Miss Becky's Blog

Collins: Why this scientist believes in God

By Dr. Francis Collins

Editor's note: Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. His most recent book is "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief."

ROCKVILLE, Maryland (CNN) -- I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those worldviews.

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's language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan.

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 "What do you believe, doctor?", I began searching for answers.

I had to admit that the science I loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as "What is the meaning of life?" "Why am I here?" "Why does mathematics work, anyway?" "If the universe had a beginning, who created it?" "Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?" "Why do humans have a moral sense?" "What happens after we die?"

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's assertion that "I know there is no God" emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative."

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.

For me, that leap came in my 27th year, after a search to learn more about God's character led me to the person of Jesus Christ. Here was a person with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life, who made astounding statements about loving your neighbor, and whose claims about being God's son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing. After resisting for nearly two years, I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty, and I became a follower of Jesus.

So, some have asked, doesn't your brain explode? Can you both pursue an understanding of how life works using the tools of genetics and molecular biology, and worship a creator God? Aren't evolution and faith in God incompatible? Can a scientist believe in miracles like the resurrection?

Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers. Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.

But why couldn't this be God's plan for creation? True, this is incompatible with an ultra-literal interpretation of Genesis, but long before Darwin, there were many thoughtful interpreters like St. Augustine, who found it impossible to be exactly sure what the meaning of that amazing creation story was supposed to be. So attaching oneself to such literal interpretations in the face of compelling scientific evidence pointing to the ancient age of Earth and the relatedness of living things by evolution seems neither wise nor necessary for the believer.

I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.

A MIRACLE OF LOVE & MODERN MEDICINE

I stared at our seven-month-old baby girl, Chelsea, in the hospital crib. As I tucked up her blanket, my eyes rested on the old Dillon family Bible I kept in the crib with her. It had belonged to my grandmother, who died when I was thirteen. I cherished that Bible as I had cherished my grandmother. She always soothed my childhood hurts and fears; to this day I still missed her. The Bible had rested in her hands during her funeral service. My mother removed it just before the coffin lid was lowered and later gave it to me.

But even Grandmother probably could not have soothed the hurt and fear my husband, Lance, and I now faced. Earlier that day the specialists at University Medical Center in Tucson had finally diagnosed the baffling condition that was slowly but surely draining the life from our first child.

“Chelsea has an extremely rare birth defect called severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome,” our doctor informed us. “SCIDS interferes with the normal functioning of her immune system. She has virtually no natural defenses against infection. Her bone marrow doesn’t produce the necessary cells.”

I stood statue-still and stared at him . . . I had prayed that somewhere in the mighty arsenal of modern medicine was the right drug, the magic bullet that would cure her. The immunologist carefully explained that the only option was a bone marrow transplant – a risky procedure that at best had about a fifty percent chance of success.

The only option.

We needed to transfer her to a hospital that did this sort of operation as soon as possible, he had said. There were only a few in the entire country.

Now as I stood over Chelsea’s crib I smoothed the blanket and pushed the old Bible off to the side. It’s leather cover was worn soft with use. As my child slept I closed my eyes and hoped for a miracle.

The next day we decided on Memorial Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan (New York City) for the procedure because of their slightly-higher-than-average success rate. But now came the enormous problem of transporting Chelsea from Tucson (in Arizona in the south west of our country) to New York (in the northeast) without exposing her to many people. Chelsea couldn’t afford to catch even a cold. Any worsening in her condition would delay surgery. A simple flue bug could kill her.

Driving there was out of the question. She couldn’t be off her IV fluids for that long. Commercial airliners posed too much hazard of contracting contagious disease, and big airports were even worse. We needed a private plane, but Chelsea’s condition was not considered acutely critical – a criterion that had to be met before our insurance company would agree to cover the enormous cost of a jet. The catch-22 was that if Chelsea did become that critical, she would probably be too sick to have the surgery.

Lance and I were at wit’s end. We didn’t sleep, we barely ate. There had to be something we could do. We made countless phone calls. Finally we heard about a group called Corporate Angels, which provides free flights for sick children aboard private planes. The flights conduct normal business travel, and patients hitch along. Corporate Angels found us a flight leaving that Friday out of Denver bound nonstop for New York. A miracle was in our grasp.

“Dear God,” I prayed, “now please help us get to Denver. I know You have Your ways. We’ll just keep on trying.”

Denver (in Colorado) was too far to drive. We got the number of a private medevac (flies people with medical problems for a fee) company. Maybe we could pay for the flight ourselves. But when I talked to Judy Barrie, a paramedic whose husband, Jim, piloted the medevac plane, she gave me the bad news. “The flight will cost six thousand dollars, minimum,” she said. We didn’t have six thousand dollars. Our finances had been stretched to the limit.

I thanked Judy and said good-bye. “Wait,” she said suddenly as I was about to hang up. “I really want to help you. I’m not promising anything, but I’ll talk to Jim. Maybe he can figure this out.”

When I hung up I had the strangest feeling that these people would be able to do something about what was increasingly a hopeless situation. An hour later Jim Barrie called back. “Listen, I’ve got a friend flying back an empty plane from Phoenix (city in Arizona, not far from Tucson where they were) to Denver in the morning,” Jim told me. “If you can get to the field by six-thirty, you can hitch a ride.”

Perfect. Chelsea could handle the drive to Phoenix. But I was almost afraid to ask the next question. “Jim, what will it cost?”

“Cost? Heck, not a thing. This guy’s a friend, and he’s got to get his plane up there anyway.”

I was faint with relief. These total strangers had taken a huge step in saving the life of my child. I didn’t know what to say. The word thanks didn’t seem big enough.

“You could do us one little favor, though,” Jim added. “Judy and I would like to meet Chelsea.”

Chelsea was awake and even a bit playful when Jim and Judy arrived at the hospital. While Jim talked to Lance (her husband) about finding our way around the Phoenix airport, Judy and I chatted. Her eyes kept flitting over to the crib. Then I noticed she was staring at Grandma’s Bible. One time when Judy was leaning over Chelsea, her fingers brushed it. Finally, as they were about to go, Judy asked, “Where are you from?” I told her Pittsburgh (a city in a state near New York and very far from Arizona).

“I’m from Pittsburgh too,” she said slowly. “Well, the suburb Carnegie actually.”

“My mother is from Carnegie,” I said. I felt a shiver go through me. “Virginia Everett. Dillon was her maiden name.”

“Virginia Dillon?” Judy said, eyes wide. “My father was Howard Dillon.”

“Uncle Howard?” I was stunned.

Judy nodded. It was as if a current of electricity had jumped between us. Now I could see why her face had seemed faintly familiar. Judy Barrie was my cousin Judy Dillon. “I haven’t seen you since . . . ,” I stared to say. Judy’s eyes jumped again to the Bible.

“Since Grandma’s funeral twenty years ago,” she finished the sentence. “That’s the Bible she was holding.”

We fell into each other’s arms. I knew then that all would be well with Chelsea. The odds against this crossing of paths were simple too great. This was meant to be.

Chelsea got her bone marrow transplant and four months later she left the hospital with a healthy immune system. She is, as they say, a medical miracle.

And then there was the other miracle. I like to think of it as my grandmother’s miracle. In a sense, even twenty years after her funeral, she was reaching out to comfort me and assure me that with God all things are possible.

By Cheryl Deep

Comment: The power of love is no less potent than that of modern medicine. In the right hands, each serves as it’s own instrument of God’s healing.