questions back another step and find that we're left with all the same questions as before. 

If God did it, how did he do it?  Where did that god come from? What sort of universe was it inhabiting? Did that universe have a beginning?

Using God as an explanation really offers no new insight into the universe.  It's just as useful to say "It was magic."  Inserting God into the equation means that all the scientific questions remain, in addition to the added complexity of the existence of an intelligent, thoughtful, powerful being.

Ultimately, the problem with using "the universe had a beginning, so something must have created it" as an argument is that it seems to assume that only gods can create universes.  It's begging the question.  Otherwise, all we'd have is "The universe had a beginning, so it began somehow."  So?  That doesn't lead to an invisible man.

Evidence #2: Objective Morals

Collins uses the Moral Argument to suggest that humans appear to have a uniform, innate sense of right and wrong, and that the best explanation for this fact is divine direction, a “spark” of morality bestowed to us by something beyond the natural universe. Further, this something must itself be intelligent and care about humans, otherwise it wouldn’t have done so.

I've already written about why the Moral Argument doesn't really work, but in a nutshell:

• Given the wide variety of moral beliefs among regions, cultures, and religions, there's no real reason to suspect that there is much of an Objective Moral Law.
• Whatever Moral Law humans do share is probably best explained through evolution, culture, and psychology.  An instinctive repulsion to murdering children, for example, could have come about as a beneficial trait that helped our species survive.  Or it could be a social necessity.  (Few societies would function without such a belief instilled in each generation.)  Or because humans have the psychological ability to sympathize and imagine being in someone elses place, we instinctively abhor actions that hurt others.  Whatever the case, there are explanations that don't require gods.
• Introducing a God as the source of morality creates a dilemma.  If the Moral Law is objective, it would exist on its own, whether there was a God or not.  On the other hand, if God authored the Moral Law, then it isn't objective and humans could be inventing right or wrong just as easily as God could.  No matter which way you cut it, having morals doesn't require a god:  either they exist without him, or we could create them on our own.  Even worse, reading the Bible, it seems god is actually more interested in our obedience than our being good.  Being willing to sacrifice a human is rewarded, where refusing to do so on moral grounds is not. 
• If a Moral Law exists, God doesn't appear to be subjected to it. His behavior can be highly immoral at times, but we're generally told it's for some greater purpose. It's acceptable to drown everyone, kill someone, or blow up a building, as long as there's a good reason for it.  This undermines the existence of a Moral Law.  Anything becomes "good" the instant God says it's good.  Morality becomes just as arbitrary as if humans were deciding it anyway.

For Collins to be correct, we have to assume that no future study in psychology, evolution, or culture will ever shed any additional light on where our morals come from. Those studies and those questions will all come up empty because the most reasonable explanation, according to Collins, is that morality is the result of divine intervention.  As Sam Harris said yesterday:

As someone who believes that our understanding of human nature can be derived from neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science and behavioral economics, among others, I am troubled by Dr. Collins’s line of thinking. I also believe it would seriously undercut fields like neuroscience and our growing understanding of the human mind. If we must look to religion to explain our moral sense, what should we make of the deficits of moral reasoning associated with conditions like frontal lobe syndrome and psychopathy? Are these disorders best addressed by theology?

We're already discovering that morality can be derived by natural means.  Many interesting studies are explaning more and more about our morality all the time.

Evidence #3:  Fine-tuned Universe

If our universe were just slightly different from what it is, it couldn't possibly support any kind of life. A universe that has the kind of physics that permit stars, planets, and ultimately biological life to exist is very improbable, suggesting it was designed this way in order for us to exist.

As with the origin of the universe, there's too much we don't know to make any kind of guess as to what's more likely. Some models suggest that there are an infinite number of universes being created all the time, and some of them would have the right kind of conditions for life. We don't know that this is the case, but we can't infer that an all-powerful, all-knowing creator magick'ed the universe into existence merely because we're here.

Besides, it's a strange thing to say that the universe was designed with us in mind when we can only inhabit a small fraction of the surface of our own small planet, nevermind the radiation, vacuum, and temperature extremes that would instandly kill us anywhere else.  The universe is filled with black holes, not life.  We can only exist in a very slim band of conditions that appear to be entirely rare.  We're alive in spite of the conditions of the universe, not because of them.
 

Collins acknowledges that these arguments, even if they're correct, can only get us as far as some general form of theism. Getting to Christianity is a whole other problem, and one that he doesn't really even attempt to make.

Collins began his search for God when he saw the sick and dying in a hospital find comfort and peace in their faith. He spent a lot of time thinking about God, life, purpose, and eventually, while on a winter hike, he had a spiritual epiphany and came to believe in a Christian God.

We can't say a whole lot about this, other than that it's emotional and subjective. We can't ignore that our own psychology can influence this sort of thing, and it's surprising that so many can so confidently assert an objective reality ("God is real") based on emotions and feelings - things that we know that can be so fickle.  I have no doubt that people find peace and comfort in an idea - but that doesn't make it true. I also have no doubt that spending enough time soul-searching and praying will eventually lead to some kind of powerful experience - but that doesn't mean it's true. Collins found Jesus, but someone else found Buddha.

We can agree with Collins that life and the universe is an amazing place full of awe and beauty. He says that this is a kind of testimony to the grandness and power of God, but as Douglas Adams said:

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? 

Email Jonathan: slcfreethinking@gmail.com
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