Musings

I just read a great article published as a cover story by Time Magazine in November 2006. It's titled "God vs. Science" and can be found here. This article is a debate between pre-eminent atheist Richard Dawkins and the Christian and lead scientist of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins. Many of the core issues in the God vs. Science debate are identified very truthfully and simply in this article. Francis Collins said a few of the same things that I wrote down in reaction to Dawkins' book The God Delusion, though his words are much more rehearsed and efficient and solidified than mine. In particular I liked Collins' statement about how we should approach the argument:

"God's existence is either true or not. But calling it a scientific question implies that the tools of science can provide the answer. From my perspective, God cannot be completely contained within nature, and therefore God's existence is outside of science's ability to really weigh in."

Collins is not saying here that science must stay out of religion or that the two are separate entities contained in airtight boxes (to quote Steven Jay Gould). You should read the article for exact clarification, but essentially what Collins is doing with this statement is reacting to Dawkins' approach to proving, or disproving God. Dawkins assumes all that exists is the physical realm, and using only the physical realm we can't see or find or prove God, so therefore he doesn't exist. I agree that you can't prove God using the physical realm alone. Somewhat in this article but also in his book The Language of God, Collins says that it is "the knowledge of the Moral Law and the universal search for God" among other uniquely human attributes that are the things that show God's existence. Collins says that when we look at science we're discovering just one of the ways that God operates in his vast creation. This too shows the paradigm difference that I tried explaining in my notes on TGD. Dawkins is working backwards through time and level of creation and Collins is working forwards.

Here's 3 further comments on this topic:

COLLINS: By being outside of nature, God is also outside of space and time. Hence, at the moment of the creation of the universe, God could also have activated evolution, with full knowledge of how it would turn out, perhaps even including our having this conversation. The idea that he could both foresee the future and also give us spirit and free will to carry out our own desires becomes entirely acceptable.

DAWKINS: I think that's a tremendous cop-out. If God wanted to create life and create humans, it would be slightly odd that he should choose the extraordinarily roundabout way of waiting for 10 billion years before life got started and then waiting for another 4 billion years until you got human beings capable of worshipping and sinning and all the other things religious people are interested in.

COLLINS: Who are we to say that that was an odd way to do it? I don't think that it is God's purpose to make his intention absolutely obvious to us. If it suits him to be a deity that we must seek without being forced to, would it not have been sensible for him to use the mechanism of evolution without posting obvious road signs to reveal his role in creation?

Dawkins comment shows that he doesn't quite get the argument of God existing outside of the physical realm. If God is outside of time, how could you possible describe him as "waiting?"

I have been a creationist for many years now, and that conclusion is not founded upon a vast understanding of science. I am open to the possibility of accepting evolution as the process of history. If all the evidence really points in that direction, then I have to choose to be ignorant and bull-headed to continue to believe in creationism. And I would also be doing it without cause. For if fundamental theology and the fundamentals of Jesus life, death, resurrection, and salvation are all consistent with evolution, then why reject it?

Having said that, there are a couple of things I am uncomfortable with about evolution. First is the fact that, if evolution is true, then death was rampant in the world before Adam. (This line of thinking came to me through the author of In the Beginning, Walt Brown). Now Paul writes in Romans 5 that death came through the sin of the first man. Sin causes death. If evolution is true, then it really complicates how we view the roll of sin. One argument is that God took a particular being at a point in the long history of this earth and called it Adam and breathed his image into this being (thus making a soul) and set it apart from all the other beings. This being was sinless and had perfect union with its creator and when it decided to not do what its creator wanted it to do sin entered the world. It is possible to reconcile this theory with Genesis 1 but not with Genesis 2 and certainly not with sin creating death. Genesis 2 makes it seem as though Adam was there near the beginning of creation, before rain and before plants were growing outside of the Garden of Eden. Is Genesis suddenly being uber-poetic here? There's another book I need to read by C. John Collins (not a relation) titled Science & Faith.

The second thing is found in Collins' last comment posted above. I disagree with what he says here. In a round-about way it is true that free will is related to why God seems hard to find, but only in the view of sin - not in some God-initiated way as Collins seems to suggest.

I believe that God desperately wants us to find him, to know that he exists, to reach out for him, to worship him, to glorify him and to honor him with our actions. Of course there is also free will. Free will allowed the possibility for sin, and it is sin that clouds our view and keeps us from seeing our ever-present creator. God didn't create with the intention to keep himself hidden so that we would have to accept him on faith. Fundamental Christian Theology states that God created us perfect and that we sinned and separated ourselves from Him and clouded our own view. As human beings we see good and bad and we realize that we are living in an imperfect condition. We constantly fight against the razor-edged chains in our life that are destroying us - addictions, hurtful words and actions, loss, and countless others. These things are the result of our transgressions against our creator. We struggle with these things, and I'm telling you the only sure-fire way to conquer them is to lay the burden of the fight on the one who can win - to let go, to trust that he will succeed, to stop struggling and believe that he will carry the day. This is called faith.


This is where I'll end now for tonight. This is a new revelation for me about faith. I think I've come across a new way of looking at faith and looking at coming to Jesus. I need more time to flesh this out and put it in identifiable and comprehensible words. I'd also like to spend considerably more time thinking and writing about Adam's role if evolution is indeed our history.

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