That's the title of a
book I'’ve just finished reading, by prominent geneticist
Francis S Collins. In it he presents his own perspective, apparently
shared by a number of scientists, that while God is a reality inaccessible to the tools of Science, He is wholly accessible to any Scientist - to any human being - willing to seek him out. The sort of tools we need to discover that one are spiritual rather than physical - Collins suggests that we need to be a "seeker" (p233) - "science is not the only way of knowing" (p229) and "each person needs to seek out his own particular path to the truth" (p219), in Collins case this involved a very particular path indeed: he "surrendered to Jesus Christ" (p223).
Collins wholly accepts Evolution, and has penned the term Biologos (p203) to describe his position as a Theistic Evolutionist: "God is the source of all life and that life expresses the will of God" (p203) and "God chose the elegant method of Evolution to create" all life (p201).
He sees no conflict between his scientific life and his religious life, and does not subscribe to any mental compartmentalizing of the two, as recommended for example by
Stephen Jay Gould in his NOMA hypothesis.
What to think of all of this. Well, here's some of the "best bits" from his book, and my thoughts about them.
Let's start with the title itself (as is my wont). Note how it's "a scientist presents evidence for belief" and not "scientific evidence for belief". The difference is of course huge, as Collins admits - "science...would get me no further in resolving the question of God" (p30). Well, why the potentially misleading subtitle then? Collins makes it sound as if the evidence he is about to present
is itself scientific - when it turns out to be anything but. Here's something I want to say about this. If, as Collins says, we need to use different tools than the tools of science to access a spiritual life, and those tools are accessible to each one of us, and the book he has written is all about
those tools and not the tools of his trade, then this book may as well be entitled (if suitably authored) "a cleaner presents evidence for belief" or "a bus driver presents evidence for belief"! True, when explaining science - and particularly evolution - Collins is compelling and convincing, but when describing his own religious views - the evidence in question - he speaks "mainly as a layman"(p34). As with any area of knowledge, any argument from authority must be handled with care (I am a scientist therefore my views are more valid) - for this reason, and for the reason that the views in question
are not scientific we must accept Collins arguments on their own merit, and give no special weight to his credentials.
I suppose that leaves me open to a question though - why did I buy the book in the first place, if not because of who and what the author was? Well, I guess I did buy it for those reasons - but I had hope beyond hope that this scientist would present evidence (not proof, I wasn't expecting the impossible!) from his field of study - hope that he would hold my hand and lead me deep into the complex and beautiful DNA molecule, stopping occasionally to say in an awe inspired voice "now, this bears all the hallmarks of a supremely intelligent designer, don't you think?" I think I wanted a "Creation book" (see previous post "Life - how ..."), without the flaws! Alas, it just isn't the case, and hence the above criticism.
I was expecting too much, as I now know that Collins believes all the complexity of life is explained by evolution, that no special creative act was needed from the moment our universe began. This is baffling to me, I must admit, for if a scientist who understands more of the complexity of DNA than I ever will can leave God out of the picture so almost entirely, then that is in my opinion evidence against belief, and not for! As already stated, the "evidence" he points to is of a spiritual nature, and the only exception to this rule (see Chapter 3 "The Origins of the Universe") that Collins is willing to admit is the fact that we have a universe to begin with - Collins' Creator is a momentous being, for he is only needed for a moment, the moment of creation - creation then takes care of itself. Collins is no astrophysicist though! Perhaps the very little scientific evidence he does point to can be discounted also - as if an astrophysicist had written a similar book and doubted God's hand in the moment of creation "but gee, look at that marvelous DNA molecule - now there's evidence for my God if any were needed!"
Well, enough with the overarching gripes, let's focus on some specific, good and bad, points within the book itself. Where is this promised evidence of his? Here would be a good place to say that a lot of the evidence Collins cites is actually quoted directly from
C.S.Lewis (yes, that one) and in particular from his book
Mere Christianity.
Collins, taking the lead from Lewis, points to "right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe" - the existence of the moral law being a strong evidence for the existence of a moral Creator. "Those accused of falling short" of this law, "such as the husband who is insufficiently cordial to his wife's friend, usually respond with a variety of excuses why they should be let off the hook. Virtually never does the respondent say "To hell with your concept of right behaviour" "(p23). Collins argues, again quoting Lewis, that this moral law is widespread, in all cultures and in all times of history, and that it is not a consequence of evolutionary pressures, as if all altruistic actions somehow bestow a selective advantage on the individual or the group - "surely most of us have at one time felt the inner calling to help a stranger in need, even with no likelihood of personal benefit. And if we have acted on that impulse, the consequence was often a warm sense of "having done the right thing" "(p27).
Man does seem to be distinct from the animals in his capacity to grasp a morality that seems already present - just as mathematics is already there, woven into the fabric of the universe, just waiting to be discovered, it seems that this moral law is much more than the work of our hands - it seems more of a discovery than an invention. This much I believe, but can we go further than this? It is a leap of faith to go any further, and it is a leap that Collins takes - "There is truly something unusual going on here" - OK, maybe, but here's the leap - "to quote Lewis, "If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe - no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves. Surely this ought to arouse our suspicions?" Encountering this argument for the first time at age twenty-six, I was stunned by it's logic...what kind of God would this be?...this God...must be a theist God, who desires some kind of relationship with those special creatures called human beings, and has therefore instilled this special glimpse of Himself into each one of us. This might be the God of Abraham" (p29).
How can we get from the existence of a moral law to the existence of the God of Abraham? In a few simple steps outlined on one page of Collins' book! The evidence presented here seems to be of the kind "I think x implies y, so you can think x implies y too", yet although x and y may very well be true of themselves, the implication does not address the truthfulness of either x or y
and there is no logical argument given to support the implication itself, therefore the whole argument collapses! The evidence in the book tends to be of this nature - but what's stopping me looking at the evidence, and coming to a completely different conclusion? Would that make me a bad person, would I be breaking the moral law, or (going one implication too far) upsetting the God of Abraham?
As to the illustration or metaphor of the architect - what rubbish! It only goes to show that metaphors can prove anything - here's how I see it: "the universe is like this, so it must be like this for a good reason, so let's say what that good reason might be". You know where this falls down? The second statement: "so it must be like this for a good reason". The fact is, nobody knows that, and any illustration that tries to support such a belief - that invents out of thin air a good reason for the universe being like it is - stands on equal footing with any other reason or illustration invented to support this erroneous statement. Try this on for size: "If there was a power that created the universe, this one would be able to interact with that universe - surely an architect would build for himself the best house of all the houses he could make, and that one would then live in that house himself and there raise his family - so too, we are the family of our creator who lives in his house, our house". I'm sure there are people, perhaps Christians, who believe this - and what's preventing it being true? Such ones probably come up with other reasons for God's "hands off" approach - "Dad stays upstairs in his bedroom, for this good reason I'm about explain to you" (or maybe this isn't the best of all possible houses? ;-) ...one thing is missing from all this sophistic working backwards from visible reality to unseen unreality: proof! But "the ultimate decision [is] based on faith, not proof" (p30).
Another example of working backwards from reality is given on page 33-34: "If the case in favor of belief in God were utterly airtight, then the world would be full of confident practitioners of a single faith. But imagine such a world, where the opportunity to make a free choice about belief was taken away by the certainty of the evidence. How interesting would that be?" Wow, this is clutching at straws. So you're saying that perhaps one of the reasons God is playing "hide and seek" with the universe as Woody Allen quipped, has to do with the quality of
interestingness? Which is the more obvious answer here, bearing Occam's razor in mind? A God who is able to interact with the world but doesn't, to make things more interesting? Would the interestingness include wars, famines, tsunamis? Or could it simply be that God that isn't there, doesn't care, or has a much more important reason than interestingness for appearing not to [be there]/[care]?
It seems to me that faith can be aimed in any direction, depending on how one interprets the "evidence", but the target isn't so large as Collins appears in his vagueness to say it is. How can we harmonize "each person needs to seek out his own particular path to the truth" (p219) with "we must not go so far as to commit the logical fallacy of saying that all conflicting points of view are equally true. Monotheism and polytheism cannot both be right"(p227). What if my search leads me to become a Hindu? Can Collins dismiss the spiritual experiences of a billion practitioners of this religion because they don't see things the way he does? Of course, Collins is saying monotheism is right - and not just right for him, but objectively so - so he
is saying that such ones are
wrong. And so to my usual complaint with all such reasoning: an obsession with
rightness and
wrongness has nothing to do with
goodness and
badness, and in my view, nothing to do with God. And would a loving God, or gods, want us to be more concerned with being right than with being good? And would a loving God or gods want us to be more concerned with faith, a strange and unnatural and practically useless quality, than with love? I don't think so, and I don't think so. That's my opinion - you don't have to share it, I'm not going to think any more or less of you if you believe otherwise.
Of course I don't think any more or less of Francis Collins for writing this book - I understand fully the desire to share my thoughts and beliefs with others, especially if those beliefs give me much comfort. One of the other main strands of evidence presented by Collins is to do with this comfort that religion gives - "why do we have a God shaped vacuum in our hearts and minds unless it's meant to be filled?" (p38) and, quoting Lewis (also p38), "Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." This is sometimes called the "argument from desire" - in other words, we are spiritually hungry and only spiritual things can satisfy us.
Well, it may be so. I'm not as convinced of this God shaped hole as I am of the existence of the moral law - after all it's a different thing to assert the absence of something than it is to assert it's presence.
Anything can be said to be absent, but you must have
something to say it's present! It could very well be, as
Anne Druyan believes (as did her late husband
Carl Sagan), that - to quote Wikipedia - "people can have a sense of awe and wonder about the unity of the cosmos without introducing the concept of a god" and that this awe and wonder may be what we're missing out on in our busy lives? Or what if this feeling that we have is just the feeling that life itself creates in us, the longing to understand why we are here, what happens when we die etc? We all would like to know those things, so if we perceive the lack of answers as a hole, then I suppose this could be what is filled (or felt to be filled) by religion? What if I have gods shaped holes that can only be filled by Hinduism? I don't think so. What I think is this: if you think you have the answers, then that surely is going to fill the troubling gaps in your mind - but what if the answers turn out to be wrong (not that you'd ever know)? What if your answer(s) don't satisfy me - is there something wrong with me, or with the answer? Allow me to boldly assert that there is something wrong with the answer. To make a mathematical analogy: I know I am in the unenviable position of having a sum with no answer, but surely the position of having a wrong answer is worse? Especially if it leads you to stop seeking "since ye have found". What if this feeling of satisfaction, to use a metaphor again where it may (or may not!) be found true, is akin to drinking water from a poisoned well in the desert? You feel satisfied, don't you? Alas, there could be a price to pay for your satisfaction...
Even more worrying could be the fact that your answer could satisfy you but harm others. Do you know how Collins answers the question "what about all the harm done in the name of religion?" With a metaphor - and a water metaphor at that! He says on page 40 that "the pure, clean water of spiritual truth is placed in rusty containers, and the subsequent failings of the church down through the centuries should not be projected onto the faith itself, as if the water had been the problem". Well, try this on for size: "the pure, clean containers called human beings are contaminated by the unclean water of religion, and the subsequent actions of the church down through the centuries should not be projected onto the people themselves, as if they had been the problem". Isn't this an equally valid view? In fact I agree more with this viewpoint. Religion may motivate people occasionally to do good (but what merit is there in doing something for a reward?) but more often it doesn't, or it motivates them to do things they wouldn't dream of doing as human beings. As Collins points out, secular ideologies have also driven human beings to levels of extraordinary evil - but we're talking about religion now, don't change the subject! To quote
Steven Weinberg "With or without [religion], you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion." Francis Collins is probably one such good person, but when he says "what are we to make of those restless hearts who deny [God's] existence" (p162), can we not see the thin end of a belief that wedges him apart from others who do not think like him?
These are pretty much the main arguments, the main evidence for belief presented by Collins in his book: the existence of the moral law, our spiritual needs (the God shaped hole within us), the creation of a universe so well suited to life and (though not really elaborated on) the person of Jesus Christ and the existence and content of the Bible. To me, the admission that a "leap of faith" (p31) is needed to get from the evidence here listed to a position of belief shows that the evidence will not satisfy every reader, for not every reader is prepared to make such a leap. Maybe some people, myself included, are under the foolish impression that if God wants us to make any leaps he would tell us, clearly and simply, so that we could all do as He wished? Even better, such a God would take us by the hand, or even carry us as He jumped for us. God knows where we would land!
Now, the really good bits of the book are concerned with the genetic evidence for evolution - I must admit that there's some real food for thought here. I hope to post some of that in a later blog.
