Francis Collins - No Friend of Bible Believers
Francis Collins, the former Director of the Human Genome Project (HGP) and now the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has risen to national prominence in recent years. His scientific acumen combined with his rather public confession of Christian faith has garnered both excitement by Christians, as seen in these Christianity Today articles (here and here), and interest among unbelievers, as in this exchange with Richard Dawkins in Time.
But not everyone is excited about Collins’ recent appointment by President Obama to direct NIH. Sam Harris, the author of the atheistic diatribes against faith, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, questions Collins’ fitness for NIH due to the geneticist’s Christian faith in this NY Times piece. While I don’t question Collins’ fitness for his present position, I do question how much he should be viewed as an ally of Bible-believing Christians. His foreword in a new book exposes his disdain for anyone who would take the creation account in Genesis 1-2 as an accurate description of the beginning of the world. Collins pens a four-page foreword for Karl Giberson’s Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution (Harper One, 2008). In this rather strained attempt to harmonize Christianity and Darwinism, Giberson stretches the limits of reason and logic in an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable. His book is introduced by Collins’ similarly tortured attempt to elevate science way beyond its boundaries and to denigrate anyone who supports Intelligent Design (ID), young-earth creationism or virtually anything regarding the early chapters of Genesis.
Collins describes ID’s challenge to evolution’s ability to explain irreducibly complex structures in living organisms as pressing on “despite the lack of any meaningful support in the scientific community” (p. v). This statement is simply not true and masks not only the many scientists who question Darwinism’s explanation of irreducible complexity but also the almost universal pressure on scientists to toe the party line concerning Darwinism.
Collins’ contempt for ID does not hold a candle, however, to his scorn for young earth creationists (YEC). He describes the Creation Museum outside of Cincinnati as “perhaps the strangest development of all” for its depiction of humans “frolicking” with dinosaurs “despite overwhelming scientific evidence that they were separated in history by more than sixty million years” (p. v). Collins’ seemingly absolute confidence in the declarations of “science” regarding the age of the earth and mechanism of human development cannot go unchallenged. If Collins rejects the Genesis account of creation, he must also reject (or at least re-imagine) the historicity of Adam, the Fall, and consequently a number of foundational orthodox doctrines, all of which directly impact the biblical account of redemption. One has to wonder exactly from where Collins draws his Christian faith.
Collins clarifies his view of Genesis when he declares that the “evidence” from a wide variety of sources, including the fossil record and human genomes means that “special creation of humans simply cannot be embraced by those familiar with the data, unless they wish to postulate a God who intentionally placed misleading clues in our own DNA to test our faith” (p. vii). Although this is not the place to expound on the importance of the historicity of Adam and Eve and the Fall as described in Genesis 1-3, it is enough to say that without the “special creation of humans” Collins must eviscerate much more than the first few chapters of the Bible. Throughout the entire Bible, the narrative of Genesis 1-3 is assumed to be factual, notwithstanding whatever phenomenological elements may be present. But a bigger problem emerges from Collins’ statement. He speaks of the scientific data as if it were simply brute fact requiring no interpretation or presupposition. But scientific data is never brute fact and must always be interpreted. It will always be contingent upon further investigation. Collins does not seem to recognize this limitation but ascribes to fallen human reason a divine, omniscient status.
Collins concludes his foreword with an appeal for believers to adopt proposals such as Giberson’s that synthesize natural and spiritual perspectives and bring one “much joy and peace” (p. vii). This will allow believers to “get beyond these destructive battles” of “alternative creation stories” and focus on the “real meaning of Christianity”—the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (p. viii). Collins’ lack of theological expertise is glaringly obvious here. He does not seem to make the connection between the trustworthiness of Scripture regarding the account of creation and the account of the life of Christ. Analytic philosophers make mincemeat of this kind of inconsistency. If someone rejects clear statements in one part of Scripture, how is he justified in accepting them in another? Autonomous human reason becomes the judge of truth at this point, not Scripture.
In addition, Collins is apparently not familiar with Paul’s whole argument of Christ as the second Adam in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, which provides the meaning of the life, death and resurrection that Collins claims to believe. The fact of Christ’s life, death and resurrection, like scientific data, is not brute fact, but needs to be properly interpreted. And if Paul tells us that Christ is only properly understood as the second Adam, then gutting the proper understanding of Adam and Eve guts the proper understanding of Christ and His work. Collins cannot have it both ways.
In summary, Bible believers should know by now that hope cannot be set on politicians or those they appoint. No professed Christian is automatically going to benefit believers or support a Christian worldview merely by his profession. The only human leaders who will ever truly be an ally to those who believe the Bible are those who make the Bible their authority in all matters of reason and life.
Mark Farnham is Assistant Professor of Theology and New Testament at Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary (Lansdale, PA). He and his wife, Adrienne, grew up in Connecticut and were married after graduating from Maranatha Baptist Bible College (Watertown, WI). They have two daughters and a son, all teenagers. Mark served as director of youth ministries at Positive Action for Christ (Rocky Mount, NC) right out of seminary and pastored for seven years in New London, Connecticut. He holds an MDiv from Calvary and a ThM in New Testament from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (South Hamilton, MA). He has also studied ancient manuscripts at Harvard Divinity School and philosophy at Villanova University. He is presently a doctoral student at Westminster Theological Seminary (Glenside, PA) in the field of Apologetics. These views do not necessarily reflect those of Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary or its faculty and administration.
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Either I cannot read, which is entirely possibly - I have been known to make worse mistakes before, or you don’t know what you wrote. In that section I quoted from you, you equated nonYE positions with those that “elevate scientific consensus to a point that leads to a rejection of Scripture”. Yes, the scientific community is dominated by atheism and agnosticism, because Christians who join the scientific community like Collins are treated as though they were traitors, giving in on important points of Scripture so that they can maintain credibility, when that is not the case. Or perhaps, you are skirting around what you mean to say: that any person who believes what modern science seems to have proved is a traitor to the Gospel because God did not, in fact, create an orderly, rationale world through which we can discover truths about ourselves and God.
Aaron, I am frustrated with this discussion. You act as though I did not mean what we both know I meant when I said it seemed you did not care what the watching world thought. Of course, we both know that the gospel is foolishness to the unbeliever. We also both know that Christ said the world would know us by the way we treated each other. So when you, by the way that you argue someone to be wrong, not in the argumentation itself, make a fellow-believer sound like an intentional cop-out, I say that fills the enemy with glee. Why would it be so painfully hard to drop the “too worried about credibility” line? Why do you insist on interpreting me as saying that Collin’s position is not problematic when I have repeatedly said that I believe we should speak out against error? The attack of this thread is not Collin’s position; it is Collins himself. That is what makes me upset. There is no pity here for a man in error, just as from people like him there would be no valuing of a simpler (and I don’t mean that in a bad way) faith. So yes, the world will mock us, justifiedly.
[Audrey] Either I cannot read, which is entirely possibly - I have been known to make worse mistakes before, or you don’t know what you wrote. In that section I quoted from you, you equated nonYE positions with those that “elevate scientific consensus to a point that leads to a rejection of Scripture”.Well, since you offered… I’ll pick “cannot read.” I’m kidding, but you did misread. Please note the “I wonder if” and “spirit of” and “leads to” which are not the same as “equals.”
I wonder if Collins isn’t an example of what the spirit of non-YEC creationist views tends to lead to? That is, once you get too worried about credibility in the “scientific community,” maybe you’ve already lost and some form of rejection of Scripture is pretty well locked in… even if that takes the form of a view that simply lacks internal consistency.By the way, I’ve been much more conciliatory toward non YEC views here before (and caught some heat for it). I’m not eager to broad brush them. But I keep seeing things that push me further in the direction of seeing the “spirit of nonYEC” views as having a built in trajectory. (And by “things I’m seeing” I don’t mean the heat I caught for saying you don’t have to be YEC to be a fundamentalist… I’m kinda stubborn and that sort of thing just tends to make me dig in. But since that heat has dissipated, I’m actually come closer to agreeing the the former heat-appliers.)
[Audrey] Aaron, I am frustrated with this discussion. You act as though I did not mean what we both know I meant when I said it seemed you did not care what the watching world thought. Of course, we both know that the gospel is foolishness to the unbeliever. We also both know that Christ said the world would know us by the way we treated each other. So when you, by the way that you argue someone to be wrong, not in the argumentation itself, make a fellow-believer sound like an intentional cop-out, I say that fills the enemy with gleeWell, first, I really didn’t know what you meant. Now I do. But aren’t believers capable of “intentional cop-outs”? I don’t see why that particular error should be off the table of potential things to rebuke. But having said that, I never aimed to make that particular charge. At least I don’t think I did…. no, it’s not really my way of thinking at all. Rather, I’m more inclined to say that an unintentional mis-alignment of values and priorities leads to the sort of quandaries Collins finds himself in—where he has to try to have something both ways that simply can’t be had both ways.
I’ll give you this, though. In retrospect, the title is not ideal. It tends to make the thing sound more personal than it is from the git go. But there is no way to go after what someone teaches and does without overlapping some with the person himself. The problem doesn’t exist in isolation from the man. Still, had it do over, I might have gone with a question mark instead… “… a Friend to Bible Belivers?” It’s just generally more persuasive to let the writing make the point rather than the title making the point.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
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