The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

“[F]or me the experience of sequencing the human genome, and uncovering this most remarkable of all texts, was both a stunning scientific achievement and an occasion of worship.”

Collins was convinced that the project to crack the genetic code had a spiritual and religious dimension, “the language of God.” The genome is similar to a language in that it consists of a “code” of letters representing chemical components. Like a language or text, the genome provides “instructions” to the body’s cells to perform particular functions.

“In my view, there is no conflict in being a rigorous scientist and a person who believes in a God who takes a personal interest in each one of us.”

The central conviction of the book is that science and religion are compatible. Collins makes this conviction personal by presenting himself as a believer in God who is also a scientist, and by relating the various issues of the book to his own experiences as a scientist and Christian.

“Biology has mathematical elegance after all. Life makes sense.”

Collins was not particularly attracted to biology as a young student, preferring chemistry; but he changed his mind after taking a course in biochemistry and discovered how “rigorous intellectual principles” (17) could be applied to the life sciences. The experience was also crucial in that it opened his mind to the possibilities of the genetic code, which would become his life’s work.

“Doubt is an unavoidable part of belief.”

Collins’s statement, echoing the ideas of theologian Paul Tillich, is a surprising perspective on the relation of doubt to religious faith: Rather than being its complete opposite, doubt is part of religious belief. Collins admits that he experienced doubts in the early stages of his religious conversion.

“The pure, clean water of spiritual truth is placed in rusty containers.”

Nonbelievers often object to faith because of the injustices perpetrated throughout history in the name of religion. Collins responds that we must judge religion on its objective principles and ideas, not on the behavior of its practitioners, since all human beings are corrupt and fallible.

“[The scientist] has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about the conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow observed with surprise that while previously, scientists believed that they were moving steadily away from the worldview propounded by religion, the Big Bang theory seemed to lend credence to theological ideas about the origins of the universe.

“I cannot see how nature could have created itself. Only a supernatural force that is outside of space and time could have done that.” 

Collins affirms his conviction that the universe is not self-subsisting but made by a force he calls God. Collins sees this as an inescapable conclusion from the Big Bang, which shows that the universe had a definite beginning.

“The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications.”

Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking reacted to the anthropic principle—the idea that the universe is so complex that it could not have arisen out of mere chance, and that the universe seems finely tuned to give rise to human beings—by giving voice to a religious perspective on science.

“The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.”

Physicist Freeman Dyson ascribed the randomness that exists in the constitution of the universe to the anthropic principle, the idea that the universe seems to have been minutely arranged to give rise to human life.

“[I]f God is truly Almighty, He will hardly be threatened by our puny efforts to understand the workings of His natural world.”

Collins repeats his fundamental conviction that faith and science are compatible and cannot contradict each other, because both are rooted in the basic truth of God. He calls for intellectual humility as an important attitude in humanity: We can never gain complete knowledge and mastery over the physical universe; only God possesses this.

“Faith that places God in the gaps of current understanding about the natural world may be headed for crisis if advances in science subsequently fill those gaps.”

Throughout the book, Collins cautions against “God of the gaps” theories that treat particular scientific phenomena, or gaps in current knowledge, as positive evidence of God’s existence. Such theories of God do a disservice to religion because they establish faith on a weak basis.

“Do not fear, there is plenty of divine mystery left.”

Collins seek to assuage believers’ fears that as scientific explanations for our world accumulate, there will be no room left for faith, religion, and mystery. In fact, Collins argues, scientific knowledge only increases our wonder at the universe and fuels our desire to worship God.

“At the DNA level, we are all 99.9 percent identical.”

This scientific fact reinforces the idea that human beings constitute one family. It has definite ethical implications, leading us to treat our fellow human beings as equals. Collins sees this as an instance where science confirms the Moral Law that we know intuitively.

“I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

Galileo defended his scientific research by putting it in the context of religious faith, which his opponents were zealous to seal off from scientific inquiry. Galileo remained a strong religious believer and, like Collins, regarded science and faith as fundamentally compatible.

“When it comes to the meaning of life, fence sitting is an inappropriate posture for both scientists and believers.”

Collins stresses the need to take a stand on the deepest questions of life, the universe, and God. In particular, we must decide where we stand on the question of evolution because it concerns how human life came into existence. Collins implies that as creatures endowed with reason, we have an obligation to come to terms with the ultimate questions.

“Truth is truth. Truth cannot disprove truth.”

Collins is convinced that science and religion are sources of truth and complement each other. From the time he became a believer, he has sought to combine faith with scientific inquiry despite naysayers in the scientific community who thought that the two paths were contradictory.

“We love conflict and discord, and the harsher the better.”

Collins attributes the clash between science and faith in part to the media. News outlets foment the conflict because it serves ratings and feeds the public taste for outrage. This is also, for Collins, one reason why BioLogos has not caught on as a harmonious and conciliatory blending of scientific and faith perspectives: The media want the conflict to continue perpetually.

“Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still underway.”

Theodosius Dobzhansky, who was both a believer in evolution and a believer in Russian Orthodox Christianity, emphasized that creation is an ongoing process. It is notable that he explicitly blended scientific and religious perspectives by applying the religious term “creation” to the process of evolution.

“The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshiped in the cathedral or in the laboratory.”

A succinct statement by Collins of the central conviction of his book, that God is behind all of reality and therefore everything that we discover in the natural world leads to God. There is no conflict between the scientific and spiritual worlds. Collins implies that science fosters the desire to worship God, because it reveals the wonders God created. One can in fact “worship” and revere God even in a secular space like a laboratory, because God is present everywhere.

“I had plunged a needle close to his heart; he had directly impaled mine.”

These were Collins’s feelings as the young African farmer whose life he saved in the operating room told him that he was called to Africa for his sake. Collins was startled into the realization that sometimes we are called by God to help people on an intimate, personal level, which contradicts our “grandiose dreams” of making a difference on a big scale.

“[T]he Moral Law […] points to a God who cares about human beings, and a God who is infinitely good and holy.”

The human consciousness of a Moral Law is one of the main factors that led Collins to believe in God. This ethical focus also underlies his work as a doctor and scientist to help and heal people. The existence of selfless acts of love among human beings is something that science cannot explain and points to the existence of a good and loving God.

“Science is the only legitimate way to investigate the natural world.”

Collins stresses the legitimacy and importance of science, implying that we should not apply religion where it is out of place—science and religion have their appropriate spheres. The correlative of the quote is that “science alone is not enough to answer all the important questions” (228); meaning, faith is also needed to answer questions about nonphysical realities.

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

Collins uses Albert Einstein’s words to reinforce the central commitment of Collins’s book. Like Collins, Einstein recognized that both science and religion are necessary and complementary in the human search for truth.