Saturday, April 07, 2007

Faith, Reason, and Science

Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the Human Genome Project. That makes him a prominent and respected scientist by anyone's definition. In this op-ed, he explains why all science has taught him does nothing to diminish his belief in God, setting himself against scientists like Richard Dawson who argue that faith and science/reason cannot be reconciled. Collins argues that a case for God can be made on purely rational grounds, and writes, "Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true... But why couldn't this be God's plan for creation?"
COMMENT: I posted this because I basically hold the same views, but Collins states them much better than I could. Science cannot be squared with a literal reading of Genesis, and conflicts with many non-Christian faiths as well. If you set aside aside literalism, though, and allow for the use of allegory and metaphor in religious texts, then it's possible to find, as Collins did, "harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith."

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