New Book Out: How I Changed My Mind About Evolution

The Religion News Service has a story about a new book that has been published that will likely set many fundamentalist evangelicals' teeth on edge and rattle their cages.  The book is titled How I changed My Mind About Evolution: Evangelicals Reflect on Faith and Science (which I just picked up as a Kindle e-book, seconds ago) Cathy Grossman writes:

Creationist Christian tourists may soon flock to the Ark Encounter, a literal vision of Noah’s story in Genesis come to life in July as a theology-packed tourist attraction in Williamstown, Ky.

But this month, another group of evangelicals is making a very different case – minus any animatronic critters — in a new book, “How I Changed My Mind About Evolution.”

It promotes the idea that one can be serious about Christian faith and still accept a scientific Darwinian account of human origins. BioLogos, the organization of pro-evolution Christians in the sciences founded by famed geneticist Francis Collins, teamed with InterVarsity Press to publish a collection of 25 personal essays from clergy, scholars and scientists.

It should be a good read. The Kindle version is only $8.84.

Ken Ham on BioLogos and Proper Interpretation of the Scripture

I have resisted posting on this, after reading Darrel's response to it but, after reflection, I think it needs some response. Ken Ham has a twenty minute “sermon” on the problems with BioLogos. Remember, this is the same Ken Ham who got into hotwater a few months back and got uninvited to a home school conference because of his caustic and uncharitable remarks about BioLogos at the time. Here is the video:




A few thoughts:

• He shows a clip of Darrel talking about the age of the earth and what he would tell new students about how to integrate that information. Darrel states that he would refer the new student to some important books on geology and biology that would help them understand the evidence, to which Ham responds

  “By the way, I have a book I would refer them to.”

  That is snide. It assumes that anything that Darrel would provide in terms of resources would be worthless.
• Concerning the evidence for age of the universe and the earth, Ham states:

  This is not science, this is man's historical science, his beliefs about the past and he is going to tell us to let go of the Bible and what it says? See, belief in billions of years is science to them. It is not science, it is belief.

This idea that we cannot know our past (a variant of his "were you there?" statement) presents some cognitively dissonant problems. What if Mr. Ham walks into his breakfast room in the morning and finds a half-eaten bowl of cereal? By his own admission, he will never be able to determine what happened the night before because it would involve the use of historical science. While this is probably an overstatement of what Ham actually thinks, he never makes it clear that there is a problem here—that the same logical processes that one uses to reconstruct a murder investigation or an archaeological site are the same to reconstruct the prehistory of this planet. He never addresses this contradiction because to do so would reveal the logical error of his thought process.
• He states, about BioLogos (for whom I write) that they are starting to

  infiltrate the church. In fact, they are now producing a homeschool curriculum to get home schoolers not to believe Genesis.

  Maybe what they are trying to do is get kids to think intelligently about Genesis and avoid the one-dimensional reading of the scripture that Mr. Ham promotes.
• Later, he argues, in response to Francis Collins' comment that the Bible is not a textbook, that it is exactly that. He states:

  The Bible is not a textbook like a physics textbook, but it is a textbook of science because it is historical science that's talking, it is God's history book. That's the point. But when he says textbook of science, see they confuse these terms for people and that's what you have to understand, the difference between observational science and historical science. Where he finds the conflict, it is not because of the observational science, it is because of the historical science.

  It is not clear that Ham even knows the definition of historical science. It appears that he is saying that there is historical science that is biblically-based (the bible) and historical science that isn't (scientific reconstruction).
• About the whole kerfuffle surrounding the Great Home School Uninvite, he states:

  “When I found out what Peter Enns believed, and that he was selling his curriculum at the home school conference, I had to, in fact, we had already told the organizers that I can't speak unless I say something about him, not him personally, but his beliefs and I did and something happened that we still don't know what happened behind the scenes but I was eliminated.He wasn't eliminated. He was allowed to continue to speak." "And he was allowed to speak at a home school conference but they didn't want me there teaching about a literal Genesis.”

  This simply isn't so and Ham knows it. He was uninvited because of his "ungodly" and "mean-spirited" statements about some other speakers (Enns) and the convention. The organizers also wrote: "We believe that what Ken has said and done is un-Christian and sinful," That is pretty clear. Judging from the way that Nathan Ham, Ken Ham's son, responded, it was smack on the money too.
• In the early part of the video, he disapprovingly quotes Bruce Waltke, who also had a dust-up last year regarding evolution. Waltke states:

  “I think that if the data is overwhelming in favor, in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult, some odd group that’s not really interacting with the real world.”

  Ironically, Ham doesn't see that this is exactly what he is doing in this video—taking his followers down an isolated road in which they are a slave to one, narrow view of scripture to the exclusion of any other and in which all who do not accept this view can only be seen as enemies.

This response is stronger than that of Darrel Falk's and my inclination is to call Ham arrogant, pompous, misguided and divisive, all of which he is. But we need to pray for those he is trying to reach. He is not a scientist and his approach is to tap into the emotions that this subject brings out. Man's science appears to be at odds with his interpretation of the scripture, but he carries the idea of man's fallenness and limited understanding in only one direction. It never occurs to him that Pete Enns has come to a different understanding of the scriptures through prayer and a desire to learn about the cultural and literary context of the book that he and Ken Ham hold so dear. It only occurs to him that if Pete Enns and Darrel Falk don't understand the scriptures the way he does, then they must not be in the spirit. If Ham's behavior and statements look “cultish” to people like Bruce Waltke, someone who has spent their entire professional life studying the scriptures, what must they look like to non-Christians?

Francis Collins and Karl Giberson at BioLogos on Common Ancestry

There is a discussion going on at BioLogos between Francis Collins and Karl Giberson about the role of common ancestry in evolutionary theory. Karl asks:

A layperson is understandably skeptical when they are told that there’s this tree of life going back to a common ancestor and all these animals are on the tree but we have no direct evidence for most of them and we have to infer them hypothetically. How do you respond to this large number of missing pieces in the puzzle? Does that bother you at all?

To this, Francis responds:

I know it bothers people who are not really convinced yet about the consistency of the whole theory but it doesn’t bother me at all. Is the absence of a fossil representation of an organism really all that troubling when you realize that what you’re asking for in that case—fossilization— is extremely unlikely to have happened? Now we can actually go back and predict pretty much to the base pair what was the genome sequence of the common mammalian ancestor.

We have done that for big stretches of the genome to show how you can computationally assemble that information. And it’s breathtaking that you can actually look now at the DNA sequence, which is a fossil record of its own, of an organism that we’re all descended from. And so are all the other mammals because we have enough evidence from today that we are able to look back through history to see what that must have looked like.

This is similar to what Jerry Coyne wrote (paraphrased) that even if we didn't have a fossil record, evolution would still be true, based on the genomic revolution that has occurred in the last fifteen years. The fact that we have the fossil record, which backs up the genomic evidence is just another nail in the coffin.

Francis Collins finishes by writing: There’s lots of stuff we [his fellow geneticists] don’t agree upon. But we do agree upon descent from a common ancestor, gradual change over a long period of time, and natural selection operating to produce the diversity of living species. There is no question that those are correct. Those are three cardinal pillars of Darwin’s theory that have been under-girded by data coming from multiple directions and they are not going to go away. Evolution is not a theory that is going to be discarded next week or next year or a hundred or a thousand years from now. It is true.

Yup. Read the whole thing as well as the first post.

Uncommon Descent Gets it Right (And Nature Immunology Gets it Wrong)

In the most recent post on Uncommon Descent, Scordova points out that the journal Nature Immunology, in their May editorial, takes some pot shots at Francis Collins, head of the NIH and founder of the BioLogos site, for his Christianity. The unsigned editorial can be found here. Scordova writes:

May, 2010 editorial in Nature Immunology makes it clear that they don’t trust religious persons–even those who are neo-Darwinian evolutionists like Francis Collins–in positions of scientific authority.

The editorial is basically a long argument that falls under the cum hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy—correlation does not imply causation. They begin:

The newest book authored by Francis Collins, Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith, was released in March 2010. A collection of essays addressing the rationality of faith, the book reflects the struggle of great minds of the past and present—philosophers, poets, scientists—to understand the urge to believe in a supernatural power. It is advertised as an essential companion for anyone seeking clarity in the ongoing debate between reason and faith: seekers, believers and skeptics.

The publication of the book has great potential to reignite some nagging doubts over the election of Francis Collins as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Many hoped that after his nomination he would refrain from publicly discussing his religious convictions and step down from projects such as Biologos, which attempts to reconcile evolution with the idea of God. This, however, has not been the case, and although most agree that Francis Collins is a skilled administrator, there are justified concerns that such public embrace of religion from an influential scientist may have negative consequences on science education.

This idea might, in and of itself, have merit, if there was evidence that Collins was subverting science education in this country. But there is none. The editors then recount several events in the last five year that detail the struggles that have been waged regarding science education over the country. These include the Dover-Kitzmiller case, the 2008 Louisiana "Academic Freedom" bill and the results of several polls suggesting that the acceptance of evolution in the United States is lower than it should be.

This is all certainly bad news but how is it remotely Francis Collins' fault? By their own admission, he has lamented the lack of evolution education and has never shied away from describing himself as an ardent evolutionist and is a prolific and gifted scientist. It is therefore, a bit puzzling when the editors refer to him only as a "skilled administrator." They write:

In the introduction and in interviews surrounding the book release [Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith], he describes his belief in a non-natural, non-measurable, improvable deity that created the universe and its laws with humans as the ultimate aim of its creation. Some might worry that describing scientists as workers toiling to understand the laws and intricacies of this divine creation will create opportunities for creationism adepts.

What they fail to recall is that when he was appointed as head of NIH, many creationist groups decried the appointment. Ken Ham, for example, wrote:

It is true that in this era of history, people are asking questions about Genesis, as they recognize that if Genesis is not true, how can one trust any of God’s Word? Collins is offering them answers that will only further undermine biblical authority—AiG is giving answers that stand on biblical authority, and, as a result, so many have testified they became Christians or rededicated their lives.

Lawrence Ford of the ICR wrote:

Should we conclude that Dr. Francis Collins is not a "born again" Christian as described in the Bible? He appears to be genuine and sincere in his belief that Jesus Christ is his personal Savior. But quite troubling is Collins' public and proud disbelief in the historicity of the Bible, the existence of Adam and Eve, the event of the Fall, and many more fundamental doctrines of God's Word--leading one to conclude that even if he is a Christian, his self-selective beliefs are terribly resistant to God's truth, revealing his dangerously poor view of the power of God. Like the Sadducees, Collins errs by "not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God" (Matthew 22:29).

Neither of these quotes faintly resembles high praise. These were calls to the "Christian" community to reject Francis Collins as a role model for Christians. It is only those of us who accept evolutionary science that welcomed his appointment and hoped he would truly be the bridge between science and faith.

But the problem, of course, is the faith. The editors of Nature Immunology have failed to distinguish between someone like Collins, who is not just a Christian but an accomplished scientist, and someone who supports creationism at the public school level, and this elementary lack of discernment is troubling and insulting.

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Francis Collins, Bill Maher and Josh Rosenau

Josh Rosenau has an interesting post at Thoughts from Kansas about the criticisms that have been leveled at Francis Collins because of his vocal Christian stance. He writes:

Collins is criticized mainly for two sets of claims about science and religion. The first, that the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of human life, the second is that the "Moral Law" cannot be explained scientifically. There is a consensus that the universe's physical constants cannot be much different than they are for life to exist, but no consensus why the universe has those values. Some people think there are a lot of universes and it is inevitable that one would have the combination of values we see in ours. Others seek physical laws which limit the range of variation in universal constants. Nothing Collins says attacks any consensus, and he has made clear that he has no aversion to scientific explanations for this phenomenon. As for the second point, there is no consensus about the origin of morality. There's good scientific evidence for the origins of altruistic behavior, but Collins seems to be aiming at a broader metaphysical meaning for "Moral Law," and has walked back comments suggesting that altruism was scientifically inexplicable.

Again, no denial of scientific consensus. He was wrong about a scientific claim (which Jason notes is not inherently anti-science), but corrected himself when he learned new information. That's how scientists work. By contrast, Maher has been challenged and corrected on his anti-vaccine and anti-germ-theory claims, but has not modified or abandoned those claims in the light of new evidence. That is decidedly contrary not just to scientific knowledge, but to the scientific process.

Rosenau is very sharp and correctly points out that there is no evidence that Collins has ever used his Christianity to sway his scientific decisions. He also points out that those who criticize him do so for his religious beliefs, not his scientific pursuits and successes. He also points to a potential problem that most people who are Christians and practicing scientists encounter—that election or appointment to any post that is as lofty as the NIH should have as a "litmus test" in that the candidate espouse no religious perspective at all. This is absurd. It demands a completely reductionistic view of the universe that is neither warranted nor unwarranted based on the available evidence. Science simply cannot speak to it. Just because these scientists have chosen to not believe in God does not mean a competent, highly qualified scientist has to do the same. A tip of the hat, Josh.


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More Praise for Francis Collins

Gary Stern of LoHud (Lower Hudson Valley) has an article on Francis Collins that reflects on the choice that Obama made (likely the only one I have agreed with, so far) to have him head up the NIH. He writes:

Collins is all scientist. He is the former head of the Human Genome Project, which only identified the nearly 25,000 genes in human DNA and mapped out a genetic blueprint for humankind.

He is a firm believer that the universe began with the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, that evolution explains the development of life, that the Book of Genesis is poetry and not history, and that the Bible-based ideas behind "creationism" and "intelligent design" are neither scientific nor intelligent.

But science is not enough for Collins. Well, maybe it's more accurate to say that his knowledge of science - of intricate codes and formulas that work for no apparent reason - inspires him to believe things that can't be proven by the scientific method.

"The elegance behind life's complexity is indeed reason for awe, and for belief in God - but not in the simple, straightforward way that many found so compelling before Darwin came along," he wrote in his 2006 book, "The Language of God."

As others have, Stern notes that Collins had a revelation reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis (how many people has that book influenced?) and allows Collins to explain himself:

For instance: "The Big Bang cries out for a divine explanation. It forces the conclusion that nature had a defined beginning. I cannot see how nature could have created itself. Only a supernatural force that is outside of space and time could have done that."

I find myself torn by that position. On one hand, I agree with it because it is also what I believe: that God created the heavens and the earth. And yet, it also falls under the heading of "belief from personal incredulity." Now, since it is not being posited as a scientific explanation for anything, the sting is removed quite a bit. Nonetheless, it is still the position that we, as scientists and (for those of us that are) theistic evolutionists, find ourselves. We believe in God and accept his Lordship over the universe. But we do this as an act of faith, understanding that science is not equipped to address those issues. Perhaps Collins understands this better than most.
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Josh Rosenau on Francis Collins

Josh Rosenau of Thoughts from Kansas has a post on the appointment of Francis Collins as head of NIH. His reaction to the move is mostly positive. He writes this:

Collins favors stem cell research and evolution. He's [sic] won't be pushing for research on intercessory prayer or other religious hokum masquerading as science. He's a good scientist, a good administrator, and a good politician. He'll work hard to keep NIH funding flowing smoothly, and he won't let his personal beliefs interfere with his agency's work.

As Rosenau points out, Collins walks a fine line between the anti-evolutionary crowd and the anti-religious crowd. He will likely get slings and arrows from both.


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Francis Collins Chosen to Run NIH

Barack Obama has chosen Francis Collins to run the National Institutes of Health. Collins, if you remember, was the head of the Human Genome Project and has a reputation for being a devout Christian and an ardent supporter of modern science. The story in the Wall Street Journal, by Steve Waldman, has this to say:

Mr. Collins was mocked by Bill Maher in his movie Religulous, so perhaps Mr. Collins' appointment will generate suspicion among secularists. And because he's advocated "theistic evolution" -- the idea that God set in motion the laws of the universe, including natural selection -- there are some more fundamentalist Christians who may sniff at Mr. Collins.

But to me, Mr. Collins is not just a scientific leader, he's a Christian role model. He shows that being a believer doesn't mean checking your brain at the church door, that people of faith have just as much intellectual heft as seculars and, most important, how faith and science can happily co-exist.

Amen, brother. The appointment of Dr. Collins reminds me of the Doonesbury cartoon that ran few years back here. He may yet get some slings and arrows. Amanda Gefter of the New Scientist thinks that those might come from our reliable antagonists, the Discovery Institute. She writes:

I think it's interesting that the Discovery Institute – which has long argued that intelligent design qualifies as science – seems to have given up the game and acknowledged that their concerns are religious after all. It's equally interesting that the catalyst doesn't seem to be someone like Richard Dawkins pushing atheism, but Francis Collins pushing Christianity. Perhaps the Discovery folks realise that Dawkins's followers are never going to be swayed by intelligent design; Collins, however, might very well cut into their target audience of scientifically-curious evangelicals.

Lets hope he does. The DI had a nondescript posting on the matter by Bruce Chapman. He writes:

But when the confirmation hearings take place I would not be surprised to hear some sharp questions about Dr. Collins' less known views on subjects that have not come out on his pulpit tours. He is, for example, a strong supporter of President Obama's program on embryonic stem cell research. The head of NIH doesn't have a lot to say about evolution, but he does have a lot to say about research matters in science on key social issues. Stem cells is only one of them.

Doesn't have a lot to say about evolution? This is what he says about evolution:

"Suppose God chose to use the mechanism of evolution to create animals like us, knowing this process would lead to big-brained creatures with the capacity to think, ask questions about our own origins, discover the truth about the universe and discover pointers toward the One who provides meaning to life. Who are we to say that's not how we would have done it? If you believe that God is the creator, how could the truths about nature we discover through science be a threat to God? For many scientists who believe in God -- including me -- it's just the opposite. Everything we learn about the natural world only increases our awe of the God the creator....

He says that a bunch of places. As Sandwalk points out, in The Language of God, Dr. Collins is crytal clear about it:

1. The universe came into being out of nothingness, approximately 14 billion years ago.
2. Despite massive improbabilities, the properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life.
3. While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, once life arose, the process of evolution and natural selection permitted the development of biological diversity and complexity over very long periods of time.
4. Once evolution got under way, no special supernatural intervention was required.
5. Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes.
6. But humans are also unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanation and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the Moral Law (the knowledge of right and wrong) and the search for God that characterizes all human cultures throughout our history.
(page 200).

How could you come to the conclusion that he doesn't say much about evolution? Mr. Chapman either Hasn't read Collins or is simply trying to downplay his views on evolution to point out his views on other controversial issues like Stem cell research. Either way, to state that he doesn't say much about evolution is simply false.

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