Scientific and Spiritual Worldviews: Are They in Conflict?
Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project, delivered a lecture at InterVarsity entitled “Human Flourishing and the Sciences.” Some of you may know Dr. Collins as the author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. This lecture is very informative as he tells you some of the history behind his involvement in the Human Genome Project. It is also very personal as he took the time to tell the story of how he became a believer. It is Dr. Collins’ contention that many people hold a false dichotomy that you can either have a scientific worldview or a spiritual worldview. Although he does not like the term “theistic evolution,” he summarizes why he thinks this is compatible with the biblical account in Genesis. He also plays his interview with Stephen Colbert which is hilarious.
I am still not sure what to make of “theistic evolution,” but I think this is a good lecture to get you thinking about it.
Human Flourishing and the Sciences
by Dr. Francis Collins
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Update: Over at Tim Challies’s blog, you will see a discussion on Greg Koukl’s take on theistic evolution. I thought it would be interesting to include his quote here in light of Collins’ lecture.
Some people suggest that God used evolution to design the world. They are motivated, I think, by two impulses. The first is a desire to affirm the Bible. The second is a suspicion Darwinism may have merit. Thus, they declare both true.
These two notions, however, seem incompatible to me. It may sound reasonable for God to “use” evolution, but if you look closer I think you will see the problem.
Suppose I wanted a straight flush for a hand of poker. I could either pull the cards out of the deck individually and “design” the hand, or I could shuffle the cards randomly and see if the flush is dealt to me. It would not make any sense, though, to “design” the hand by shuffling the deck and dealing. There’s no way to ensure the results. (I guess if I were really clever I could make it look like I was shuffling the deck when in reality I was stacking it, but that would be a deceitful kind of design called “cheating.”).
In the same way, either God designs the details of the biological world, or nature shuffles the deck and natural selection chooses the winning hand. The mechanism is either conscious and intentional (design), or unconscious and unintentional (natural selection). Creation has a purpose, a goal. Evolution is accidental, like a straight flush dealt to a poker rookie.
The idea that something is designed by chance is contradictory. Like trying to put a square peg in a round hole, this just doesn’t fit.
