Waterstones The Language of God
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Price: £8.99
Brand: Waterstones
Description: Dr Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, is one of the world's leading scientists, working at the cutting edge of the study of DNA, the code of life. Yet he is also a man of unshakable faith in God. How does he reconcile the seemingly unreconcilable? In THE LANGUAGE OF GOD he explains his own journey from atheism to faith, and then takes the reader on a stunning tour of modern science to show that physics, chemistry and biology -- indeed, reason itself -- are not incompatible with belief. His book is essential reading for anyone who wonders about the deepest questions of all: why are we here? How did we get here? And what does life mean?. Waterstones The Language of God - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: Waterstones
Product ID: 9781847390929
Delivery cost: 2.99
ISBN: 9781847390929
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Author: Neutral
Rating: 5
Review: Francis Collins argues that the realms of spirituality and knowledge of God are different from that of science. He sees no conflict between the coexistence in the same person of belief in a transcendent God who takes a personal interest in human beings and the exploration of nature with the tools and language of science. Originally an agnostic/atheist, as is often the case with children in households where religion and church are thought of as one and are primarily social institutions, Collins didn't want to know about the great questions of life until he read C S Lewis's Mere Christianity. From this he concluded that altruism was an expression of the Moral Law, a reasoning he found far more convincing than the ant-centred altruism of E O Wilson and the sociobiologists. There many problems for any religious believer, of which the problem of evil is perhaps the most apparent. None of these are scientific problems. They are philosophical ones and Collins sets out in detail the war of the worldviews of science and religion. On the one hand there are those who see God as wish fulfilment, excusing incredible evil and asking for the suspension of reason, a view held by many scientists. However, Collins points out, "Science is not the only way of knowing. The spiritual worldview provides another way of finding truth." The latter cannot be understood by the application of the scientific method and it is unscientific to attempt to do so. Those who see this book as an attempt to reconcile religion and modern science are mistaken. It is an attempt to show that a scientist can believe in God without ceasing to use the scientific approach to material knowledge. For Collins DNA is, by its very complexity, the language of God, not proof of atheism. Evolution by natural selection is for Collins a hypothesis which constantly requires testing but which, in his view, provides the underlying theory for the explanation of the development of today's human beings. In that respect he probably under-estimates the philosophical nature of Darwin's theory. Collins dismisses Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design as explanations for the development of life on earth. He recognises both were inspired in part by the atheistic message of evolutionary biologists, such as Dawkins, whom he regards as misguided in believing there is no teleological purpose to the universe. He concludes that science does not demand atheism. "If God is outside nature, then science can neither prove nor disprove His existence" and concludes, "Atheism itself must....be considered a form of blind faith, in that it adopts a belief system that cannot be defended on the basis of pure reason." Evolution is an insufficient premise on which to reject either God or science. Collins does not see the conflict as one of religion and science but one of humankind's attempt to bully their fellow creatures into intellectual submission. That was true when religion was politically powerful (and in places where it still is) and it is equally true where materialism (and science) reigns unchecked. Worldviews by their nature tend to be exclusive. Collins shows they can exist in harmony. Regrettably many people appear unwilling to acknowledge the possibility that their view may be incorrect. An enjoyable book, unlikely to convince many people, but a welcome antidote to the strident atheism of Dawkins.
Author: Jean Harvey
Rating: 2
Review: In his introduction, Collins says "But science is powerless to answer questions such as "Why did the universe come into being?", "What is the meaning of human existence?", "What happens after we die?" One of the strongest motivations of humankind is to seek answers to profound questions, and we need to bring all the power of both scientific and spiritual perspectives to bear on understanding what is both seen and unseen." And yet these questions are neither profound, nor answered in any satisfactory way. They are not profound because they presuppose an answer. Why SHOULD there be a reason for the universe? Why SHOULD there be a meaning to life? Why think that anything might happen to us other than decay after we die, and why suppose that there is an 'us' which is separate from our body and could have an existence after death anyway? These of course are questions which those who ask them need to justify, yet Collins never does. He simply accepts that the assumptions behind the questions are valid and that answers are required. The questions are not only not profound; they are not even shallow. Collins approach is to simply fit the god he was inculcated with as a child into what he sees as gaps in the science, by implicitly concluding that a gap means the questions is unanswerable, therefore the only feasible explanation must be the god his parents told him about. This is intellectually dishonest and especially so from someone who earned his living closing gaps in scientific knowledge using the scientific methodology which we now need to believe is inadequate for the job when it comes to the gaps which best fit his gods. And there lies the final piece of dishonesty: if, as Collins admits, the 'spiritual', or 'supernatural' are beyond the reach of science, how does he know about them and how can they interact with the natural world? Clearly they cannot. To interact with, and so to influence the natural world, is to be part of it. Anything which is exerting any influence in the natural world would be detectable by measuring this effect. If it cannot be so measured it is not doing anything and we would have no knowledge of it existence. As a man of science, Collins SHOULD be aware that this principle unpins all of science. If science is powerless to answer his questions, and powerless to examine his assumed 'spiritual' world, how does he know HIS answers are the right ones? Clearly, he deems them to be the right ones only because they confirm the assumptions behind the questions in the first place. Hence this book is nothing more than a lengthy apologia for Collins' own superstitions, just as those of C.S.Lewis (whom he cites as some sort of authority figure) were for C.S.Lewis superstitions. Inevitably these books always arrive at the same conclusion - it is the locally popular god that did it! Strangely, no one these days ever rehearses these same old answers to these same old questions and concludes that it was Zeus, Ra or Wotan that did it, even though the 'logic' would still stands. Of course, an Islamic apologist will conclude that it was the god Mohammed described and a Sikh will conclude that it was the god revealed by Guru Nanak or a Hindu will conclude that it was one or more of the Hindu pantheon. The conclusion is always the one which best supplies the local market in religious apologetics. Collins is very clearly trading on his scientific background and yet he has abandoned science in what is nothing more than a book intended to trade on the market in self-affirming satisfaction for those who derive it from reading about how a 'real scientist' agrees with their superstitions and evidence-free preconceptions, and who like to think that there are still plenty of gaps in the science in which their unintelligently designed, locally popular god, so perfectly fits.
