Reconciling God and Science

Monday, Jul. 10, 2006 By DAVID VAN BIEMA

Lab coat in the pews: Collins, at the National Cathedral, has been a Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian congregant

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To some, the mere fact that he is effectively outing himself to the secular world as a man of faith warrants celebration. "Just that he's written the book is important," says Randy Isaac, head of American Scientific Affiliation, a professional group for conservative Christians. "It will help convince Christian young people that science is a viable career, and scientists to recognize that Christian faith is a relevant option."

But Collins has more in mind than being a role model. The last celebrity scientist to suggest a middle path in the creation wars was Stephen Jay Gould, who argued that science and faith could coexist because they are "nonoverlapping" domains with no common ground on which to clash. Yet Collins insists on overlaying and intertwining them. He starts from a very Gouldian premise--"Science is the only reliable way to understand the natural world [but] is powerless to answer questions such as 'what is the meaning of human existence'"--but he tracks it to a different conclusion. "We need to bring all the power of both scientific and spiritual perspectives to bear on understanding what is both seen and unseen," he writes, maintaining that those perspectives "not only can coexist within one person, but can do so in a fashion that enriches and enlightens the human experience." And without seeming particularly immodest, he offers his own experience as Exhibit A.

Collins' life, although told many times in the press during the genome race, remains appealingly weird and inspiring. He was born on an outhouse-equipped Virginia "dirt farm"--but his Yale-educated parents had earlier returned to the land as part of a rural-community experiment under Eleanor Roosevelt's patronage. Home-schooled and solitary, their brilliant fourth son pursued his inclinations through a Yale dissertation on quantum mechanics--but then swerved, first to an M.D. and next to the field of genetics, whose astonishing precision and lifesaving potential were becoming manifest.

In 1993, Collins' trailblazing work identifying genetic defects that predispose to cystic fibrosis and other diseases led to his succeeding double-helix discoverer James Watson as head of a 2,400-scientist, multination project to map all 3.1 billion biochemical letters that constitute the human blueprint. In 2000, Bill Clinton honored Collins and his private-sector competitor Craig Venter in the White House, crediting their complementary genome work with uncovering "the language in which God created life."

That statement reflected Collins' input. In 1976, during his medical residency, the serene faith of some of his mortally ill patients shocked the self-described "obnoxious atheist" into consulting a local minister, who handed him the book Mere Christianity by the great Christian popularizer and Narnia creator, C.S. Lewis. Struck by Lewis' nuts-and-bolts approach, Collins investigated faith on his own methodical terms. Finally, one morning in 1978, while hiking in the Pacific Cascades, he came upon a massive, frozen, three-stream waterfall. To him it recalled the Trinity. He writes, "I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ."