C.DLT

Did we happen by chance or by intelligence? Just when most scientists thought the point moot, “I’ve Found God, Says Man Who Cracked the Genome” seems to expand the dialogue about a few million base pairs. At first, Intelligent Design (ID) might make it seem like creationists are selling out. But as world renowned scientist Francis Collins suggests, the evolution of our species has been too precise—too calculated—to be the heir of mere chance. But can we expect biological evolution to stand on holy ground?

My fascination with science growing up went far beyond your garden variety terrarium. I had my parents thinking I might eventually make something of it. And for a while I had. The takeaway from my career as a scientist was that nature’s mechanisms are far too intricate to be the product of millions of molecules caught up in some sort of interstellar head-on collision—there just has to be more to it than that. Even cracking the human genome—the 3 billion-letter “instruction book” as Collins refers to it—doesn’t come close to understanding the intricacies of mother Earth, much less the universe. We may have liberated ourselves from the stone age, but our evolution can only go so far so fast. Sure, we’re still riddled with war and famine, but it’s irresponsible to assume that the species has hit a glass ceiling of progress, while at the same time nursing our obsession with a 2,000-year-old prophecy that calls for both an untimely and gruesome end to our collective existence.

That’s why I find it impossible to buy Collins’ claim that “man will not evolve further.” And I stand by my choice. Collins believes in theistic evolution, the theory that merges creationism (God created the earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th), with biological evolution (Darwin). Seems smart to have found a way to join diametrically opposed theories; at some point Collins must have traded in his clear lab safety goggles for rose-colored ones:

“One of the great tragedies of our time is this impression that has been created that science and religion have to be at war…I don’t see that as necessary at all and I think it is deeply disappointing that the shrill voices that occupy the extremes of this spectrum have dominated the stage for the past 20 years.”

Extremes have dominated this critical debate for too long. But the senseless blood feud between superstition and rational thought dates back to the Enlightenment, if not before—a bit longer than 20 years. But the tragedy stems not from the competition between connotations of “religion” and “science,” but rather from the lack of harmony between science and spirituality; we’ve lost a connection with nature, and so we’ve lost a connection with ourselves.

I remember the first time I extracted DNA. My spiritual experience came from seeing, with my own eyes, the product of my labor: strands of naked DNA swimming in a clear cocktail. It was then that I realized we know relatively nothing of our existence. That was my experience with God. Sir Isaac Newton must have had a similar feeling when he discovered the laws of gravity: “This most beautiful system could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.”

I get it. But what disturbs me about Francis Collins’ approach is that he seems to sink in a mire of God-centric views. That, in my opinion, lowers the glass ceiling of his own evolution a great deal. Whether or not Collins’ brand of science follows suit to Newton’s (the man subscribed to religious views much like Collins does), it’s clear that both gravity and our newly published genome were not the products of divine intervention—otherwise, the controversy around science and religion simply would not exist. But humans, ever desperate to find the meaning of life, are content to settle for a quick fix—even if it means sacrificing common sense. Collins may have led the Human Genome Project at the turn of the century, but he also endorses a set of beliefs narrated thousands of years ago that, up until quite recently, has successfully advocated for slave ownership and the subjugation of women. Humans have evolved considerably since then, haven’t we? The fact that we still rely so heavily on biblical teaching suggests that we haven’t changed much after all. We may not, beyond the shadow of a doubt, know the origin of the species. In fact, science has in recent years warmed up considerably to the concept of God. But we have no way of knowing who or what our creator is. At least not yet. So the theory of Intelligent Design might not be so intelligent after all; Darwinian evolution at least accounts for the fact that it gets things wrong once in a while.

As a scientist, Collins should be more responsible to avoid making claims based on non-reproducible theory. But in this case, the scientific enterprise might just pardon Collins for such heresy. If it took a shocking moment of clarity on a mountaintop for Collins to think about God and, as a result, bring about the translation and discovery of the human genome, then so be it. But if that is truly the case, it seems we would have more say in our evolution than we realize.