There is a transcript and MP3 of a presentation in three parts by Francis Collins here on the Evangelical Ecologist.
Found by way of the Acton Institute’s PowerBlog:
Francis Collins - A Believer Looks at the Human Genome - Acton Institute PowerBlog
In the second half he lays out his primary argument for the existence of God.
Collins was the subject of the blog post called “God in Details, says man who cracked human genome” here on I.I.
It sounds like the answer is ‘yes’.
This article has some stunningly simple math laid out to show that we all have ancestors in common.
Roots of human family tree are shallow - Yahoo! News
It’s simple math. Every person has two parents, four grandparents and eight great-grandparents. Keep doubling back through the generations — 16, 32, 64, 128 — and within a few hundred years you have thousands of ancestors.It’s nothing more than exponential growth combined with the facts of life. By the 15th century you’ve got a million ancestors. By the 13th you’ve got a billion. Sometime around the 9th century — just 40 generations ago — the number tops a trillion.
It means when Muslims, Jews or Christians claim to be children of Abraham, they are all bound to be right.
Perhaps this is obvious, but the mathematics involved are not so complex that they account for some people being more geographically isolated than others. Perhaps there are people in New Guinea or on Hawaii who are related to me only by way of the original migrants who populated or came from those places millenea ago.
Liking this story doesn’t make me a Bible literalist, I like it that big numbers make that which feels unlikely not only possible but probable. I also like it that this math story underscores the Judeo-Christian story that we are all brothers.
Thanks to Mutti @ Portia Rediscovered
He didn’t really say that, it was Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (architect) who said:
God is in the details.
Francis Collins of the US genome project said something more like this:
I’ve found God, says man who cracked the genome - Sunday Times - Times Online
June 11, 2006
Steven Swinford
THE scientist who led the team that cracked the human genome is to publish a book explaining why he now believes in the existence of God and is convinced that miracles are real.Francis Collins, the director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute, claims there is a rational basis for a creator and that scientific discoveries bring man “closer to Godâ€.
His book, The Language of God, to be published in September, will reopen the age-old debate about the relationship between science and faith. “One of the great tragedies of our time is this impression that has been created that science and religion have to be at war,†said Collins, 56.
“I don’t see that as necessary at all and I think it is deeply disappointing that the shrill voices that occupy the extremes of this spectrum have dominated the stage for the past 20 years.â€
Thanks to my lovely wife, who heard it on Dennis Prager’s radio show this morning.
I rather doubt that Scott Adams, the Dilbert artist, is a proponent of Intelligent Design per se, but it’s pretty clear here that he sees the humor in some of the presumptions that the “Look at Me! I’m descended from Plankton!” Evolutionaries crowd seem to make. If he stops by to tell me to take the image clipping down, I’ll ask him.
The “mid-species” idea is already funny, even when it doesn’t involve oysters. The pre-eye light sensitive blob is already funny, even before the character hopes for it to evolve into an eye right there on his head.
Dilbert Comic Strip from Dilbert.com
Is that a tail?
I can’t get an Intelligent Designed universe to sit flush with a Bird Flu risk on the table at the same time.
Either: there is some kind of mutation going on, mutation that would be advantageous to the flu virus i.e. evolution, or: there’s bird flu and there’s people flu. An avian flu that can’t spread between humans today won’t do it tomorrow.
I’ve vented about what I see as shortcomings in Intelligent Design as science (here). If you read that post, you will not be tempted to misunderestimate this book review as a wholehearted endorsement of I.D. any more than the following is an endorsement of I.D.:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things seen and unseen.
Nature Never Stops Talking is a series of articles written by Samuel J Alibrando originally for publication in a local newspaper. The articles are presented here in a well organized collection for pleasurable reading. The articles are grouped such that similar subjects are presented together. I found the story cross referencing to be a very nice way to jump around the collection.
Subtitled “The Wonderful Ingenuity of Nature” this joyful book celebrates the astonishing wonders of creation. Sam Alibrando sees the fingerprints of the Creator on everything in nature that is complex, intricate, clever, beautiful, too small to see or too huge to grasp.
The articles rejoice in the power of God as the author sees it in astronomy, biology, genetics, all the natural sciences. Each piece is an exploration of the beauty in creation and worship of its Creator. I can’t help but think that I’d enjoy a long walk in the woods with this author chatting about the amazing interconnectedness of wonderful things in nature.
Some of the presumptions that a great many scientists, and possibly even more science teachers are a little too comfortable with are put to strenuous tests here. I’ve written elsewhere about the power of faith required to believe improbable and extraordinary things, like some neo-darwinists do, for example, that a species that reproduces sexually was born from parents that reproduced asexually. Some of these things might actually have happened, but they require at least as much expenditure of imagination and faith as taking the story of Adam and Eve as literal, sorry, Gospel.
The sweet spot: If you’re already thoroughly and steadfastly convinced of Intelligent Design, if you love a walk in the woods, if a clear, starry night full of stars, planets and meteorites put you in a mood for prayer and rejoicing, if reading fascinating bits about nature’s creatures makes you thankful for the meticulous attention to detail God granted to a historical Noah before a literal worldwide flood, if the Joyce Kilmer poem…
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
…is one of your favorites, this book is for you. I can recommend it enthusiastically! If you are in or even near the sweet spot, you can stop reading now, go find this book you’ll think it’s a lot of fun.
The rest of what I have to say is less complimentary, so if you’re excited now maybe you should skip it.
(more…)
Before I can write a fair review of Sam Alibrando’s Nature Never Stops Talking I’ve gotta get a few things off my chest.
Nature Never Stops Talking is at its heart an Intelligent Design book. While Mr. Alibrando insists at the outset that there is no “argument” in the collection of newspaper articles that is presented here as a book, this book cannot be considered without a discussion of I.D. (Intelligent Design)
Courageous Intelligent Design proponents are asking tough questions about the limits of Darwin’s theory of evolution as an explanation of Life the Universe and Everything. It goes like this:
Charles Darwin did not attempt to describe the origins of the universe, just the species. Darwin’s
Origin of The Species refers to the capital “C” Creator breathing life into the original beings. The difference between a house cat and a single-cell ameoba is gargantuan, enormous, huge, but measurable. That measurable difference is in conflict with either biologists’ understood rates of mutation or with astronomers’ understanding of the age of the universe, or both. How many spontaneous eruptions of life were there? What are the odds of that? How was it that organisms that don’t have cell nuclei produced organisms that do? Was it the other way around? How did sexual reproduction evolve out of asexual reproduction? Did male and female evolve separately, but at the same time? Who set the first Male up with the first Female? How did they know where to meet? What if they didn’t hit it off? How many billions of years would we have been set back if they hadn’t? What if they got acquainted and had a few drinks but he hadn’t evolved his beer goggles yet? What are the odds of that?
They’re good questions. (except for those there at the end, they’re mostly mine.)
Sadly, in the hands of us mere mortals, we sinners who want so desperately to see the face of our Lord, we the wretched who see the Virgin Mary on the walls of the Fullerton Avenue underpass in Chicago, these good questions are wasted. We want so badly to have our faith rewarded, we want so much to be right, and we are so tired of the fish stickers that sprout legs and say “Darwin” instead of “IXOYE” (a really old Greek acronym for Jesus Christ God Son Savior) or “Jesus”. We let our hopes and fondest wishes fill the gaps in science and we can look pretty stupid doing it:
Irreducible complexity. It’s the idea that a multipart thing cannot have come together accidentally when the disassembled parts don’t make sense each on their own. If you see a structure in nature that is irreducibly complex, you’re seeing design. This is hogwash. If you see a structure in nature that is irreducibly complex, your seeing a thing that might have evolved by having the unnecessary parts shrink and dissapear.
Evolution defies entropy. Hog. Wash. Entropy is the law in physics that says everything is always degrading, on its way to grey while Evolution is always building thing up, making them better. 1.) Evolution is not betterment, just change. 2.) Physics <> Biology. duh.
Nature is too complicated to be an accident, it must be designed. Wash Another Hog. Just because you can’t imagine another answer doesn’t make the only answer you can imagine correct. This little logical error has actually spawned a mini mock church, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The membership claims to believe that a super intelligent flying-pasta-being created this earth and all the creatures that inhabit it. They have every bit as much proof of this as Christians have. The Pastafarians are mocking you and their church is funnier than yours.
The fossil record is lacking. Yes it is, so what? fossils don’t usually happen from remains. - and - Yes it is, so what? We haven’t found all the species currently inhabiting the globe, why are you surprised that we’re missing some of those that have been dead for a kajillion years?
Cardinal Paul Poupard head of the Pontifical Council for Culture reminds us of Pope John Paul II’s words: “Truth cannot contradict Truth.” Cardinal Poupard is quoted extensively in an article from the International Herald Tribune:
Religious zealotry in the name of Charles Darwin is still religious zealotry. So, Mr. I’ve-got-a-fish-with-legs-on -my-hatchback, be careful what fond hopeful wishes you stuff into the mysterious spaces that are between the things that science can observe, measure, hypothesize about, and do reproducible experiments on.
