God's Merry-Go-Round

Around Christmas last year, Francis Collins (Director of the Human Genome Project) was interviewed on the Colbert Report. I wish I could stay up late enough to watch this every night, but these days, I can't even make it to Jon Stewart. Why is this on my blog? Well, Francis Collins is a really prominent scientist who is a Christian. He wrote a book about how he believes DNA to be the language of God. I spoke with him last year about his beliefs and was impressed by his humility, open-mindedness and accessibility. Note that he included in the subtitle of his text, "evidence for belief," not evidence for God.

Anyway, let the laughs begin.

Part 1:


Part 2:


Careful Francis - I know you are tall and all, but please don't kick that cute little lamb's head!

More True Faith

I don't think Richard Dawkins pays attention to the American Republican primary race, but he recently made some comments about faith and science relevant to a recent post of mine. Fortunately, newspaperman William Rees-Mogg elegantly responded to this.

Thanks to the reader who alerted me of this conversation.

True Science and True Religion

As you may know, several candidates for president were recently asked if they believed in evolution. In elaborating on his response after the debate, one candidate offered the following:

He told his interviewers that he did not believe there was a “conflict between true science and true religion.”

“True science and true religion are on exactly the same page,” he said. “they may come from different angles, but they reach the same conclusion. I’ve never found a conflict between the science of evolution and the belief that God created the universe. He uses scientific tools to do His work.”

Interesting. Putting aside my curiosity of what he actually means by 'true' science and 'true' religion are, I wonder if we will ever hear language like this come from a Democratic candidate... I kind-of wish we would sometime. It might bring the conversation about faith, science and politics toward a discussion, rather than a shouting match.

You get extra points for correctly guessing which candidate this was.

Einstein's God

These days, people tend to be interested in Albert Einstein's philosophy more than his science. Walter Isaacson (who has written the first biography of Einstein since his sealed personal files were opened) published a nice little introduction to Einstein's belief in God in the On Faith blog of the Washington Post. Einstein was basically a deist:

I believe in a God who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.

A la Baruch Spinoza. Is deism still around? Not many I have spoken with openly subscribe to such ideas. I wonder if by taking this view, folks give a nod to a higher power that 'science' may never understand, but avoid orthodoxy, dogma and other difficult to accept practices of organized religion.

Creationism is Pagan?

Here's one from the intersection of Science and Religion:

Vatican Astronomer Guy Consolmagno was in Glasgow yesterday to deliver a lecture, and The Scotsman picked up the story. Some interesting nuggets came out of the article.

Brother Consolmagno stated that "Knowledge is dangerous, but so is ignorance. That's why science and religion need to talk to each other." This he supported with an analogy describing creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a "kind of paganism" because it harked back to the days of "nature gods" who were responsible for natural events.

The article ends with the following statement:

"Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism - it's turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do."

Something about this resonates with me. I wonder what it is...