Science is about getting rigorous answers to questions about how nature works. And it’s a very important process that’s actually quite reliable if carried out correctly, with the generation of hypotheses and testing of those by accumulating data and then drawing conclusions that are continually revisited to be sure they’re right. So if you want to answer questions about how nature works, how biology works, for instance, science is the way to get there. Scientists believe in that, and they’re very troubled by suggesting that other approaches can be taken to derive truth about nature. And some, I think, have seen faith as a threat to the scientific method and, therefore, to be resisted. But faith, in its proper perspective, is asking a different set of questions. And that’s why I don’t think there needs to be a conflict here. The kinds of questions that faith can help one address are more in the philosophical realm.
Why are we all here? Why is there something instead of nothing? Is there a God? Isn’t it clear that those aren’t scientific questions and that science doesn’t have much to say about them? But you either have to say, well, those are inappropriate questions, and we can’t discuss them, or you have to say, we need something besides science to pursue some of the things humans are curious about. For me, that makes perfect sense. But I think for many scientists, particularly those who have seen the shrill pronouncements from extreme views that threaten what they’re doing scientifically and feel, therefore, that they can’t include those thoughts into their worldview, faith can be seen as an enemy.
And similarly on the other side, some of my scientific colleagues who are of an atheist persuasion are sometimes using science as a club over the head of believers, basically suggesting that anything that can’t be reduced to a scientific question isn’t essential and is just represents a superstition and it should be gotten rid of. Part of the problem is I think the extremists have occupied the stage. Those voices are the ones we hear. Most people are comfortable with the idea that science is a reliable way to learn about nature, but it’s not the whole story. And there’s also a place for religion, faith, theology, for philosophy, but that harmonious perspective doesn’t get as much attention. Nobody’s as interested in harmony as they are in conflict.
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My study of genetics certainly tells me incontrovertibly that Darwin was right about the nature of how living things have arrived on the scene. By dissent from a common ancestor under the influence of natural selection over very long periods of time. Darwin was amazingly insightful, given how limited his molecular information was. Essentially it didn’t exist. Now with the digital code of DNA, we have the best possible proof of Darwin’s theory that he could have imagined. So that certainly tells me something about the nature of living things, but it adds to my sense that this is a answer to a how-to question, and it leaves the why question still hanging in the air, other aspects of our universe. I also think for me as Einstein raised questions about the possibility of intelligence behind all of this.
Why is it, for instance, that the constants that determine the behavior of matter and energy, like the gravitational constant, have precisely the value that they have to for there to be any complexity at all in the universe? That is pretty breathtaking. It’s lack of probability of ever having happened. And it makes you think that a mind might have been involved in setting the stage simultaneously. That does not imply necessarily that the mind is controlling the specific manipulations of things that are going on in the natural world. I would very much resist that idea. I think the laws of nature could be the product of a mind. I think that’s a defensible perspective. But once those laws are in place, I think nature goes on, and science has the chance to perceive how that works and what its consequences are.
Francis Collins