{"id":3224,"date":"2007-04-05T16:14:57","date_gmt":"2007-04-05T15:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=3224"},"modified":"2007-04-05T16:15:47","modified_gmt":"2007-04-05T15:15:47","slug":"cnn-why-this-scientist-believes-in-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=3224","title":{"rendered":"CNN: Why this scientist believes in God"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dr. Francis Collins<\/strong><\/p>\n

Special to CNN<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. His most recent book is \u201cThe Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.\u201d<\/p>\n

ROCKVILLE, Maryland (CNN) \u2014 I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views.<\/p>\n

As the director of the Human Genome Project, I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, our own DNA instruction book. As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God\u2019s language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n

I did not always embrace these perspectives. As a graduate student in physical chemistry in the 1970s, I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked \u201cWhat do you believe, doctor?\u201d, I began searching for answers.<\/p>\n

I had to admit that the science I loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as \u201cWhat is the meaning of life?\u201d \u201cWhy am I here?\u201d \u201cWhy does mathematics work, anyway?\u201d \u201cIf the universe had a beginning, who created it?\u201d \u201cWhy are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?\u201d \u201cWhy do humans have a moral sense?\u201d \u201cWhat happens after we die?\u201d (Watch Francis Collins discuss how he came to believe in God Video)<\/p>\n

I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. My earlier atheist\u2019s assertion that \u201cI know there is no God\u201d emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, \u201cAtheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative.\u201d<\/p>\n

But reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page. Ultimately, a leap of faith is required.<\/p>\n

read the rest here…
\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"HareBy Dr. Francis Collins<\/strong><\/p>\n

I did not always embrace these perspectives. As a graduate student in physical chemistry in the 1970s, I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iskcon-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}